Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy in the PRC, and the working classes control the state. For example, when looking at publicly owned industries, we can see the following:
Even checking Wikipedia, data from 2022 shows that the overwhelming majority of the top companies are publicly owned SOEs. This is China’s strategy, they’ve been honest about it from the beginning. The private sector is about half cooperatives like Huawei or farming cooperarives and sole proprietorships, with the other half being small and medium firms. As these grow, they are folded into the public sector gradually. This is China’s Socialist Market Economy.
As for the state being run by the working classes, this is also pretty straightforward. Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and the CPC, a working class party, dominates the state. At a democratic level, local elections are direct, while higher levels are elected by lower rungs. At the top, constant opinion gathering and polling occurs, gathering public opinion, driving gradual change. This system is better elaborated on in Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance, and we can see the class breakdown of the top of the government itself:
me when I do liberal reductionism and don’t understand anything Lenin, Chairman Mao or Stalin wrote.
Edit:
To more properly explain.
You rely on a crude, ahistorical definition of socialism and treats China as a static abstraction rather than a real society developing under concrete material conditions. You reduce Marxism to a legal-form checklist and ignores class power, historical development, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a fundamental error.
In Marxism, “who owns the means of production” is not a question of paper titles but of class rule. Ownership only matters insofar as it expresses which class holds political power, controls surplus, and sets the direction of development. Defining socialism as the immediate abolition of all private enterprise is not Marxism; it is utopian liberal nonsense.
Lenin addressed this explicitly. Under proletarian rule, state capitalism is a socialist tool. His formulation is unambiguous: state capitalism under a dictatorship of the proletariat is not capitalism in the bourgeois sense but a form subordinated to socialist power and goals. The decisive issue is not whether markets or private firms exist, but which class commands them.
In China, the commanding heights of the economy are publicly owned and planned: land (state-owned in cities, collectively owned in the countryside), finance, energy, heavy industry, transport, telecommunications, arms production, and strategic resources. These sectors form the backbone of the economy. Private capital exists, but it does not dominate accumulation or political power.
The Chinese bourgeoisie does not rule. It has no independent state power and no ability to capture the party. Capitalists are subordinate to the Communist Party and can be regulated, expropriated, imprisoned, or eliminated when they conflict with socialist objectives. Recent crackdowns on tech monopolies, finance, real estate speculation, and billionaire figures demonstrate this class relation. In capitalist states, capital disciplines the state. In China, the state disciplines capital.
Surplus extraction and allocation further expose the difference. Under capitalism, surplus is privately appropriated and reinvested for profit. In China, surplus (especially from state and regulated sectors) is redirected toward long-term national development: infrastructure, industrial upgrading, poverty eradication, and technological independence. The largest poverty reduction in human history did not occur through laissez-faire capitalism, but through state-directed socialist accumulation (nearly a billion people lifted from poverty).
Chairman Mao was also clear that socialism is not a finished endpoint but a long historical process filled with contradictions. He emphasized that class struggle continues under socialism and that development occurs through uneven, conflicting processes. Socialism is transitional by definition: it emerges from capitalism, contains remnants of it, and advances toward communism through struggle and transformation. Treating socialism as a stable, contradiction-free end state is anti-Marxist.
Calling China “authoritarian capitalism” is ridiculous. I’ve already dealt with the “capitalism” issue but also authoritarian is a useless modifier used by liberals to easily bundle together countries that opposed the status quo as evil and immoral. Try reading On Authority
“Everything else follows from there” is exactly wrong. Everything follows from class power, historical conditions, and the direction of development. Your reductionist liberal framework cannot explain why China plans five-year strategies, suppresses finance capital, controls land, resists imperialism, and openly declares socialism as its goal. Marxism can however.
The mental gymnastics you need to go trough trying to defend why being capitalistic is basically anticapitalist when the ruling party has “communist” in their name is telling.
No? You’re trying to say that an economy where public ownership is clearly the principle aspect is actually one where private ownership is principle, and are pretending materialist arguments about the structute of socialism are about what a party is named. Just respond to the actual comment, don’t insult yourself by hiding behind a strawman.
There are indeed communists here, that have been able to debunk the user you’re replying to. Simply calling unsourced claims “stating the obvious” in the face of hard facts and statistics is illogical to the extreme.
A tankie is when people point out you don’t understand what you’re talking about and are just regurgitating talking points and it makes you feel bad.
Come to China I can give you a tour I can translate so you can talk to the locals and you can see we’re humans too not just some brainwashed peasant “untermensch”. You chauvinist loser.
When did I say chinese people arent people? Are you replying to the wrong comment? You sound like you are 14 with your reading skills and going straight to calling me a loser lol.
You are a loser. You don’t view us as independent people who have our own views on our country. You ignore the fact that even western outlets report over 80% of us support the government. But none of that matters to you because we’re just peasants brainwashed by the evil “authoritarians”.
QinShiHuangsShlong was clearly explaining how you are utterly mistaken about China. When Chinese tell you that public ownership is principle (ie controls the commanding heights), that the working classes run the state, and an overwhelming number support the CPC, your response is that it’s “stating the obvious” to say otherwise. This stems from a sheer distrust of the words of Chinese people, and is why your comment is chauvanist.
They said I dont see Chinese people as people instead of focusing on the ‘stating the obvious’ part. They literally came up with something I never said to support their point.
When you’re denying China’s system as socialist, despite what Chinese say and the reasons they give, it points to a distrust of Chinese people themselves.
You are defending and agreeing with someone calling China evil and authoritarian capitalist. He is wrong and so are you. No amount of dodging or hiding behind semantics will change the position you chose to defend and that you clearly chose to defend it for chauvinist reasons.
No because even if you don’t state it openly it’s clearly apparent. You clearly hate China, and we’re all just brainwashed serfs of the ebil gubberment.
Authoritarian capitalistic state?
For all the tankies disagreeing simply ask yourself two questions:
Who owns the means of production in a socialist society?
Who owns the means of production in China?
Everything else follows from there
Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy in the PRC, and the working classes control the state. For example, when looking at publicly owned industries, we can see the following:
Even checking Wikipedia, data from 2022 shows that the overwhelming majority of the top companies are publicly owned SOEs. This is China’s strategy, they’ve been honest about it from the beginning. The private sector is about half cooperatives like Huawei or farming cooperarives and sole proprietorships, with the other half being small and medium firms. As these grow, they are folded into the public sector gradually. This is China’s Socialist Market Economy.
As for the state being run by the working classes, this is also pretty straightforward. Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and the CPC, a working class party, dominates the state. At a democratic level, local elections are direct, while higher levels are elected by lower rungs. At the top, constant opinion gathering and polling occurs, gathering public opinion, driving gradual change. This system is better elaborated on in Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance, and we can see the class breakdown of the top of the government itself:
Overall, this system has resulted in over 90% of the population approving the government, which is shown to be consistent and accurate. If you want to learn more, while not nearly as in-depth due to time limits as Roland Boer’s work (and mostly focused on the Xi Jinping era), Red Pen’s A Summary of Xi Jinping’s Governance of China can be a good primer! There’s also This is how China’s economic model works: Explaining Socialism with Chinese Characteristics by Geopolitical Economy Report.
Edit: To more properly explain.
You rely on a crude, ahistorical definition of socialism and treats China as a static abstraction rather than a real society developing under concrete material conditions. You reduce Marxism to a legal-form checklist and ignores class power, historical development, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a fundamental error.
In Marxism, “who owns the means of production” is not a question of paper titles but of class rule. Ownership only matters insofar as it expresses which class holds political power, controls surplus, and sets the direction of development. Defining socialism as the immediate abolition of all private enterprise is not Marxism; it is utopian liberal nonsense.
Lenin addressed this explicitly. Under proletarian rule, state capitalism is a socialist tool. His formulation is unambiguous: state capitalism under a dictatorship of the proletariat is not capitalism in the bourgeois sense but a form subordinated to socialist power and goals. The decisive issue is not whether markets or private firms exist, but which class commands them.
In China, the commanding heights of the economy are publicly owned and planned: land (state-owned in cities, collectively owned in the countryside), finance, energy, heavy industry, transport, telecommunications, arms production, and strategic resources. These sectors form the backbone of the economy. Private capital exists, but it does not dominate accumulation or political power.
The Chinese bourgeoisie does not rule. It has no independent state power and no ability to capture the party. Capitalists are subordinate to the Communist Party and can be regulated, expropriated, imprisoned, or eliminated when they conflict with socialist objectives. Recent crackdowns on tech monopolies, finance, real estate speculation, and billionaire figures demonstrate this class relation. In capitalist states, capital disciplines the state. In China, the state disciplines capital.
Surplus extraction and allocation further expose the difference. Under capitalism, surplus is privately appropriated and reinvested for profit. In China, surplus (especially from state and regulated sectors) is redirected toward long-term national development: infrastructure, industrial upgrading, poverty eradication, and technological independence. The largest poverty reduction in human history did not occur through laissez-faire capitalism, but through state-directed socialist accumulation (nearly a billion people lifted from poverty).
Chairman Mao was also clear that socialism is not a finished endpoint but a long historical process filled with contradictions. He emphasized that class struggle continues under socialism and that development occurs through uneven, conflicting processes. Socialism is transitional by definition: it emerges from capitalism, contains remnants of it, and advances toward communism through struggle and transformation. Treating socialism as a stable, contradiction-free end state is anti-Marxist.
Calling China “authoritarian capitalism” is ridiculous. I’ve already dealt with the “capitalism” issue but also authoritarian is a useless modifier used by liberals to easily bundle together countries that opposed the status quo as evil and immoral. Try reading On Authority
“Everything else follows from there” is exactly wrong. Everything follows from class power, historical conditions, and the direction of development. Your reductionist liberal framework cannot explain why China plans five-year strategies, suppresses finance capital, controls land, resists imperialism, and openly declares socialism as its goal. Marxism can however.
The mental gymnastics you need to go trough trying to defend why being capitalistic is basically anticapitalist when the ruling party has “communist” in their name is telling.
The German brainpan not able to comprehending a popular socialist government
No? You’re trying to say that an economy where public ownership is clearly the principle aspect is actually one where private ownership is principle, and are pretending materialist arguments about the structute of socialism are about what a party is named. Just respond to the actual comment, don’t insult yourself by hiding behind a strawman.
You didn’t read anything I wrote. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Please read a book.
The people, the people.
Good luck trying to state the obvious here, lots of tankies on lemmy.ml (as you can see from the other replies)
There are indeed communists here, that have been able to debunk the user you’re replying to. Simply calling unsourced claims “stating the obvious” in the face of hard facts and statistics is illogical to the extreme.
Come to China I can give you a tour I can translate so you can talk to the locals and you can see we’re humans too not just some brainwashed peasant “untermensch”. You chauvinist loser.
When did I say chinese people arent people? Are you replying to the wrong comment? You sound like you are 14 with your reading skills and going straight to calling me a loser lol.
You are a loser. You don’t view us as independent people who have our own views on our country. You ignore the fact that even western outlets report over 80% of us support the government. But none of that matters to you because we’re just peasants brainwashed by the evil “authoritarians”.
Does lemmy.ml include entirety of China? Because I was only talking about lemmy.ml. Again, you sure you replied to the right comment?
QinShiHuangsShlong was clearly explaining how you are utterly mistaken about China. When Chinese tell you that public ownership is principle (ie controls the commanding heights), that the working classes run the state, and an overwhelming number support the CPC, your response is that it’s “stating the obvious” to say otherwise. This stems from a sheer distrust of the words of Chinese people, and is why your comment is chauvanist.
They said I dont see Chinese people as people instead of focusing on the ‘stating the obvious’ part. They literally came up with something I never said to support their point.
When you’re denying China’s system as socialist, despite what Chinese say and the reasons they give, it points to a distrust of Chinese people themselves.
You are defending and agreeing with someone calling China evil and authoritarian capitalist. He is wrong and so are you. No amount of dodging or hiding behind semantics will change the position you chose to defend and that you clearly chose to defend it for chauvinist reasons.
You said I didnt see Chinese people as people, which I never said ever. Are you gonna retract that? Cause you are still wrong.
No because even if you don’t state it openly it’s clearly apparent. You clearly hate China, and we’re all just brainwashed serfs of the ebil gubberment.