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? Are the Chinese billionaires a good thing?
That’s because China is not Communist and only “communist” on paper so that the people can still be fed propaganda of the “trickle down” economics where “the people” own a share of the business.
They do not.
China is more authoritarian capitalism where the CCP and Xi rule the people and dissidents are punished with death and prison
The United States is only a national emergency away from this by the way.
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.
The people who wanted to make China communist, as in people having collective ownership over the economy, were thrown out of power by the Dengists who ostensibly believed that they needed to use capitalism to build towards socialism. Except they’ve never done anything to actually implement socialism. In China everyone is still a wage cuck just like everywhere else.
Poop fart and fart poop
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 wants to offer critiques should be able to answer the simple question of whether the reforms were good or bad, whether they moved in the right or wrong direction.
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?
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.
But, but the share holders this fiscal year! While not caring about the next fiscal year or keeping people employed.
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. Did you know that the founding fathers intended for there to be no standing army for this very reason? I just learned this the other day.
Jefferson said a central bank was more dangerous to our liberty than a standing army. 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.
This makes me wonder too. A lot of communists I met idolize China but China does not seem to me a communist country now.
i have it on good authority from about half of lemmy that china is a wonderful place where everyone feels safe and actually there never were any uyghurs, since that’s just western propaganda
Why people like china? They are trying to solve global warming problem. They are bringing innovations at scale and low cost. Their state is battling some capitalism schemes, like price inflation of goods and housing. Their billionares are little bitches of the party. Not the other way around. People there generally feel safe, better salaries compared to its neighbours, better medicine etc.
If usa or europe or russia rules the world, humanity is fuked. If china rules then everything will be fine.
You know other, better countrys exist outside of these 2, right?
i guess uyghurs aren’t human.
that tracks with chinese policy.
out of curiousity, how much do you get paid to post on lemmy? is it a decent gig?
I mean, we all know you’re making more at Langley, but at what cost?
Oh, right, your soul.
Also North Korea is what all countries should strive to emulate.
No, seriously, I’ve seen a tankie on here say that.
Wdym? Haven’t you seen the citizens of the democratic people’s republic of Korea cheer and cry when they see their beloved leader Kim Jong Un?
Also, did you know that countless people defect from South Korea to the democratic people’s republic of Korea???
/s
The second point is legitimately what someone told me on lemmygrad. No, they explicitly said “today”. They were not just talking about the 50s-60s.
I wonder how many of them think they ally live like a North Korean peasant?
Being banned from .lm is a badge of honor.
Here is your Lemmy ban medal;
Aw Fuck yah, a chucky cheese token
I’ve heard that too
Same reason the US has the most prisons even though it’s aiming to be the freest country.
Don’t make me tap the sign.
The sign: “Whatabout the USA”
Systemic racism to control the marginalized and ensure the poor stay with very few viable options?
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?
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.
996 has been ruled illegal since around 2021 with a great crackdown in 2025
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.
- Nono you see they’re the “people’s billionaires”.
- They’re all patriots with the goal of achieving communism. It’s just that to transition to communism, we need billionaires first.
- The imperialists have billionaires. To defend against these imperialists, we need our own billionaires.
- China is 3000 years old. China survived without your help. We don’t need you to tell us where we can improve. Improve yourself.
- Each country has its own material conditions. This is why we need socialism with Chinese characteristics for China. These Chinese characteristics mean billionaires. Don’t you understand dumm librul?
Big fat /s.
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
Cos playing at communism at best. China is a totalitarian fascist state.
They’re a capitalist country.
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.
