Capitalism lifted 800 million Chinese from poverty?

[Jacob Cliff]

I've heard this many times – that capitalism lifted 800 million since the free[er] market was introduced into China. Is this true? If so, why advocate communism and/or planned economics when it seems that capitalism and free markets have outdone planned economies?

[Armchair Partisan]

I have no idea what kind of delusional fantasy this is supposed to be (clearly whoever invented this has not even read about inland China, not that the workers in major cities are enjoying massive wealth). But really, it depends on your definition of 'poverty'. After all, the best way to combat poverty is to redefine it so that fewer people qualify. This way, we can see how poverty rates are rapidly declining year by year, exhibiting the success of capitalism, while workers do not see any significant improvement in their lives anymore. Magic!

First of all, the wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China) says that according to World Bank statistics, the poverty rate in 2009 was 11.8%. (When I tried to click on the source I got an error, but it may be temporary. Let's assume the number is legit for now.) That is according to the World Bank standards of living on below $1.25 a day. Anything above that is no longer considered "poverty". China defines its poverty line as 2300 yuan a year, which is 361 USD a year according to Google - so a bit less than 1$ a day. By that standard, China has been even more successful at eradicating poverty! Woo hoo! Now, the very same page tells us that most of China, namely 67.8%, lives under $5 a day.

This site (http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=China&displayCurrency=USD) claims that a 0.5kg loaf of white bread costs an average of $1.56. Do the math for yourself as to how livable (or, as it happens, unlivable) such conditions are. Compared to this, the (still barely livable) minimum wage in Hungary provides a much, much better lifestyle (and even the incredibly exploitative, seasonal 'public work' programme that has recently been implemented), I would say.

Hooray for Chinese capitalism, which has nearly eradicated poverty, even though everyone's lives are still miserable and the Chinese are famous for the inequality they have produced in their state! I mean, cheering on the Nordic model or Soviet state capitalism is bad enough already, but at least there you can see some kind of improvement. This is just ridiculous. Note that I am by no means an expert; these are just the results of a quick little research on the subject that anyone could replicate (thus if anyone better at this can correct any mistakes I might have made, please feel free). Now, one thing may be true: that in the aftermath of the failure of the Great Leap Forward, and the subsequent ineptitude that Mao's government showed at administrating the country, Deng's reforms helped - as anything else would have, probably. But that's like winning snap elections in the middle of a natural disaster and then claiming credit for successfully fighting it when it passes.

[Rafiq]

"Capitalism" did not do anything in China, because "capitalism" is not some external entity that "does things" for people. Instead, we recognize that China, undoubtedly a part of a world-capitalist totality, after eliminating all the old social bonds which impeded capitalist development, underwent vast reforms (which were, as far as "preparing" the population for, quite seemless) to integrate itself in the world economy under the backdrop of the globalization of capital.

Of course living in China today is better than it was decades ago. But let's think - are ideas responsible for this, or social processes? Let's think about where the average Chinese citizen derives their income, how they are able to accrue that income, by producing what goods and for who, etc. Are Chinese citizens, as neoliberal drivel would have us believe, living better today because they enjoy the spoils of their own entrepreneurship? Have the Chinese masses finally been bestowed relative "economic liberty" upon them, and if so, how do we measure this "economic liberty" and its varying degrees? In other words, are Chinese citizens better off because they can start businesses and so on? How many of them can do this?

As of a 2013 survey, of the 1.3 billion Chinese citizens, around 750 million are categorized as "economically active". That means hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens are largely left out of the process. And again, one must understand that the threshold for poverty is still abominably low in China. China, where "middle class" can be defined by 13,000 USD per year. Those who speak of an "emerging" Chinese middle class are wrong for doing so. Data has shown in some instances that in the most advanced cities in China, there is a monthly decline in wages for working people, for example.

We must remain faithful to the tradition laid forth by Marx: We do not dabble with stupid abstractions a la "capitalism" and proceed to make hollow moral judgement from there. We must concretely understand how such processes work, and the sum-total of those processes we call capitalism.

[Crabbensmasher]

China has modernized tremendously over the past few decades. Resources that had once stayed in the ground are now being mined and exported, peasant farms have made way for large agribusiness and aquaculture, railways and roads are paved to carry goods all across the country.

Why has all this happened? Globalization, foreign investment, neoliberalism, sure. Investors from all over the world have provided the cash to extract resources, to build factories and clearcut forests. Suddenly, a lot of economic activity is happening where there once was little.

And sure, workers became better off. They were given more jobs, they moved to cities to work in factories - where they had access to certain luxuries not available in the countryside. Factories and modern farming provided stable employment, and increased food production made things like pork more widely available - and affordable.

So the workers won a bit - as the decline in poverty levels can attest to. But who are the real winners from this expansion of economic activity? The American bourgeoisie, the emerging Chinese bourgeoisie, and wealthy investors from all over the globe. An astounding amount of wealth has been created in China over the past 30 years. They went from exporting very little to being the manufacturing hub of the world. The real winners are corporations extracting superprofits from factories, mines and other resource extraction.

The Chinese and foreign bourgeoisie have received the vast majority of the wealth from China's economic expansion. The workers have received the same as they always have throughout history - enough to live on so they can keep working, and whatever they can fight to claw back on top of that. The fact that this small trickling of wealth is enough to lift millions of Chinese out of poverty is a testament to how much REAL wealth was created in the first place.

So sure, you can say that global capitalism succeeded in that it started exploiting Chinese resources on a mass scale and building factories. But then you should look at the horrendous distribution of the wealth, and realize how utterly inefficient it is. Look at how many Ferrari dealerships have opened up in Shanghai, look at how the profit margins of western corporations shot up after the 1980s. And look at how integrated China is into global capitalism today - where the actions of wealthy investors on the stock market sent negative reverberations all the way down to poor Chinese workers who've never invested a penny.

[willowtooth]

So 800 million Chinese went from $1.75 a day to about $2.50 per day, between 1970 and now. Do I have that about right? Does that include inflation?

[Blake's Baby]

China was always capitalist. So, yeah, it did (for any given value of 'lifted out of poverty'), but it also enslaved 1.2 billion Chinese, killed 60 million of them, etc.

[Rafiq]

I would like to know where you arrive at the number of 60 million murdered Chinese.

[Hatshepsut]

I would like to know where you arrive at the number of 60 million murdered Chinese.

Perhaps from The Black Book of Communism, which claims 65 million. Even these authors admit their figures "are rather speculative" (p. 459 in Harvard U. Ed.), unsurprising given they cite only Jasper Becker (Hungry Ghosts, John Murray Pub., 1996) in support; but Becker considers only the 1959-1961 famine during the Great Leap Forward, which even under inflated estimates accounts for 30 million, less than half the total. In other words, no quantitative methodology exists on this topic. Chinese agricultural policy made grave mistakes which led to an unknown number of deaths in the low tens millions, roughly 2% of the national population, though higher or lower by region. The World Bank demographic series shows a population drop from 667M in 1960 to 660M two years later. Proportionally, few of these deaths were homicides; most were due to diseases that accompany malnutrition, especially in small children. It is the sole mass death event in China after 1949.

Smaller death tolls pegged variously between 1 and 5M attended the initial class struggle of the early 1950s and the later Cultural Revolution. I'm not in favor of whitewashing Communist killing. Yet Mercantile Capitalist deaths, for instance the 50 to 90% decline in Native American populations in the first century after Spanish arrival, or the horrific cholera epidemics of underfed British Colonial India, just breeze by as they happened in less dramatic fashion. Capitalists shot fewer people at home but their policies abroad were hardly less deadly. Then there is the fascist Hitlerite onslaught that did in 20M Soviet citizens by war and 10M Europeans by extermination programming.

For comparison with natural events, the H1N1 "Spanish" influenza killed about 1 to 2% of the world population in 1918-1920.

[Alet]

"Capitalism" did not do anything in China, because "capitalism" is not some external entity that "does things" for people.

Why does this matter? Of course, there is not really an external entity, but everyone who says something like this means that capitalist economy was the cause for certain phenomenons. And they are pretty much right, aren't they? I mean, wasn't it Marx' point that our actions are related to the mode of production?

[RedMaterialist]

I mean, wasn't it Marx' point that our actions are related to the mode of production?

I think it would be more accurate to say that our ideas, politics, philosophy, legal systems, etc, our "ideology," are related to, and ultimately determined by, the mode of production. It is our actions which are the mode of production.

[RedMaterialist]

The Chinese state owns most of the largest industries in China. For instance, 98% (according to Wiki) of the banking assets in China are owned by the state. (Imagine if 98% of the banking assets in the US were owned by the state.) The state was able to bail out the stock market recently to prevent a major crash.

At the same time private ownership is allowed in medium and smaller production, although many of those companies are still owned and controlled by local, village and town authorities. .

The state then plans the development of the economy as a whole, but allows capitalist markets to operate in non-state controlled industries.

Isn't this the same system advocated by Lenin, the ownership and planning by the state of the "commanding heights" of the economy? The Chinese still even use the old Leninist terminology of the "Five Year Plan."

Who could have imagined that in 55 years one of the poorest third world countries in the world, still recovering from the absolute devastation of WWII, still fighting wars with capitalism in Korea and Vietnam, just now catching up with the West in nuclear weapons and thus able to defend itself, could have been transformed into the second biggest economy in the world, soon to become the biggest economy per capita?

As far as lifting 800 million people out of poverty in 55 yrs, who would have believed such a thing was even possible? Famine has been eradicated in China; it is now the largest producer and consumer of food in the world; according to Wiki, the people in China consume on average a fifth of a pound of pork per person per day. Obviously the food is not evenly distributed, but compared to what? A famine killing tens of millions?

None of this would have been possible only on the basis of capitalism. It had to be on the basis of a centrally planned economy in which the state maintains control and management over the biggest industries.

Lenin was right. (I heard that in an introduction to the Beatles' Back in the USSR, at McCartney's concert in Red Square in 2003.

[RedMaterialist]

I've heard this many times – that capitalism lifted 800 million since the free[er] market was introduced into China. Is this true? If so, why advocate communism and/or planned economics when it seems that capitalism and free markets have outdone planned economies?

Because the Chinese did not use free(er) market capitalism. They used a mixed system of market socialism centrally planned and managed by the state. If the Chinese had introduced free market capitalism it would still be a third world country even poorer than India.

[Jacob Cliff]

"Capitalism" did not do anything in China, because "capitalism" is not some external entity that "does things" for people. Instead, we recognize that China, undoubtedly a part of a world-capitalist totality, after eliminating all the old social bonds which impeded capitalist development, underwent vast reforms (which were, as far as "preparing" the population for, quite seemless) to integrate itself in the world economy under the backdrop of the globalization of capital.

Of course living in China today is better than it was decades ago. But let's think - are ideas responsible for this, or social processes? Let's think about where the average Chinese citizen derives their income, how they are able to accrue that income, by producing what goods and for who, etc. Are Chinese citizens, as neoliberal drivel would have us believe, living better today because they enjoy the spoils of their own entrepreneurship? Have the Chinese masses finally been bestowed relative "economic liberty" upon them, and if so, how do we measure this "economic liberty" and its varying degrees? In other words, are Chinese citizens better off because they can start businesses and so on? How many of them can do this?

As of a 2013 survey, of the 1.3 billion Chinese citizens, around 750 million are categorized as "economically active". That means hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens are largely left out of the process. And again, one must understand that the threshold for poverty is still abominably low in China. China, where "middle class" can be defined by 13,000 USD per year. Those who speak of an "emerging" Chinese middle class are wrong for doing so. Data has shown in some instances that in the most advanced cities in China, there is a monthly decline in wages for working people, for example.

We must remain faithful to the tradition laid forth by Marx: We do not dabble with stupid abstractions a la "capitalism" and proceed to make hollow moral judgement from there. We must concretely understand how such processes work, and the sum-total of those processes we call capitalism.
But can't it "do things for people"? Your average neoliberal twat will often point to graphs that I have had very hard trouble "debunking" -- which show the tremendous growth of economies following economic liberalization and free market policies. Even if we're not talking about capitalism as an idea, we can still refer to it as a mode of production. And my problem is that it is often when libertarians and champions of the market point to the massive growth and relief from poverty that freer markets have, undoubtedly, caused. It's incredibly hard to formulate responses to these cold, empirical data charts and such.

[Црвена]

But can't it "do things for people"? Your average neoliberal twat will often point to graphs that I have had very hard trouble "debunking" -- which show the tremendous growth of economies following economic liberalization and free market policies. Even if we're not talking about capitalism as an idea, we can still refer to it as a mode of production. And my problem is that it is often when libertarians and champions of the market point to the massive growth and relief from poverty that freer markets have, undoubtedly, caused. It's incredibly hard to formulate responses to these cold, empirical data charts and such.

Well any system which produces as much as capitalism does should be lifting a lot more people out of poverty. Actually, the fact that there are still people in dire poverty even when so much is being produced just shows that capitalism is no longer the most efficient mechanism of resource allocation, because the "invisible hand," prefers to make $40,000 solid gold phones for the rich than to feed starving people living in one of the many countries which are being fucked over by globalisation. GDP figures mean nothing to socialists - a higher GDP just means that the capitalists are getting better at exploiting workers. Which doesn't make capitalism successful (at least, not from a proletarian perspective) - quite the contrary.

Also, I'm sure you know this, but all markets should be abolished, not just the "freer," ones. Whether a free market is better at easing poverty than a more regulated one is irrelevant. They both suck.

[RedMaterialist]

It's incredibly hard to formulate responses to these cold, empirical data charts and such.

You shouldn't take those charts at face value. Once you begin to look into who produced the charts, where they got the numbers, then you can usually find that they are lying.

[Hatshepsut]

Your average neoliberal twat will often point to graphs that I have had very hard trouble "debunking" -- which show the tremendous growth of economies following economic liberalization and free market policies...the massive growth and relief from poverty that freer markets have, undoubtedly, caused. It's incredibly hard to formulate responses to these cold, empirical data charts and such.

You can point to charts showing that most of the growth in per-capita money income goes to 10% or 20% of the population. There are improvements the general population shares in, such as reduction of disease, cleaner water, better transportation, military security that reduces invasions and civil wars, and cheaper consumer goods. But much of the spending behind this better infrastructure is governmental, rather than in the form of wages paid by foreign entrepreneurs.

Growth in living standards is driven primarily by increasing sophistication of technology, from the "green revolution" in agriculture to health care to telecommunications. Yes, this has taken place in a context of innovation for profit in free markets. There's no inherent connection between technology and markets, however, and indeed much of the progress here has been government funded.

You'll have to do some homework to find sources. For income inequality in the USA, the Congressional Budget Office has an interesting document at

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/49440

For the world, the UN Development Programme is a good source, e.g. at

http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi

The World Health Organization has comparative data on life expectancy and diseases. Some of those Arab lands with very "free" market bazaars and high per capita income (from oil) show life expectancies at 60 years or less, because all the income goes to sheikhs and their cronies who don't bother to take care of the ordinary population, while the very poor Communist Cuba has a life expectancy of 77 years, almost the same as in the U.S. Yet America and its capitalists act much friendlier toward these Arabs than to Cuba, despite the terrorism sponsored by the oil sheikhs and the utter lack of threat Cuba poses.

[Rafiq]

Why does this matter? Of course, there is not really an external entity, but everyone who says something like this means that capitalist economy was the cause for certain phenomenons. And they are pretty much right, aren't they? I mean, wasn't it Marx' point that our actions are related to the mode of production?

Capitalism defines man, it determines our sphere of action. But capitalism is a totality, compromised of nothing more than men and women. So there's no antagonism between humans and capitalism as such, but between contradictions that are inherent to capitalism itself.

[Rafiq]

But can't it "do things for people"?

No, because this statement is an abstraction.

What is left of "people" once they are subsumed by the capitalist totality, once they are constituted by capitalist relations? There is no trans-historical "people" that one can do anything for, for people constitute the mode of production. It is not some external entity, it is the sum-total of their social relationships to production.

Why do I stress this? Because capitalism is not something one can "use", or something that serves some kind of utilitarian purpose to some other end. There are no objective human interests that capitalism can "serve", that one can manage or regulate scientifically, every society is constituted by the sum-total of its relations to production, and the basis of production alone determines the scope of interests of men and women.

What that means is that it doesn't make a fucking difference that people live better than they did 100 years ago. The antagonisms constitutive of the totality remain, and it learns nothing from history. Thus, Maoist Third Worldists, for example, do not analyze some kind of objective shift in the spirit of the class struggle because less people are hungry in the west vis a vis the "developing" countries - they simply relegate themselves to the western petite-bourgeoisie (One can easily say that the impoverished Belgian was "privileged" compared to how those in the Congo Free State were living!). Think: Why should a worker today tell himself "Hmm, I live better now than my forefathers did in the late 19th century, this is probably why I shouldn't fight". What does that matter? What does the "past" do for people, is it some kind of divine entity that one submits to?


Your average neoliberal twat will often point to graphs that I have had very hard trouble "debunking" -- which show the tremendous growth of economies following economic liberalization and free market policies.

First, "economic liberalization" and "free market policies" are nothing more than ideological buzzwords. There is no such thing as a 'free market', even during the Reagan era, the state-corporate bureaucratic apparatus exploded and inflated in size. But which economies are being referred to? The "growth" relegates back to the sweeping away of old social bonds and the subservience of economies to globalization. It's an incredibly stupid argument. Nowhere are markets more free than sub-saharan Africa, which retains its role as the great meat-grinder for capital, unbound by the tariffs and restrictions of the developing protectionist states that one found in, for example, South Korea and Singapore before globalization. Marxists do not pay attention to such stupid categories as "free markets', because they are unscientific. What does a "free" market actually mean, and what are the definite qualifications for it - and finally, why are these qualifications the essential basis for the economies in question?

Marxists do not think with their ass, as they do. What kind of philistine just looks at something, frames it in such a simplistic manner, "Oh look, capitalism is great!"? Communists despise all superstitions, all social superstitions.

[John Nada]

But can't it "do things for people"? Your average neoliberal twat will often point to graphs that I have had very hard trouble "debunking" -- which show the tremendous growth of economies following economic liberalization and free market policies. Even if we're not talking about capitalism as an idea, we can still refer to it as a mode of production. And my problem is that it is often when libertarians and champions of the market point to the massive growth and relief from poverty that freer markets have, undoubtedly, caused. It's incredibly hard to formulate responses to these cold, empirical data charts and such.The PRC's economy was already growing before Deng's "reforms". Actually some years had much higher growth before the restoration of capitalism. The years it had negative growth had political struggles(Sino-Soviet split, the Great Leap Forward+famine, Cultural Revolution and Mao's death) and natural disasters disasters(often concurrent with the political ones). Even then, infrastructure was built up by the workers and peasantry the whole time.

The infrastructure, training, educations, raw material and productive capacity already built up during socialist construction made possible capitalism's supposed "incredible transformation" later on. Capitalists didn't do this shit, the proletariat and poor peasantry did. The (sorta)free market just enabled a new bourgeoisie as well as the imperialist-bourgeoisie to make a ton of money exploiting the workers. The growth required an encloser of the people's communes which created a large mass of dispossessed workers, austerity, privatization(even if it was de jure state-enterprises) and exploiting workers in exchange for imperialist capital. If growth entails things becoming qualitatively worse or about the same, improvement in technology aside, that growth doesn't mean anything.

And China's growth is driven by the state intervention, like any "actually existing" capitalist economy. If the "libertarians" thing the US is crony-capitalist...:lol:

[Rafiq]

None of the characteristics you mention qualify China as socialist. In fact, the qualifications you give us, such as the magnitude to which the state owns banks and plans the economy, are meaningless as far as a proletarian dictatorship goes: There is nothing inherently socialist about "public banking". the point is simple: In whose interest is the state run, regulated, and so on? Tell us of how China is a proletarian dictatorship. It is not. Rather, it is, like the United States since New Deal (though more proficient, with its handling of the stock market as you mention) a "scientifically managed" capitalist society (an ironic term). The Chinese proletariat must be pacified by the state, in its struggles with the Chinese bourgeoisie and foreign barons of industry, the Chinese state hardly champions its aspirations, whether economic or political. Even then, a new proletariat emerges - besides the precariat - in China: Has it ever occurred to you that there is a mass of hundreds of millions of Chinese who are not even privileged with the right of being exploited in the factories by foreign capital? The rural Chinese petite-bourgeoisie and proletariat who are tossed aside, afforded no security, and continually dispossessed. This mass will not even be destined to join the ranks of the Chinese industrial proletariat as it was for the English peasantry - they, like the slum-dwelling poor of the favelas, are simply outside.

The Chinese Communist Party is an irredeemable institution. It serves capital, and capital alone - even perhaps at the expense of the immediate prerogatives of the bourgeoisie. Shame, shame on the defenders of this twisted leviathan. Should a proletarian dictatorship occur in our lifetime, be sure that China will be among the first nations to attack it. You don't need to go on Revleft to find the foremost defenders of the Chinese state, look no further than the fucking creeps in Silicon Valley, the reactionary modernist technocrats of all Western (and Japanese) countries. We live in a fucking epoch where it is pubilcally acceptable to debate the "merits" of democracy, as though formal democracy is now a privilege, and not an absolute an unconditional publicly recognized ethical axiom.


Because the Chinese did not use free(er) market capitalism. They used a mixed system of market socialism centrally planned and managed by the state. If the Chinese had introduced free market capitalism it would still be a third world country even poorer than India.

Care to provide us with some examples of "free market capitalism"? There is no such of a thing, in fact, all this can ever indicate is the position of a state in relation to globalization and its propensity to submit before American capital. Free markets are hardly encouraged by the Americans for their domestic implications, rather, they give the O.K. for foreign finance and businesses to do as they please.

RedMaterialist, a self-proclaimed Marxist, tells us "They used a mixed system of market socialism". A "mixed system", ladies and gentlemen. There is no such thing as a "mixed system", a system is a system, constitutive of a totality. We Marxists will not even owe you the credit of accusing you of being an apologist for the Chinese state, for this implies a level of intellectual sophistication and existential rigidness far beyond you. Rather, your adherence to "socialism" amounts to nothing more than an allegiance to words, and you find guarantee, and sanctuary in the notion that some kind of force is "out there" as an active vehicle, agent of this word. For you, anti-capitalism is a matter of a battle of ideas relegated to Reddit-wars, and the great China, among the most if not the most heavily concentrated regions of world industrial capital on the planet, you use as your shield.

Communists do not play games of infantile dick-waving with words. Communists live life with bleeding hearts for the exploited and damned of China, Communists are possessed by rabid hatred for the corrupt and aggrandous Chinese elite in all its decadence, filth and extravagance, Communists see the Chinese model of capitalism, hailed by the scum of scum of our own countries as an alternative for the future, as presently among the greatest threats to the working people globally. The great irony of China is the abdication of "liberal democracy" by ass-covering itself with the Marxist criticism of democracy. But this is a disgusting perversion: Our criticism of liberal democracy already possessed an implicit acknowledgement of its achievements. Formal bourgeois democracy, in all its meekness, today is now a burden for global capital, it is the duty for Communists to re-invent the principles of Russian and German revolutionary social democracy in basically defending democratic decency in society, exposing corruption, and being the foremost defenders of the legacy of the enlightenment, a legacy now being discarded by the degenerate financial oligarchies.

Go on, call us liberals, but in the face of the Chinese model (of Singapore, South Korea, etc.), in the face of Fascism, liberals we are indeed, because the only fucking difference is that in our liberal democracies, there is already room for the political class struggle. Let us hail, in the face of such darkness, the proud legacy of liberalism, of the bourgeois principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Principles now being discarded by the ruling classes, which only the Communists can defend. And yet the RedMaterialists of the world, no doubt absolutely insignificant, will shame us by qualifying the Chinese state as "Socialist", a model we in the west should strive for.

[Hatshepsut]

Of course Capitalism doesn’t “do things” for people; what it does is reproduce itself to create more Capitalism. Because only people do things for other people, the question becomes one of whether Capitalists personally care about the well-being of others. The answer can be “yes” or “no,” depending on which Capitalist we have in mind: We see lots of greedy fellas like the Martin Shkreli who has his own thread on $750 pills.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/drug-goes-13-t194193/index.html?t=194193

But even when they do care, they remain subject to the rule of “serve shareholders or perish.” Deng Xiaoping’s “Four Modernizations” actually concentrated on loans more than on foreign direct investment; he never envisioned a true Western-style private property state. Crony capitalism may better describe the result, as whatever wasn’t allowed to be owned by foreigners would go friends of local Party officials, the state reserving ownership of certain enterprises to itself. For more details, see

Shang-Jin Wei, Foreign Direct Investment in China, 1996
http://www.nber.org/chapters/c8559.pdf

This is a bourgeois view from the U.S. Nat’l Bureau of Economic Research, yet the Chinese, who aren’t eager to reveal much to begin with, publish little on the topic in English. For those wanting to believe China on the path to “democracy,” here’s a diagram showing the convolutions. Not to mention the liberation of its proletariat: Odd how the USA quit yelling about Communist threats once China opened up shop.

9657

[RedMaterialist]

Go on, call us liberals, but in the face of the Chinese model (of Singapore, South Korea, etc.), in the face of Fascism, liberals we are indeed, because the only fucking difference is that in our liberal democracies, there is already room for the political class struggle. Let us hail, in the face of such darkness, the proud legacy of liberalism, of the bourgeois principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Principles now being discarded by the ruling classes, which only the Communists can defend. And yet the RedMaterialists of the world, no doubt absolutely insignificant, will shame us by qualifying the Chinese state as "Socialist", a model we in the west should strive for.

Rafiq, the self-described Marxist of Revolutionary Tendencies, advises the Chinese people to shrug off 50 years of the bloodiest revolution in history and adopt his democratic ideals of Liberty, Equality, etc. etc. You, Rafiq, are a classic example of Marx's Bourgeois Socialist, you want the results of the revolution without the struggle of actually fighting the revolution. The Chinese people have already done that for you. Bourgeois ideals only develop in a bourgeois society under bourgeois conditions. The question is what kind of ideals develop in a society emerging from centuries of feudalism, slavery and a half-century of starvation, and bestial civil war? You expect Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, and the democratic town hall? No, what you expect is the ideal of feeding 800 million starving peasants.

At the rate the Chinese are going they will soon be the largest economy, per capita, in the world. And who is going to stop them? Western bourgeois liberals with their nuclear submarines?

You say you want a revolution? Don't go to John Lennon looking for help. Don't like the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat, then vote for Hillary Clinton.

You're right about one thing: a communist is one of the most absolutely insignificant persons in the US. At last count there are about fifty of them.

[Puzzled Left]

At the rate the Chinese are going they will soon be the largest economy, per capita, in the world. And who is going to stop them? Western bourgeois liberals with their nuclear submarines?


How's China anything close to the largest economy, per capita, in the world?

[Puzzled Left]

Rafiq, the self-described Marxist of Revolutionary Tendencies, advises the Chinese people to shrug off 50 years of the bloodiest revolution in history and adopt his democratic ideals of Liberty, Equality, etc. etc. You, Rafiq, are a classic example of Marx's Bourgeois Socialist, you want the results of the revolution without the struggle of actually fighting the revolution. The Chinese people have already done that for you. Bourgeois ideals only develop in a bourgeois society under bourgeois conditions. The question is what kind of ideals develop in a society emerging from centuries of feudalism, slavery and a half-century of starvation, and bestial civil war? You expect Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, and the democratic town hall? No, what you expect is the ideal of feeding 800 million starving peasants.

At the rate the Chinese are going they will soon be the largest economy, per capita, in the world. And who is going to stop them? Western bourgeois liberals with their nuclear submarines?

You say you want a revolution? Don't go to John Lennon looking for help. Don't like the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat, then vote for Hillary Clinton.

You're right about one thing: a communist is one of the most absolutely insignificant persons in the US. At last count there are about fifty of them.

The Chinese Revolution was more than sixties years ago. We are talking about current condition in the context of the current global society. Anybody who has any idea about China knew that it is not only a state that serve the interest of capital, but it is also one of the cruelest and most heinous capitalist state because they are virtually completely unrestrained by any bourgeois principles. Some of the western bourgeois was so impressed by the Chinese state machines that they are willing to ditch their own principles of liberty, equality, etc.because they realized that any sort of democracy, even just formal ones, hinders capital. And stop using phrases like "800 million starving peasants"; China, like you had not realized, are not semi-feudal state with such high proportion of peasants in 2015. Besides, it is the failure of the Chinese capitalist state that prevent its population form being fed. It is disturbing that a self-declared Marxist can imply that somehow even with the current industrial infrastructure, democracy can somehow further hinder the efficiency of authoritarian capitalism.

You bizarrely accused others as "Bourgeois Socialist" when the very person you accused are actually advocating for the resistance and struggle of the Chinese workers. You are the defender of the Chinese capitalist state; you are the one who claimed that the Chinese workers somehow already "done" the revolution. The dictatorship of the proletariat (which is not socialism) is one belonging to an proletariat class, and not one of individuals or the capitalist class. You cannot even be accused as Bourgeois Socialist, for you would rather see the Chinese capitalist and western reactionaries advocate the further degradation of whatever little achievement liberalism had made than advocating socialism in those capitalist state.

[willowtooth]

gdp is terrible way to measure an economy all it measures is how much stuff your selling to other countries


The United States, the world’s wealthiest country in GDP terms, ranks 16th in “social progress.” Compared to our economic peers, we underperform on a number of dimensions, particularly those related to health: life expectancy, premature deaths from diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular and respiratory failure, fatal car accidents, and even maternal and infant mortality rates.

The gap in these standings underscores the limitations of GDP. By focusing exclusively on economic growth, GDP misses – or worse still, externalizes – the costs and value of a number of critical elements of well-being: basic human needs like nutrition, medical care, and shelter; access to education and information; and environmental sustainability – not to mention things harder to measure like rights and freedoms, tolerance, and inclusion.


http://time.com/3826731/is-gdp-dead/

[RedMaterialist]

How's China anything close to the largest economy, per capita, in the world?

They're already the largest economy in aggregate terms. They are steadily growing to largest per capita, predicted to there around 2050. This doesn't mean that China is wealthy or that poverty has been eradicated. But GDP per capita is a common western method of measuring the strength of an economy.

[Alet]

They're already the largest economy in aggregate terms. They are steadily growing to largest per capita, predicted to there around 2050. This doesn't mean that China is wealthy or that poverty has been eradicated. But GDP per capita is a common western method of measuring the strength of an economy.

Whether it is a common method or not does not matter. GDP is not something communists should care about, not only because we distinguish between use value and exchange value, but also because economic power is not relevant to us. We do not want to compete with other nations, we want to supply humans' wants.

[RedMaterialist]

It is disturbing that a self-declared Marxist can imply that somehow even with the current industrial infrastructure, democracy can somehow further hinder the efficiency of authoritarian capitalism.

... for you would rather see the Chinese capitalist and western reactionaries advocate the further degradation of whatever little achievement liberalism had made than advocating socialism in those capitalist state.

I never thought I would see western bourgeois ideals of liberalism, democracy, freedom, etc. defended by the RevLefters.

Liberalism, a democratic representative govt., as Marx said, is the best form of state for modern capitalism. It's in the US, the leading "democratic" western state that capitalism has reached its current gigantic size, even beyond what Marx may have imagined.

China (as also Russia) had no choice but to develop from a semi-peasant, semi-feudal, pre industrial society directly into a modern industrial state. Marx may once have thought this was impossible, that a socialist society could only develop out of a fully established capitalist economy and state.

Russia and China proved him wrong. But he and Engels also saw what the experience of the French Civil war taught. That the capitalist state cannot be overthrown by simply taking hold of the existing state and using it for socialist purposes. The existing state has to be destroyed and replaced by a dictatorship because the remaining capitalists will do everything in their power to destroy socialism. That is what Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and other countries have proved.

Bourgeois values, democracy, liberty, freedom are only meant for the ruling class. They are all equal and free to pursue profit. Those values are not meant for the working class which is even being daily replaced with robots.

When a real crisis develops what happens to democracy? In 2008 the capitalist class saved itself by robbing trillions of dollars from US taxpayers. The robbery was absolutely opposed by the America people and democracy was simply suspended until the crisis was over.

The Chinese state owns 98% of the banking sector. You may call this state capitalism, state socialism, market socialism, but one thing it is not is capitalism. In the US 98% of the banking sector is owned by private capitalists, although it is subject to some minor regulation. That is capitalism.

A US capitalist is supposed once to have said, "Give me control of the money supply and I don't care who makes the laws." Marx could not have said it better, and he probably did somewhere.

[RedMaterialist]

Whether it is a common method or not does not matter. GDP is not something communists should care about, not only because we distinguish between use value and exchange value, but also because economic power is not relevant to us. We do not want to compete with other nations, we want to supply humans' wants.

I agree, except economic power is relevant to communists because the western capitalist powers will use any means possible to destroy socialism and communism. The only reason China has not been invaded by the West is that it developed the economic power, with Russian help, to create the PLA and later obtain nuclear weapons.

MacArthur and McCarthy were right, from their point of view, that China should have been invaded during the Korean War.

GDP, use value and exchange value are simply characteristics of capitalism which will carry over into socialism until they can finally be eradicated in a communist society. Marx settled this in the Gotha Program when he said that even wage-labor would continue to be used in the DOP.

We can supply the wants of all humans' needs only when socialism is established worldwide. We have the same goal in mind, the difference is in how it can be achieved. I think a revolution will be necessary, which I thought was why this site called itself RevLeft, which is not to say, however, that a revolution can be put on the calendar for next Tuesday.

What if capitalism does collapse in the next 10 yrs or so; and the people somehow prevent the bankers from robbing them again? what will happen? Will the communists suddenly appear and explain to the people how liberal democracy is really supposed to work? Or will the military be used to destroy any move toward socialism?

[Rafiq]

At the rate the Chinese are going they will soon be the largest economy, per capita, in the world. And who is going to stop them? Western bourgeois liberals with their nuclear submarines?

What is most acutely ironic is that China had already underwent its bourgeois revolution, you fool. The point is that this model of bourgeois dictatorship is now being respected, considered and adopted in our liberal democracies.

"Who is going to stop them" he claims. Has it ever occurred to you where this large "economy" comes from? Is China some kind of organic entity that is simply growing and accelerating? Is it a homogeneous conglomeration of ubermenschen, or perhaps is it that the same social antagonisms which accentuate in every capitalist state, also are rapidly exploding in China? "They are going to be the largest economy!" - and he calls me a liberal. Better a liberal than a degenerate liberal. "Largest economy" he sais. Largest economy composed of hundreds of millions of wage-slaves living in destitution and misery, coupled with an aggrandous rural precariat who are not even afforded the privilege of being exploited by foreign capital, administered by extravagant lords of regional capital, a grand leviathan of exploitation indeed.

The dream state of the technocrats and the high bourgeoisie of the West. "Oh, democracy? Fuck that hypocritical democracy! Let's just get things done!" they will sell us. On one hand, the status-quo bourgeoisie will give us capitalism with "Asian values", and on the other, the reactionary forces of capital will give us destruction, barbarism and populist putinism.


You say you want a revolution? Don't go to John Lennon looking for help. Don't like the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat, then vote for Hillary Clinton.

Do you really want to make yourself look like such an ass by trying to qualify China as a proletarian dicttaorship? Do you even know what a FUCKING proletarian dictatorship is? The Chinese state is not even a fucking paternal guardian of the Chinese working class - but you would go as far as to claim that it constitutes a proletarian dictatorship?

No one thinks that you're a fucking tough guy. "Oh, my Chinese tanks will roll over your puny Hilary Clinton liberalism!" - China, herald of 21st century eugenicists, reactionaries, neo-Fascists, is not distinguished at all from Singapore and South Korea, kiddo. The fact that you're trying to emulate Stalinist rhetoric against liberalism with the reference point being China... Your anti-Liberlaism is not a shred different form that of Viktor Orban's, Putin's and Berlusconi's. You're a reactionary, and it's plainly that simple.

We here in the west, with our liberal democracy, are on a formal level legally allowed to engage in class-based politics. We won this right through constant and incessant struggles (because no, this wasn't "given" to us). The Chinese proletariat will have an infinitely harder time doing this, and this is a model of politics that is now being heralded in our own countries. "Oh, you want those Chinese to get the best of us! Let's become great again!" - that's what the populists in the US are tacitly telling us. China is a reactionary state, and that's the end of story.

So listen, tough guy, we all know you want to feel comfortable and secure, confident knowing there's a big force out there which is the vehicle of your ideas. One day you'll need to pull your head out of your ass for some air - or you can suffocate on your own shit-fumes. We don't care. Stop harking on "I thought this was REVLEFT" because you sound like a fucking clown if your shock at the fact that we presuppose the achievements of liberalism is based in a defense of the Chinese state - no doubt the world's foremost revolutionary force, heralding neo-colonial revolution on Africa and encouraging revolution in the west, where it openly attacks social welfare services because they are an impediment to debts that are owed to it. East is red indeed.

[Rafiq]

The idea that liberty, fraternity and equality is just a "bourgeois concept" is so adorable.

A concept which Marx and Marxists afterwards literally and explicitly stated was a presupposition of Communism. Of course not as "eternal truths", but presuppositions of bourgeois society, from which Communism derives. To abdicate on these principles would be no different than to have opposed bourgeois modernization or liberalism in the early 19th century, which Marx mercilessly attacked the German "true socialists" for - those "socialists" who used French anti-liberal rhetoric in Germany, where modern society did not even exist yet.

[Antiochus]

I find it quite odd that the site administrators instantly ban someone for the minutest comments regarding abortion yet permit an imbecile like RedWorker to extol the virtues of a dictatorial bourgeoisie state like China. I think this was the same kid that argued that Saudi Arabia was a "socialist" state since there was public ownership of banks and oil reserves.

This is really not much different than the fetish a few people in the U.S have over Putin. Some sort of strongman that "isn't bound by silly representative democracy" and can "give his people what they need". Off course, his fans are Rush Limbaugh and the cum-stains of the right. Which is why Trump is a big fan of China.

[Rafiq]

Liberalism, a democratic representative govt., as Marx said, is the best form of state for modern capitalism. It's in the US, the leading "democratic" western state that capitalism has reached its current gigantic size, even beyond what Marx may have imagined.

I suppose Liberalism was "the best form of state for modern capitalism" in modern Nazi Germany, where precisely the opposite was true. Capitlaism has a tendency to degenerate. Liberalism, and liberal democracy, are now great burdens upon western capital, which is why it is so easy to see how acutely less democratic, even by bourgeois standards, our societies have become. Today we have ruthless technocracy, which is infinitely more dynamic and efficient for our bloated financial oligarchies.


Marx may once have thought this was impossible, that a socialist society could only develop out of a fully established capitalist economy and state.

Russia and China proved him wrong.

And a socialist society, by Marx's qualifications for socialism, never developed in any of these states. These states never quelled or absolved the social antagonism, which is why - you fool - that the introduction of capitalism in the latter was swift and seamless, while in the former - while chaotic, still a logical conclusion of the Soviet state's trajectory path (and it was globalization which created this deformity, not the introduction of private property as such).

Even for Marx, a proletarian dictatorship was not necessarily a "socialist" society. The ten planks in the Communist Manifesto do not describe a socialist society.


That is what Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and other countries have proved.

And this assumes that the Russians, Chinese, Vietnamese and Cubans merely took over the ready-made state formations that existed previously, but that's not true. The Russians, Chinese and Vietnamese all smashed the old states and replaced them, so would you mind telling us what exactly has been "proven"?


Bourgeois values, democracy, liberty, freedom are only meant for the ruling class. They are all equal and free to pursue profit. Those values are not meant for the working class which is even being daily replaced with robots.

You can regularly point out the hypocrisy of formal democracy, the crackpot nature of bourgeois democratic rhetoric, but to do this from the standpoint of a Fascist, a reactionary, an Islamist, or an apologist for the Chinese/Singaporian/South Korean mode makes your argument itself hypocritical. Because what you insinuate is pretty much that "Oh, democracy is a joke, so let's not even have formal democracy".

Formal democracy is, and has always been, a necessary presupposition to Communism. You're such an idiot that you can't see that Lenin and the Bolsheviks tirelessly campaigned for bourgeois formal democratic rights, for "political liberty", freedom of the press, and so on - Lenin fought mercilessly against the Russian autocracy while EXPICITLY STATING that should this lead to a bourgeois democratic state, that would be infinitely better as far as estabilishing political conditions for the thriving of social democracy.

Lenin quoted Kautsky who said that freedom of press, assembly, and political rights were the air and water of social democracy. It was only AFTER the acquisition of state power and the proletarian dictatorship in Russia that the anti-liberal rhetoric became appropriate, because of course we never championed bourgeois rights out of some eternal moral law, but because these were necessary PRE-REQUISITES to Communism. Communism can only be understood in terms of how it relates to the LEGACY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT. Marx and Marxists after didn't have to fucking focus that much on self-masturbatory congratulatory rhetoric about bourgeois democracy and enlightenment BECAUSE IT WAS ALREADY HEGEMONIC IN MOST SOCIETIES BY THAT TIME. Practically, however, Marx came out of the Young Hegelians who fought for bourgeois democracy. Practically, however Marx called for the fighting of democratic rights in Germany where the true socialists spoke of their "hypocrisy" and so on, using the rhetoric of the French.

That bourgeois democracy is only for the ruling class in juxtaposition to proletarian democracy is a truism. But bourgeois democracy, vis a vis Fascism, or Chinese technocracy, is indeed not "only for" the ruling class. For a dialectical magician, you sure don't know shit about dialectics. I mean, how the FUCK IS BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY "only for the ruling class" when compared to Chinese technocracy? HOW? You don't know shit. You literally just talk out of your ass - nay, let's fucking forget about Chartism, let's forget about the fact that initially voting was reserved for a tiny minority and that working class struggles coerced the state into giving us the "democracy" we have a semblance of today.

It's like saying the minimum fucking wage is only for the "ruling class", or that "the minimum wage is so terrible!" while applauding the Chinese 1.25$ per day wage. Pure stupidity.


The Chinese state owns 98% of the banking sector. You may call this state capitalism, state socialism, market socialism, but one thing it is not is capitalism. In the US 98% of the banking sector is owned by private capitalists, although it is subject to some minor regulation. That is capitalism.

"My understanding of capitalism comes from an American 9th grade high school economics textbook, which means private free enterprise and economic liberty. So china isn't capitlaist".

The existence of a banking sector is all the evidence we need that China is a capitalist state. It is not POLITICAL a liberal state, but this sais little about its class composition. Germany, after all, was a bourgeois state under Hitler after all.

98% of banking assets owned by the state merely reflects the different role of banks. You make it seem like the HUGE financial industry, the various private financial institutions that cooperate with the central bank (as socialist as new Deal or Fascism), and so on are just some kind of anomaly. Are you stupid? No, redmaterialists, be honest, I'm not even trying to be mean. Are you actually stupid? That banks are owned by the government sais nothing about the fact that they exist for-profit, are hardly distinguishable from western banks, and do not serve the commons insofar as it does not extend beyond avoiding financial catastrophe.


A US capitalist is supposed once to have said, "Give me control of the money supply and I don't care who makes the laws." Marx could not have said it better, and he probably did somewhere.

Thanks for repeating anti-semitic forgeries to demonstrate the point that because capitalists are the ruling class (a shocking revelation), political action, and laws are not important at all, and that we should all prostrate and accept the destruction of the political rights we've fought for with our blood.

Whether capitalists care about who makes the laws or not do not matter. But laws, such as the minimum wage, federally enforced worker's rights, and endless other laws were and are certainly captivating their attention. These laws are lacking in China, and if workers fought for them, they'd be "Hilary Clinton's" and "liberals".

Make me laugh.

[RedMaterialist]

Whether capitalists care about who makes the laws or not do not matter. But laws, such as the minimum wage, federally enforced worker's rights, and endless other laws were and are certainly captivating their attention. These laws are lacking in China, and if workers fought for them, they'd be "Hilary Clinton's" and "liberals".

Make me laugh.

So, western liberal democracy is going to save the Chinese people from capitalist dictatorship, the same liberalism which forced China into two decades of opium addiction, the same liberalism which watched as Japan raped the entire country, the same liberalism which demanded nuclear was against China.

You remind me of Said's Orientalism. The advanced, democratic, liberal, western ideals showing the way for the backward Orientals.

The 1911 revolution destroying the old feudal dynasty was never followed by any bourgeois social structure. Here is a picture of the "Republican" government in 1911.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/3-10.jpg/440px-3-10.jpg

The 1911 revolution was followed by 40 yrs of civil war with Mao and the communists defeating the "nationalists." The same process happened in Russia, 1917 failed bourgeois revolution, followed by socialist revolution and five yrs of civil war and the establishment of a worker's state later degenerated.

Neither country developed bourgeois democracy because neither country experienced bourgeois economic development.

If the U.S. declares war on China will the social democrats and liberals vote for war credits? Is China too big to declare war on? There're always defenseless countries who can be accused of allying themselves with the ChiComs: Venezuela, Bolivia, or any country between the Sahara and South Africa.

There are always people to be murdered by western liberals, always, of course, in the moral struggle to bring the victims democracy, freedom, justice, etc. etc.

[Rafiq]

As stated:


What is most acutely ironic is that China had already underwent its bourgeois revolution, you fool. The point is that this model of bourgeois dictatorship is now being respected, considered and adopted in our liberal democracies

The point has nothing to do with importing liberal democracy to China, but to fighting against the import of "capitalism with Asian values", which doesn't simply refer to China, but Singapore, South Korea, ETC. - new authoritarian forms of capitalism that are more efficient than liberal democracy. This is what you fail to understand, and it's so painfully stupid.

"Neither country developed bourgeois democracy because neither country experienced bourgeois economic development" - this assumes that bourgeois democracy is the sole political supplement to bourgeois economic development, but as it happens, bourgeois economies greatly differ today than they did in the mid-late 19th century. The absence of bourgeois democracy in China is owed to the fact that old feudal bonds in China could not be eliminated by the foreign or domestic bourgeoisie - the Chinese romantic bourgeoisie (i.e. who are not bourgeois themselves obviously, but assume the role of them) had to do this. Throughout Stalinsim, all historic-acheivments were largely relegated to destroying and replacing old, traditional social bonds - when this process reached its highest fulfillment, the states either collapsed, or in the case of China, were able to seamlessly manage the transition (to capitalsim).

In fact, one can say that Maoism is the perfection of Marxism-Leninism, as the deformities present in Russia which made it antagonistic to globalization never occured in China. Russia had always been burdened with the institutional, structural, cultural, ideological, ETC. legacy of having been born OUT of a proletarian revolution, while China underwent no such thing - it thus was able to not only destroy the remnants of feudalism more efficiently (mobilizing the Chinese peasantry as a whole, giving them greater political power, representation, etc.) but transition to and manage capitalism more efficiently than western bourgeois democracies. China never developed a liberal democracy, because the Chinese bourgeoisie did not lead the transition to capitalism and the revolution in agricultural relations - the Chinese state did.

Liberal democracy allows the class antagonsim to develop more actuely because it is formally legal for political class struggle to be waged. This is why class struggle in Fascist Germany or Italy, or present day Iran, is incredibly difficult - possible - but arduous campaigns in favor of bourgeois-democratic rights, such as freedom of press, assembly, etc. (POLITICAL RIGHTS THAT SHOULD BE FOUGHT FOR TODAY IN CHINA) must be waged before this is possible. of course the Chinese state cannot be overthrown and replaced by a liberal democracy - but a Chinese working class movement can fight for political reforms in the same vein that the German working class fought for them under Bismark, the same way that the Bolsheviks fought for them in Russia, ETC.

of course, however, there are no eternal truths. If the Iranian state is smashed by an internal revolt sponsored by American imperialism and replaced by a liberal democracy, Communists cannot oppose this development - in fact Communists would support such a development (JUST AS communists would have supported the Arab spring). The issue with China is that such a "liberal-democratic revolution" is a pipe-dream: Chinese capitalism as we know it would crumble to pieces if managed by a liberal democracy, there are no elements among the growing Chinese bourgeoisie which could or would even want to facilitate this, and the cultural (and political) aspirations of the tiny Chinese "middle class" are not strong enough to facilitate such a thing. Bottom line, the Chinese proletariat, in order to wage political struggle to enact POLITICAL (and subsequently economic) reforms, needs political freedom (by no means something we support as an eternal moral right). Such a project would have to be coordinated by a trans-national political force that can coordinate worker's struggles in synchronicity with their socialized inter-dependence (i.e. the implications of fighting for higher wages in China will have to take into account those in South Africa, struggles in the United States for those in Mexico, or whatever you want).

China would respond to such an international movement with pseudo-orientalist ass coverings "Oh, our sovereignty is being undermined". Just like the fucking Mullahs - we don't give a fuck about "cultural" considerations when it pertains to matters of the class struggle. The acheivments of liberlaism are not encoded into European DNA, there is nothing excuslively European about them - only the bloodsuckers, reactionaries, only the master-caste ever complains about "foreign culture". You love to forget that China during the cultural revolution destroyed the vestiges of traditional Chinese culture, and whether consciously or not, was bringing "western" modernization to China.

[Puzzled Left]

You remind me of Said's Orientalism. The advanced, democratic, liberal, western ideals showing the way for the backward Orientals.


Aren't Marxists and radical ideas themselves born in the western world? So I guess since the Chinese act and think in an innately different ways we should never "arrogantly" spread "western-originated" ideas to the "backward orientals".

You know what? That attitude itself is extremely paternalistic. It implies Chinese and Asians are exempted, or at least differentiated, regarding class struggle because of culture. As if all the western nations were culturally homogeneous and gladly embraced liberal ideals. Asian societies to you are a romanticized fascination instead of functioning, complex societies. The Chinese workers are not even capable of "being exploited" like the western proletariat. Just go to China (or any Asian nation with basically the same form of authoritarian capitalism) and tell all the miserable, angry, exploited workers how luck they are to live under Chinese bureaucrats and capitalists because they are the head of a "dictatorship of the proletariat". Ask any Chinese leftists (real leftists, not tankies), and all of them, including Maoists, were either going to be shocked at your stupidity or laugh at your naivety.

Being ethnically Chinese myself, and having lived in China for more than 10 years, you really disgusted me.

[Antiochus]

What exactly was the point of posting that picture? Only a cretin would think the way people dress could, intrinsically, describe their class outlook. Marx or Engels dressed no differently than an English aristocrat.

[RedMaterialist]

Aren't Marxists and radical ideas themselves born in the western world? So I guess since the Chinese act and think in an innately different ways we should never "arrogantly" spread "western-originated" ideas to the "backward orientals".



The question in the original post was whether capitalism lifted 800 million Chinese from poverty. As I am sure you know, capitalism is only concerned with the production and appropriation of surplus-value, profit, not with the social well being of millions of people, Chinese or otherwise. Beginning at least since the mid-19th century capitalism has invaded China, slaughtered millions of Chinese, forced opium addiction onto millions of Chinese, allowed two invasions of China by Japan, one of which has given us the memorable name of the "Rape of Nanking."

And now we're supposed to believe that these same capitalists have reformed themselves and with their ingenuity and humanity have saved China from mass starvation? Or perhaps you believe that the new capitalists are "Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics?"

This whole discussion has nothing to do with the culture of Chinese capitalism, but rather is a repetition of the old argument about whether the Soviet Union was "state capitalist." Did capitalism save 200 million Russians from Hitler? Did capitalism send the first human into space? Did capitalism save 20 million Vietnamese from US aggression? Did capitalism overthrow the apartheid govt in South Africa?

[Puzzled Left]

You simply did not address any of points directed against you. I have what points you are trying to demonstrate, nor do you actually address people's point.


The question in the original post was whether capitalism lifted 800 million Chinese from poverty. As I am sure you know, capitalism is only concerned with the production and appropriation of surplus-value, profit, not with the social well being of millions of people, Chinese or otherwise. Beginning at least since the mid-19th century capitalism has invaded China, slaughtered millions of Chinese, forced opium addiction onto millions of Chinese, allowed two invasions of China by Japan, one of which has given us the memorable name of the "Rape of Nanking."

Thank you for your lecture on Chinese's history that every Chinese middle school student knows. But what does it show? Capitalism is just a system that has no mercy or any other feeling. Nobody is defending capitalism here.


And now we're supposed to believe that these same capitalists have reformed themselves and with their ingenuity and humanity have saved China from mass starvation? Or perhaps you believe that the new capitalists are "Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics?"

If you can't understand that capitalism had brought progressive changes, juxtaposed to previous economic system, then you don't even understand basic historical materialism. This is not because capitalism is kind, but its nature propelled working class struggle. All of those progress were fought and won by the working class with their blood, and how can you simply just ignore that. The disturbing thing is, China, along with several other states, represents the decline of liberal democratic capitalism due to the inner contradictions of the system. All of the previous progresses that people fought for is now being threatened. Even the once-sacred principle of "democracy" is now being questioned and attacked, not by socialists, but by reactionary capitalists (mind you, many of them are not Chinese or Asian but westerners who are jealous of Chinese capital's efficiency). The fall of formal democracy is going to be a huge blow to working-class struggle.


This whole discussion has nothing to do with the culture of Chinese capitalism, but rather is a repetition of the old argument about whether the Soviet Union was "state capitalist."
I don't actually care about on the Soviet Union because that is not relevant. I care about your view on China today, an embodiment of a form of reactionary capitalism that could become the norm of the future. You need to look past your blind nostalgia and just think. As I told you, any Chinese leftist, no matter his/er tendency, will simply laugh at the claim that China today is not capitalist. And yes, the "culture" of capitalism is important because it affects the progress and development of class consciousness.


Did capitalism save 200 million Russians from Hitler? Did capitalism send the first human into space? Did capitalism save 20 million Vietnamese from US aggression? Did capitalism overthrow the apartheid govt in South Africa?
Are you incapable of understanding my points? Had I made any claim that capitalism is the savior of the world? Did capitalism save 200 million Russians from Hitler? The Russians won the war at the expense of 30 million of their lives, and so what? What does that say about capitalism and Stalinism? Nothing. "Did capitalism send the first human into space?" Seriously? Is this what you come up with? What the hell does this tell us?! We get it, you like the USSR, and? We know that a (undisputed) capitalist state sent the first human to moon, but does that tell us anything besides that this is something unreachable under feudalism? "Did capitalism save 20 million Vietnamese from US aggression?" Again, no, but what does this tell us? Don't tell me something like "socialism is great because it saved Vietnam from the US!" It would be the equivalent of "Capitalism saved France from the other European aggression! (This of course assumed Vietnam to had been socialist at some point, in order for that to be an analogy). "Did capitalism overthrow the apartheid govt in South Africa?" Capitalism is neither a superhero nor an entity, so what's your point? What is the "entity" that overthrew the apartheid? Certainly not communism, but that does not show anything either.

[ComradeAllende]

I never thought I would see western bourgeois ideals of liberalism, democracy, freedom, etc. defended by the RevLefters.

Idk why. There aren't that many Tankies around here, so you'd be hard-pressed to find someone that supports totalitarianism and authoritarianism on this forum.


China (as also Russia) had no choice but to develop from a semi-peasant, semi-feudal, pre industrial society directly into a modern industrial state. Marx may once have thought this was impossible, that a socialist society could only develop out of a fully established capitalist economy and state.

No, they did not. What they (the Chinese Communist Party) did have a choice in was instituting a totalitarian dictatorship that centralized control of the means of production and replicated the Stalinist means of repression and bureaucratic rule. The transition to an industrial society was always going to be painful; what the revolutionaries in developing countries should have done was mitigate such pain while maintaining the right of the workers to assemble, voice their grievances, etc.


Russia and China proved him wrong. But he and Engels also saw what the experience of the French Civil war taught. That the capitalist state cannot be overthrown by simply taking hold of the existing state and using it for socialist purposes. The existing state has to be destroyed and replaced by a dictatorship because the remaining capitalists will do everything in their power to destroy socialism. That is what Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and other countries have proved.

Yes, the authoritarian turn in the aforementioned countries was partly caused by the hostility of the capitalist nations. But that fact alone shows the inadequacy of the revolutions that formed each of those nations. How can the revolution attract supporters when it represses them in the face of capitalist aggression?


Bourgeois values, democracy, liberty, freedom are only meant for the ruling class. They are all equal and free to pursue profit. Those values are not meant for the working class which is even being daily replaced with robots.

We all know that the ruling class has little intention of extending "bourgeois values" to the working class because doing so would lead to its destruction. That is why we socialists seek to destroy the ruling class by expanding access to bourgeois values, not restricting them. You are mistaking socialism for reactionary populism; the former opposes liberalism's hypocrisy, whereas the latter opposes liberalism itself.


When a real crisis develops what happens to democracy? In 2008 the capitalist class saved itself by robbing trillions of dollars from US taxpayers. The robbery was absolutely opposed by the America people and democracy was simply suspended until the crisis was over.

Which is why we make the case for democracy; when the ruling class willfully abrogates its professed values for its own interest, it is up to us to point out this hypocrisy and appeal to the workers that they and they alone can run a democracy (as opposed to the "experts"). To paraphrase another famous revolutionary, "Socialists have not come here to abolish the law but to fulfill it."


The Chinese state owns 98% of the banking sector. You may call this state capitalism, state socialism, market socialism, but one thing it is not is capitalism. In the US 98% of the banking sector is owned by private capitalists, although it is subject to some minor regulation. That is capitalism.

To socialists, capitalism is defined by the relative (if not total) predominance of wage labor, commodity production for exchange value, and for-profit enterprises. Whether or not those are controlled by private shareholders, managers, or the state apparatus is (somewhat) irrelevant if we're trying to ascertain the mode-of-production. The Chinese state's (massive) role in the so-called "Chinese Miracle" simply indicates that capitalism is not a static entity; it can "adapt" to the particular constraints that it finds thrust upon itself.


A US capitalist is supposed once to have said, "Give me control of the money supply and I don't care who makes the laws." Marx could not have said it better, and he probably did somewhere.

The quasi-public Federal Reserve controls the money supply in the United States and has done so since 1913; does that mean the US has been a "quasi-socialist" nation for over 100 years? The Bank of England has existed since 1694 and was the subject of Marx's writings regarding public debt; does that mean England was a "quasi-socialist" society since before the days of Marx and Engels? You are conflating "socialism" with "statism", a mistake (or strategy) made by many reactionaries (from plain vanilla conservatives to classical liberals and right-populists).

[RedMaterialist]

"Did capitalism overthrow the apartheid govt in South Africa?" Capitalism is neither a superhero nor an entity, so what's your point? What is the "entity" that overthrew the apartheid? Certainly not communism, but that does not show anything either.

Did capitalism lift 800 million Chinese from poverty?

No other country in the world has gone from a semi-feudal society to fully developed socialism, esp in a world still dominated by capital. China used a mixed economy to develop, in 50 yrs., the world's largest economy and one of the world's most technologically advanced societies. It has done so, in part, by allowing companies like Foxconn to exploit millions of employees, which is exactly what captalism did in the 16th century: convert millions of peasants into factory workers. You can be sure that every computer component leaving Foxconn has been reverse engineered by Chinese scientists. As someone once said, when it comes time to hang the capitalists they will sell you the rope.

You can't develop socialism without fully developing capitalist production. It is as simple as that, unless you live in a world where the capitalists are watching you develop socialism and don't do anything about it.

Just because a state,in the first stages of socialism, uses capitalist techniques of production, such as wage-labor, does not mean that the state is capitalist. If that were the case then Karl Marx would have admitted to being a capitalist in The Gotha Programme.

Apartheid was, in large part, overthrown by SWAPO, a communist party and its military allies, with the help of Angola, Cuba and the Soviet Union. SWAPO, however, made the mistake of trying to take possession of the existing state and make it work, just as Marx told them not to do.

[RedMaterialist]

We all know that the ruling class has little intention of extending "bourgeois values" to the working class because doing so would lead to its destruction. That is why we socialists seek to destroy the ruling class by expanding access to bourgeois values, not restricting them. You are mistaking socialism for reactionary populism; the former opposes liberalism's hypocrisy, whereas the latter opposes liberalism itself.

You want to destroy the capitalists with kindness. Marx described this attitude in the Communist Manifesto:
Marx The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements.

No sane person wants to descend again into the reactionary populism of fascism. However, it appears that insane people are in control of the most militaristic state in history. Can it happen again? 1929 almost happened again.


To paraphrase another famous revolutionary, "Socialists have not come here to abolish the law but to fulfill it."


He said that just before they nailed him to a cross. A later revolutionary said he wanted to abolish capitalism.


The quasi-public Federal Reserve .

The quasi public Fed is only made to appear quasi-public. It is entirely owned by the US private banking system.

[e_e]

Did capitalism lift 800 million Chinese from poverty?

No other country in the world has gone from a semi-feudal society to fully developed socialism, esp in a world still dominated by capital. China used a mixed economy to develop, in 50 yrs., the world's largest economy and one of the world's most technologically advanced societies. It has done so, in part, by allowing companies like Foxconn to exploit millions of employees, which is exactly what captalism did in the 16th century: convert millions of peasants into factory workers. You can be sure that every computer component leaving Foxconn has been reverse engineered by Chinese scientists. As someone once said, when it comes time to hang the capitalists they will sell you the rope.


First of all, what is "fully developed socialism"? Are you stating that China is currently or at some point in history "fully developed" in socialism? What does it even mean?

Secondly, if I interpreted your next few sentences correctly, you are stating that allowing Foxconn to exploit millions of workers has helped China to become the world's most technologically advanced societies with the largest economy, and that is part of industrialization and conversion of peasants into factory workers comparable to the rise of capitalism in the 16th century in West? And therefore allowing millions of workers to be exploited by capitalists will help them hang the people who are exploiting them?

I am sorry but that is too much drivel for me. You are considering that allowing your workers to be exploited by foreign capitalists is somehow a step towards "fully developing socialism". My Gods, how did you think of that? Apparently an increase of quality of life and industrialization in a state that controls its own economy whilst exploiting and oppressing millions of workers is a step towards "socialism". You are ignoring the fact that the Chinese capitalists are the ones exploiting their own damned workers in the first place. You also said something bizarre about how peasants being forced by financial conditions to work in Foxconn factories is a process of converting peasants into workers, therefore...socialism. After being oppressed and exploited, socialism is fully developed and....I cannot even spin this on myself. Seriously. Attributing the increasing number of exploited workers who contribute to a growing economy as socialism is just plain dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.



You can't develop socialism without fully developing capitalist production. It is as simple as that, unless you live in a world where the capitalists are watching you develop socialism and don't do anything about it.

And since China is a stronk socialist state, it has developed capitalist production. But China iz still a stronk socialist state, and no matter what happens I will always refrainz labeling it capitaleest, as ztate capitalizm under the attitude and flag of socializm is alwayz socialist.



Just because a state,in the first stages of socialism, uses capitalist techniques of production, such as wage-labor, does not mean that the state is capitalist. If that were the case then Karl Marx would have admitted to being a capitalist in The Gotha Programme.

How much does a socialist state has to do to be called capitalist? Let's see, millions of oppressed workers, check. State run capitalist enterprises, check. Capitalist market, check. Imperialism for the benefits of state-run enterprises, check. Not enough? Dammit. Also how much longer are we gonna be stuck in the first stages of socialism, and while is my average proletarian working condition getting worse?



Apartheid was, in large part, overthrown by SWAPO, a communist party and its military allies, with the help of Angola, Cuba and the Soviet Union. SWAPO, however, made the mistake of trying to take possession of the existing state and make it work, just as Marx told them not to do.

So hurr durr communism stopped apartheid in Africa

[ComradeAllende]

You want to destroy the capitalists with kindness.

If you think I'm one of those types that believes in parliamentary reform or nonviolent protest or shit like that, you're wrong. Its useful, but systemic change only happens when you destroy the old system, and that requires violence. I'm just saying that we have to retain some semblance of decency and respect. Tough decisions will have to be made that may compromise the bourgeois values that many people hold dear; that does not mean that we reject those values. The revolutionaries in postcolonial Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America rejected those values (some out of conviction, others out of necessity), and now they're looked on as pariahs and despots. Plus how are we gonna gather support in Western countries by rejecting bourgeois values like liberty and equality? People in the West believe deeply in the liberal personality-cult that haunts their civic cultures, particularly here in the US; we can't expect them to reject that after years of living in this socially-constructed world.


No sane person wants to descend again into the reactionary populism of fascism. However, it appears that insane people are in control of the most militaristic state in history. Can it happen again? 1929 almost happened again.

1929 can always happen. Never underestimate the desperation of people who think they have nothing to lose by backing a slick demagogue who promises to make them feel better.


He said that just before they nailed him to a cross. A later revolutionary said he wanted to abolish capitalism.

Can't both of them be connected? I mean, I know Marxism tends to lead to atheism, and I'm not religious by any definition, but I remember reading a book as young kid that said that God was a communism because of the egalitarianism of heaven. Hell, that's how the Sandinistas gathered support in Latin America; relying on the priests who preached about justice and equality and brotherly love.


The quasi public Fed is only made to appear quasi-public. It is entirely owned by the US private banking system.

It is, although that would assume that the state (or "public sector") is independent from the banking system (and the capitalist class as a whole), when in reality the two are blurred and tend to have similar (though not identical) interests.

[Luís Henrique]

I've heard this many times – that capitalism lifted 800 million since the free[er] market was introduced into China. Is this true? If so, why advocate communism and/or planned economics when it seems that capitalism and free markets have outdone planned economies?

More interesting is the obvious question, "why did China need a Communist revolution, and half century rule by a Communist party to actually become a capitalist country?"

Apologists of capitalism in the abstract are always out of their depth when you factor history into the discussion.

Luís Henrique

[willowtooth]

Can't both of them be connected? I mean, I know Marxism tends to lead to atheism, and I'm not religious by any definition, but I remember reading a book as young kid that said that God was a communism because of the egalitarianism of heaven. Hell, that's how the Sandinistas gathered support in Latin America; relying on the priests who preached about justice and equality and brotherly love.

Religion itself was created to preserve capital, heaven being egalitarian is complete and utter nonsense, to anybody who studied the bible for awhile, or the religous texts of any religion for that matter, will find that is extremely hierarchical, anytime someone says Christianity is egalitarian I point to the pope, and if they keep talking I throw a fossil just over their head lol

[RedMaterialist]

How much does a socialist state has to do to be called capitalist? Let's see, millions of oppressed workers, check. State run capitalist enterprises, check. Capitalist market, check. Imperialism for the benefits of state-run enterprises, check. Not enough? Dammit. Also how much longer are we gonna be stuck in the first stages of socialism, and while is my average proletarian working condition getting worse?

State run capitalist enterprises? No, those are privately run capitalist enterprises. Capitalist market? No, a mixed socialist/capitalist market. Imperialism for state-run enterprises? No. Imperialism is what happened to China between 1850 and 1950. A century of wars, mass slaughter, starvation, and the Rape of Nanking.

The state owns the largest industries and plans the overall economy. And also uses part of the wealth generated by private enterprises to fund the massive military needed to prevent re-imperialism by the west (with the help of Japan.)

They asked the Chinese leadership how long they were going to be stuck in the first stages of socialism. They said maybe a 100 yrs. The Chinese take the long view of history.

The proletariat in factories like Foxconn are developing a social consciousness just like all workers do under capitalist conditions of production. If the Chinese Communist Party continues to allow working conditions to degenerate, then it will suffer the same fate as the Soviet Communist Party. [/QUOTE]


So hurr durr communism stopped apartheid in Africa

It sure wasn't hee haw liberalism that ended it.

[ComradeAllende]

Religion itself was created to preserve capital, heaven being egalitarian is complete and utter nonsense, to anybody who studied the bible for awhile, or the religious texts of any religion for that matter, will find that is extremely hierarchical, anytime someone says Christianity is egalitarian I point to the pope, and if they keep talking I throw a fossil just over their head lol

Religion could not have been "created" to preserve capital because religion (as anthropologists understand it) was created thousands of years before the development of capitalism. Religion can and most certainly has been used to delude the workers into complacency with the hope of an egalitarian afterlife (and, if all else fails, divide them along sectarian lines). But that does not explain religion in its totality.


Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Religion is more than just an oppressive tool; it is the spiritual sustenance of the working class, without which they crumble in despair. The Jesuit priests spreading liberation theology in Latin America did more to put the fear of God into the likes of Kissinger, Nixon, and Reagan than all the left-wing slogans of the various revolutionary parties there combined. Now I am not an apologist for religion, nor do I buy into such superstitious nonsense, but I do know the social and historical context of religious beliefs in human society.

[Emmett Till]

State run capitalist enterprises? No, those are privately run capitalist enterprises. Capitalist market? No, a mixed socialist/capitalist market. Imperialism for state-run enterprises? No. Imperialism is what happened to China between 1850 and 1950. A century of wars, mass slaughter, starvation, and the Rape of Nanking.

The state owns the largest industries and plans the overall economy. And also uses part of the wealth generated by private enterprises to fund the massive military needed to prevent re-imperialism by the west (with the help of Japan.)

They asked the Chinese leadership how long they were going to be stuck in the first stages of socialism. They said maybe a 100 yrs. The Chinese take the long view of history.

The proletariat in factories like Foxconn are developing a social consciousness just like all workers do under capitalist conditions of production. If the Chinese Communist Party continues to allow working conditions to degenerate, then it will suffer the same fate as the Soviet Communist Party.

And a lot of the Chinese capitalists, a rising and all too influential class, do invest overseas to extract surplus profit from superexploitation. As in Lenin's model of imperialism. Often to considerable Chinese embarrasment.

But that is not the heart of the Chinese economy. Do state run enterprises invest overseas also, in Africa and elsewhere? Yes they do, and they don't turn down profits earned thereby. But they do so for different primary purposes, namely obtaining raw materials for Chinese industry and, of course, to gain friendship and influence overseas.

Which is why the investment terms are almost always far better than European or American overseas investments, and the pay and working conditions for Third World workforces are usually better--though the Chinese state owned corporations usually prefer exporting Chinese workers at Chinese wages. Exportation of labor instead of capital, almost the opposite of Lenin's model of imperialism. I suppose you could call that "worker imperialism," no doubt that's how African workers who don't get those relatively well paid jobs view it.


It sure wasn't hee haw liberalism that ended it.

Ended it? Now you have neo-apartheid instead of apartheid in South Africa, with massacres in Marikana instead of Soweto. Whereas the standard of living of the Chinese masses is vastly higher than before the Revolution, and for that matter quite a bit higher than under Mao, the actual average standard of living of the black South African working class is actually lower than under apartheid, what with much higher unemployment. While the "wabenzis," a black Mercedes Benz owning ANC elite, join the true white rulers of South Africa at the top of the social pyramid.

But though working people made little or no material gains, there were great moral gains, for which much of the credit goes to the Cuban army defeating the South African army at the battle of Cuito Carnavale in Angola.

[Comrade Jacob]

Capitalism, but capitalism used by the Communist party.

[Emmett Till]

More interesting is the obvious question, "why did China need a Communist revolution, and half century rule by a Communist party to actually become a capitalist country?"

Luís Henrique

And the answer is that it didn't. In the era of imperialism it would be absolutely impossible for an underdeveloped country to make the huge strides that China has effected without breaking free of capitalism.

China has a "mixed" economy," and a rising capitalist class, but it is still a transitional society in between capitalism and socialism, where the main means of production are still in the hands of a state that broke the rule of Chinese capitalism in 1949. Mainland Chinese capitalism is mostly "for export," to fill up the shelves of Walmart, not basic to the real Chinese economy.

[Blake's Baby]

How can China possibly be a 'transition between capitalism and socialism', and at the same time be transitioning between feudalism and capitalism?

It's possible to believe neither of these things; or at worst (and very wrongly) one of them; but to believe both at the same time shows a staggrering lack of understanding.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

I've heard this many times – that capitalism lifted 800 million since the free[er] market was introduced into China. Is this true? If so, why advocate communism and/or planned economics when it seems that capitalism and free markets have outdone planned economies?

Meanwhile in China...

this (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides)
this (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/11/12/the-haunting-poetry-of-a-chinese-factory-worker-who-committed-suicide/)
this (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/13/chinese-workers-threaten-mass-suicide.html)
this (http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2015/04/apple-watch-sweatshop-scandal-death-factory-worker-body-discovered-suspected-suicide/)
this (http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/sinosphere/2014/10/17/despite-poverty-efforts-china-still-faces-wealth-gap/?referer=)
this (http://www.poverties.org/poverty-in-china.html)
and this (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China)

[Emmett Till]

How can China possibly be a 'transition between capitalism and socialism', and at the same time be transitioning between feudalism and capitalism?

It's possible to believe neither of these things; or at worst (and very wrongly) one of them; but to believe both at the same time shows a staggrering lack of understanding.

That would be tricky, especially since China was never feudalist in the first place. Feudalism is something that existed in Europe, in Japan, in Ethiopia, and as far as I know noplace else on the entire planet.

And it didn't have an "Asiatic mode of production" either, that being probably Karl Marx's least successful concept.

For those who want to learn something, this being the Learning corner of Revleft after all, I highly recommend Perry Anderson's brilliant "Lineages of the Absolute State," which really ought to be the core textbook for the second half of all the World History college survey courses out there. And his "Passages from Antiquity" for the first half.

[Luís Henrique]

That would be tricky, especially since China was never feudalist in the first place. Feudalism is something that existed in Europe, in Japan, in Ethiopia, and as far as I know noplace else on the entire planet.

Right. But Blake's Baby question remains, if reworded:

How can a country be transitioning into capitalism (from a pre-capitalist status quo, feudal or otherwise) and out from capitalism (into some kind of socialism, I presume)?

Even if so, it very much looks like the first transition (into capitalism) deserves an "A" grade, being extremely successful - but the second transition is looking like an "F" grade in the making, with no signs of actual abolition of generalised commodity production, of labour alienation, of surplus value production, of capitalist exploitation of workers.


And it didn't have an "Asiatic mode of production" either, that being probably Karl Marx's least successful concept.

To be fair, while I certainly agree that it isn't very successful, I don't think it is from Karl Marx either. What little Marx wrote on the subject (link here (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/precapitalist/ch01.htm)) seems to me to point into a very different direction - that of three different ways (ancient, Germanic, "Asiatic") in which primitive communist societies broke up and transitioned into class societies. True, "ancient" transition brought slaverism, "Germanic" transition (combined with the collapse of a centralised slave-based empire) brought feudalism, and it is possible to speculate that "Asiatic" transition should have brought us a third, "Asiatic", mode of production. But that is already reading into Marx, instead of reading Marx.


For those who want to learn something, this being the Learning corner of Revleft after all, I highly recommend Perry Anderson's brilliant "Lineages of the Absolute State," which really ought to be the core textbook for the second half of all the World History college survey courses out there. And his "Passages from Antiquity" for the first half.

That. Those are absolutely wonderful books; no one can call him or herself a historian, or a knowledgeable Marxist, without having read those. And since I have defended Marx in the paragraph above, it is necessary to say that their criticism of Marx's limited knowledge of all things "Asian" (meaning, in fact, "non-European") is spot on.

Luís Henrique

[Blake's Baby]

Indeed. If China is not transitioning from feudalism into capitalism, then from what is it transitioning into capitalism? In order to have a 'rising capitalist class' capitalism must be developing inside some other system. What do you think that system is?

How then can it be transitioning both into and simultaneously out of capitalism? Into what is it transitioning, apart from capitalism?

I think it's easier to say that it is capitalism rater than 'both pre- and post-capitalism'.

[Emmett Till]

Indeed. If China is not transitioning from feudalism into capitalism, then from what is it transitioning into capitalism? In order to have a 'rising capitalist class' capitalism must be developing inside some other system. What do you think that system is?

How then can it be transitioning both into and simultaneously out of capitalism? Into what is it transitioning, apart from capitalism?

I think it's easier to say that it is capitalism rater than 'both pre- and post-capitalism'.

Well, now that your question has been reformulated a bit with Luis's help, it's possible to answer it.

The world as a whole, economically speaking, has entered the final stage of capitalism, monopoly-financial bank-driven imperialism. Capital has penetrated everywhere, and even the first Chinese Revolution of 1911 could not have happened otherwise.

The Second Chinese Revolution of the 1926, which ended up bringing the KMT, the party of the Chinese bourgeoisie, to power, would have brought the working class to power were it not for Stalinist misleadership. Had it succeeded, then I suppose indeed you would have had a society that you would agree would be slowly (probably very slowly) transitioning from a pre-capitalist social structure to socialism, no doubt going through a NEP-style semi-capitalistic period on the way.

The Third Chinese Revolution uprooted Chinese capitalism, and indeed uprooted the Chinese capitalists, most of whom fled to Taiwan, creating a society in transition between capitalism and socialism. The 1949 Revolution, like the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, did almost immediately annihilate all precapitalist relations in society and politics. No "transitional period between 'feudalism' and capitalism" really at all.

Are there vestiges of pre-capitalist China in modern China? Well, there's a lot of talk about Confucius, but that's merely in the realm of ideology, and what's more the official ideology is still Stalinist "Marxism-Leninism," which the regime is currently waging an ideological campaign to reinforce. Essentially, there are no real traces of "feudalism" or whatever you want to call in in modern China. Damn few in Taiwan for that matter, as the CIA found it convenient to get rid of them, and the KMT went along, as the place had been a Japanese colony after all, so they were all in favor of getting rid of the local landlords tied to Japan not the KMT. (Said pro-Japanese former landlords and compradors being the main social base of the "Taiwan independence" movement.)

According to Trotsky's permanent revolution theory, which I imagine you have heard of, in the era of imperialism the "bourgeois" tasks of a "bourgeois democratic revolution" can only be accomplished despite and against the bourgeoisie. As happened in 1917 in Russia and in 1949 in China.

However, since the People's Republic, unlike the Soviet Union, was *born* bureaucratically deformed, the arrow of motion has been back to capitalism. If the CCP is overthrown and the brand new mainland capitalist class and its blood brothers in Hong Kong and Taiwan take over, you will have a thoroughly capitalist China. Just like Putin's Russia, where the feudal nobility who were the dominant class of Tsarist Russia are nowhere to be seen.

So, to answer your question directly, no, there are not now and have never been two different transitions between social systems going on at the same time in China.

What is the social system within which a rising mainland capitalist class has been developing? Well, just like Russia in the 1920s, it is a social system with elements of both capitalism and socialism, in transition between them. The capitalist elements are a lot stronger in China, but the difference is quantitative not qualitative. Be it noted that in raw sociological terms, the working class in China is a lot larger in percentage terms (and of course vastly larger numerically) and has much more weight in society than did the battered Soviet working class of the 1920s.

The difference between a "healthy" workers state on the Lenin model and a degenerated or deformed workers state on the Stalin model is, fundamentally, in which direction the arrow of development points, forward to socialism or backwards to capitalism.

[Blake's Baby]

Oh good monkeys. Do you consider yourself a Marxist at all? If so, can yopu reconcile what you've written above with the Critique of the Gotha Programme, particularly Part IV? If you can't do so, please can you explain what you reject of the Critique, and on what basis?

Do you think that there was actually a revolution in China in 1949? What about Mao's victory in the Chinese Civil War was in any way related to the proletariat coming to power?

[Emmett Till]

Oh good monkeys. Do you consider yourself a Marxist at all? If so, can yopu reconcile what you've written above with the Critique of the Gotha Programme, particularly Part IV? If you can't do so, please can you explain what you reject of the Critique, and on what basis?

Do you think that there was actually a revolution in China in 1949? What about Mao's victory in the Chinese Civil War was in any way related to the proletariat coming to power?

Do you really think there wasn't a revolution in China? Are you joking, or just totally detached from reality?

The bourgeoisie and the landlords were pretty soon expropriated, and the forms of property that came out of the Russian Revolution of 1917, surely a proletarian revolution by just about anyone's standards, were adopted in China. Those forms of property correspond to the social dominion of the proletariat over Chinese society, as subsequent events clearly demonstrated by the way.Social, not political, the Chinese proletariat under Mao and his successors has as little direct political power as the French capitalists under the Bonapartes.

You are complaining that the Chinese proletariat played no direct role in the revolution? True enough, but irrelevant.

Japan had a bourgeois revolution, the Meiji restoration, in which the bourgeoisie played hardly any role at all. Hell, it was carried out by the samurai, a feudal class.

How can such things happen? Well, read Engels's "The Role of Force in History," where he explains how Bismarck, a feudalist reactionary, found himself in the position of carrying out a bourgeois revolution in Germany. The world is a complicated place, this is why Marx preferred dialectics to formal logic.

As for Part IV of the Critique, I fail to see the relevance, as even Mao did not claim that China was a communist society.

[RedMaterialist]

Those forms of property correspond to the social dominion of the proletariat over Chinese society, as subsequent events clearly demonstrated by the way....

You are complaining that the Chinese proletariat played no direct role in the revolution? True enough, but irrelevant.



In 1950 there was virtually no proletariat class in China, only a huge peasant class which Mao organized and led to destroy feudal society. Also destroyed was the small, nascent bourgeois class. After the revolution a dictatorship of the peasant class was established, something which sounds impossible, but, like the revolution in undeveloped Russia, it happened.

From 1950 to 1980 the Chinese state imported millions of peasants from the countryside and turned them into workers who built gigantic dams, huge empty cities, nuclear power plants, etc. Thus, a working class was created. How was the state going to employ, house, feed these hundreds of millions of people? They could take the Stalinist approach and set up thousands of state managed factories or take the Leninist approach and maintain control over the giant industries and import capitalists from Taiwan to develop consumer industries.

The Chinese probably thought, like everybody else in 1990, that the Soviet Union collapsed because of the inefficiency of the Stalinist bureaucracy. They took the Leninist approach and filled the empty cities with consumers. They also built the largest economy on the planet.

Is it possible that China will become infected with large scale capitalism and that one day FoxConn, Apple and Chase will own the country? China is like a person who was born with a defective heart valve. They have grafted onto the heart the valve of a dead capitalist. Yes, it is possible that the body will reject the valve.

The next logical transition will be for the state to appropriate the FoxConn factories, throw the capitalists out and begin producing its own computers, in other words, a complete transition to full scale state-capitalism, in the Leninist-Trotskyist meaning, and then a transition to socialism followed by communism, unless, of course there is a repeat of the Soviet experience.

[Antiochus]

Is it possible that China will become infected with large scale capitalism and that one day FoxConn, Apple and Chase will own the country? China is like a person who was born with a defective heart valve. They have grafted onto the heart the valve of a dead capitalist. Yes, it is possible that the body will reject the valve.

The next logical transition will be for the state to appropriate the FoxConn factories, throw the capitalists out and begin producing its own computers, in other words, a complete transition to full scale state-capitalism, in the Leninist-Trotskyist meaning, and then a transition to socialism followed by communism, unless, of course there is a repeat of the Soviet experience.

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/288/625/69c.png

Inb4 I get a 'warning'. As if posting a meme is more ridiculous than what is going on in this thread.

[Emmett Till]

In 1950 there was virtually no proletariat class in China, only a huge peasant class which Mao organized and led to destroy feudal society. Also destroyed was the small, nascent bourgeois class. After the revolution a dictatorship of the peasant class was established, something which sounds impossible, but, like the revolution in undeveloped Russia, it happened.

From 1950 to 1980 the Chinese state imported millions of peasants from the countryside and turned them into workers who built gigantic dams, huge empty cities, nuclear power plants, etc. Thus, a working class was created. How was the state going to employ, house, feed these hundreds of millions of people? They could take the Stalinist approach and set up thousands of state managed factories or take the Leninist approach and maintain control over the giant industries and import capitalists from Taiwan to develop consumer industries.

The Chinese probably thought, like everybody else in 1990, that the Soviet Union collapsed because of the inefficiency of the Stalinist bureaucracy. They took the Leninist approach and filled the empty cities with consumers. They also built the largest economy on the planet.

Is it possible that China will become infected with large scale capitalism and that one day FoxConn, Apple and Chase will own the country? China is like a person who was born with a defective heart valve. They have grafted onto the heart the valve of a dead capitalist. Yes, it is possible that the body will reject the valve.

The next logical transition will be for the state to appropriate the FoxConn factories, throw the capitalists out and begin producing its own computers, in other words, a complete transition to full scale state-capitalism, in the Leninist-Trotskyist meaning, and then a transition to socialism followed by communism, unless, of course there is a repeat of the Soviet experience.

None of that is possible as long as the CCP is in power. There is a blood line between the revolutionary Marxism of Lenin and Trotsky and Stalinism, whether of the Russian or Chinese variety. Practically all of the old revolutionaries who led the 1917 Revolution were exterminated by Stalin in the 1930s. As you had a peasant revolution rather than a workers revolution in 1949, that was much less necessary for Mao, the Chinese Trotskyists were usually just given 20 year prison sentences instead of murdered.

China needs a revolution, but only a political revolution analogous to the American bourgeois revolution of 1776, not a full blown social revolution like the French or Russian, as the fundamental social system is not capitalist.

It is not true that there was no proletariat in 1949 in China. It is true that after decades of Japanese and KMT massacres, mass starvation and social disintegration, it was not only much weaker than now, but much weaker than in the 1920s, when Chinese workers did play a leading role in the 1926 Revolution, misled by Stalin into supporting Chiang Kai-Shek with disastrous consequences.

But the memory of that experience facilitated the creation of a bureaucratically-deformed workers state, erected by peasant guerillas who usually had started out as urban working class revolutionaries and socialist intellectuals. It was a peasant revolution, but few CCP leaders actually had peasant backgrounds.

"The Chinese," i.e. Deng and his coterie, thought that the Soviet Union collapsed because Gorbachev hadn't cracked down hard enough. A "mistake" they did not make in Tienanmen Square.

[Blake's Baby]

There was no revolution in China. There was a civil war and a coup. A different section of the capitalist class took power - one based on a militarised peasantry. It was still capitalist.

A revolution is when class relations are overthrown and a new class comes to power. This did not happen in China (because the working class was all but destroyed by the KMT, when Mao was working for them).

[Armchair Partisan]

There was no revolution in China. There was a civil war and a coup. A different section of the capitalist class took power - one based on a militarised peasantry. It was still capitalist.

A revolution is when class relations are overthrown and a new class comes to power. This did not happen in China (because the working class was all but destroyed by the KMT, when Mao was working for them).

There was no social revolution in China, perhaps, but I think it's pretty silly to say there was no political revolution. A very different sort of capitalism developed after Chiang fell, with a very different support base and internal mechanics. A coup requires a part of the existing government (most likely the military) to suddenly assume power. Mao's rebellion was a peasant insurrection and definitely formed from the opposition to the government.

[Blake's Baby]

When the revolution in China was defeated (1927), Mao was working as an agricultural advisor to the KMT. He was part of the Chinese ruling class.

A 'revolution' is the replacement of one class by another class, not a shift in power inside the ruling class from one faction to another. There was no revolution in China.

'Opposition to the government...'? In 2008 or whenever it was, the US electoral college replaced the Republican President with a Democratic President. Under your criteria, this was a 'revolution'.

[Quantumus]

State run capitalist enterprises? No, those are privately run capitalist enterprises. Capitalist market? No, a mixed socialist/capitalist market. Imperialism for state-run enterprises? No. Imperialism is what happened to China between 1850 and 1950. A century of wars, mass slaughter, starvation, and the Rape of Nanking.

The state owns the largest industries and plans the overall economy. And also uses part of the wealth generated by private enterprises to fund the massive military needed to prevent re-imperialism by the west (with the help of Japan.)

They asked the Chinese leadership how long they were going to be stuck in the first stages of socialism. They said maybe a 100 yrs. The Chinese take the long view of history.

The proletariat in factories like Foxconn are developing a social consciousness just like all workers do under capitalist conditions of production. If the Chinese Communist Party continues to allow working conditions to degenerate, then it will suffer the same fate as the Soviet Communist Party.



It sure wasn't hee haw liberalism that ended it.[/QUOTE]

As long as in an enterprise everything is decided by a management with labor treated as a commerce in a market (even loosely regulated) is a first sign of capitalism. Furthermore management is a way of ownership. The directors of large state companies, almost always members of the communist party, choose what their huge wages will be (or take huge sums in a black economy only they participate) and have large fortunes not only inside China but also outside of the country.

The wages and prices are controlled by the state apparatus but in the context of a global market and of the huge trade exchanges with other countries. With the only purpose of accumulation and reproduction of capital, as an an end in itself. That is also clearly capitalism (the core definition of it) The wealth produced is not spent and invested for social and human development and well-being. And when this is done is done up to a point because it fits the needs of profits and accumulation of capital.

Chinese "communist" party scams the people by saying that is a needed phase for future socialism. I dont think anyone buy is it. It is a phase of a tremendous accumulation of wealth for relatively few, that owns and manage this wealth with indirect methods just typically different than the western capitalists. (members of CPC)

I think it smells and sounds like capitalism to me and has nothing to do with socialism.

[Quantumus]

As long as in an enterprise everything is decided by a management with labor treated as a commerce in a market (even loosely regulated) is a first sign of capitalism. Furthermore management is a way of ownership. The directors of large state companies, almost always members of the communist party, choose what their huge wages will be (or take huge sums in a black economy only they participate) and have large fortunes not only inside China but also outside of the country.

The wages and prices are controlled by the state apparatus but in the context of a global market and of the huge trade exchanges with other countries. With the only purpose of accumulation and reproduction of capital, as an an end in itself. That is also clearly capitalism (the core definition of it) The wealth produced is not spent and invested for social and human development and well-being. And when this is done is done up to a point because it fits the needs of profits and accumulation of capital.

Chinese "communist" party scams the people by saying that is a needed phase for future socialism. I dont think anyone buy is it. It is a phase of a tremendous accumulation of wealth for relatively few, that owns and manage this wealth with indirect methods just typically different than the western capitalists. (members of CPC)

I think it smells and sounds like capitalism to me and has nothing to do with socialism.

[Comrade #138672]

Capitalism is a certain stage in development. The next stage is communism.

[Comrade #138672]

Inb4 I get a 'warning'. As if posting a meme is more ridiculous than what is going on in this thread.You will get a warning regardless (read the rules; the moderators are very strict here). If you think the thread is ridiculous, it is up to you to show why it is, instead of posting over-used memes.

[RedMaterialist]

As long as in an enterprise everything is decided by a management with labor treated as a commerce in a market (even loosely regulated) is a first sign of capitalism.

It can also be the first sign of a transition from capitalism to socialism, as Marx demonstrated in The Gotha Programme. Labor is still treated as commerce, as a commodity, the workers are paid different wages for different work. The first stage of socialism has many of the characteristics ("birthmarks") of the old system (capitalism) out of which it is developing.

It is true that everything is decided by management, but means of production, esp. the gigantic sectors of the economy, are no longer privately owned, they are owned by the state. The essential difference, in my view, is that under capitalism the means of production are privately owned, in socialism the ownership is first by the state then social.

As far as the super-wealthy Chinese party officials here is an article (http://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-high-ranking-officials-businessmen-salaries-still-too-high-critics-1223295) showing that the Chinese Prime Minister makes about $20K per year and the CEO of China's (and the world's) most profitable bank making about $200K. It's hard to find information about exactly how much Chinese govt officials make. Everybody seems to believe the entire Communist Party is made up of US dollar billionaires.


Furthermore management is a way of ownership. The directors of large state companies, almost always members of the communist party, choose what their huge wages will be (or take huge sums in a black economy only they participate) and have large fortunes not only inside China but also outside of the country.


What specific evidence with web page sites do you have for that?


The wages and prices are controlled by the state apparatus but in the context of a global market and of the huge trade exchanges with other countries. With the only purpose of accumulation and reproduction of capital, as an an end in itself. That is also clearly capitalism (the core definition of it) The wealth produced is not spent and invested for social and human development and well-being. And when this is done is done up to a point because it fits the needs of profits and accumulation of capital.


Again, what evidence? The question is not whether capital is accumulated, but rather who owns that capital. In China the state owns almost all of it. The state then decides how to re-invest it. They have been accumulating and re-investing it for the past 30 yrs or so and they now have the largest economy in the world. Life expectancy went from 45 in 1968 to 75 today, with the biggest increase between 1960 and 1970. (http://countryeconomy.com/demography/life-expectancy/china) The average Chinese 6 yr old today is two inches taller than in 1960. Beginning around 1960 the Chinese began making huge investments in modernising farm production. The last Chinese famine was in 1959-62. I saw somewhere that the average per capita consumption of pork was 3/4 pound per day. Today China exports food.

Everybody knows about the Chinese education system.

No social or human investment?



I think it smells and sounds like capitalism to me and has nothing to do with socialism.

It smells and sounds like capitalism because it is still developing out of capitalism.

[oneday]

As far as the super-wealthy Chinese party officials here is an article (http://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-high-r...ritics-1223295) showing that the Chinese Prime Minister makes about $20K per year and the CEO of China's (and the world's) most profitable bank making about $200K. It's hard to find information about exactly how much Chinese govt officials make. Everybody seems to believe the entire Communist Party is made up of US dollar billionaires.

From your own link:


Take the president of China International Marine Containers, Mai Boliang, who was the best paid among high-ranking managers of the nation’s SOEs, making $1.6 million in the same year the company reported a 47 percent drop in net profits. The People’s Daily reported that while salary raises increased for executives 13-fold over a period of four years, wages for regular employees increased by only 32 percent.

Government officials, on the other hand, are perhaps worse (or better?) at disguising their wealth, despite having deceptively low salaries. Aside from President Xi, another top official, Premier Wen Jiabao, was recently said to have a hidden trove of wealth estimated at $2.7 million, despite a similarly meager official annual salary. Fallen political leader and tabloid headliner Bo Xilai had an official salary of $1,600 a month. According to Bloomberg, his family still owned assets valued at $130 million.

From this source: http://www.icij.org/offshore/leaked-records-reveal-offshore-holdings-chinas-elite and this http://time.com/1374/offshore-wealth-of-chinas-leaders/

apparently about 22,000 of the top party elites hold between 1 and 4 trillion in private offshore assets. That's between 45 and 180 million each if it was divided evenly among them. That's just their assets kept in tax-havens, they may also have substantial wealth still within China.

[John Nada]

When the revolution in China was defeated (1927), Mao was working as an agricultural advisor to the KMT. He was part of the Chinese ruling class.

A 'revolution' is the replacement of one class by another class, not a shift in power inside the ruling class from one faction to another. There was no revolution in China.

'Opposition to the government...'? In 2008 or whenever it was, the US electoral college replaced the Republican President with a Democratic President. Under your criteria, this was a 'revolution'.Mao was "part of the ruling class" in the same way August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Karl Liebknecht were "part of the ruling class" for being in the Kaiser's Reichstag under your criteria. His "agriculture advice" to the Kuomintang and CCP was for the poor peasants to seize land from the landlords and execute counterrevolutionaries if necessary. He barely escaped alive as "just an agricultural advisor" when the Kuomintang massacred Communists, rural proletarians and poor peasants in Hunan just as ruthlessly as crushing the Shanghai Commune.

Global proletarian socialist revolution(that has yet to happen) isn't the only type of revolution. Marx and Engels always recognized the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism as real revolutions. And all vestiges of feudalism were completely crushed in the Chinese Revolution, even if moving it towards a proletarian socialist revolution(where the proletariat was a tiny minority for no fault of their own) completely failed.

[Comrade #138672]

It can also be the first sign of a transition from capitalism to socialism, as Marx demonstrated in The Gotha Programme. Labor is still treated as commerce, as a commodity, the workers are paid different wages for different work. The first stage of socialism has many of the characteristics ("birthmarks") of the old system (capitalism) out of which it is developing.

It is true that everything is decided by management, but means of production, esp. the gigantic sectors of the economy, are no longer privately owned, they are owned by the state. The essential difference, in my view, is that under capitalism the means of production are privately owned, in socialism the ownership is first by the state then social.

As far as the super-wealthy Chinese party officials here is an article (http://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-high-ranking-officials-businessmen-salaries-still-too-high-critics-1223295) showing that the Chinese Prime Minister makes about $20K per year and the CEO of China's (and the world's) most profitable bank making about $200K. It's hard to find information about exactly how much Chinese govt officials make. Everybody seems to believe the entire Communist Party is made up of US dollar billionaires.



What specific evidence with web page sites do you have for that?



Again, what evidence? The question is not whether capital is accumulated, but rather who owns that capital. In China the state owns almost all of it. The state then decides how to re-invest it. They have been accumulating and re-investing it for the past 30 yrs or so and they now have the largest economy in the world. Life expectancy went from 45 in 1968 to 75 today, with the biggest increase between 1960 and 1970. (http://countryeconomy.com/demography/life-expectancy/china) The average Chinese 6 yr old today is two inches taller than in 1960. Beginning around 1960 the Chinese began making huge investments in modernising farm production. The last Chinese famine was in 1959-62. I saw somewhere that the average per capita consumption of pork was 3/4 pound per day. Today China exports food.

Everybody knows about the Chinese education system.

No social or human investment?




It smells and sounds like capitalism because it is still developing out of capitalism.The same site also has this article: China's Hidden Wealth Estimated At $2.34 Trillion (http://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-hidden-wealth-estimated-234-trillion-1117337?rel=rel1)


And now it seems that a lot of those mysterious money-makers could be in China. According to research by economics scholar Wang Xiaolu, China’s citizens do not report an estimated $2.3 trillion of what they earn each year. This “gray income” represents nearly 20 percent of the nation’s GDP.

Also:


The NPC itself is home to some of China’s wealthiest citizens. According to the same Hurun report, among the delegates gathered in Beijing, 31 people have more than $1 billion in personal assets each. And according to a report by the Financial Times, an additional 52 billionaires are delegates to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory board that meets during the NPC conference. That means a total of 83 billionaires sitting in parliamentary positions.

As much as I would like to believe that China truly is transitioning to communism, I don't think that is quite true.