Chinese Economics Thread

solarz

Brigadier
I understand where Jura is coming from. He is probably old enough to remember the Czechoslovak Communist period which was no fun. So he equates Communism in China with what he knows from his own experience or that of his family in Czechoslovakia. Which is quite natural.

I suppose Jura isn't part of this group of people. :D

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Probably because he doesn't live there anymore, lol.
 
...

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is January 31, 2013 headline
Poll shows Czechs are "nostalgic for communism"
and I covered this group:
...
on certain occasions, even non-members pretended interest, for example they would attend Lenin's Evening (to commemorate the birthday of the Genius) if organized in a pub, because after one hour or so, a free dinner and booze was served to them LOL!
LOL again

now I checked some numbers:

Communistic Party of China now has
98/1384 which is seven point one percent of the population

Communistic Party of the Soviet Union in 1990
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had
19/293 which would be six point five percent

Polish Communistic Party (PZPR to be precise :) peaked in 1981 at
3/36 which be more than eight percent, but Martial Law was declared then (not because of the membership getting too big though LOL
 
Probably because he doesn't live there anymore, lol.
I thought reactions here would be even more preposterous; I offer you my screenshot:
XnLP.jpg
LOL!

there is more thing I wanted to know about Communistic China (and was afraid to ask in this thread :)
Has the huge, fast economic growth been achieved at the expense of the environment?
(I've read some regions are pretty much destroyed, with more to come, that's why I took interest in Sep 1, 2016
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2016-08-31 08:54Xinhua ...
which took us here :)
 

flyzies

Junior Member
Has the huge, fast economic growth been achieved at the expense of the environment?

Of course it has. But the more important question to ask is: Is it normal to substantially damage the environment as a nation is fast developing economically?
And of course the answer is yes!

Do some reading on how polluted England (London in particularly) got in the years after the industrial revolution. While you are at it, read up on how the chimneys of the factories and power stations got cleaned back then...

So this brings us to the next question: Can the environment recover after the nation has developed? The answer is of course a big resounding yes.

What this means is that China is simply going through the natural course of economic development, where she has to sacrifice some things in short-medium term in order for her overall condition to improve in the long term.
 
Of course it has. ...
oh really?

environmental damage in
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was denied/downplayed by Communists, despite certain areas of moon landscape (not sure if it works in English just like this, sorry if it doesn't :)

have one more question: Are there political prisoners in Communistic China now?

(Communists in
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made efforts to have NO political prisoners, putting dissidents in on a criminal charge (after "impartial" trial, of course), plus since around 1980 "encouraging" them to leave the country)
 

flyzies

Junior Member
oh really?

Yes really. Read my response again if you wish.

environmental damage in
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was denied/downplayed by Communists, despite certain areas of moon landscape (not sure if it works in English just like this, sorry if it doesn't :)

have one more question: Are there political prisoners in Communistic China now?

(Communists in
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

made efforts to have NO political prisoners, putting dissidents in on a criminal charge (after "impartial" trial, of course), plus since around 1980 "encouraging" them to leave the country)

What has any of this got to do with my response to your question in post #6053?

You asked "there is more thing I wanted to know about Communistic China (and was afraid to ask in this thread. Has the huge, fast economic growth been achieved at the expense of the environment?"

To which I gave a honest answer to above.

Now, if you would like to continue discussing about China's economic development and/or its impact on its environment, I would be happy to oblige.

What I will not do however, is go into the topics of Czechoslovakia or political prisoners...as the title of this thread is "Chinese Economics Thread".
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
Yes really. Read my response again if you wish.



What has any of this got to do with my response to your question in post #6053?

You asked "there is more thing I wanted to know about Communistic China (and was afraid to ask in this thread. Has the huge, fast economic growth been achieved at the expense of the environment?"

To which I gave a honest answer to above.

Now, if you would like to continue discussing about China's economic development and/or its impact on its environment, I would be happy to oblige.

What I will not do however, is go into the topics of Czechoslovakia or political prisoners...as the title of this thread is "Chinese Economics Thread".

It is hard to argue with people whose opinion is already set against anything that smell "communism" without any regard of different shade of communism.

Add to that the constant brainwashed and hubris by western press as to the primacy of western democracy with a tinge of racism and angst of doubtful economy superiority.

You get people that use wide brush stroke to doubt or depreciate any non western achievement.

Every country undergoing rapid economy progress will suffer environment degradation in some fashion.
It become a science that they even have a curve to describe the process.It is called Kutznezov curve
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But as the country get richer they will progressively turn back the environment pollution.
But western press of course would not let it go in their campaign to slander China.
Even when China is not even the most polluted country in the world

Well you get to start some where. In case of China coal it the cheapest energy source and plentiful So naturally they use when they start with economic reform.Still make up large chunk of energy source
But now that they money they stop building coal fired GS or even dismantle coal fired station.

People often ignored or purposed ignored China is the largest producer of solar panel, wind turbine and other environment friendly electricity generator.

And they have moved large chunk of big polluter out of urban area

Because of it the the air pollution is getting better year by year
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These people often went off tangent when confronted with fact just to make China look bad and rescue their hubris and sense of superiority.

When thing ain't broke don't change it but many would be "Arab spring" er Jasmine spring wannabe want to change it It look innocuous and innocent at first . but no mistake they want regime change.
And we know what happened to Arab Spring that so much touted in western press. It become tragedy of civil war, boatload of refugee and drown children, misery and desperation.Rise of extremist
The west has blood on their hand and their conscience for destruction of city and people lives all in the name of democrazy. Fortunately Chinese people understand and reap the benefit of peace stability and continue prosperity
To each according to its own and read this wise article by Daniel Bell
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Last edited:
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the best I've heard here so far;
Has China Discovered a Better Political System Than Democracy?
“One person, one vote is not the only morally legitimate way to select leaders,” a political theorist says.

is how it starts ... the most interesting part perhaps is "... if there is a coherent China model, it may be more of a “red empire” in which authoritarian leaders choose their own successors from a political elite and remain repressive in order to manage a complex society." ... not exactly
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:)
 

dragoooons

New Member
Registered Member
Yall need to be educated on what communism is. Strictly speaking it is a society without state (anarchic), social classes, and money. Goods and services are distributed from each according to his ability to each according to his needs. You can ask yourself if China fits these definitions and the answer is no. There exists a state, there are still capital and working classes (among others), and money is used facilitate the exchange of goods and services.

It will be many decades or even a century before we see anything close to a communist society as it requires global communist revolution to finally end the threat from capitalist states. Discussing the details of communism is pure science fiction at this point. Political parties that call themselves communist have an eventual goal of reaching communism and they implement socialist economic systems to transition there.

Why do we want to transition away from capitalism to communism? This is a complex topic and you can begin to get an idea of why through reading
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. In it, Marx uses the economic theories and assumptions of the great capitalist economists (Smith, Ricardo, Mill, etc.) to identify destabilizing tendencies in capitalism which he calls "internal contradictions" and reasons that the contradictions will lead to crisis. These contradictions arise as a result of individual capitalists behaving optimally to improve their own profit. It turns out that what is good for the profit of individual capitalists is harmful for the capitalist system as a whole. Note that Marx is not creating a different theory of economics, rather he takes the economic theories of the great economists of his time and discovers deep problems with the capitalism that these economists champion. Marx provided us with an account of the problems caused by capitalism but finding a solution is up to us.

You can learn more about Marxian theory with David Harvey's
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or by listening to his
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. Of course there are many other scholars to learn from as well though I find that Harvey explains Marx's analysis well and he also has very relevant interpretation of socialism. He advocates for an end to economic growth for the sake of growth and profit (Marx says this is required by capitalism, an end of growth means the end of capitalism). Instead, growth should be aimed at serving the needs of people and further more, we should be prepared to have the "ungrowth" of excessive and wasteful economic activities (definitions of excessive and wasteful vary from person to person).

I find Harvey's ideas of socialism to both applicable to China's situation and more innovative that the socialism that is publicly promoted by the CPC. The CPC states that China is in an early stage of socialist development and needs accumulation of means of production (whether by state or by private capitalists) to increase living standards of the Chinese people. This is a noble goal but if we look closely at the development since the economic crises in 2008, it was partially motivated by the capitalist compulsion to protect ever increasing profits and the theoretical basis for China's economic planning in these past few years was based on Keynes, not Marx. For example the excess steel and concrete production capacity of China was focused into infrastructure and property development both domestically and abroad. Workers who lost their jobs in the factories found employment in the construction industry.

The infrastructure development is good as it serves the people's needs but it also serves a capitalist need by facilitating transportation between coast and inland areas. Was the government thinking about the people when it built the high speed rails or was it thinking about the profits of private and state enterprises?

The property development was less good. Regardless of how many people were able to find new homes in the building boom, it is indisputable that the property prices in most Chinese cities increased. Why does increasing the supply of housing also increase the price of housing? Economics tells us that increasing supply should drive down demand and reduce prices. It is clear that financial speculators have turned an effort to give more people homes to live in into a money making game.

What we can learn from the economic policy of China in the years since 2008 is that China has adopted a Keynesian capitalist approach to managing its growth. Today, China is trapped by the "growth compulsion" of the capitalist system just as much the European nations, Japan, USA, etc. The state must find new ways of achieving ever increasing growth for the nation and ever increasing profits for the capitalist sector as that is the very definition of growth in capitalism.

I am certain that SDF members know that you cannot have ever increasing growth in a world of finite resources. Therein lies the answer to why we should transition away from capitalism. Now whether or not we transition to communism is another question.

Returning to the question of China. China's current policies while misguided, are improving the lives of ordinary people. However, these policies cannot go on forever. There is a vast amount of over capacity in all sorts of production in China (steel, concrete, consumer goods of all types). China does not need all this capacity, nor does the world. We only have this capacity because the current economic system requires us to create more and more things every year so naturally the capacity increases. Eventually we will need to undergo "ungrowth" which means find new jobs for the workers and repurpose all those means of production to do something socially good and sustainable. The largest threat to the eventual transition away from a growing capitalist economy is the increasing power of capitalism in China. We see that capitalism is already driving national economic policy. The government will need more power than it has now to tell the various industries (including State Owned Enterprises) to stop making all that crap and that China has "grown enough" and that the Chinese people are "enjoying a sufficient standard of living". The only place the government can get this power is from the people. This means that increased democratic control is necessary in the future.

I think currently the Chinese people (at least the urban populations) are insufficiently socialist to decide on the correct course of action for the China. If they were allowed to vote, they are more likely to vote away all their power and give it to a handful of capitalists. That would be a true undoing of the communist revolution setting back progress by 50-100 years and would require another protracted struggle by the Chinese people to free themselves again. Chinese people and people of all nations need to have a comprehensive understanding of what capitalism is and why it is in the long run, unstable and unsustainable. Hopefully with that understanding, they will make the correct decision when the time comes.
 

B.I.B.

Captain
Every country undergoing rapid economy progress will suffer environment degradation in some fashion.
It become a science that they even have a curve to describe the process.It is called Kutznezov curve
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

But as the country get richer they will progressively turn back the environment pollution.
But western press of course would not let it go in their campaign to slander China.
Even when China is not even the most polluted country in the world



No doubt their will be government bureaucracies created to monitor the cleaning up of the environment and possibly getting bribes along the way thus creating a non productive cost to the economy.
These bureaucracies don’t go away after the job is done, in fact they get bigger and bigger, thinking up new rules and regulations along the way to justify their continued existence and creating a ever bigger drag .

In NZ the Resource Consent Act which was introduced to protect the environment has done just that. It has resulted in huge costs to do anything and the process of applying and having it granted moves at a snails pace.

To show how ridiculous this can get, my friend when he was house building, at the time, could not afford the cost of finishing off his second bathroom.(He needed more time to save for the fancy Italian bathroom stuff) All the behind wall plumbing was done and passed inspection. However a year later when he had the money to complete the task, he was told he needed to pay another $3000 to get resource consent to finish the work.
This charge was not there to monitor the handiwork of any trades people invbolved, but the pen pushing involved in noting the extra discharge of water from the house that would be created.(In NZ there is a cost for discharging water)

One would have thought it would have already been noted when the original plan was submitted to council for building approval.


A second example Twenty years ago to divide a flat half acre section into two equal sizes would have cost about $2000 in council fees. Today the council charges $100,000 for exactly the same administrative work. All this to help protect the environment.
 
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