Submitted 1 day ago by Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/1abde6a3-8484-4d19-857f-ea24b7ec0f77.jpeg
China is a capitalist country
They focus their government money on creating jobs and control. People will well paying jobs and money for fun stuff are less likely to start a civil war
Rather than the US where the focus is making themselves richer and funding the military
Funding the military so they can quash any rebellions from people having nothing left to lose deciding to rise up.
They also basically told us to overthrow the government and rewrite the constitution in our situation
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
They should’ve banned it in the Constitution then. Though given how bloodthirsty Americans turned out to be, we probably would’ve amended it anyway.
Same reason the US has the most prisons even though it’s aiming to be the freest country.
Systemic racism to control minorities?
It was always from the very start meant to maximized the freedom of the Landed classes, nobody else.
gotta ensure that reserve army of labor, otherwise how the capitalists gonna keep profit?
Don’t make me tap the sign.
The sign: “Whatabout the USA”
They aren’t trying to be communist, they are trying to be “Communist with Chinese elements” which is just capitalism. Similar to how they are a “Democracy with Chinese elements” which is just a dictatorship.
Interesting
They didn’t used to have billionaires, when Mao was in power. Strangely, a lot of Westerners seem to hate what China is now, but also hate what China was before, which seems very strange to me. “The reforms were bad and China should be more Maoist” that is a coherent position, “The reforms were good but should have gone further and become even more capitalist” that is also a coherent position. But “China is bad now because they allow billionaires but they were also bad when they didn’t allow billionaires” isn’t really coherent, it just seems like knee-jerk opposition to whatever they do or don’t do. Anyone who can’t answer the simple question of whether the reforms were good or bad is ideologically bankrupt.
On the off-chance that you actually want a serious answer to the question, let’s start with some history. Before the revolution, China’s average life expectancy was in the 30’s, it experienced frequent famines, had no access to medicine, and had had similarly awful conditions for literally thousands of years with no improvement for the average person. The revolution brought about huge improvements in life expectancy and the basic necessities of life (with the failure of the Great Leap Forward being an exception to this general trend).
However, while central planning works for providing basic necessities because the demand for those necessities is very predictable, it is not the most efficient regarding consumer goods. This was one of the failures that caused the collapse of the USSR, the desire for consumer good and the inability to compete domestically. Furthermore, despite the increases in life expectancy, virtually everyone in China still lived in extreme poverty. The reforms in the 80s were intended to address this, and they were wildly successful at it:
In the words of Deng, it doesn’t matter if the cat is white or black, so long as it catches mice. It doesn’t really matter if a policy is ideologically “pure,” so long as it provides clear material benefits for the common people.
Where I’m standing, the whole point of having any sort of political beliefs at all is to figure out which policies will improve people’s lives. And lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty over the span of 40 years, can you name a more successful policy, ever, in all of history?
And yet, China has delivered substantially lower average incomes than its peers. It’s not even close. The people of Taiwan, despite sharing a common cultural and ethnic history as mainland China, enjoy a substantially higher standard of living than their mainland peers.
Yes, they’ve raised hundreds of millions out of poverty, but that’s been the case throughout East Asia. The whole region saw its standard of living dramatically rise as it industrialized. And the capitalist countries have enjoyed far greater economic success than the communist ones.
The absolute number of people is a red herring. Obviously big countries have more people.
I’m hoping you’re not one of those .ml folks that acts like a Republican and calls every source they don’t like “Fake News.” But in case you are, can you provide your own sources? I would be curious on your thoughts of the per-capita incomes of China vs the capitalist East Asian countries. Can you show that China has performed better than them on a per-capita basis?
I think the position of those people is “Maoism was bad, the reforms were good, but they overcorrected”. Imho a perfectly coherent position as well. Quality of life in modern China is surely better than during the Mao era, and not only because if material wealth, but surely this current state is not perfect. Far from it, if you ask me.
You mean people don’t like that millions of people starved to death when Mao killed at the intellectuals? Yeah, I could see why people might have a bad view of that.
China does not claim to be a fully communist society yet. Official ideology describes the country as being in a long-term developmental phase of socialism; communism is portrayed as a future goal. However, if they continue as they have been treating people like mere numbers, keeping them in poverty under total control, while billionaires amass wealth they will never achieve that anyway. In a society that ideologically advocates for overcoming class distinctions and capitalist exploitation, enormous private fortunes exist. Entrepreneurs like Jack Ma have at times amassed wealth running into the billions. At the same time, the Party controls key sectors of the economy and can exert massive pressure on companies. That transitional phase has gone spectacularly wrong. That is not how communism is defined. Private property is accepted only as long as it remains compatible with the Party’s political interests. This is very convenient for the government: it can harness the productivity and innovation of capitalism without adopting the political power structures of a liberal political system.
Oh Jesus Christ. They’re as communist as you can humanly get currently. I hate this crap where people go “well xyz isn’t full communist”. No country can or will be 100% communist, socialist, or capitalist. It’s basically impossible. They can claim whatever they want. Half the shit they say is made up anyways.
But. they are at communist as possible.
No they aren’t. Try actually reading about how their economy works. The whole thing is a scam to keep their form of state capitalism.
Poop fart and fart poop
So much ignorance on display here in this thread. People talking out of their ass with no clue or care why and how China has implemented economic reforms and development policy. No clue what communists even are much less the details of how they manage the economy of a developing socialist state within a capitalist global economy. Just thought-terminating clichés about billionaires and so-called “state capitalism”.
Fun fact: you can actually read the justifications for why socialist countries managed by proletariat governments have implemented limited market systems in their economies in China, Vietnam, Cuba, USSR, even Korea. Their thoughts are public!
I might go one further and suggest this is why the “Just tax the billionaires” line never actually delivers the goods. It’s a classic Belling-The-Cat problem, because its very easy to say “Tax the Billionaires” but its very difficult to move forward with a policy that does the actual thing, without billionaires pooling their resources to prevent you from accessing any of the levers of power.
You need a certain collectivist worldview to even attempt the problem of regulating and sanctioning a bourgeois class. And when you’re brainwashed by some combination of out-of-context Adam Smith quotes and reskinned Milton Friedman / Ayn Rand videos, good fucking luck.
Fun fact: you can actually read the justifications for why socialist countries managed by proletariat governments have implemented limited market systems in their economies in China, Vietnam, Cuba, USSR, even Korea. Their thoughts are public!
If you know where to look and you trust the source material and you’ve got the patience to work through the finer details, sure.
But that’s the sort of learning you typically need to tackle in grade school if you want it to stick. Open minds and lots of free time are necessary to get this kind of rigorous political education. By the time you’ve had your head crammed full of cable news fearmongering and employer-sponsored propaganda, you’ll be allergic to the very idea of taking a book like Fanshen or The Bolivian Diary at face value.
What do you mean?
Instead of using the term good, I think the standard here is asking, “Do the billionaires have more power than the some other group? In this cases CPC.” And if the CPC has more power, “What role does the CPC imagine using the billionaires to development of society and the party goals?”
Cos playing at communism at best. China is a totalitarian fascist state.
That’s because China is not Communist and only “communist” on paper so that the people can still believe in the “trickle down” economics where “the people” own a share of the business
They do not.
Still prefer that to the hellhole that is the US
!!! 15+ social credit
Because “Communist States” are just State Capitalism with red branding, next question.
Why does my girlfriend call all the food I make slop.
Maybe improve your cooking?
Have you checked you’re not a dog?
IMHO China is a more capitalist country than the USA. 12h workdays 6 days a week (996), with overtime 16h, no labour rights, no representation, only the party gets that. Flooding the markets with goods sold at a loss, to drive the other countries’ industry out of business. The taxpayer subsideses the loss. And once China is the monopoly, they can charge what they want.
IMO these MAGA cunts should wet themselves at the sight of China. After all, China is more capitalist than the USA, lol.
IMHO China is a more capitalist country than the USA. 12h workdays 6 days a week
Communism doesn’t mean that everybody can slack off. If people don’t work enough it’s difficult for them to catch up with Capitalism, like USSR and Eastern Europe have shown.
All that work has paid off for China. Unlike any other country they have a shot at being independent from the West.
Capitalism means that the people who control the means of production also control politics. That’s not true in China, so that people there can hope for a better life despite AI and robots.
Ask Jack Ma what being a billionaire in China is worth.
It’s worth $30 billion.
Being humbled by the state while remaining a billionaire does not justify the existence of the billionaire capitalist class.
Well yeah, he criticized a government labeled “communist”. He’s lucky to be alive. But, he’s still a billionaire and has homes in like a dozen countries.
I’m just trying to connect your reasoning here. Are you implying that billionaires should be brought to heel by popular power or private property should be respected? Do you believe property is an essential right that should give you a megaphone or not? I’m just saying billionaires don’t particularly laugh at Chinese state directives as in the meme.
Big fat /s.
This makes me wonder too. A lot of communists I met idolize China but China does not seem to me a communist country now.
Tankies are the greatest right-wing propaganda that lefties still fall for both by believing in it and by believing that it’s actually coming from sincere leftists.
define “tankie”
Yeah, I think the U.S. is going to naturally pull back to the left, but I fear it will still go poorly, because we’re still very stupid people and it will be exploited by bad-faith actors just like everything else. But I hope I’m just overly cynical. I don’t think I am though.
China has stopped being communist for a while now, it’s developed into some flavour of capitalist society though I don’t remember much about the different variants. It’s certainly top heavy though like the USA.
Stopped being socialist*
They were never communist.
So it was a communist country at one point?
It declared itself communist but history has shown the most countries have gotten is to socialist.
They’re a capitalist country.
Because they’re marxist leninist and think socialism is something you work towards and isn’t achievable by pressing the big red communism button.
Just a few more billionaires and the state will wither away.
I believe the thinking is that you can’t really have the state wither away while capitalist states remain predominant on the planet.
If communism why has big red button not been pressed?
Maybe the real shitpost was the comments we made along the way.
That was the ideal scenario
You were tickling my fancy until I noticed the community. Well done, dear Lemming, well done.
But, but the share holders this fiscal year! While not caring about the next fiscal year or keeping people employed.
Not how it works. You build a facility that feeds thousands of people for much less.
djsiete@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
Worry about your own country, yank