I think a good illustration of this is Jack Ma and Ant group, vs Bezos and Amazon (or corporate America in general). Both in their interactions with consumers, and with their governments.
Western governments bend over backwards to help their corporations fleece consumers. Their antitrust operations are pathetic.
Meanwhile in China, the government has helped Alipay and Wechatpay become the de-facto cash currency infrastructure because it’s a quality of life improvement for people. But as soon as Ant Group started to step out of line (where being ‘out of line’ is not putting public interests first) the government broke it. No kid gloves, no appeasement.
Whenever I’m using Alibaba apps the ads are fucking annoying. But when the ad says ‘we think you’d be interested in this’ it rarely misses because its algorithms are genuinely looking to sell me things I want to buy. In the Amazon app the algorithm is looking to sell me things it wants me to buy. Same with douyin and facebook/ig promoting shit at me. Douyin is eerily accurate because it’s looking for what I want to see while fb is weighing what I want to see against products and politics its sponsors & handlers want to show me.
SWCC’s implementation of capitalism can look very similar to actual capitalism on the surface, but the heavy regulation and policing of the profit motive is transformative on a very fundamental level. The difference is most noticable crossing the Hong Kong-Shenzhen boundary, where the unfettered Western-liberal capitalism is still quite pronounced on the HK side. Fortunately that’s changing, albeit slowly.
Looking at how capitalists are treated in China is a very good indication of what class holds power in society. This is another point a lot of people don’t seem to understand about ML theory, the key goal is to ensure that working class holds power and forms the government that represents the interests of the working majority. We recognize that there will necessarily be a transition period where capitalist relations persist. Thinking otherwise is naive and leads to impractical idealism.
I think a good illustration of this is Jack Ma and Ant group, vs Bezos and Amazon (or corporate America in general). Both in their interactions with consumers, and with their governments.
Western governments bend over backwards to help their corporations fleece consumers. Their antitrust operations are pathetic.
Meanwhile in China, the government has helped Alipay and Wechatpay become the de-facto cash currency infrastructure because it’s a quality of life improvement for people. But as soon as Ant Group started to step out of line (where being ‘out of line’ is not putting public interests first) the government broke it. No kid gloves, no appeasement.
Whenever I’m using Alibaba apps the ads are fucking annoying. But when the ad says ‘we think you’d be interested in this’ it rarely misses because its algorithms are genuinely looking to sell me things I want to buy. In the Amazon app the algorithm is looking to sell me things it wants me to buy. Same with douyin and facebook/ig promoting shit at me. Douyin is eerily accurate because it’s looking for what I want to see while fb is weighing what I want to see against products and politics its sponsors & handlers want to show me.
SWCC’s implementation of capitalism can look very similar to actual capitalism on the surface, but the heavy regulation and policing of the profit motive is transformative on a very fundamental level. The difference is most noticable crossing the Hong Kong-Shenzhen boundary, where the unfettered Western-liberal capitalism is still quite pronounced on the HK side. Fortunately that’s changing, albeit slowly.
Looking at how capitalists are treated in China is a very good indication of what class holds power in society. This is another point a lot of people don’t seem to understand about ML theory, the key goal is to ensure that working class holds power and forms the government that represents the interests of the working majority. We recognize that there will necessarily be a transition period where capitalist relations persist. Thinking otherwise is naive and leads to impractical idealism.