Miscellaneous News

[manqiangrexue]

Dear friends,

Yes, what made China great is the 1949 Chinese revolution and the overthrow of capitalist system in China.

Mainly because the capitalist system was one that worshipped the West and was intent to follow rather than lead. The economic events that took place under socialism after 1949 were quite disastrous. It's a miracle that China pulled out of that tailspin and evolved into a competent economy; that's so rare historically.

In the meantime, all defenders of socialism need to be vigilant that the socialist cause in China is indeed under attack and has seen severe erosion as capitalist class grow stronger in China.

The cause is to make China the strongest country in the world; other causes are silly, sometimes wrong. China is the master, not slave of socialism because China takes what it needs to serve Chinese interests and leaves what is poisonous behind.

The deplorable wealth gap in China is a reality,

I also wish it were smaller; I wish for China's small time laborers to make a decent living, but it should never get so small that the drive for excellence is lost. We are getting there.

so is the lack of social warfare, and other ills of capitalism.

Hybrid system at work; best of both worlds. Grows better than capitalism, social cohesion better than socialism (mainly because nothing works when the economy is collapsing).

While Marxism is still the official ideology, the government never dare to use the tool of class analysis in fear of antagonizing the capitalists, domestic and foreign.

Yeah, because Marxism is just the sign on the door that nobody bothered to change and they didn't bother to name the Chinese system either so... "Marxism" it is for now.

For example, the government is unwilling to call the U.S. imperialist

Facts fail; Xi calls the US imperialist in the article.

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, or calling out its capitalist ruling class for their crime against humanity.

Here:

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What else did you want, BLM? Mexican border human rights violations? China's been through them all.

Hell, they don't even dare to call Chinese billionaires capitalists, with many of them are CPC members.

They grew up under China's own system and flourished there; why give the credit to capitalists?

The great USSR, who industrialized China and made the U.S. imperialists shaken, was sold out from within by officials who wanted to enrich themselves and their friends/family. The privatization of China's public owned economy shows the same trend in slow motion.

The great dead USSR? LOL Who else? Any living socialist country you want to tout or did they all happen to go belly up for reasons unrelated to socialism?

Saying the USSR, which was already bleeding out by the time it knew it had to get off of socialism only failed because it left socialism is like saying a guy who rushed to the hospital with stab wounds and died there died because he went to the hospital, not because he was stabbed. The USSR was failing under socialism, or it would have continued and won the cold war.

So the slow capitalist restoration has brought damaged environment, sever inequality, slowdown of wage increase, high housing cost, poor safety-net, significant unemployment, financial instability, racial animosity, moral degradation...

You mean adding components of free market capitalism into China's system turned China into a country that could at best make a bicycle into a country that can make an artificial sun.

The resurface of all these old craps of capitalism and rising of a capitalist class, which was eliminated after the revolution, reminds us that socialism is under threat in China.

Socialism isn't a cause that can be threatened or needs to be protected; the cause is elevating China to the top of the world. Socialism is just a tool, among many, to be used as much or as little as appropriate to aid in the cause.

A free market with rules and regulations ceases to be a free market.

@manqiangrexue

"As long as we stay in the realm of theory, socialists can debate; as soon as we ask why socialist states have all failed in the real world which is dominated by free market capitalism (with regulations), they go silent. In other words, socialism is all excuses, no substance."

See above.

I guess it's fairer to say if a country's economy is more free market or less free market because by the absolute definition here, there would be no free markets in the world.

 

[solarz]

I was going to say more like the decades under Mao, China was totally socialist and basically the nation wasn't going anywhere. I'm not against Mao because he gave China its identity but China under Mao was the most socialist and it had the least stable economy and least improvements in technology.

Actually Mao was going for full out Communism. That's what the communes were.

But you know you're also wrong on the technology part. China's technological achievements under Mao are every bit as impressive as it's technological achievements today, if not more so.

China has amazing technological achievements today, but they are based on a strong industrial and economic capacity.

Under Mao, China was a pre-modern agrarian economy, yet we were able to achieve Two Bombs and One Satellite, not to mention our own indigenous submarine. That's the equivalent of jumping from the 1800s to 1950s!

As for the nation "not going anywhere", China's life expectancy doubled and literacy rate triple under Mao. I would not call those achievements "not going anywhere".

The Chinese people are more and more hungry for personal success and wealth. They had given up when China was fully socialist under Mao; now you have people dying to get rich and eager to buy luxury items to show it off. This is clearly a cultural trend towards capitalism.

Again, you've got the wrong idea on socialism. Socialism is not about preventing people from getting rich.

State-owned industries are crucial to China's growth but they are becoming a smaller and smaller piece of the pie as China's private industries boom and its billionaires sprout, putting more and more wealth in private rather than collective hands.

It's not the size that matters, it's the role they play. China's SOEs cover the most crucial areas for running the country and controlling the economy: banking, energy, infrastructure.

Not to mention the crucial difference between China and capitalist nations when it comes to land ownership.

Wealth inequality has decreased in the short term but actually increased in the long term. China, in its olden full socialist days, was full of poor people who dressed in uniform with a red star and wealth-flaunting was non-existent. Then, as you said, in the frenzy of the 90's and 2000's, the wealth gap exploded due to lack of regulation. Now, it is narrowing back as a modern economy but the gap today is still far larger than it was when China was fully socialist. We still have people working 16 hour assembly lines who share an underground apartment with 5 other guys and we have the rich who eat meals that are more expensive than the monthly salary of the poor. (It's a wealth gap still greater than the majority of the developed nations in the West.) This does not point to a nation moving away from capitalism towards socialism but it points to a country that was first completely socialist, then opened up to the free market as a young economy, but then started to get the hang of things and regulate more and more like a modern mature economy.

The wealth gap by itself means nothing if there's no wealth.

Like I said, Deng and Jiang guided China during two decades of tumultuous Capitalist reforms. There were good things and bad things as a result of those reforms. The good thing was that some people were getting. The bad things were 1) not everyone was getting rich, and 2) rich people could now make politicians do their bidding through corruption.

Before Xi began his anti-corruption drive, he said that if not rooted out, corruption would spell the demise of the CPC. He didn't mean that the people would rise up and overthrow the government. He meant that the CPC would become mere pawns of the wealthy, just like US politicians are the pawns of corporations.

Yes, the Chinese model, not plain old socialism

There's no such thing as "plain old socialism". The Chinese model is still Socialism.

 

[Abominable]

Mainly because the capitalist system was one that worshipped the West and was intent to follow rather than lead. The economic events that took place under socialism after 1949 were quite disastrous. It's a miracle that China pulled out of that tailspin and evolved into a competent economy; that's so rare historically.

The cause is to make China the strongest country in the world; other causes are silly, sometimes wrong. China is the master, not slave of socialism because China takes what it needs to serve Chinese interests and leaves what is poisonous behind.

I also wish it were smaller; I wish for China's small time laborers to make a decent living, but it should never get so small that the drive for excellence is lost. We are getting there.

Hybrid system at work; best of both worlds. Grows better than capitalism, social cohesion better than socialism (mainly because nothing works when the economy is collapsing).

Yeah, because Marxism is just the sign on the door that nobody bothered to change and they didn't bother to name the Chinese system either so... "Marxism" it is for now.

Facts fail; Xi calls the US imperialist in the article.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Here:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

What else did you want, BLM? Mexican border human rights violations? China's been through them all.

They grew up under China's own system and flourished there; why give the credit to capitalists?

The great dead USSR? LOL Who else? Any living socialist country you want to tout or did they all happen to go belly up for reasons unrelated to socialism?

Saying the USSR, which was already bleeding out by the time it knew it had to get off of socialism only failed because it left socialism is like saying a guy who rushed to the hospital with stab wounds and died there died because he went to the hospital, not because he was stabbed. The USSR was failing under socialism, or it would have continued and won the cold war.

What policies of the Soviet Union post Stalin did you oppose?

 

[solarz]

And my girlfriend is a Chinese PhD student in economics. I actually asked her how Chinese people feel about China saying it is socialist and her first sentence was, "It's a joke because there's no incentive to perform in a socialist system."

Didn't you mention that your gf is from HK? If so, that's not a very surprising viewpoint coming from her. I'm sure plenty of American PhDs in economics think the same thing.

Besides, what does the feeling of lay people matter? The point that matters is Chinese academics view the Chinese economic model to be a socialist model due to fundamental differences with a capitalist model.

 

[hashtagpls]

The mindset of a deranged American idiot.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1398403768350216195

Notice how the attitude of these white americans is to regard "Our chinese" but never as fellow Americans; no, these are "Our coolies" "Our compradors".

I'm sure nazi germany would have relented on persecuting some of the jews if it realised just how essential jews were to atomic research, but sadly, the narcotic of white supremacy proves too strong for the white anglos.

 

[solarz]

The deplorable wealth gap in China is a reality, so is the lack of social warfare, and other ills of capitalism. While Marxism is still the official ideology, the government never dare to use the tool of class analysis in fear of antagonizing the capitalists, domestic and foreign.

For example, the government is unwilling to call the U.S. imperialist, or calling out its capitalist ruling class for their crime against humanity. Hell, they don't even dare to call Chinese billionaires capitalists, with many of them are CPC members.

The great USSR, who industrialized China and made the U.S. imperialists shaken, was sold out from within by officials who wanted to enrich themselves and their friends/family. The privatization of China's public owned economy shows the same trend in slow motion.

That's where we disagree. You obviously subscribe to the classic view of Socialism, which has proven itself to be deficient in many areas in practice, and those deficiencies can be directly traced to a dogmatic stance.

China's Socialism model is based on pragmatism. It uses Socialist ideals as an objective, but it is not afraid to include elements from other ideologies where they are useful, including but not limited to Capitalism, Confucianism, Legalism, Mohism, and even Taoism.

Wealth gaps may be a source of social inequality, but they are also a source of motivation and ambition. Without wealth gaps, there is no productivity.

China also no longer sees the need to put labels on people. We did away with that crap after the Cultural Revolution. Capitalists are not our enemies, they are productive citizens of our society. The onus is on the State to provide the regulatory framework to prevent individual capitalists from abusing the system for their own profit.

 

[manqiangrexue]

Actually Mao was going for full out Communism. That's what the communes were.

But you know you're also wrong on the technology part. China's technological achievements under Mao are every bit as impressive as it's technological achievements today, if not more so.

China has amazing technological achievements today, but they are based on a strong industrial and economic capacity.

Under Mao, China was a pre-modern agrarian economy, yet we were able to achieve Two Bombs and One Satellite, not to mention our own indigenous submarine. That's the equivalent of jumping from the 1800s to 1950s!

OK, yeah Mao did develop the bomb. Well I guess it's subjective what's more impressive in terms of growth but top end tech at the time was significantly less complicated in the 50's than it is now to just figure out by yourself and China's technology was just nowhere near a challenge to the US like it is today but that's the catching up process.

As for the nation "not going anywhere", China's life expectancy doubled and literacy rate triple under Mao. I would not call those achievements "not going anywhere".

He did lots of things right and lots of things wrong. Massive numbers of people died of famine; Mao had citizens burn down their pots and steel items to boost national steel production. His achievements have to be weighed against his flops and in the early days of the CCP, China's economic development was unstable and the technological developments on top of those were stretched like North Korea trying to get what it can out of its little economy. China's economy really only took off after China incorporated more and more elements of free market into its system.

I'm still pro-Mao in that he set a lot of the framework right for China, but if China had continued under him or a guy like him, things would be no good today.

Again, you've got the wrong idea on socialism. Socialism is not about preventing people from getting rich.

I don't know what you're talking about anymore. What kind of socialism keeping minting billionaires with luxury stores and restaurants that the laboring class can't afford?

It's not the size that matters, it's the role they play. China's SOEs cover the most crucial areas for running the country and controlling the economy: banking, energy, infrastructure.

Why not the size that matters. I say the size definitely matters. SOEs have always covered the most crucial areas but now, they are getting smaller in comparison.

Not to mention the crucial difference between China and capitalist nations when it comes to land ownership.

Hybrid system working.

The wealth gap by itself means nothing if there's no wealth.

That's what I've been saying the whole damn time. That's why China's economic start in 1949 was so terrible. It took Deng's opening up to free market values to create wealth.

Like I said, Deng and Jiang guided China during two decades of tumultuous Capitalist reforms. There were good things and bad things as a result of those reforms. The good thing was that some people were getting. The bad things were 1) not everyone was getting rich, and 2) rich people could now make politicians do their bidding through corruption.

M'kay, no issues.

Before Xi began his anti-corruption drive, he said that if not rooted out, corruption would spell the demise of the CPC. He didn't mean that the people would rise up and overthrow the government. He meant that the CPC would become mere pawns of the wealthy, just like US politicians are the pawns of corporations.

That's cool, and also, it would have a negative impact on long term growth and development. I'm so pro corruption-busting.

There's no such thing as "plain old socialism". The Chinese model is still Socialism.

That's what you just referred to as classic socialism. Chinese socialism is like a guy who did Muay Thai, BJJ and Tai Chi saying he's a Tai Chi fighter.

Didn't you mention that your gf is from HK? If so, that's not a very surprising viewpoint coming from her. I'm sure plenty of American PhDs in economics think the same thing.

No, that's the last one. She was from HK and she studied law. My current one is from Shandong and she is in econ.

Besides, what does the feeling of lay people matter? The point that matters is Chinese academics view the Chinese economic model to be a socialist model due to fundamental differences with a capitalist model.

That was a continuation of the conversation where Brightfuture told me that he studied economics at a Chinese university.

What policies of the Soviet Union post Stalin did you oppose?

I'm not here to pick apart the policies of the USSR, just that they obviously failed but Spring keeps bringing them up like some shining example.

 

[solarz]

He did lots of things right and lots of things wrong. Massive numbers of people died of famine; Mao had citizens burn down their pots and steel items to boost national steel production. His achievements have to be weighed against his flops and in the early days of the CCP, China's economic development was unstable and the technological developments on top of those were stretched like North Korea trying to get what it can out of its little economy. China's economy really only took off after China incorporated more and more elements of free market into its system.

I'm still pro-Mao in that he set a lot of the framework right for China, but if China had continued under him or a guy like him, things would be no good today.

Yes, Mao made mistakes, but life expectancy and literacy rate are the fundamentals of country building.

Do you do any gardening? I'm a gardening enthusiast. Every year I eagerly wait for the warm weather to start planting my garden. We have a short growing season in Ontario, so I mostly buy seedlings from nurseries instead of starting the plants from seed.

What I noticed with seedlings is that they will spend most of May and June just sitting there, with little or no apparent growth, and then suddenly start to take off like crazy come July.

The reason for that is a newly transplanted seedling needs to 1) deal with transplant shock and 2) grow its roots first. With transplant shock, you may even see some die-back of the leaves, but if the roots grow well, the plant will bounce back after a while.

That's what the early years of the PRC were like. The transition from a war-torn pre-modern society to a stable modern republic is like the transplant shock. The deaths from the famines and the Cultural Revolution were like the die-back of leaves, while the improvements to life expectancy and literacy rate are like the growth of roots. It's those fundamental factors that drove the economic boom of the post-Mao era.

That's what you just referred to as classic socialism. Chinese socialism is like a guy who did Muay Thai, BJJ and Tai Chi saying he's a Tai Chi fighter.

If I might make another analogy, Capitalism and Socialism are like theories. In any good scientific endeavor, theories are used to construct models, and models are used to drive experiments. A good scientific process will then use the data from the experiments to revise the models, and a strong enough model might even drive a revision of the theory.

The USSR, USA, China, etc. are models of Capitalism and Socialism. The problem with the USSR and Mao-era China models is that there was a dogmatic adherence to the model despite empirical evidence indicating the contrary. For example, sticking to a planned economy despite the fact that it's obviously falling behind the West.

The difference between Capitalism and Socialism is that Capitalism is a much older theory than Socialism. Capitalism was born some 500 years ago when medieval European merchants started gaining power over the aristocracy. Socialism, on the other hand, was born after Marx wrote his critique of Capitalism. Therefore, Capitalism, as the more established theory, has a lot of good models simply by virtue of the bad models having had time to be discarded by history. Socialism, however, doesn't have a lot of good models in memory.

In this analogy, China would be the newest, most successful Socialist model. It is a model that actually responds to empirical data and is constantly being revised when new data comes in. It incorporates ideas from other theories, including Capitalism, but it is nevertheless still a model for the theory of Socialism.

Who knows, maybe with enough time, it might even drive some revisions to the Socialism theory.

 

[manqiangrexue]

Yes, Mao made mistakes, but life expectancy and literacy rate are the fundamentals of country building.

Do you do any gardening? I'm a gardening enthusiast. Every year I eagerly wait for the warm weather to start planting my garden. We have a short growing season in Ontario, so I mostly buy seedlings from nurseries instead of starting the plants from seed.

What I noticed with seedlings is that they will spend most of May and June just sitting there, with little or no apparent growth, and then suddenly start to take off like crazy come July.

The reason for that is a newly transplanted seedling needs to 1) deal with transplant shock and 2) grow its roots first. With transplant shock, you may even see some die-back of the leaves, but if the roots grow well, the plant will bounce back after a while.

That's what the early years of the PRC were like. The transition from a war-torn pre-modern society to a stable modern republic is like the transplant shock. The deaths from the famines and the Cultural Revolution were like the die-back of leaves, while the improvements to life expectancy and literacy rate are like the growth of roots. It's those fundamental factors that drove the economic boom of the post-Mao era.

Here, it seems that you are saying that China, continuing under a Maoist style, would have succeeded anyway but later due to transplant shock but below, you mention the fundamental problem which is that Mao's model stuck too much to dogma without adaptability. Which I agree with. So what's with the transplant shock?

If I might make another analogy, Capitalism and Socialism are like theories. In any good scientific endeavor, theories are used to construct models, and models are used to drive experiments. A good scientific process will then use the data from the experiments to revise the models, and a strong enough model might even drive a revision of the theory.

The USSR, USA, China, etc. are models of Capitalism and Socialism. The problem with the USSR and Mao-era China models is that there was a dogmatic adherence to the model despite empirical evidence indicating the contrary. For example, sticking to a planned economy despite the fact that it's obviously falling behind the West.

The difference between Capitalism and Socialism is that Capitalism is a much older theory than Socialism. Capitalism was born some 500 years ago when medieval European merchants started gaining power over the aristocracy. Socialism, on the other hand, was born after Marx wrote his critique of Capitalism. Therefore, Capitalism, as the more established theory, has a lot of good models simply by virtue of the bad models having had time to be discarded by history. Socialism, however, doesn't have a lot of good models in memory.

In this analogy, China would be the newest, most successful Socialist model. It is a model that actually responds to empirical data and is constantly being revised when new data comes in. It incorporates ideas from other theories, including Capitalism, but it is nevertheless still a model for the theory of Socialism.

Who knows, maybe with enough time, it might even drive some revisions to the Socialism theory.

The thing I was most interested in hearing back from you on is that not all socialism prevents wealth accumulation?? I wanted you to explain how a society that calls itself socialist can have people earning meager wages for 16 hour work days and others becoming billionaires on their ideas. I didn't hear back on that but if this is the Chinese model we are seeing but you just want to call it socialism while I'm calling it the Chinese system simply because such key parts don't strike me as socialism anymore, then we essentially agree that China's model is best. The only disagreement is naming, which you want to go with what they claim and I want to go with what seems more obvious. My main debate points were that I disagree with Spring's model of attack against the the ruling elite to destroy billionaires and whatever else kind of anarchy angry poor people have going on in their minds. I guess that is what you call classic socialism that a strongly disagree with.

 

[Tse]

nice to see the trump friendly Poland being true to its own national interests and maintaining links with China

It's actually quite interesting I think. Poland is best friends with Hungary under Orban, the most anti-Western country in the EU now. They also have similar internal political policies and are both in the Visegrad group. They constantly quarrel with the major western EU states over all kinds of issues from environment to social policy to economics to refugees. You'd think Poles would have a more independent foreign policy but nope. I guess the leftover paranoia from living under Russian rule in the 19th and 20th centuries is still very strong in Poland. Would be good ally to woo over though, but Russia has too much historical baggage to be brought into the picture.

As for this Capitalist-Socialist debate, it feels increasingly like a matter of semantics. Obviously the ideas of state regulation and market freedom are not a black-and-white dichotomy but exists within a spectrum. Truly laissez faire economics did not exist on a large scale before the 1980s, and government interventionism in the economy was the norm for most ostensibly capitalist states, with Laissez Faire ideas being only championed by (Classical) Liberal parties. For instance, Bismarckian policy in Germany and Disraeli's one-nationism are hardly laissez-faire and attempted to compromise between the haute bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Today there is dirigisme, Rhine capitalism and the Nordic model which all fall on different places along the spectrum. I think we are all agreed that it is good that China has found a place on the spectrum with features adapted from different sources.