Recently, I noticed that on August 28, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of the Chinese revisionists passed an amendment to the National Defense Mobilization Law of the People’s Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as the “National Defense Mobilization Law”), making
The revision of the very first article is striking. Usually, the first article of a law explains why the law is being enacted, which fundamental law it is based on, and so on.
Article 1 In order to strengthen national defense, improve the national defense mobilization system, ensure the smooth execution of national defense mobilization, and safeguard the nation’s sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, security, and development interests, this Law is formulated in accordance with the Constitution.
In this revision, the Chinese revisionists added the term “development interests” to Article 1. This can only be described as an utterly outrageous choice of words. If, in the past, the Chinese revisionists still maintained the outward claim that they were pursuing “national defense” and waging wars of self-defense to prevent themselves from being violated, then this “development interests” phrase is truly an open declaration that they intend to seize “land under the sun”—a manifesto explicitly written for aggressive expansion.
There are many other provisions that have sparked considerable controversy. For example:
Article 37 After the state decides to implement national defense mobilization, reserve personnel scheduled for call-up may not leave the place where they are registered without the approval of the military service organ of the county-level people’s government where they are registered; those who have already left must immediately return or remain on standby where they are.
This means that the Chinese revisionists can forcibly conscript able-bodied men: once they are registered, they cannot leave their place of registration.
Article 57 After the state decides to implement national defense mobilization, people’s governments at or above the county level may, as required for the implementation of national defense mobilization, mobilize organizations and citizens who meet the conditions stipulated in this Law to undertake national defense duties.
The term “national defense duties” as used in this Law refers to tasks including supporting and providing logistical保障 for military operations, undertaking the prevention of and relief from war-related disasters, and assisting in the maintenance of social order.
The provisions concerning the so-called “national defense duties” go even further, seeking to pull all working people into production in service of war—entirely like the other imperialist countries that launched the world wars in the past. The scope of these “national defense duties” even includes male citizens aged eighteen to sixty and female citizens aged eighteen to fifty-five. Except in certain special circumstances, they are all required to participate; essentially, this means every laborer who can be put to use.
There are also several provisions that have been widely discussed concerning the requisition of civilian resources:
Article 63 After the state decides to implement national defense mobilization, if reserve supplies cannot meet the mobilization needs in a timely manner, people’s governments at or above the county level may, in accordance with the law, expropriate or requisition civilian resources.
The term “civilian resources” as used in this Law refers to facilities, equipment, means of transportation, premises, and other resources owned or used by organizations and individuals for social production, services, and daily life.
Article 64 All organizations and individuals have the obligation to accept the lawful expropriation or requisition of civilian resources.
Active-duty and reserve units of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese People’s Armed Police Force, and militia organizations that need to use civilian resources shall submit requests for expropriation or requisition. People’s governments at or above the county level shall uniformly organize the expropriation or requisition in accordance with the powers and procedures prescribed by law. People’s governments at or above the county level shall register the civilian resources that have been expropriated or requisitioned and issue certificates.
Many petty-bourgeois people online are extremely dissatisfied with this section, saying that the Chinese revisionists are preparing to forcibly seize supplies and begin looting. Of course, the Chinese revisionists have tried to explain that civilian resources do not include necessities of daily life—but what counts as a “necessity of daily life” will, naturally, be defined by the Chinese revisionists themselves.
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At first, I didn’t understand what exactly had been changed in the National Defense Mobilization Law either. Later, I looked it up online and found a few points that seemed absolutely outrageous:
1. Previously, it was the requisitioning of supplies, but now it has been changed to requisitioning and commandeering. The difference is that requisitioned items have to be returned, whereas commandeered items have their ownership transferred directly—in other words, it amounts to outright confiscation.
2. The scope of what it calls requisitioning and commandeering also includes supplies for civilian daily life. Although so-called essential daily necessities are supposedly excluded from the scope of requisitioning and commandeering, when it comes to the Chinese revisionists, how those essential necessities are determined can be very flexible. When the time comes, they might leave you two pieces of bread and two bottles of water and say those are your essential supplies; or they might decide that what you have isn’t essential and simply turn it into outright seizure.
Another thing is the introduction of so-called “national defense service.” During mobilization, all men aged 18 to 60 and women aged 18 to 50 (I don’t remember the exact age ranges, but they were roughly those; the range is incredibly broad. Even when the Nazis launched total war in 1943, they only mobilized people in this age bracket) are included in the mobilization pool to perform so-called national defense service.
The previous National Defense Mobilization Law mobilized reservists—in other words, people were called up to serve in the military—so the number of people doing military service was certainly relatively small. But this so-called national defense service is now extremely flexible. When the time comes, they could send you to build or dig trenches, repair roads, repair airports, or work in a military factory; all of that counts as part of national defense service. You could say it is legalized press-ganging.
Moreover, once you are included in the mobilization pool, you are not allowed to leave the place where you are currently registered, meaning that even your freedom of movement is restricted. Once you are taken into national defense service, will you be paid for it? The law does not say clearly. Judging from what I’ve read, I estimate there will be no pay—or at most, they’ll give you roughly the minimum wage.
This reminds me of the “National Mobilization Order” and the labor service corps imposed by Japanese imperialism in the past. Put bluntly, they simply forcibly commandeered people to work.
It also seems that the Chinese revisionists feel extremely guilty about making these changes in secret—so much so that they will not even allow people to discuss them publicly. I haven’t seen any videos about it on Bilibili, and many people are only talking about these things in a sarcastic, roundabout way.
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Personally, I think that the Chinese people all understand what Chinese revisionism is up to. In fact, because the contradictions within China are so intense, if wartime mobilization really involved handing out guns to people and sending them to the front, it would simply be courting destruction.
Images like the one on Bilibili that says, “As long as the state hands out guns, not a single real enemy will escape,” do appear.
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This is unbelievably absurd. Anything they requisition probably won’t be returned anyway. Then they’ll send the people they requisitioned to the battlefield, and once they’re dead, they won’t have to give them back.
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So-called national defense service can itself include being sent directly to the front to serve as a soldier. Russia has set a precedent for this: it deceived conscripts and contract soldiers it recruited by telling them they would “only perform rear-area service,” and then, once they reported for duty, they discovered that they had already been sent to the front. Moreover, this is directly supported by law:
First, all citizens who have reached the age of eighteen must register for military service.
In the 2010 version of the National Defense Mobilization Law, it is described as follows:
“Chapter Five, Article Two, overall Article 27: Reservists shall be placed into reserve according to the principles of matching their specialties and facilitating mobilization, by being preassigned to active-duty units, assigned to reserve units, assigned to militia organizations, or through other forms.”
What exactly is meant by reservists being placed into reserve is quite vague, but under normal circumstances, it is generally assumed that a person must first become one of the three types listed above. However, in 2026 it became this:
“Chapter Five, Article Two, overall Article 33: Reserve personnel shall be placed into reserve according to the principles of matching their specialties and facilitating mobilization, by being preassigned to active-duty units, assigned to reserve units, assigned to militia organizations, or through forms such as military service registration.”
This directly counts people who have registered for military service as reserve personnel as well. In other words, nearly all adults are reservists. Anyone can be ordered to the front.
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Legislation is one thing, but the bourgeoisie has always made laws as it pleased. So legislation was never an obstacle for the bourgeoisie in the first place—especially not for fascist states. For their own interests, they will create a law even where none exists, binding everyone to their war chariot. But legislation will not stop working people from resisting. During the pandemic, they also enacted strict laws and imposed countless rules, deploying countless organs of repression. Yet the strikes launched in various places, with Foxconn workers as their representatives, along with anti-lockdown movements across the country, ultimately forced the Chinese revisionists to lift the lockdowns through violent action.
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So many troops and reservists—really, is that necessary? Are they planning to fight a protracted war? Or did they secretly change it first?
The war of Russian imperialist aggression against Ukraine has suffered a crushing defeat, and Russia itself has been thrust into a predicament where it can neither advance nor retreat. If the Chinese revisionists want to attack Taiwan, they will certainly have to begin preparing for total war in advance.
Russian imperialism thought the same way. At the time, it believed that it possessed one of the most powerful armies in the world and the largest nuclear arsenal, and it attacked a country that was not yet a NATO member and had no direct military alliance with the imperialist countries of the United States and Europe. Now it has become bogged down in a quagmire. It certainly would not dare to act rashly against Taiwan, whose strength is greater. This is so simply from the standpoint of the balance of power among the imperialists. More importantly, such acts of aggression will meet resistance from the masses of the people—as is the case with Russian imperialism. Few people are willing to fight in an unjust war. But the Ukrainian people do have the enthusiasm to defend their homeland. Moreover, openly expanding the military and preparing for war will provoke opposition from the people of the country itself and from the peoples of the world; Japanese imperialism is an example of this. Chinese revisionism, the most cunning imperialist country, will secretly prepare for a major war, and will certainly, like Nazi Germany, use every means to launch a sneak attack. But no matter what it does, it will ultimately be unable to escape the fate of annihilation. Once a major war breaks out, the already extremely acute class contradictions within the country will only intensify rapidly. As indicated by these laws, the forcible conscription of people and requisitioning of property will certainly provoke the broadest opposition. By then, Chinese revisionism will be completely finished.
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Previously, influenced by the idealist view of history, I thought Ukraine had been able to hold out this long purely because of strategic problems at the top of Russian imperialism, as well as U.S. imperialist aid to Ukraine. It was only after coming to the forum that I understood that the Ukrainian people have been engaged in an ongoing struggle against the Russian invaders all along. That is the reason Ukraine has been able to hold out this long. In general, it is still the people who make history.
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I used to be immersed in my own fantasies, thinking that since Xi Jinping had purged so many military officers, it would take a fairly long time to rebuild the armed forces, and that war would at least be postponed. Otherwise, launching a war rashly under these circumstances would definitely lead to confusion in the military command structure and a lack of coordination, resulting in a truly ugly war. I used to think that if there were to be a war in the future, preparations would certainly have to be made beforehand, along with policies for wartime and the postwar period. Society would undoubtedly fall into an extremely high-pressure state, with social controls reaching unprecedented levels. If the war went badly, it would not be a simple riot, but a major upheaval. Based on this, I believed that if Xi the bandit wanted to keep his rule secure and live to the age of 150, he would not take such a huge risk. He could simply leave the problem to his successor and avoid the risk. But this legislation is sending a signal of war, so we can no longer optimistically assume, as we did before, that war is still a long way off. We must prepare ourselves psychologically in advance. My knowledge is still very limited, and I cannot offer any answers about what should be done.
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As for the bourgeoisie, it is only if we do not wage war against them that they will be unable to survive.
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Actually, if people thought the way I used to, there probably wouldn’t be any wars in the world. If the ruling class and its leaders all considered the consequences of losing a war and only prepared for war when the situation looked favorable, they would never find the perfect moment to go to war in their lifetimes, let alone rashly launch military action. Moreover, when the bourgeoisie seeks to plunder colonies, expand markets, and compete for global hegemony, it inevitably comes into conflict with other colonial imperialist powers and challenges the existing world order. As long as capitalism has not been overthrown, peace in the true sense of the word will remain impossible.
To think this way is to fail to recognize that contradictions within the exploiting class are absolute. To ensure victory in launching a war of aggression, Xi Jinping will certainly purge dissenters from the military. But this does not change the fact that the ruling class as a whole stands to benefit from launching a war and profiting from it. Many liberals outside China believe that, because Xi Jinping is constantly purging one faction or another and there are hardly any generals left, the military has become unstable and China will be in a dangerous position if it goes to war in the future—or that this shows there is currently no risk of war breaking out. Yet when the army of an exploiting class launches a war, it has never depended simply on whether its military commanders are capable enough or not. “War is an extension of politics.” As long as the class contradictions within China and the contradictions between China and the U.S. imperialist bloc develop to a sufficiently intense level, the Chinese revisionist ruling group will provoke a war regardless of the consequences.
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That is exactly what the Russia–Ukraine battlefield looks like today: the front lines have barely changed in any significant way for several years. There may not even be any so-called “strategic objectives”; both sides have simply remained locked in fierce trench warfare. There is no other reason: Russia’s war machine cannot stop once it has been set in motion. The monopoly bourgeoisie must keep the war going in order to continue making profits and prolonging its decaying rule. Every day, countless people lose their lives under artillery fire and drone attacks—all for the benefit of monopoly capital.
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I believe the army’s decision to go to war and its defeat were not determined by the outcome of Xi the Dog’s factional infighting. No matter how powerful and stable a fascist army may be, it will ultimately be overthrown by the broad masses of the people—let alone the Chinese revisionist army, which is so corrupt in quality and so lacking in combat effectiveness that it is merely a paper tiger. Factional infighting actually has little influence.
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Screw, if you have any objections, feel free to share them.