At least China uses the metric system, which makes them better than the US /j
Is it even imperialism when they don’t use the imperial system?
Same behavior, different branding… people just pick their favorite version 😅
Guys what about China?? Guys OK my country does bad shir but what about Iran guys??? Guys??? What about Hamas guys?? Saddam had nukes guys don’t forget about the tankies??? It’s like feminizm maybe the pendulum is swinging too far the other side guys???
My pendulum only swings one way, towards class consciousness.
China isn’t imperialist. It seems mutual cooperation with the world, instead of the West’s desire to extract from the Global South, leaving them poor in goods (in/tangible) and services and the West rich.
Once again, neolibs cope that their empire is righteous and excellent while ignoring reality completely.
Fuck them both.
This ^^
Good thing I’m an anarchist, I want all states to be dismantled equally ^_^
And all showers dismantled equally
Based
Equal opposition to all states just shoots yourself in the foot, though. Should we focus on dismantling Cuban and Palestinian statehood with equal measure to the US Empire? If your goal is anarchism, shouldn’t you be focused on the bigger obstacles to that goal?
It’s not that the Palestinian Authority is doing a great job at helping the people on the ground. The Two State Solution (and therefore Palestinian statehood) isn’t liberation either.
Critical analysis is like critical thought; absent from liberals and anarchists.
Your little pfp gif always makes these memes even better lol
<3
Thanks for the post. I got so many tankies blocked
China isn’t as successful at imperialism as the Americans. The American ruling class is just… Too good at being evil.
Doesn’t mean that China and Russia aren’t imperialist though. They’re just unable to beat the US… For now…
Give them a few years. The belt and road initiative is set to bring levels of exploitation and wealth extraction never before seen. China gets shit done when it wants to and understands the long game.
This is pure projection.
China is not debt trapping poor African nations. We can see that this isn’t the case when we can observe countries in BRI engaging in rapid development and industrializing, and this is confirmed by China forgiving tons of debt. The goal of China isn’t to make countries reliant on them, or to earn money from debt, it’s because China gains personally through mutual development. Here are some articles debunking the “debt trap” myth:
There are many more examples I can use. China isn’t doing this out of the goodness of their own heart, but because they stand to gain from mutual development. A more developed global south means China is less reliant on the US Empire as a customer, provides new avenues to facilitate trade, and creates more markets for customers. The west harvests the global south for cheap labor and resources, and we can see hard comparisons in data between BRI participants and those imperialized by the west to see fundamentally different results.
Don’t forget that China recently removed all tariffs from Africa. Meaning goods imported to China from Africa are comparatively cheaper than from other countries, which gives Africa a leg up in competition.
bUt ChInA iS iMpErIaLiSt
Yep! I mentioned it elsewhere this thread. Removing tariffs from global south countries is a part of boosting consumption, which is one of China’s more important economic problems it needs to tackle moving forward. It’s a win-win, African countries get to export finished commodities to Chinese consumers, and Chinese consumers get more access to goods. This helps build up African industry while also improving the lives of Chinese people.
They’re turning an entire continent into a sweatshop to feed their own greed and consumerism. They learned from the best! And they’re improving on it through the strength of single party central planning.
No, they are not. China’s consumption is actually too low, which is why the CPC is taking measures to address it and lower tariffs on other countries. This helps build independence and interconnection. You’re absurdly off-base to the point of fantasy.
The measure they’re taking to address it is creating vassal states to turn into sweatshops.
No? Where on Earth did you get that idea? They are focusing on raising wages and boosting consumption, lowering import fees from global south countries to help their rising industry, and are trying to boost incomes in the countryside.
Lol, Jesus dude! Are you just plagiarizing U.S. state department talking points from the mid 20th century on U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia and other places in the global south?
China and Russia are taking over in the soft imperialism department, because some billionaire moron had to kill USAID. Let’s hope their soft imperialism won’t have really bad consequences human rights-wise (though the US also had a spotty record with that).
Looking at human rights in russia… doesn’t look too good, chief, not gonna lie. At least China pretends for the media.
Unless the media wants to check up on the Uyghurs.
Dude… idk how I fell into it but there’s an account here on lemmy that goes around commenting shit like “fake news” and “your American state media lies to you and its so easy” on posts calling out what China is doing to Uyghurs. Basically denying any wrongdoing by China. Idk if they’re a bot or state agent or paid actor or what. I wonder if they’ll make an appearance on this post…
Ahh just scrolled further and they’re here lol. Name is Cowbee. The account is 2 years old, 17,000 comments. All they do is post pro-china shit everywhere they can.
Cowbee is basically the tankie supreme, yeah. They love China and russia
Yeah, I think I made a pretty strong refute of his points in this comment.
I’m just impressed with how long you must’ve spent researching to make that response, we need more people like this when debating tankies.
US imperialism has set a dictatorship in my country that lasted 21 years, killed and tortured people in the most horrible ways and led to unimaginable inflation, while Chinese imperialism here has been decreasing donkey population by buying them and making a tea that makes you more masculine supposedly.
Well, China also is actively committing a genocide against their Muslim minority and invaded Tibet
There are 10 chinese ethnicites who are mostly sunni, and they’re alright. There are people who say daily that China is 72 hours away from collapse, and they are the same to claim this genocide, no muslim authority denounced it, the banderite organization “Victims Of Communism memorial” did, more specifically a guy called Adrian Zenz who believes God gave him that duty.
And i’m not feeling bad for China to take back a territory who has been chinese for pretty much all history and end serfdom there, in fact, nor are tibetans, that was clear on a 17 point agreement, but a little later the Dalai Lama got bribed and your narrative appeared.
Most muslim majority countries do not accuse China of genocide. The states that do make this claim are the same ones that are actively supporting an ongoing genocide against Palestinians. Who should we choose to believe?
Of course Western governments had no hesitation in denouncing genocide in China before a single body was documented. Yet, when people protested against an actual live streamed genocide, supported by these same governments, they were met with beatdowns by police and criminalization.
Even today, they will still seriously tell you that this is a genocide:
And this isn’t:
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
Haven’t you heard? It was silently downgraded to a cultural genocide, because there was no actual proof of genocide. Cultural genocide is not recognized by the UN, because Western colonial powers started sweating profusely when Lemkin proposed it.
Cultural genocide is not recognized by the UN
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; 5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Elements of the crime
The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. (…) The same article establishes the obligation of the contracting parties to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide.
Bold by me.
You need to improve your reading skill, because nowhere in the link or your quoted text does it talk about cultural genocide, because it has been rejected from the start
From your first link:
Among many other potential reasons, cultural genocide may be committed for religious motives (e.g., iconoclasm which is based on aniconism); as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing
This is covered by “intent to destroy (…) ethnical (…) group”.
From your second link:
The final prohibited act is the only prohibited act that does not lead to physical or biological destruction, but rather to the destruction of the group as a cultural and social unit
There will always be political legalese in play, when imperialist powers want to commit genocide, and so they’ll cling to the fact that “cultural genocide” is not specifically mentioned. But, in the case of Uyghurs, it’s a very clear-cut case of both ethnic cleansing and physical genocide (through forced sterilisation and displacement of children).
Here is the human rights report from the United Nations on Xinjiang. It talks of human rights abuses (which there are), but it doesn’t use the word genocide, because it doesn’t meet any definition of genocide, especially not the ones recognized by the UN.
The Western move to label it genocide before any actual proof is just atrocity propaganda to divert people’s attention towards China, rather than the West’s own crimes against humanity.
Funny that you say it’s to distract from the west’s crimes against humanity, since the report literally uses those exact words to describe what China is doing to the uyghurs, but yes you are correct it doesn’t say it’s a genocide.
Well, China also is actively committing a genocide against their Muslim minority
Source?
The wiki you linked redirects “Uyghur genocide” (which all the people search for due to heavy propaganda) to “Persercution of Uyghurs”. The name of the article was changed, because there is not enough scholarly consensus to define it a genocide. It’s literally in the summary section
Damn, your own source(s) conflict and never come to consensus on the matter of genocide. Rough.
Even further, the ICC managed to come to a consensus on the Gaza genocide despite accusations of antisemitism and enormous pushback and sanctions from the US and Israel, but even with the influence peddling from racist and colonialist nations like the US and UK, and testimonies from Uyghurs who left Xinjiang, there’s still never been a consensus that Uyghurs in China were victims of genocide. Extra rough.
guessing brazil?
I literally said this to a tankie on here once, and they responded “Yes, unironically.”
Edit: I’m sorry, I said “totalitarianism”. Not better.
Totalitarianism is a term that was explicitly used to flatten any differences between socialist states and fascist ones. It’s not a particularly useful term if you want to actually interrogate how these states operated.
Actually worse
They’re right
I think imperialism is bad :/
I’m sure you do
Shhhhhh You’re scaring .ml
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This goes okayish to “we didn’t start the fire”
That’s fucking hilarious
Looks like CIA didn’t approve of the copy pasta
The title of the next hit light novel.
The Alternian Trolls from Homestuck prepared me for this reality
Doesn’t count if you don’t give me a five page essay on each.
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Oh, don’t pass the buck with that “just read the book” BS. Summarize the book please.
America bad.
Is that a book?
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Oh that’ll be a problem, I can’t read. So books are a no go.
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Audiobooks are not hard to find
This but unironically? lol the US is bad. do china next!
But I think most MLs would assume everyone already knows this and would instead want to argue about whether the bad things china does are actually “imperialist,” technically.
IDK maybe this is an accurate depiction of some kind of rabid sinophile…I haven’t had the joy of meeting any.
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Joke went way over my head; thanks for the context!
Sad there is no mention of warm water ports
Or warm water sports
That looks like emacs spook output
That is the joke, yes.
I had a stroke and died
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At the moment Chinese propaganda is working in a far superior way than murican propaganda, so yes, I agree with the me me.
I mean is it though :> 1/3rd of Americans think the election was stolen because of the right wing media network. I would guess it’s probably the same percent in China who blindly believe what the ccp tells them.
I meant for us outsiders. But sure. 🙂
It’s not that the west practices “bad imperialism” while China practices “good imperialism,” China isn’t imperialist to begin with. In order to understand why, though, we need to understand what imperialism is to begin with, as well as what causes it.
As capitalism monopolizes, it is compelled to expand outward in order to fight falling rates of profit by raising absolute profits. The merging of bank and industrial capital into finance capital leads to export of capital, ie outsourcing. This process allows super-exploitation for super-profits, and is known as imperialism. The domination of financial capital in an economy is what compels a country towards outward expansion, forcing privatization and market expansion via diplomacy on the one hand, and bombs in the other.
This is undeniably true of western countries, who have reached the imperialist stage of capitalism by around the late 19th century, especially the UK, Germany, France, and the US Empire. After World War II, the US Empire became hegemonic, and the western countries vassalized. What’s important is that none of this applies to China.
China is a socialist country. Public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy, it governs the large firms and key industries and dominates the overall character of the economy. Private ownership exists, but is secondary to that, filling in the gaps left behind by the huge state driven industries in secondary and underdeveloped areas, and is folded into the public sector as it grows. The capitalist class is not allowed to gain political power, and the working classes control the state.
The key takeaway here for the purposes of imperialism, is that China’s banks are overwhelmingly publicly owned, as are its large firms and key industries, and thus there isn’t the same compulsion towards dominating the global south for profit. Instead, China has mutual cooperation agreements, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and placing zero tariffs on 53 African countries.
The US Empire alone has hundreds of overseas millitary bases, while China has ~3. The US Empire bombed and destroyed countless countries over the last few decades alone, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, is embargoing Venezuela and especially Cuba, and more. China is not. The US Empire practices unequal exchange via maintaining monopoly on higher tech, China does not.
China’s position in the global stage facilitates south-south trade, which bypasses unequal exchange, where the global north maintains monopolies on high tech industries so as to consistently charge monopoly prices in exchange with the global south. China charges non-monopoly prices, and this is why exchange with China, alongside the rise of the Belt and Road Initiative, has resulted in dramatic development in African and Latin American countries. This is ultimately the single greatest contributor to the downfall of imperialism globally, and is why right now there is such a large cold war with China.
China is not debt trapping poor African nations. We can see that this isn’t the case when we can observe countries in BRI engaging in rapid development and industrializing, and this is confirmed by China forgiving tons of debt. The goal of China isn’t to make countries reliant on them, or to earn money from debt, it’s because China gains personally through mutual development. Here are some articles debunking the “debt trap” myth:
There are many more examples I can use. China isn’t doing this out of the goodness of their own heart, but because they stand to gain from mutual development. A more developed global south means China is less reliant on the US Empire as a customer, provides new avenues to facilitate trade, and creates more markets for customers. The west harvests the global south for cheap labor and resources, and we can see hard comparisons in data between BRI participants and those imperialized by the west to see fundamentally different results.
It’s clear at this point: participation in BRI results in sustained and rapid development and mutual cooperation, and working with the west results in sustained impoverishment. China gains from this mutual cooperation, but so do African countries, and unlike the west China doesn’t force trade at the barrel of a gun. That’s part of why it’s mutally beneficial, and results in development in Africa, vs underdevelopment and western enrichment.
The simple reason why China isn’t economically compelled to imperialize is because it isn’t dominated by finance capital, and thus prioritizes long-term results, as we saw in the beginning. It’s simply better for everyone for there to be mutual cooperation, but western countries are dominated by the profit motive and finance capital, which compels them to take short term gains via looting the global south.
All in all, trying to equate western imperialism with China’s trade agreements and multi-national projects is the height of projection, and highlights an utter lack of materialist analysis.
Based based based based
China isn’t imperialist to begin with.
AAaahahahahahha, ahhahahahahahahaha, hahahahahahahahahahaha!
Excellent shitpost, milord!
Why do you talk like this? And is that all you can do to counter what I’ve said, just act like it’s ridiculous to avoid engaging with the points raised?
The moment you say that “China isn’t imperialist to begin with” you lose all credibility and reading the rest is a waste of time.
Read about the Belt and Road initiative, the militarisation of the South China Sea, the treatment of Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet, or Taiwan, THEN come back and say with a straight face that “China isn’t imperialist to begin with”. :D
So in other words, the moment you read anything that disagrees with you, you stop thinking immediately and reflexively shut off any and all engagement? Sounds like you’ve holed yourself up in an echo chamber of your own making. I already addressed all of these subjects either here or elsewhere, directly, such as Xinjiang here, Taiwan here, Hong Kong here, and Tibet here. I already explained the Belt and Road Initiative in the comment you claimed to stop reading at the first sentence.
So in other words, the moment you read anyone that disagrees with you, you stop thinking immediately and reflexively shut off any and all engagement?
No. The moment someone makes a claim that is utterly ridiculous in its disregard for facts, I disregard their reasoning.
If you said “the Earth isn’t round to begin with”, you’d earn an identical reaction.
Sounds like you’ve holed yourself up in an echo chamber of your own making
Sounds like you’re projecting.
My claim isn’t ridiculous though, nor does it have a disregard for facts. In fact, I supported my claims overwhelmingly with western sources that are already biased against China. You would know that if you read my comment, but you won’t let yourself even look at information even from the west that runs counter to your fragile worldview. What makes me a part of an echo chamber, when you’re the one unwilling to even glance at western sources that disagree with you?
Sure, the person who refuses to engage with any counter evidence and acts incredibly smug must be the credible one…
I’m not going to engage in this discourse, just as much as I won’t engage in the discourse about whether or not the Earth is flat.
You are engaging. You’re just doing it in a way that makes you look like you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Seriously, all they did was legitimize me rhetorically. Focusing on rhetoric is a trap that I try not to fall for, but I can’t really do anything if someone does their best to tank any opposing argument.
okay that seem to be coherent. We are used to define imperialism as “the system produce by the competition between states”. Some domination are note linked (or loosely) with market.
I understand why it’s interesting to focus on things we can fight on. But a lot of us couldn’t fight the financial market and it’s exportation. However we could blockade exportation of weapons, sending medic kit or foods to people that suffer from domination.
I’m not saying your definition is wrong, I’m saying that I found it ineffective for an international solidarity of the working class
To the contrary, understanding how capitalism turns to imperialism helps us see what countries have revolutionary potential, and how to end imperialism. Imperialism allows the capitalist class in the core to “bribe” their working classes, in the form of huge safety nets like in the nordic countries, or in the form of cheap commodities like in the US. This serves as a pressure valve. However, what this also means is that the contradictions are exported to the imperialized countries.
That’s why, in the global south, revolutionary movements have peppered the 20th and 21st centuries. Helping countries in the global south fight imperialism includes sabotaging war efforts against Iran and Palestine, for example. When diplomacy fails to force open markets for foreign plunder, imperialist countries turn to bombs. That’s why the US Empire is bombing Iran, to open their markets up for US companies to own Iranian oil production.
As anti-imperialists, we need to understand the motive forces of imperialism to break them. The solution to end imperialism is to pivot to socialism, and this is genuine international working class solidarity.
Thank you for sharing this information. Living in an imperialist country makes it hard to understand China’s politics and not fall into some of the propaganda against it, even if you’re careful.
You are most likely responding to an astroturf agent 😬 they linked a Chinese (state owned) tabloid as a source on the uyghur genocide being fake. I can link you to the comment if you want I would just warn that they are cleary not trying to convince for the sake of informing people.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by me linking a “state-owned tabloid?” The large majority of sources I link are western, because I know I would get accusations of bad-faith if I primarily linked Chinese or otherwise global south sources (regardless of accuracy, truth, or legitimacy). This character assassination holds no water whatsoever, you can feel free to argue against the sources I’ve linked if you like but making up conspiracy theories about me is low.
No problem! Yea, it can be very difficult, searching in English for example always props up results for NYT, CNN, Fox, etc, and we know how biased these sources are when it comes to, say, Palestine. Understanding how China works is going to be very important going forward.
China is a neolib paradise, regardless of the name of the single party in control. The belt and road is nothing more than a means to extract wealth from and exploit the global south.
Do you know what “neoliberalism” is or even what the “global south” refers to? Because none of this makes any sense.
China famously rejected neoliberal economics when carrying out market reform. That’s why their economy skyrocketed instead of collapsing like many Eastern European countries. They are also considered part of the global south and are still a developing country in many respects.
China being socialist has nothing to do with the name of the party in control, and everything to do with the mode of production and distribution in China. Rather than a neoliberal paradise, it’s closer to a nightmare for neoliberals. This editorial from The Guardian explains it quite well, actually:
But Xi’s support for mixing private and public ownership structures was purely pragmatic. It had value, he said in another forum, because it would “improve the socialist market economic structure.” Xi’s assessment is echoed by Michael Collins, one of the CIA’s most senior officials for Asia. “The fundamental end of the Communist party of China under Xi Jinping is all the more to control that society politically and economically,” Collins argued earlier this year. “The economy is being viewed, affected and controlled to achieve a political end.”
…
The party’s overarching aim, though, has remained consistent: to ensure that the private sector, and individual entrepreneurs, do not become rival players in the political system. The party wants economic growth, but not at the expense of tolerating any organised alternative centres of power.
…
“[Capitalists] act as if they are being chased by a bear,” wrote Zhang Lin, a Beijing political commentator, in response to these comments. “They are powerless to control the bear, so they are competing to outrun each other to escape the animal.”
How then, does China’s economy work? Public ownership is the principal aspect of China’s economy. This means that public ownership governs the large firms and key industries, and is what is rising in China, as private ownership is kept to small and medium non-essential industries. No system is static, meaning identifying the nature of a system depends on identifying what is rising and what is dying away. Cpitalists are held on a tight leash, and are prevented from gaining political power as a class. The reason private ownership is allowed at all is because China has very uneven development due to their rapid industrialization, and private ownership does help with filling in gaps left by the primary aspects of the economy like SOEs.
The form of democracy and the mode of production in China ensures that there is a connection between the people and the state. Policies like the mass line are in place to ensure this direct connection remains. This is why over 90% of the Chinese population supports the government, and why they have such strong perceptions around democracy:
The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.
China does have billionaires, as you might then protest. China is in the developing stages of socialism. Between capitalism, which is characterized by private ownership being the principal aspect of the economy and the capitalists in control of the state, and communism, characterized by full collectivization of production and distribution devoid of classes and the state, run along the lines of a common plan, is socialism, where public ownership is principle and the working classes in control. China in particular is working its way out of the initial stages of socialism:
The reason China has billionaires is because China has private property, and the reason it has private property is because of 2 major factors: the world economy is still dominated by the US empire, and because you cannot simply abolish private property at the stroke of a pen. China tried that already. The Gang of Four tried to dogmatically force a publicly owned and planned economy when the infrastructure best suited to that hadn’t been laid out by markets, and as a consequence growth was positive but highly unstable.
Why does it matter that the US Empire controls the world economy? Because as capitalism monopolizes, it is compelled to expand outward in order to fight falling rates of profit by raising absolute profits. The merging of bank and industrial capital into finance capital leads to export of capital, ie outsourcing. This process allows super-exploitation for super-profits, and is known as imperialism.
In the People’s Republic of China, under Mao and later the Gang of Four, growth was overall positive but was unstable. The centrally planned economy had brought great benefits in many areas, but because the productive forces themselves were underdeveloped, economic growth wasn’t steady. There began to be discussion and division in the party, until Deng Xiapoing’s faction pushing for Reform and Opening Up won out, and growth was stabilized.
Deng’s plan was to introduce market reforms, localized around Special Economic Zones, while maintaining full control over the principle aspects of the economy. Limited private capital would be introduced, especially by luring in foreign investors, such as the US, pivoting from more isolationist positions into one fully immersed in the global marketplace. As the small and medium firms grow into large firms, the state exerts more control and subsumes them more into the public sector. This was a gamble, but unlike what happened to the USSR, this was done in a controlled manner that ended up not undermining the socialist system overall.
China’s rapidly improving productive forces and cheap labor ended up being an irresistable match for US financial capital, even though the CPC maintained full sovereignty. This is in stark contrast to how the global north traditionally acts imperialistically, because it relies on financial and millitant dominance of the global south. This is why there is a “love/hate” relationship between the US Empire and PRC, the US wants more freedom for capital movement while the CPC is maintaining dominance.
Fast-forward to today, and the benefits of the CPC’s gamble are paying off. The US Empire is de-industrializing, while China is a productive super-power. The CPC has managed to maintain full control, and while there are neoliberals in China pushing for more liberalization now, the path to exerting more socialization is also open, and the economy is still socialist. It is the job of the CPC to continue building up the productive forces, while gradually winning back more of the benefits the working class enjoyed under the previous era, developing to higher and higher stages of socialism.
In doing this, China has presented itself to the global south as an alternative to the unequal exchange the global north does with the global south, which is accelerating the development of the global south. China is taking a more indirect method of undermining global imperialism than, say, the USSR, but its been remarkably effective at uplifting the global working classes, especially in China but also in the global south.
To call China “imperialist” or “capitalist” is to either invent a fantasy of China or to not understand imperialism, capitalism, or socialism. China isn’t a utopia, it’s a real socialist country.
You can copy paste all the charts and quotes you want. None of that means anything next to the reality on the ground.
China is great, it’s one of my favorite places to visit. But that’s because I have the money to enjoy it. As soon as you travel a little way away from the glitz of the major cities, leave behind the Michelin starred restaurants, five star hotels, and bullet trains, the poverty is crushing. More so than many other neolib places where you can go to a more rural area to chill. But that’s mostly due to time. Give China a little more time and they’ll continue to make their welfare state more robust through progressive taxation (as is the hallmark of neoliberalism), and it seems like they’ll cleave close to the social democracy side of things, at least for now.
Anyone who looks at the crushing poverty a large percentage of Chinese live in and the rate they are minting new billionaires and then tries to say their system is in the same universe as socialism is delusional at best and cynically promoting lies to advance an agenda at worst.
The charts represent what’s actually happening on the ground. The urban/rural divide is one of the biggest problems for China, this is correct. The origin of the issue is in China’s rapid development, which left the countryside lagging behind. However, thanks to their socialist system, they’ve already taken concrete steps towards addressing this.
Purchasing Power in 2022 was 25 times higher than 1978. The gap between rural and urban development has long been acknowledged and is already something worked on. The famous poverty eraducation campaign, which lifted 800 million people out of absolute poverty, was focused on just that. Read The Metamorphosis of Yuangudui to see what that looks like in practice.
What separates social democracy from socialism? In social democracy, private ownership is the principal aspect of the economy, and capitalists control the state. In socialism, it’s public ownership that is principal, and the working classes that control the state. I won’t retread old ground here, other than to remind you that China’s economy is overwhelmingly state-driven:
China does indeed have billionaires, because they still have private property for the small and medium secondary industries. This, however, is not a permanent fixture of the economy, as no economy is static and unmoving. As these firms grow, they are folded into the public sector, advancing socialization of the economy. What do you believe socialism to look like? How can a neoliberal ecomomy be dominated by public ownership, the working classes, and central planning?
No, what I, and everyone what that has actually been to factories and rural areas of China, has seen is what’s actually happening on the ground. You’re nothing more than a neolib apologist with an Eastern fetish.
All you’ve mentioned is that you’ve seen poverty, which I already explained why it exists, and you’ve already explained why you believe it will go away eventually. We both know China is working to remove this with massive social programs. You have not once explained how China is “neoliberal,” nor what you believe socialism to be. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, I hate neoliberalism like what Reagan and Thatcher installed, and neoliberalism is lightyears away from China’s Socialist Market Economy.
Please, explain what you believe socialism to be, and where you got that idea from. Explain how China is “neoliberal” beyond the vanishing presence of rural poverty.
Dude, neoliberalism is a huge range, not just those douches. Just because they’re not (currently) as bad as Regan/Thatcher doesn’t mean they’re not neolibs. I’m sure you’ve got tons of copypastas ready to go, but none of them change the fact that China is a great place to be rich and get richer but if you’re poor, the best you can hope for is that your grandchildren have a better life built on the backs of exploited Africans and others in the global south.
