Li Minqi

Li Minqi speaking at the Subversive Festival, Zagreb, 2009

Li Minqi (born 1969) is a Chinese political economist, world-systems analyst, and historical social scientist, currently professor of Economics at the University of Utah. Li is known as an advocate of the Chinese New Left and as a Marxian economist.

Quotes

The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy (2008)

• China's dramatic rise as a global economic power is one of the most important developments at the current world-historical conjuncture. Many have wondered how the rise of China will shape the world-historical trajectory of the twenty-first century Will China become the next hegemonic power? If yes, what would the new China-centered global system look like? if not, what would be the implications for the existing world-system?
  • Chapter 1: Introduction to China and the Capitalist World-Economy

• The Revolution is dead. Long Live the Revolution
  • Chapter Two, "Accumulation, Basic Needs, and Class Struggle: the Rise of Modern China"

• Mao Zedong was a great leader of the Chinese Revolution and as a result enjoyed an enormous amount of prestige among he ordinary Chinese people. However, Mao, as a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist, had always worked with and relied upon other Party leaders as well had always worked with and relied upon either Party leaders as well as the grass-roots Part members and masses to accomplish political, economic and social goals. Mao never relied upon and never believed in a command hierarchy imposed form above. Within the Chinese Communist Party, Mao had never gained that kind of absolute control that Stalin had over the Soviet Communist Party (and even Stalin could not simply impose his will without the cooperation of much of the Party and state bureaucracy). ON the contrary, on many historical occasions, Mao often found himself in the minority (as Lenin did within the Part leadership. If Mai's intention had eventually become the will of the Party, that took place only after patient and sustained persuasion, difficult and sometimes intense intra-Party struggle, criticism and self-criticisms, and most importantly, after the Party leaders and members had learnt from practice themselves.
  • Chapter Two, "Accumulation, Basic Needs, and Class Struggle: the Rise of Modern China"

• For the capitalist world-economy, the problem of China lies with its huge size. China has a labor force that is larger than the total labor force in all of the core states, or that in the entire historical well0to-do semi-periphery. As China competes with the well-to-do semi peripheral states in a wide range of global commodity chains, the competition eventually would lead to the convergence between China and the historical well-to-do semi-peripheral sates in profit races and wage rates. This convergence may take place in an upward manner or a downward manner.
  • Chapter Two, "Accumulation, Basic Needs, and Class Struggle: the Rise of Modern China"