So with the 1970s reforms the CPC allowed foreign companies and capitalism to come into the PRC, reducing the equality of workers with the owners, regressing closer to capitalism from socialism. These companies obviously exploit the Chinese workers to make giant profits. Even today there is a strong 996 work culture in the PRC. Does this amount to Chinese Revolution being exploited? I just feel uneasy about it.
A revolution can not be “exploited”, you mean Chinese workers? They’re doing incredibly well, and the long-term strategies of SWCC have avoided the fateful low-wage trap that nearly every poorer capitalist global south nation is suffering under. Sources:
Workers rights
- The real wage (IE the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. The US real wage by comparison is lower in 2019 than it was in 1973.
- Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
- US Life expectancy peaked in 2015, is on the decline, and is now lower than in China. 2
- Wages themselves are forced to rise in the private sector by the CPC (+16% every years, +400% since 1980) who force the capitalists to accept the presence of CPC chapters who represent the interest of the workers, increasing workers control even in the capitalist parts of the economy.
- Eliminated Urban Poverty. On track to eliminate all poverty within a decade.
- CGTN documentary - China’s war on poverty
- Trade union laws of the PRC.
- The west views China as one big sweatshop, but the actual working hours aren’t much more than anywhere else. The average for a migrant worker (most vulnerable to exploitation as they are traveling from the countryside) is 8.8 hours, little under an hour more than a typical working day. Labor strikes are rarely suppressed, and usually get the support of the PRC.
- The workplace safety standards of China are better than in the capitalist countries of the West like in Australia who have an higher rate of work related death despite having a GDP per capita 3-5 times higher.
- /u/cheezicle - My experience as a factory worker in a Chinese “sweatshop”
- 70% of Chinese millenials own their own home, and 91% as of 2021 plan to buy their own home within the next 5 years.
- In a typical example of proletarian police accountability, the CPC sentences a police officer to death for killing a pregnant woman in a restaurant in southern China.
- The US is losing to China: “Washington is actually far more corrupt than Beijing. If you want to get something done in Washington, you do what you do in Jakarta: just slip some money to the right people.”
- Hudson and Escobar - The consequences of moving from Industrial to Finance Capital in the US
- Hudson and Escobar - China, the US, Russia - Finance capitalism, Industrial capitalism, and rent seeking
Bless you Comrade!
You’re doing God’s work! May Lenin bless you Comrade!
Absolutely spectacular mega thread. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Order_of_Lenin_badge_with_ribbon.png ![ (https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/2c79211a-a5fe-41d7-aa27-7d3ed31a027d.png) Take this, you’ve earned it
minqi li was a student during 89 and, like many fellow students, took the liberal -> maoist pipeline in the immediate aftermath (the other half went full fash). he now works at university of utah as an economics professor in the wallersteinian tradition and has published several books regarding china’s current and future roles in the capitalist world system.
the tldr from him is that it’s not looking good and that the imperial core of the capitalist system was moving towards china pre-2019. this was in the process of causing a shitload of issues with regards to overproduction as well as the physical limitations of the biosphere that could very much have resulted in the final contradiction of capitalism.
but then covid happened after his last book and maoist hardliners and their policies got a big boost domestically and it’s currently too early to tell in which direction the country will go from here, so who tf knows?
From what I heard, there are capitalists in the lowest rungs of the party, but none above that first level
I am over the moon because of the CPC’s diligence against capitalism in the party nowadays.
My opinions are, I’d assume, different from a majority of people here from what I’ve seen. I’m not a fan of China’s socio-economic direction, as you pointed out the reforms enacted have not had the best results for the people of China and the socialist structures of the nation.
I don’t think its fully hopeless though - there are still a fair number of hardline Maoists, and the influence of communism on the nation’s culture definitely can’t be denid. You see a lot of instances where there is definitely potential to return to a more hardline path that is willing to confront capital directly rather than try to work inside of the system.
I’m not a fan of China’s socio-economic direction, as you pointed out the reforms enacted have not had the best results for the people of China and the socialist structures of the nation.
Chinese people are doing better than ever, their wages have gone up 4x in the past 25 years ( see my sources above ). What proof do you have that Chinese workers are doing worse under the CPC?
Also, the Chinese people vehemently disagree with you:
- In contrast to low US political approval ratings, 96% of Chinese are satisfied with the national government (Edelmans 2016). World Values Surveys says that 83% think the country is run for their benefit rather than for the benefit of special groups. A Harvard research center study of long-term public opinion survey finds that > 95% of Chinese citizens approved their government.
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Secondly, this is an educational community. No sources = your comments or posts will get removed.
I don’t know if I am allowed to link to it since technically you have to ‘buy it’, but the book “China: From Permanent Revolution to Counter-Revolution” by John Peter Roberts was one recommended to me by a Chinese friend whose family left due to their staunch support for Maoism. Lovell’s work as well (I think its just called “Maoism”).
Also the fact that China, out of pragmatism, joined institutions like the IMF and World Bank. They also supported Nepal’s royalists in the Civil War http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4469508.stm which I find to be far too pragmatic for my tastes. I am not saying China needs to be overthrown, that its a totalist hellhole, or that its people suffer unduly - I am saying that the actions they have taken have weakened its socialist institutions in favor of ones that see it now locked into ‘pragmatic’ courses where the west can make psychotic threats of starving the entirety of the nation and clipping systems it has become reliant upon.
I know having an ardently anti-Market socialist stance is unlikely to be popular here, but part of what enabled the socialist movement during the Cold War to combat capitalism as it did were institutions like CMEA providing an alternative framework to things like the IMF.
What evidence do you have that China has weakened its socialist institutions? Because state control over the economy remains dominant:
- The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2 The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.
China being a part of the IMF or World bank does not make them a betrayer of socialism: they join those institutions to exert influence and get better trade deals. They also do deals with whatever party is in power in any given country, they even trade with the most evil empire in world history, the US! Isolating yourself from the world economy, refusing to trade with other countries because you disagree with the politics of the ruling party, is pure utopianism that harms citizens of both countries.
More sources:
- Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
- Is modern day china communist? Is it staying true to communist values?
- Didn’t China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn’t it liberalize its economy? Is China’s drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
- Is the CPC committed to communism?
- The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
- The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
- Tsinghua University- Is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics real socialism, or is it state Capitalism?
- Isn’t China revisionist for having a capitalist sector of the economy, and working with capitalists? Why isn’t it fully planned like the USSR was?
- Castro on why both China and Vietnam are socialist countries.