“With the policy China is pursuing, it is becoming even more obvious that it is trying to strengthen the positions of capitalism at home and to establish its hegemony in the world, to become a great imperialist power, so that it, too, occupies, so to say, the ‘place it deserves.’

[….]

We are now witnessing the efforts of another big state, today’s China, to become a super power because it, too, is proceeding rapidly on the road of capitalism. But China lacks colonies, lacks large-scale developed industry, lacks a strong economy in general, and a great thermo-nuclear potential on the same scale as the other two imperialist superpowers.

To become a superpower it is absolutely essential to have a developed economy, an army equipped with atomic bombs, to ensure markets and spheres of influence, investment of capital in foreign countries, etc. China is bent on ensuring these conditions as quickly as possible. This was expressed in Chou En-lai’s speech in the People’s Assembly in 1975 and was repeated at the 11th Congress of the Communist Party of China, where it was proclaimed that, before the end of this century, China will become a powerful modern country, with the objective of catching up with the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Now this whole plan has been extended and set out in precise detail in what is called the policy of the “four modernizations”. But what road has China chosen so that it, too, will become a superpower?

At present, the colonies and markets in the world are occupied by others. The creation of an economic and military potential equal to that of the Americans and Soviets, within 20 years, and with their own forces, as the Chinese leaders claim they will do, is impossible.

In these conditions, in order to become a superpower, China will have to go through two main phases: first, it must seek credits and investments from US imperialism and the other developed capitalist countries, purchase new technology in order to exploit its local wealth, a great part of which will go as dividends for the creditors. Second, it will invest the surplus value extracted at the expense of the Chinese people in states of various continents, just as the US imperialists and Soviet social-imperialists are doing today.

China’s efforts to become a superpower are based, in the first place, on its choice of allies and the creation of alliances. Two superpowers exist in the world today, US imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. The Chinese leaders worked out that they must rely on US imperialism, on which they have pinned great hopes of getting assistance in the fields of the economy, finance, technology and organization, as well as in the military field. In fact, the economic-military potential of the United States of America is greater than that of Soviet social-imperialism. This the Chinese revisionists know well, though they say that America is declining. On the course which they are following, they cannot rely on a weak partner, from which they cannot gain much. Precisely because it is powerful, they have chosen the United States of America to be their ally.

[….]

The group ruling today in China lays great stress on the “third world” in which, not fortuitously and not without a purpose, it includes China, too. The “third world” of the Chinese revisionists has a well-defined political aim. It is part of the strategy which aims at transforming China into a superpower as quickly as possible. China wants to rally round itself all the countries of the “third world” or the non-aligned. countries or the “developing countries”, in order to create a large force, which will not only increase the overall Chinese potential but will also help China to counterpose itself to the other two superpowers, the United States of America and the Soviet Union, to carry greater weight in the bargaining over the division of markets and spheres of influence, to gain the true status of an imperialist superpower.

[….]

However, like every country with imperialist aims, China is fighting and will fight harder still for markets in the world. It is striving and will strive harder still to spread its influence and extend its domination. These plans are apparent even now. China is opening its own banks, not only in Hong Kong, where it has had them for a long time, but also in Europe and elsewhere. It will strive especially to open banks in and export capital to the countries of “the third” world.. For the present it is doing very little in this field. China’s “aid” amounts to the building of some cement factory, railway, or hospital, for its possibilities are limited. Only when the American, Japanese and other investments in China begin to yield the fruits it desires, that is, when its economy, trade and military technology are developed, will China be able to embark on a venture of real large-scale economic and military expansion. But to achieve this, time is needed.

[….]

The more China develops economically and militarily, the more it will want to penetrate into and dominate the small and less developed countries by means of its exports of capital, and then it will no longer charge a 1-2 percent interest for its credits, but will act like all the others.

[….]

China cannot carry on positive revolutionary propaganda in the countries of the “third world”, also, because it would come into collision with that superpower from which it is hoping to get investments of capital in China and advanced technology. China cannot conduct such propaganda, also, because the revolution would overthrow precisely those reactionary cliques ruling in a number of countries of the so-called third world, which China is supporting and helping to stay in power.

[….]

China cannot go ahead with its course of transforming itself into a superpower without intensifying the exploitation of the broad working masses at home. The United States of America and the other capitalist states will seek to secure superprofits from the capital they will’ invest there, they will also press for rapid and radical transformations of the base and superstructure of Chinese society in the capitalist direction. The intensification of the exploitation of the multimillion strong masses to maintain the Chinese bourgeoisie and its gigantic bureaucratic apparatus and to meet the repayment of the credits and interest to the foreign capitalists, will undoubtedly give rise to deep contradictions between the Chinese proletariat and peasantry, on the one hand, and the bourgeois-revisionist rulers, on the other. This will bring the latter into confrontation with the working masses of their own country, a thing which cannot fail to lead to sharp conflicts and revolutionary outbursts in China.”

– Enver Hoxha, “Imperialism and the Revolution” Excerpts from “China’s Plan to Become a Superpower”