Chinese Economics Thread

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HighGround

Senior Member
Registered Member
China is not a meaningfully Marxist country in any way and arguably is hard to even call it socialist if your definition is strict. It's a mixed-capitalist economy with a structural tailwind towards private enterprise. And that's a good thing.
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It doesn't matter if a cat is white or black.

Harmful market structures can manifest themselves in a variety of different forms.

There are contexts where having a national champion (a monopoly) is the best market outcome for everyone. The country, the people, and the capitalists.

There are also contexts where having a hyper-competitive market with dozens of companies competing in every sector is actually bad for the economy.

From what I've glimpsed when looking at major Chinese events like the Economic Work Conference, is that the Party is much more concerned with the actual lives of Chinese people, building a sustainable balance between demand, global markets, and its manufacturing base, and so on and so forth.

GDP is important for them, but so are other indicators that don't get the headlines. I think PIIE's obsession with the exact breakdown of private vs public and their veiled implication that there is an almost "moral" judgement to be made over this number is a perfect demonstration of how detached the Western economy has become from what actually matters, living standards.

The private sector's share of the top 100 listed Chinese companies by market value grew to 40.0 percent in the second half of 2025, driven by high-profile technology firms amid China's artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That share was up from 37.6 percent six months earlier and 33.5 percent at its mid-2024 low.
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These data in our tracker, updated twice a year, confirm that the three-year relative decline of the private sector's share between mid-2021 and mid-2024 did not mark a permanent reversal of its spectacular rise over the previous decade. Even so, the private sector's share today remains far below its 55.4 percent peak reached in mid-2021.
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abenomics12345

Junior Member
Registered Member
siegecrossbow said:
I don’t think the issue is so much private vs state owned as whether the firms/companies can compete against one another. Monopolies are a much bigger threat.
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This. Competitive neutrality is the key from a regulatory perspective. The important thing is to get rid of the narrative that the government is both the referee and the player in the markets, stepping on the scale in favor of SOEs at the expense of POEs.
 
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hereforsemithread

New Member
Registered Member
mossen said:
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China's private sector has had a good run recently. Xi's Big Tech crackdown began around the peak and subsided by 2023, and the recovery began after that. He may not be comfortable with the ever-increasing importance of the private sector, especially the tech companies, but they are the backbone of China's success. There's no turning back.

Should also put to rest two types who view China as a socialist country: the tankies with rose-tinted glasses and the "China Hawks" who don't pay attention to data and instead fixate on Mao outfits at military parades.

China is not a meaningfully Marxist country in any way and arguably is hard to even call it socialist if your definition is strict. It's a mixed-capitalist economy with a structural tailwind towards private enterprise. And that's a good thing.
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This is market cap data, not share in actual value added in the economy. The two are basically unrelated. The SOE/private split in GDP has been stable at ~25/75 since the late Jiang period. Contrary to the sentiment of some the Xi era has not been one of increasing SOE share in GDP, nor decreasing for that matter. It has been continuous with prior periods, though major non-size-related reforms to the state sector have been done by the Xi admin to make it better at its functions.
 
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