Genuine question so please don’t hate on me. It seems to me that china now is more of a mixed market than a planned economy. Billionaires and class disparities definitely still exist in China and it seems like american communists almost romanticize china while ignoring obvious flaws in its system, only because they (rightfully) hate america and america hates China. China also supplies all of the world’s exploitative corporations with the vast majority of their goods. While China is probably better than the capitalist economies of the west, I don’t understand why a lot of people seem to hold it in the same regard as the USSR.
The government is run by socialists who are using a market to rapidly develop until they can transition to socialism while giving everyone a decent quality of life. They decided to cooperate with capitalist countries to do this. They don't claim to have transitioned to socialism yet so they still have class disparities. As a leftist you can critique their path to socialism, but as communists, we hope they succeed
Are they really on a path to socialism though? it seems to be that the class disparities are only growing in china since mao. the rich are only getting richer. I don’t see how the capitalists in china are going to give way to socialism in the future if they’re only getting more powerful.
I hope every socialist country succeeds, of course. It just seems to me that china is going down a different path, one that doesn’t lead to full communism.
A billionaire dies in China every ~39 days. The Chinese government consistently enforces the death penalty on the wealthy.
That doesn't refute the claim that, since China has increasing wealth disparity, they aren't on the path to communism. Killing billionaires could well be simply a means for keeping the capitalist class in line. I think it's entirely possible that the Chinese project at this point is more an attempt to simply remain in control of its capitalists and continue to use capital in a way that best benefits the interest of China as a state in the grand game of geopolitics. To remain riding the beast, so to speak, but without necessarily working towards a realized communism.
We could discuss how likely this is or whether it's a worthy project in itself - and whether it's possible to indefinitely retain control of capital in this sense - but it doesn't necessarily follow that executing billionaires means a state is communist in its aims.
Is the government appropriating the wealth of dead billionaires? If not, you just got billionaires in different generation, what is the benefit to people
idk... the thing is is you gotta compare it to where it was 10 years prior, and the 10 years prior, and so on. the day mao took power china was on the same level as africa. destitute, destroyed, and minimal industry. now they are where they are. its a dramatic leap in quality of life. the fact its taking so long is simply because china still hasnt finished modernization. that stuff takes time.
without the communist party, china would be seen as a backwater, like many parts of africa and south asia are
They're certainly at a crossroads, but you could argue that the Deng reforms were necessary and had to go on longer than the NEP in the Soviet Union because China was so far behind Russia in development at the time of its revolution. Russia before World War 1 was the backwater of Europe, but it was still a major imperial power which had 5-10x the industrial output per capita of China and a much, much larger proletariat. Mao's land reforms were an awesome and necessary step, but at some point it was obvious that China needed some sort of Capitalist development to build productive forces. The NEP was a temporary measure for the USSR to recover from the war/revolution. Deng's liberalization was a necessary step to actually build China's industry, and now we've reached the point where some hard decisions need to be made.
China has one major advantage over the USSR: it hasn't failed yet. I don't think achieving historically highest stages of socialism is an inevitability in China, there is still a huge battle to be won, but they are the ones going fastest on a route to it currently.
On the other hand, I think the reason some leftists idolize China is because it gives them an imagined path to communism, where it is simply imported from China and they don't have to do the work or make the sacrifices. While this can be a source of hope, which is something we all need in these times, I think it is ultimately passivating and harmful.
I definitely agree with this. I don’t think socialism will ever be or can ever be just imported from china to the US, honestly.
correct, socialism must be based on the material conditions of each country / culture that develops it.
idk id say it worked well for the development of those countries. the collapse sucked.
It basically directly correlated to how much internal revolutionary forces were present. So Yugoslavia did the best, Czechoslovakia/Bulgaria/East Germany were in the middle while Poland and to a lesser extent Romania were barely functional.
not a terrible analysis. though czechoslovakia had a very extensive partisan group that was almost entirely communist, some of my relatives were in it! theyd mostly be killing fascist slovak collaborators in the mountains heres a song btw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o98d_GouBPQ
Well, Poland also had Gwardia Ludowa and PKWN, and their members basically built a new Polish state, but they still had much less influence than communist partisans in other Eastern European countries.
China also supplies all of the world’s exploitative corporations with the vast majority of their goods.
:very-intelligent: "The country being exploited by the imperial core is the real villain"
I'll look around and see if I have anything I can repost.
I have unironically seen ultras (chuang) argue that because of the imperial core's reliance on Chinese industry that China must be made to collapse to bring down the imperial core, as if such a crisis wouldn't just result in the US backing reactionary and liberal factions in a balkanized China and ending up directly controlling client states around the current centers of Chinese industry the same way the US already controls Japan and South Korea.
isn't the actual, less insane take that this means that China could cripple the US anytime they want and this is actually amazing?
Sprinting in and collapsing the world economy as a means of revolution seems pretty galaxy brain on multiple levels (including what you said)
The amount of mental gymnastics ultras use to try and justify their chauvinism / racism is incredible.
There's nuanced arguments you can make and people here already have, but the simplest answer is because it's the U.S.'s current scapegoat. The foundations for a pervasisve anti-Chinese concensus in the U.S. and its client states are being built now, and anyone who knows even a lick of history knows that means nothing good for anyone. Anti-Asian domestic racism, official and unofficial; crack downs on Chinese "sympathizers" who will inivetiably be socialists; support for color revolutions on the Chinese periphery that will lead to thousands of deaths and empower right-wing nationalist parties just like in Eastern Europe; ever-more spending for military equipment that will eventually be used on someone; the list goes on.
Every other criticism or praise is secondary.
I support them overall because, despite their flaws, they are a country run by a communist party, and plainly do more than their real-world peers to both serve the needs of their citizens, and to hold their rich accountable to their laws and collective best interest.
On a personal level, I need something good I can think of to cope with the world and my own country's decline, and China (not to forget Latin America!) does that for me.
I honestly support China because they're pretty explicitly anti-imperialist which makes the contradictions that arise from their foreign investment more blatant. Even though the current Chinese system is far from perfect, it still models a stage of capitalism where revolution is possible and the party has maintained the pathways for a real moment of the working class to overthrow it.
explicitly anti-imperialist
I'm not sure I would conflate the concepts of "strict non interventionism" and "explicitly anti-imperialist" tbh. I've only seen evidence of the former, which is fine and probably the correct move.
I disagree with Dengism but I have no material power to "stop" it and doing so would end many lives.
All I can do is hope it works, really. That's my view.
I'm pretty much in the same boat. Though I'm not really pro or anti-Dengism. As long as China exists, it's a power which fights against American power which is a net good for the world. I hope their goal of Communism is reached.
I dislike workers being exploited for the "greater good" but I'm not some sort of Messiah who can undo it so
Since Deng, China has attempted a different kind of socialist experiment from those of Europe or small states. The idea was/is to run a capitalist market subservient to the party to "build productive forces", which includes further industrialization and embedding within global trade. There is actual theory around this you can read to see how this was both forwarded and rationalized. We can also debate whether this was a necessary change or the result of a slightly more liberal tendency taking power. But what really matters is that China's socialist experiment is working and continues to work, unlike European socialism that either (1) never developed as expected in the first place or (2) crumbled under internal contradictions and external threats.
China has produced stable growth that actually benefits its population via party oversight, integration into industry, and appropriation. You can see this in their infrastructure improvements, of course, but it also appears in their growing wages, improved living conditions, safer and better nutrition, better healthcare, better sanitation.
There is still exploitation in China, just as one would expect from socialism that's "taking it slow" and as Marx predicted. You can see that in accumulation like their billionaires (who they regularly execute and otherwise rein in, and increasingly so). This is, of course, horrible, but it's also strategic and not just a rationalization by Chinese liberals. China's geopolitical security is premised on a transition from world manufacturer with undercutting prices (produced through currency devaluation and exploitation) to a fully-developed country with a balanced economy of manufacturing, agriculture, and services - an economy based more and more on the domestic market, not just exports. This strategy not only creates a means by which to slowly improve material conditions, but saddles the Western imperialist powers, particularly the US, with a dependency on Chinese manufacturing. Any such country would suffer an immediate and long-lasting depression of they cut out Chinese imports. This has protected China during its transition and now it is strong. Note that Japan was not protected in this way and left itself in a weak position re: the US, so despite being an "ally" the US bombed its economy in the 90s through financial shenanigans.
Xi Jinping's allies are less lib than recent predecessors and are in power in the CPC. They are expanding the impact of communist party-driven redirection of resources from their capitalist-friendly zones to overall improvement of the people's conditions. China is proletarianizing in its own way, arguably a more sustainable way than, say, the USSR's understandably panicked industrialization, and actually is retaining and expanding a socialist view among those proles. It is cracking down on corruption and billionaires that don't divert their resources and effectively become non-billionaires. It's expanding health services, eliminating forms of poverty, guaranteeing housing and training and jobs to the most vulnerable. These are not natural outcomes of capitalism, they are driven by centralized organization of the CPC against capitalist interests.
In short, China is a country run by a communist party that is transitioning through/to socialism depending on how your want to define it, they're heading in the right direction, and they have problems and challenges like you'd expect - while also picking them off one by one.
And as a result of their success and largess, they are the primary bullwark against imperialism on the planet and likely our only hope against an out-of-control, uncontrolled spiral into climate change.
In part, USSR was held in high regard because it led the principle anti-western block and offered an alternative pole to the third world.
It's not quite the same, but China occupies a simar position now.
It's not an alternate "2nd world" but it is an alternative partner for trade, foreign investment, technical expertise etc. This isn't simple altruism from China, but it does offer a way for countries to get these things without suffering structural adjustment or loss of sovereign assets to the west. The rise in global influence and standing caused by this are in large part what the new US hostilities with China are about.
Internally, China is one of the only third world countries that has massively improved the conditions and living standards for the people in it's borders. At the end of the civil war, China was poorer than India. Both countries are huge, multi-ethnic states. But today China is much wealthier and has eliminated extreme poverty. To people in wealthy countries this may not seem impressive, but to the majority of humanity it is monumental. And it should impress people in wealthy countries since now more people live in extreme poverty in the US than in China.
It accomplished this by following a development path very different from what capitalists nations called for and it is why most of the world's poverty reduction hasn't occurred in South America, or Africa, or India but has instead happened in China.
All that said, there's definitely cringe romanization of China from lefties too.
Agreed. To me, a leftist in 2021 should view China in the way that a leftist in 1914 could have viewed the United States-- progressive in some unique ways, a better alternative than the current ruling empire, but by no means representative of the end goal for the left.
I definitely agree with this, and have held this viewpoint for a while now. As a Bangladeshi living in the US, it is ridiculous how a ‘first world’ country seems to face some of the same issues in the grand scheme of things that bangladeshis do back home. Me moving to the US is what radicalized me. And I do hope Bangladesh shifts it’s political position to be more pro-China because yes, China is better than the US and will definitely do more for us than the US ever has or ever will. It’s just the almost mythical regards to which western leftists hold china to that baffles me sometimes.
I think the mythologization is jokes for the most part, sort of an ironic inversion of the cartoon cutout commie citizen character that we get in western propaganda.
It’s just the almost mythical regards to which western leftists hold china to that baffles me sometimes.
Yeah, it's weird. I think it's partially cuz of hopelessness of change in their country. But that hopelessness is often a giving up on the responsibility of taking action and organizing. China won't deliver us to global communism, that will take an international movement from people around the world.
extremely interesting article. i definitely understand more of why china is doing what it’s doing than i did before.
While I do see the advantages in keeping billionaires within the reach of law while allowing them to conduct business, I still cannot wrap my head around the idea that people with such vast amounts of wealth will never undermine the communist leadership. Maybe that is a shortcoming on my part for not being optimistic enough.
“ Here's why: there's no way a group of billionaires could control the Politburo as billionaires control American policy-making. So in China you have a vibrant market economy, but capital does not rise above political authority. Capital does not have enshrined rights. In America, capital - the interests of capital and capital itself - has risen above the American nation. The political authority cannot check the power of capital. That's why America is a capitalist country, and China is not.”
While that may be true now, how long will it hold?
Still, definitely a very interesting read and I hope their experiment works. I guess it will take time for me to fully agree with it, if ever.
Oh, they tried, billionaires or their flunkies tried to infiltrate the CPC and corrupt it in the 90s-2000s as capitalist accumulation reached a peak. Caused massive corruption issues and a lot of bad shit even as people were lifted from poverty.
One of the reasons I'm so positive about Xi despite him doing some things I disagree with is that he reversed this, forced new party members to have proper ideological vetting and theory education, and put the billionaires on notice.
Additionally, the CPC isn't a monolith. There are NEPmen and Nationalist minority factions, and there are hard-left Neo-Maoists and Cyberneticists like the Shanghai Branch.
Important to note that Chinese billionaires do not control the military, do not have control over the financial system, and you can see that when they start to even speak out too much in public. China is willing to merk billionaires of they don't accept that the CPC is in charge. The party is also able to pursue projects of genuine good that imperial countries would never even consider today.
China might have billionaires, but that seems to be worth something in assuaging the fears of foreign investors from the imperial core. It's notable that in terms of a more reasonable definition of poverty, China is essentially solely responsible for the global decline in poverty from the 1980's on. So they might have billionaires, but they also have Xi Jinping and a party that doesn't give a shit about what those billionaires want for themselves.
China killing billionaires is easily the thing that made me Chinapill
Because they had a based revolution and they're at least a competent, living-standard-improving government that embraces communism and communist leaders of history instead of spreading lies about them.
edit: They also killed a bunch of CIA goons a couple years ago :caught-in-4che: :che-smile: :che-poggers: lmao get rekt imperialists!
cia got super angsty that their network of hundreds of operatives got rooted out
It was because they used third-rate security on their China systems. The same security they used on systems for the Middle East, etc. Turns out, China actually has competent hackers who got in and exposed the CIA's entire operation in China! Whoopsy-doodle! The whole network was rolled up and the spies were shot in front of their horrified co-workers. Now not only is the CIA blind in China, everyone knows what happens when you sign up with the CIA. They don't give a shit about you and will expose you through sloppiness or carelessness. The same thing happened several times with the USSR.
The CIA / US has forgotten the only thing that gave them any success in the Cold War - assume the other side has at least as many resources and tech as you have.
The US can’t handle opposition spying with countries that can have their own end-to-end spycraft tech. The whole strategy of backdoors in tech only works if the manufacturer works for you.
Class conflict isn't all there is to Marxism. The problem with capitalism for Marx was fundamentally one of production for profit, in which the capitalist class is incentivized to extract as much surplus value as possible from the workers. Billionaires and wealthy capitalists aren't the real problem with capitalism- profit is. The billionaires only do what a system of production for profit incentivizes them to do. Mao himself called capitalism a system of "profits in command." It follows therefore that non-capitalist economic systems are systems where profits are not in command. China does not have a system where the laboring masses work only for the profits of its capitalist class, rather China uses a market sector and market dynamics, including the creation of a capitalist class for management, in order to solve the problem of poverty. The standard of living has consistently gone up in China since the period of Reform and Opening Up. Extreme poverty was eliminated last year. Industry in China is ultimately organized to serve the public good, not profit. Who cares if they made a few billionaires along the way?
In fact, a fringe benefit to allowing some people to get incredibly rich is that it keeps that kind of person out of the government. Actually existing socialist states had issues where opportunistic people who just wanted to be wealthy and successful would enter the party and the state, steal everything they could, and ideologically decay the party. It's probably a significant reason the USSR fell- the Nomenklatura elites wanted to get rich and they killed the socialist project. It might be better to just let some people become billionaires but marginalize them politically than give them the keys to state-owned industries where they can amass tremendous wealth and power, but teem with frustration that they can't have anything nicer than a luxurious apartment and a dacha.
In fact, a fringe benefit to allowing some people to get incredibly rich is that it keeps that kind of person out of the government. Actually existing socialist states had issues where opportunistic people who just wanted to be wealthy and successful would enter the party and the state, steal everything they could, and ideologically decay the party. It’s probably a significant reason the USSR fell- the Nomenklatura elites wanted to get rich and they killed the socialist project. It might be better to just let some people become billionaires but marginalize them politically than give them the keys to state-owned industries where they can amass tremendous wealth and power, but teem with frustration that they can’t have anything nicer than a luxurious apartment and a dacha.
This is a super interesting point I had never thought about, thank you!
https://mobile.twitter.com/henrysgao/status/1470748973711257603
Article published by Xi says that socialism ≠ planned economy, and that it was an idea forced upon Marx by later generations.
A planned economy is very much a tool and a useful one at that, but thinking it is a requirement is dogmatic.
One of my hot takes is that a market economy is a tool that is sometimes useful as well. Of course, it would be absolutely fucking ridiculous to plan 100% of the entire economy around market mechanisms, especially with modern computing and communication resources available to you, but who would ever want to do that anyway? :/
If I posted those summaries as my own takes on socialist and market economics, I'd probably get skewered here.
There's so little hope in the "west" that I think a lot of leftists look at China, its achievements, the party's rhetoric, and they desperately want to believe cuz there's nothing else. Like "this has to be our way out" kinda thing. But you can imagine how that clouds someone's view. It reminds of Finkelstein talking about how he was so devoted to Maoist China that at first he couldn't even process the Deng reforms.
There's also the fact that most people, leftists included, don't know much about China. Most the reporting on China comes from liberals, so most on here (justifiably) dismiss it. But if you can read critically and generally avoid newspaper OpEd sections you can get a lot of useful information from them. Mahbubani for example worked at the UN Security Council and is a liberal but that doesn't stop him from spending a whole chapter debunking every case of "Chinese aggression" in the South China sea and highlighting western hypocrisy.
But there's a lot of good leftist sources or at least left-lib people who talk about China like David Harvey or Adam Tooze.
I think it's that people just need a win of some kind. So they identify with China, which is in opposition to America (which obviously makes it right) and China has some measurable power in the world and sometimes gets wins. So they get to identify with that win and spike the football in America's face. It's an emotional need in a lonely world.
