For instance, the organization known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is by no means an innocent bystander watching the debate in China. GATT is an organization set up by the imperialists that includes 105 countries. Under GATT's rules, devised some years, ago, China, the USSR, Eastern Europe, Cuba, the DPRK, Vietnam and a few other countries could not become members unless they agreed to certain restrictions. Such as free trade. Thus the struggle over the class characterization of China's economy and state is not solely a debate among so-called doctrinaire communists, it reaches into the summits of the capitalist government as well.
China has a vast population of peasants and a minority of workers.
In the early 1960s, after collectivization, the commune was established as the unit of agricultural production. Farm work was elevated to collective labor, and private ownership of the land was abolished. The dismantling of the communes in the 1980s signified that agriculture in the main returned to private ownership. The rationale for dismantling the communes was that they were inefficient. The peasants held back their production.