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Jmdatcs@lemmy.world 5 days agoYou 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 transaction (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.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
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:
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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?
Jmdatcs@lemmy.world 5 days ago
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.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
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.
Jmdatcs@lemmy.world 5 days ago
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.