The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026 Page 2 According to Nicolas Baverez of Le Figaro , China’s proposed Five-Year Plan for 2026-2030, accepted by the Fourth Plenum of the CCP Central Committee, marks China’s transition to a war economy . At the national level, the focus would not be on rebalancing demand, but on reducing dependencies in order to resist external pressures and international sanctions. War preparations, writes the French economist, are now fully integrated into China’s economic development strategy. In our view, it would be more accurate to speak of a rearmament economy , since no major power has yet moved towards the proportions of a full-scale war effort, i.e., military spending historically measured in tens of percentage points of GDP. Instead, the variations have so far been a few percentage points and fractions of a point. This does not mean that there is no rearmament process affecting the economy and society as a whol...

Internationalism No. 81, November 2025 Page 4 “Capital for China” [December 1994] and “Arms for Asia” [January 1995] are among Arrigo Cervetto’s last writings. They are part of a series of articles on the social, political, and military consequences of Asia’s irruption into the multipolar world. A 1992 article, “Rearmament in Asia” , had already observed how the end of the Cold War translated into China’s rise in Asia, including in the military sphere. Consequently, in the process of China’s imperialistic maturation, its power relations with Japan, India, and the United States were changing. The rapid development in the region, supported by a very high rate of proletarianisation , attracted massive amount of capital, fuelling tensions. The old imperialist metropolises intervened with huge flows of credit and arms. The supposed end of history , celebrated in the West through the benign myth of globalisation, was met in the East ...