Miscellaneous News

solarz said:

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.

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At the end of the day @manqiangrexue can say whatever he wants. The article I sent him (and he refuses to acknowledge) says it all, words written by 习近平 itself; China is a socialist state, and its future is to continue its path towards socialism. This is not a con or a mere label. @manqiangrexue can keep claiming to know more than the president of China and thousands of Chinese economists who are socialists. Facts don't care about your feelings or your thoughts, China is socialist, and will continue to be as long as that's the goal of the CPC. Xi doesn't have to pay lip service to anyone.

I know 曼倩热血 will reply to me, he cannot help it. I also know he will delude himself thinking that he has achieved some kind of grandiose victory because I didn't reply to his previous message. I will just tell him that I don't have time, if I find the time and the energy I will reply to him.

I also want to tell him that he mistakes communism for socialism. Socialism is usually defined as the period of transition to communism. As Xi himself says, it will take certain conditions to truly be able to achieve communism, it might take another 100 years or more. China is socialist as it is in this process. Also Socialism (unlike capitalism) is not something inamovible that can't adapt or change. Hell, Marx himself pointed out how socialism must be a system that continuously evolves and adapts; and that's exactly what China did, evolve and adapt socialism according to China's circumstances (aka 中国特色社会主义). Lybia was also a socialist state, and it was a Muslim socialist state, not an atheistic one. The Chinese system you praise so much is nothing more than socialism, socialism adapted via scientific materialism to China, also known as Socialism with Chinese characteristics.

On a final note, I guess your girlfriend didn't study in mainland China, and if she did, I guess she failed miserably in the obligatory subjects of politics and socialism (as she thinks socialism is the same as communism). Can she explain to you 社会主义市场经济? What does she think about that?

solarz said:

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.

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I love reading you, comrade. I couldn't agree more.

BrightFuture said:

At the end of the day @manqiangrexue can say whatever he wants. The article I sent him (and he refuses to acknowledge) says it all, words written by 习近平 itself; China is a socialist state, and its future is to continue its path towards socialism. This is not a con or a mere label. @manqiangrexue can keep claiming to know more than the president of China and thousands of Chinese economists who are socialists. Facts don't care about your feelings or your thoughts, China is socialist, and will continue to be as long as that's the goal of the CPC.

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Xi Jinping can say he is doing one thing then do something else and you can be blind and say that he can only do what he says. The facts don't care about your feelings; so many aspects of Chinese society and economy are not socialist.

BrightFuture said:

Xi doesn't have to pay lip service to anyone.

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He pays it to socialism despite not adhering to it whenever convenient.

BrightFuture said:

I know 曼倩热血 will reply to me, he cannot help it. I also know he will delude himself thinking that he has achieved some kind of grandiose victory because I didn't reply to his previous message. I will just tell him that I don't have time, if I find the time and the energy I will reply to him.

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LOL nice try at reverse psychology, no dice. If I find you wrong, I will respond, and when you do not, it is because you cannot. You don't have the time to debate me because it is too difficult for you to twist your wrongs against my obvious rights.

BrightFuture said:

I also want to tell him that he mistakes communism for socialism. Socialism is usually defined as the period of transition to communism. As Xi himself says, it will take certain conditions to truly be able to achieve communism, it might take another 100 years or more. China is socialist as it is in this process.

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LOL OK, see you in 100 years, but right now, it is not communist and many parts of it are not socialist. 100 year predictions are for people who know they are wrong now.

BrightFuture said:

Also Socialism (unlike capitalism) is not something inamovible that can't adapt or change. Hell, Marx himself pointed out how socialism must be a system that continuously evolves and adapts; and that's exactly what China did, evolve and adapt socialism according to China's circumstances (aka 中国特色社会主义). Lybia was also a socialist state, and it was a Muslim socialist state, not an atheistic one.

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OK so it failed, then it had to be changed and now you say it succeeded? LOL If you made an airplane that doesn't fly but then someone rebuilt it to fly, you say your design can fly?

BrightFuture said:

The Chinese system you praise so much is nothing more than socialism, socialism adapted via scientific materialism to China, also known as Socialism with Chinese characteristics.

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In name only, but it is a Chinese system with some parts taken from socialism, some free market capitalism. then can name it whatever they want but it is a fusion and its credits cannot be attributed to socialism.

BrightFuture said:

On a final note, I guess your girlfriend didn't study in mainland China,

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You guess wrong all the time, don't you?

BrightFuture said:

and if she did I guess she failed miserably in the obligatory subjects of politics and socialism (as she thinks socialism is the same as communism).

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Yes indeed, wrong all the time. She was an ace in her class at Ren Da.

BrightFuture said:

Can she explain to you 社会主义市场经济? What does she think about that?

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What's your point? Private ownership in China is increasing and increasing as a piece of the economy. What would the question be regarding market socialism?

PS. I don't converse with foreigners in Chinese; it is reserved for my countrymen. I answer only in English. I find them laughable when they learn some Chinese then pepper it into their writing as if it meant that they were an insider. It feels like white/black people who are enamored with anime writing sentences like, "Kelly-Chan so kawaii today, desu ne?" If you resorted to Chinese for a phrase that has no perfect translation in English, I would understand but that you would wrote Xi Jinping in Chinese shows how pointlessly shallow you are.

One good way for China to promote its interest in the world would be by promoting nationalism in all over the world.

Thus client states of the West would increasingly raise their voices against the Western power exploiting them. For far too long, the West's advantage was that it "captured" the elites of the world by offering their own education, money, media etc. Nationalism can break this

Nationalism can generate a gassroots pitebtial for promoting the own country's interests and who better than China who offers economic opportunities and infrastructure...

manqiangrexue said:

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.

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Sure, let's talk about that.

I can answer your question in two ways. First the pedantic way, which is that the definition of Socialism doesn't say anything about preventing wealth accumulation. It only says that the means of production and of goods exchange should be owned or regulated by the community at large. In China's case, we went the route of regulation. I don't think anyone's figured out the whole ownership thing quite yet.

Now for my personal thoughts on this matter, I believe that Socialism is about the struggle to lessen social inequality. However, at least in the case of the wealth gap, it cannot and should not be entirely removed. As I mentioned in a previous post, a wealth gap is instrumental in providing people with the motivation and ambition to become more productive. The only time I see the wealth gap being actually removed is when society progresses to Communism.

In addition, the wealth gap itself is an imperfect reflection of other underlying problems in society. For example, it does not take into account social mobility. In both Capitalist and Socialist societies, social inequality is reduced when social mobility is high. The difference between the Capitalist and the Socialist society is that the Capitalist society focuses on generating wealth, and increased social mobility is a side-effect of that. In a Socialist society, the reduction of social inequality is the goal, and social mobility is a tool for achieving that goal. A good example of this is China's poverty alleviation program, where they don't just throw money at the poorest villages, but actually send social workers to those villages to support them making their lives better. For some families, this might mean helping keep their kids at school and teaching the parents the value of education. For other families, this might mean helping them raise some cattle and teaching them some basic business skills so they can generate revenue.

On a related note, many Socialist values can also be found in Confucianism and Mohism. You certainly wouldn't be wrong calling China's model a uniquely Chinese system. That's why they call it Socialism with Chinese Characteristics!

solarz said:

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.

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Not really. What we call the "Communist" economic model today is old as dirt. The so called palace economies were basically command and control economies dictated by central bureaucrats. They basically arose with the onset of agriculture where you needed to have centralized granaries to ensure people would not starve in case of a bad harvest. Some of those expanded quite a lot. Take a look at the Inca economy for a more recent example of an economy like that. The Inca had a vast and prosperous empire and it was all centrally planned.

To say that the USSR economic model was a total failure ignores the vast achievements it made. The USSR had the second largest economy of the world at the time of its collapse. The central planning model enabled vast improvements in things like electric production, and distribution, steel production, housing for the entire population, weapons production, etc. Even today in Russia more people own their own house than in Western Europe. This compensates for what are usually perceived as lower incomes in Russia. Most people there do not pay rent. The Soviet economy had the highest rates of economic growth in the world in the late 1920s and the whole 1930s. Compare the achievements of an economy like the Soviet economy with a similar sized country like Brazil around the same time.

The talk that people are not motivated to work under Socialism and they are under Capitalism is bullshit. Salaried workers under capitalism, the vast majority of workers, have no motivation to work more. And unlike in Mao's China, the Soviet Union did in fact give prizes for workers who had high productivity. Salaries and compensation were not the same regardless of occupation either. A teacher or doctor did not get the same compensation as a farm worker. The idea that everyone had the exact same income in the Soviet Union is bullshit too.

The major problem the Soviet system had was that the emphasis on central planning meant solving a lot of economic problems was hard or almost impossible. Also, if for whatever reason the political system dismissed some kind of technology for ideological reasons that could lead to reduced development in that area which could eventually have fatal consequences. For example Stalin was against 'cybernetics' research as he thought it was a waste of resources and this lead to a structural deficiency in computer research in the Soviet Union which had lasting consequences. Korolev was arrested and put into hard labor on a precious metals mine because the State considered his work on rocket powered airplanes a waste of resources as well.

gelgoog said:

The major problem the Soviet system had was that the emphasis on central planning meant solving a lot of economic problems was hard or almost impossible.

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That was exactly my point. For various reasons, the Soviet Union refused to given up on the centrally planned economy model despite growing evidence that it was increasingly falling behind the West economically. That's what I call blind adherence to dogma.

I don't dispute that the USSR had some great achievements, but in the end it failed, and its failure brought much misery to its people. Blaming outside forces or "capitalist traitors" is just deflection. The Soviet Union failed because it failed to address its own inadequacies.

manqiangrexue said:

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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the guy is a fundamental socialist and a jihadi communist, I think he's proud of that.

Mao's China was just a large size North Korea, no more, no less.

today officially China is: socialism with Chinese characteristics; the other side of the coin is: capitalism with Chinese characteristics. market capitalism is the only game on earth, there's no alternative.

solarz said:

That was exactly my point. For various reasons, the Soviet Union refused to given up on the centrally planned economy model despite growing evidence that it was increasingly falling behind the West economically. That's what I call blind adherence to dogma.

I don't dispute that the USSR had some great achievements, but in the end it failed, and its failure brought much misery to its people. Blaming outside forces or "capitalist traitors" is just deflection. The Soviet Union failed because it failed to address its own inadequacies.

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Except it was. The Soviet economy kept growing until the 1970s. Most citizens of the Soviet Union did not want it to collapse and the collapse was engineered by the elites in the Soviet Union who wanted to plunder the State's resources to enrich themselves. You could argue that their economy was less efficient, in particular from the late 1970s, but it was still good enough to go by. There was a vast collapse in living standards in Russia after the collapse of the USSR. It led to decreased lifespans and higher mortality rates. The Russian economy took over a decade to recover to the levels of GDP/capita it had when the USSR collapsed.