Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country?
WoodScientist@lemmy.world 5 hours agoWhy the billionaires though? Sure, you can argue that China needed to adopt a largely market-based economy in order to grow its economic base. But a market economy does not require billionaires. Why couldn’t China do exactly what it’s doing now with worker-owned cooperatives? Why does there have to be one rich guy at the top hoarding all the money?
What’s stopping China right now from instituting a maximum wealth cap?
Oppopity@lemmy.ml 4 hours ago
It’s transitioning to that. The government subsidises shares for workers to take ownership of their own workplaces.
There doesn’t have to be.
Nothing.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
You’re dancing around my core question.
I’m talking about the past, not the future. I’m specifically asking about the past. I don’t want to hear about all the great things China promises to do. I want to know why they chose to create billionaires. I want to know why China is the way it is now. I don’t want to hear glittering promises about what it will become.
I ask you again. Why the billionaires? Why did a nominally socialist country not design its market economy (which it built from scratch) to be more equitable from the start?
I’m not talking about what China may change into. I’m asking why they didn’t plan this from the start. The CCP has in its ranks literally millions of people formally educated in the theories of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and others. They know class struggle and the inevitable outcomes of unregulated capitalism. It’s not like they couldn’t easily predict that a market economy would lead to billionaires. If anyone could be expected to design their market economy in an equitable way, it’s the CCP. And there wasn’t a class of wealthy businessmen that took over the government and forced them to adopt these economic policies. They created their market economy from scratch; they could have built it on a worker co-op model. They CHOSE the current model.
China’s existing market economy did not evolve spontaneously. The old pre-Communist market economy was destroyed in the Revolution and during the Mao era. China’s billionaires aren’t just the wealthy inheritors of Qing-era nobles. They’re all new money; they made their fortunes in the economy Deng and others created. The post-Mao leaders of China created a market economy from scratch, and they could have made it any way they wanted. They chose a model that allows for billionaires.
I want to know why they made that choice. Why didn’t Deng and others build the new Chinese market economy with hard wealth caps or around worker-owned co-ops?
Oppopity@lemmy.ml 3 hours ago
They didn’t choose to create billionaires. That’s just what happens when capitalists exist, they accumulate wealth.
It’s not unregulated it’s very heavily regulated. Capitalists in China never stop whinging about how oppressive their government is because the government actual regulates them. That’s why they end up investing in other countries because they’re less regulated and there’s more options for accumulating more wealth.
It wasn’t designed to be equitable it was designed to develop the country fast to transition to socialism rather than everyone being poor ass farmers with wood tools but all being kind to one another.
They haven’t taken over the government they are beholden to the government. That’s why capitalists get executed instead of a slap on the wrist like in capitalist countries because the capitalists work for the state not the other way around.
The party general secretary is not a capitalist. There are no capitalists in the politburo standing committee. There are no capitalists in the politburo There are no capitalists in the central committee Of the 2270 delegates in the party congress about 30 are capitalists.