The Marx China

From August 25 to 28, 2026, the 24th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress was held in Beijing, where it passed five laws and resolutions: the Medical Safety Law of the People's Republic of China, the Law on the Protection and Improvement of the Quality of Farmland of the People's Republic of China, the Law on Agriculture of the People's Republic of China (Amendment), the Law on the Mobilization of National Defense of the People's Republic of China (Amendment), and the Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on the Amendment of the Law on Lawyers of the People's Republic of China. Meanwhile, three draft laws relating to the private economy and financial institutions—the Draft Amendment to the Law on Bankruptcy of Companies, the Draft Amendment to the Law on Bank Supervision and Administration, and the Draft Law on Combating Cross-Border Corruption—only reached the deliberation and processing stage at this meeting.

The eight laws mentioned include both laws amended with additional articles and completely new laws; all of them serve to consolidate the control of the Communist Party of China over the property of Chinese residents and companies.

Among these laws, the Medical Security Law of the People's Republic of China stipulates that Chinese citizens have both the right and the legal obligation to participate in basic medical insurance. This effectively transforms residents' health insurance payments from a voluntary act into a legally enforceable obligation. Previously, many low-income groups and young people chose not to enroll temporarily to maintain their basic standard of living. Implementing the new law will directly increase the fixed expenses of ordinary families, reducing their budgets for daily consumption. At the same time, the law lacks rigid and unified indicators regarding guaranteed rights and specific reimbursement percentages, delegating discretionary power mostly under the guise of "additional local regulations." This institutional design forces ordinary people to assume precise financial obligations while making it difficult for them to obtain clear and predictable health security benefits; the health insurance system is becoming a kind of specific tax on health.

Although the Medical Security Law of the People's Republic of China has already been enacted, a transition period of several months has been granted to allow the National Medical Security Administration and the various provinces and cities to develop detailed reimbursement regulations. The law will officially come into effect on January 1, 2027.

In the Law on the Protection and Improvement of the Quality of Farmland of the People's Republic of China, Article 2 clearly states that "farmland shall be used mainly for the production of grain and agricultural products such as cotton, oil, sugar, and vegetables, as well as fodder and feed"; Article 18 strictly restricts the use of permanent basic agricultural land (a term that designates the core areas of high-quality arable land whose use cannot be altered or occupied without authorization, according to the needs of demographic and socio-economic development of a given period); and Article 27 states that "the State shall strictly control the conversion of farmland into forest land, pastureland, orchards, or other types of agricultural land."

These articles coercively link agricultural land use to specific crop types, depriving farmers of the freedom to adjust their planting practices according to market supply and demand. Even if the yield of staple grain crops is minimal, they cannot switch to higher value-added cash crops (such as grapes) or independently convert land to more profitable projects like aquaculture (such as fish farming) based on market prices. This directly undermines farmers' ability to improve their living conditions through market participation. Furthermore, the legal texts fail to provide farmers with guarantees of equivalent prices or proportional compensation for losses in the market, effectively imposing the economic cost of food security on them through legal instruments.

Furthermore, the People's Republic of China's Agriculture Law (Amendment) is an extension of the Farmland Law, deepening control down to the micro level of agricultural production. For example, farmers' daily farming activities will be strictly monitored through satellite remote sensing and law enforcement brigades. Those who commit violations, such as allocating land to non-food or non-agricultural uses, will face administrative penalties, including the suspension of permits and land conversion procedures, severely compressing operational space at the local level. This reflects the extreme politicization of agricultural production and the coercive replacement of business management decisions with administrative imposition. Both laws will come into effect on January 1, 2027.

The following section addresses the Law on Mobilization of National Defense of the People's Republic of China (Amendment), the most far-reaching, controlling, and representative of the eight laws, which will officially come into effect on October 1, 2026 (China's National Day). Its implementation signifies that the state apparatus has legally completed preparations to impose paramilitary control and extra-economic exploitation (additional/secondary exploitation) at any time.

Coercive deprivation of the right to individual property

The new law introduces the concept of "expropriation," breaking with the previous logic of "requisition" (loan, subsequent repayment, and compensation). The State gains the power to make compulsory purchases or even confiscate private property free of charge, without citizens having the right to refuse, and unilaterally setting the amount of compensation. Furthermore, the scope of requisitions and expropriations expands from business assets to personal everyday belongings, including private vehicles, motorcycles, agricultural vehicles, real estate, food, and even household items and pets, which citizens must surrender unconditionally.

Severe restriction of personal freedom

The new law includes, for the first time, "development interests," meaning that when strategic areas such as the economy, technology, supply chains, or major foreign interests are seriously threatened, mobilization mechanisms can also be activated. In other words, the grounds for issuing an emergency mobilization decree are no longer limited to threats to national sovereignty, political unity, territorial integrity, or national security; political or military interventions can now be carried out against any target without requiring clear justification.

To prevent a mass exodus from leaving the regime without subjects to mobilize, the State Council's Regulations on Entry and Exit Administration, aimed at preventing ordinary residents from legally leaving the country, will be applied in advance starting September 15, 2026. At the same time, the law expands the group subject to control from "reserve personnel" to "military reserve personnel": men aged 18 to 60 and women aged 18 to 55 are considered military-age individuals obligated to provide unconditional support to the army in combat and collaborate in maintaining social order; furthermore, those possessing special professional skills (without a clear definition in the regulation) may be conscripted without age limits.

Once the mobilization order is issued, all "reserve military personnel" must periodically report their movements to the military service authorities and may not leave their registered address without authorization; those who have already left their registered address must return immediately or remain where they are. Citizens not directly drafted will be required to provide material goods, and their personal skills (such as computer programming or drone piloting), logistical networks, and even family contacts abroad may be coercively requisitioned to meet mobilization needs, without exception. The freedom of movement and choice of employment for hundreds of millions of people will be directly curtailed.

Total annulment of judicial rights

According to Article 77, following the issuance of the mobilization order, all legal proceedings, including litigation, administrative appeals, arbitrations, and claims for state liability, will be suspended. This means that even if citizens suffer property losses or violations of their rights due to expropriation or requisition, they will lose the possibility of defending themselves or demanding compensation through legal channels during the mobilization. Article 65 stipulates that essential goods and primary residences are exempt from expropriation and requisition; however, enforcement authorities at the grassroots level, such as district (neighborhood) offices, have discretionary leeway to circumvent this provision in practice.

Article 7 grants the State the direct power of home inspections for data collection and absolute control of networks; citizens are obligated to provide truthful and complete private information about family composition, personal assets, and community dynamics, with concealment or refusal being punishable as a criminal offense. The "data service guarantee system" explicitly mentioned in the law can easily be transformed, in a state of emergency, into strict control or even a total internet blackout.

Article 72 introduces wartime standards in the control of freedom of expression: any discussion or dissemination of mobilization information, if classified as "fabrication or dissemination of false information" (even for minimal numerical discrepancies), will carry extremely severe criminal penalties, exponentially increasing the risks to the population's freedom of expression.

The following is a decision that systematically undermines justice: the Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on Amending the Law of Lawyers of the People's Republic of China, commonly known as the Lawyers Law, which came into effect on September 1, 2026. This legislation makes it impossible for lawyers of Marxist conviction to fight for the social rights and interests of the proletariat by incorporating political loyalty into its general provisions and practice requirements, completely reshaping the identity and procedural logic of lawyers in China.

Justice in capitalist courts rests on the balance derived from the counterweight between a neutral judge, a prosecuting attorney, and a legal defense. When the law coercively compels lawyers, judges, and prosecutors to pledge allegiance to the same political organization, procedural justice becomes a mere fiction. Especially in cases affecting the interests of the Party-State or in socially sensitive events, the logic of the judgments ceases to be based on the Constitution and the laws, instead depending on the directives of the Party committee and political orientations; the court is transformed entirely into an instrument of political propaganda, and the trial becomes a mere formality to ratify a predetermined outcome.

Those lawyers determined to defend the interests of the working class using labor law and democratic rights in a context of political repression can no longer exert open social pressure against the bureaucracy. This is because the Law of Lawyers makes the issuance and revocation of professional licenses contingent upon "support for the Party leadership," allowing administrative bodies to legally strip independent lawyers who challenge public power of their licenses after political scrutiny, making the availability of lawyers willing to take on sensitive cases defending rights virtually nonexistent.

Furthermore, law firms are required to establish Party cells within their offices and provide space, funding, and personnel for their activities. Ideological control and political censorship are thus directly embedded in the daily operations and case debates of law firms, creating a pervasive and top-down mechanism of self-censorship.

Finally, three bills relating to the private sector are examined. Although they do not possess the massive coercive reach of the previous regulations, their significance lies in the fact that they fulfill China's role as a "secondary metropolis" of capitalism and indirectly reflect the role played by the Chinese Communist Party in the global financial crisis: with the PCAOB (U.S. Publicly Traded Companies Accounting Oversight Board) fully assuming audit supervision of Chinese companies listed in the U.S. and local accounting firms in China, Wall Street is not the target of Chinese government repression, but rather the determining actor in the country's economic restructuring.

The proposed amendment to the Corporate Bankruptcy Law introduces a "joint and several liability regime for debtors" and establishes a waiting period of up to five years. Its central political objective is to appease the unemployed population and prevent collective protests by workers facing unemployment or unpaid wages following corporate bankruptcies. The law dilutes the impulses of the working class struggle through protracted judicial liquidation proceedings, thus serving to preserve the existing order of domination. Furthermore, bankruptcy restructuring does not resolve the precariousness of unemployment but rather opens legal avenues for debt evasion by bureaucrats and capitalists through formalized liquidations.

Although the Bankruptcy Law ratifies and reinforces the indemnities and compensation derived from the termination or rescission of employment contracts due to bankruptcy, placing them, along with back wages, medical disability benefits, and social security funds in individual accounts, in the first order of priority in the distribution of the bankruptcy estate—with priority over ordinary tax and commercial credits—this priority mechanism proves ineffective in practice: companies frequently lack distributable assets; in other cases, workers accept new contracts with reduced wages in restructuring companies to preserve their jobs; or unemployment coverage is limited, with subsidies amounting to between 80% and 90% of the local minimum wage, an insufficient figure to counteract the impact of mass layoffs on the family economy.

While the project appears to harm Wall Street creditors by prioritizing wage payments and the delivery of housing in China during restructurings—imposing severe debt reductions on them—the reform of the law is not actually intended to confront transnational capital. It is a measure implemented by the regime under the standards of global financial capital (led by Wall Street) to carry out a "surgical purge" of excess productive capacity and toxic domestic assets. The bankruptcy exit mechanisms eliminate ownership and debt barriers, allowing Wall Street and transnational vulture funds to acquire high-quality assets from struggling Chinese companies at ridiculously low prices, deepening the penetration and control of international financial capital over the Chinese economy.

Regarding the Draft Amendment to the Banking Supervision and Administration Act: the proposal grants regulatory bodies enhanced administrative intervention powers (such as restrictions on dividend distribution and asset transfers), making it more difficult for Wall Street institutions to quickly withdraw capital and profits abroad in the face of systemic risks in the Chinese financial sector.

On the surface, the reform tightens oversight of "shareholder qualifications" and "beneficial owners," blocking the avenues through which transnational capital used offshore shell companies to opaquely control domestic financial institutions. However, in reality, this responds to the transparency demands of Wall Street investment banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, etc.), aligning with the US PCAOB's oversight of the local financial system to ensure that Chinese financial data conforms to global capitalist standards. The Chinese Communist Party is seizing this opportunity to punish corrupt elements within the domestic financial sector and prevent a crisis from disrupting debt repayments and profit remittances to Wall Street and transnational entities, thus solidifying China's position as a financial link dependent on global capitalism.

For the proletariat and the vast working masses, as ordinary savers, their deposits become absorption funds to absorb trillions of yuan in toxic assets annually. The state apparatus resorts to administrative violence to maintain the superficial stability of the banking sector, ensuring that the surplus value extracted from labor flows unhindered to the bureaucracy and financial elites, rather than safeguarding depositors' assets. Terms like "transparent supervision," "key personnel," and "dual legal framework" are used to prevent embezzlement by the banks' main shareholders and true controllers (as in the case of the rural banks in Henan or the Tomorrow Group), thus preventing a systemic financial collapse and ensuring the uninterrupted operation of capitalism's "accumulation machine."

Regarding the Cross-Border Corruption Bill: the law is essentially a Chinese version of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). On the one hand, it tracks the escape of fugitives and the cross-border transfer of assets; on the other, it imposes restrictions on transnational monopoly companies operating in China (such as European and US technology, industrial, and consumer giants) and their executives.

On the surface, the proposal appears to fracture the monopoly on extraterritorial jurisdiction exercised by the U.S. Department of Justice through the FCPA, granting China sanctioning and jurisdictional powers over violations by multinational corporations connected to the country, subjecting them to a double standard that increases their compliance costs and the risk of violations. However, its fundamental nature is not confrontation with imperialist capital, but rather serving the long-term interests of global monopoly capital: the CCP bureaucracy, under the supervision of Wall Street, curbs capital flight and regulates debt restructurings, preventing the domestic bureaucracy and acquiring capital from evading funds to tax havens, coercively retaining capital within the national territory to subject it to restructuring and re-exploitation by international financial capital. It also constitutes an attempt at formal integration into the imperialist legal structure under standardized and internationalized compliance parameters.

For the Chinese proletariat, the consequence lies in the institutionalization and normalization of extraordinary operations to seize assets and fugitives abroad (such as "Operation Fox Hunt"), expanding the scope of state violence. This mechanism not only targets corrupt officials but can also be used against representatives of the labor movement abroad and exiled dissidents. The assets recovered from abroad will be entirely incorporated into the patrimony of the bureaucratic state apparatus, without translating into social welfare or assistance programs, becoming resources to consolidate social control and governmental power.

In summary, with the Law on Mobilization of National Defense of the People's Republic of China (Amendment) as its cornerstone, the priority objective of the Communist Party of China is far from unleashing a war "against Wall Street," instead focusing on containing revolutionary movements of the working class stemming from the economic crisis. The legalized militarization of society by the bureaucratic regime seeks to coercively maintain control over labor and internal resources as the crisis of capitalism deepens. Under its subordination to US imperialism, China's central competitive advantage as a "superfactory" of global manufacturing lies in a disenfranchised and extremely cheap workforce.

Thus, the Medical Security Law makes contributions mandatory while cutting reimbursement rates and coverage; the Agriculture Law and the Farmland Protection Law eliminate farmers' options for job mobility and the conversion of land into hedge assets. The underlying logic is to forcibly lock farmers into low-profit agricultural production to maintain low food prices and contain overall social subsistence costs. This directly benefits international monopoly capital, reducing wages and social protections for Chinese workers to transfer extraordinary surplus value to Wall Street and transnational corporations.

In the context of the global capitalist recession, the Chinese capitalist class must collaborate with transnational capital to extract the last remaining profit margins. Faced with the explosion of labor disputes and social tensions, the Law on Lawyers subordinates the practice of law to political loyalty, effectively depriving the working class and the unemployed of their right to legal assistance and collective action, thus preventing civil conflicts from escalating into political insurrection against capitalist dictatorship.

In conclusion, China does not represent an "anti-hegemonic force" separate from global capitalism, nor does it constitute the resurrection of fascism (which suffered a definitive historical defeat and whose atrocities make its reestablishment impossible). China is currently governed by a Stalinist-Bonapartist regime, characterized by a synthesis of Stalinism (bureaucracy) and Bonapartism (military-police junta), where military and administrative power are not monopolized by a single absolute ruler, but rather fragmented among various bureaucratic factions, in which the military and administrative leadership hold distinct shares of economic power. The Communist Party of China thus acts as an agent and violent enforcer of the global capitalist system within the country.

The coordinated enactment of these eight laws is not a response to a stance of "confrontation with the West," but rather to the dictatorial regime's survival strategy in the face of the general crisis of capitalism: on the one hand, opening the door to financial audits and asset restructuring by Wall Street, and on the other, shifting the entire cost of the crisis onto the shoulders of the Chinese working class and peasantry through the deployment of state violence. We, the Marxist-Leninist Left, reject these laws and call on the people to fight against them.