1. Why does China, a socialist country, have mega corporations like Tencent and Bytedance? Are they collectively owned by syndicates or unions? If this is a transitionary phase to socialism, can we trust China to actually enforce Socialism after this stage ends?
  2. Child Labor in factories: Myth or Fact? I have a Chinese friend who said he personally never worked as a child in China, but obviously if this was true not every single kid would have worked in a factory.
  3. Surveillance and Social Credit: are these myths, or are they true? Why would China go so far to implement these systems, surely it'd be far too costly and burdensome for whatever they'd gain from that.
  4. Uighur Muslim genocide: Is this true?

Thank you to anyone who answers, and if you do please cite sources so I can look further into China. I really appreciate it.

edit: I was going to ask about Tiananmen Square, but as it turns out that literally just didn't happen. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html

https://leohezhao.medium.com/notes-for-30th-anniversary-of-tiananmen-incident-f098ef6efbc2

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/

  • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago
    1. Imo, China have essentially introduced a new mode of production that has not been properly analyzed in political economy. You can see this simply by the absence of traditional business cycles as we've witnessed in increasing capitalist economies since the eary 19th century. This mode of production is essentially characterized by a fusion of a massive, dominant public sector with extensive localized capitalization, introduction of private property, commodities and wage labor. Ostensibly, the CPC claim that the purpose of this is to build up the productive forces of the economy in order to lay the ground for a transition to socialism, guided by extensive state planning, intervention, direction, carried out through a massive and dominant public sector in the economy. I personally think they went way too, unecessarily, far, especially in certain sectors of the economy, such as housing, healthcare and education. It is clear that they are aware of these issues, and this is one reason for the increasing tight leash that the CPC is holding over their capitalists and private enterprise, as well as perhaps conditioning the economy is prepare for a long-run transition away from dependence on international capitalism, or shifting their base of economic demand towards the domestic economy and domestic consumption.

    There is also a system of complex distribution of economic management at regional, provincial levels, with the aim of establishing a form of competitive meritocracy among administrations; careers in the CPC are based on performance in such administrations. However the economy is still dominated by the public sector, by the state, thus by the party. A huge chunk, measured in terms of ownership, is in state hands, and the state is also a large co-owner in many huge, formally private, enterprises. The largest banks in the world are Chinese state banks. The state uses extensive planning, regulation, and targeted fiscal and monetary measures, as well as manipulation of financial mechanisms that would be less institutionally acceptable in the West. Also, despite the introduction of capitalistic reforms, the society as a whole, or the mode of production, thus the political system, are not really capitalist in the sense we're familiar with because while capitalists as an economic class do exist in China, they are not politically dominant. The CPC are in charge, and they are not a capitalist class, despite the fact that their immediate interests are now somewhat tied to the capitalistic parts of their economy. Economic policy is thus not necessary, in the final accounting of things, a matter of maximization of profit or profitability. This does raise the question whether or not the party and/or state bureaucracy in China constitute a socio-economic class unto themselves, in the sense that they would have a specific socio-economic function through which they reproduce themselves as a class, and whether they are therefore the dominate class, meaning that they ultimately control production and use of the economic surplus (in the general sense, not necessarily surplus-value).

    As to whether they will actually engage in a genuine transition to socialism, I admit that I'm personally sceptical, and the main reason for this is that I don't think that they have genuinely socialistic democratic institutions.

    • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      For some more context I'm going to copy from previous posts of mine:

      China had greatly economically developed its means of production during the Maoist period, and industrialization had already progressed to a significant degree. See what Amartya Sen, of all people, said about the Maoist period:

      • Because of its radical commitment to the elimination of poverty and to improving living conditions - a commitment in which Maoist as well as Marxist ideas and ideals played an important part - China did achieve many things… [including] The elimination of widespread hunger, illiteracy, and ill health… [a] remarkable reduction in chronic undernourishment… a dramatic reduction of infant and child mortality and a remarkable expansion of longevity.

      • The accomplishments relating to education, health care, land reforms, and social change in the pre-reform [i.e. Maoist] period made significantly positive contributions to the achievements of the post-reform period. This is so in terms of their role not only in sustained high life expectancy and related achievements, but also in providing firm support for economic expansion based on market reforms.

      According to the Journal of Global Health:

      • Life expectancy soared by around 30 years, infant mortality plummeted and smallpox, sexually transmitted diseases and many other infections were either eliminated or decreased massively in incidence... By the mid-1970s, China was already undergoing the epidemiologic transition, years ahead of other nations of similar economic status. This was due to population mobilization, mass campaigns and a focus on sanitation, hygiene, clean water and clean delivery," as well as "clinical care and continuing public health programs to the masses through community-funded medical schemes and the establishment of community-based health workers "

      According to Population Studies

      • China's growth in life expectancy at birth from 35–40 years in 1949 to 65.5 years in 1980 is among the most rapid sustained increases in documented global history... Physician and hospital supply grew dramatically under Mao due to a variety of factors (including increases in government financing, the introduction of social insurance for urban public employees, and the launch of China's Rural Cooperative Medical System in the mid-1950's). Rural Cooperative Medical Schemes (CMS) were vigorously promoted and became widespread in the late 1960's as part of the Cultural Revolution.

      Sen also emphasizes gains in education:

      • China's breakthrough in the field of elementary education had already taken place before the process of economic reform was initiated at the end of the seventies. Census data indicate, for instance, that literacy rates in 1982 for the 15-19 age group were already as high as 96 percent for males and 85 percent for females.

      Finally, see Maurice Meisner (Mao's China and After) to summarize:

      • Yes despite all the failings and setbacks, it is an inescapable historical conclusion that the Maoist era was the time of China's modern industrial revolution. Starting with an industrial base smaller than that of Belgium's in the early 1950's... [China] emerged at the end of the Mao period as one of the six largest industrial producers in the world.

      • The Maoist economic record... compares favorably with comparable stages in the industrialization of Germany, Japan, and Russia - hitherto the most economically successful cases (among major countries) of late industrialization. In Germany the rate of economic growth for the period 1880-1914 was 33 percent per decade. In Japan from 1874-1929 the rate of increase per decade was 43 percent. The Soviet Union over the period 1928-1958 achieved a decadal increase of 54 percent. In China over the years 1952-1972 the decadal rate was 64 percent. This was hardly economic development at "a snail's pace," as foreign journalists persist in misinforming their readers.

      If we understand capital in the Marxist sense as a social relation of self-producing value underwritten sociologically by a class relationship, then it can be argued that this was largely eliminated from China between 1956-1978, before being reintroduced under Deng.

      • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Further shameless copying of my previous posts:

        'China' is not a simple entity about which you can just make simple judgements, tempting as they may be. If you want to understand and be able feel confident in your analytical and political judgements on the different aspects, elements, and socio-economic, political and cultural subsystems that make up the society we call China, then there's no royal road to doing so. 'Without investigation, no right to an opinion'.

        I'll add my two cents on a couple topics you've mentioned:

        • Xinjiang and the Uyghurs: first off, while it would be unreasonable to deny that there has long been evidence of discrimination against Uyghurs in China. China does also, indeed, have a massive security and intelligence apparatus (like every other major state). Unfortunately, abuses are inevitable in such a system. The Chinese prison system remains, imo, given the evidence, very much something that can be criticized, although bear in mind that if you partake in these discussions in liberal company in the West then you'll likely only have the concrete effect of reinforcing your interlocutors sinophobia. There has never, at any point, been any concrete evidence ever produced establishing that there is actual genocide going on in Xinjiang. The claims, their arguments, and supposed sources have been thoroughly debunked. Also, the Chinese state actively engages in cultural conservation/protection programs in Xinjiang. Pretty much all Some Westerner jabbing a camera in someone's face and being ignored, then editing this with a vague image of a grey, concrete building which they're not allowed into, and which the western (eg BBC) media then labels 'torture/gulag centre etc', is not any kind of objective reporting or evidence. It's propaganda, pure and simple, based on racist hermeneutics of suspicion. See Qiao Collective articles for debunking: https://www.qiaocollective.com/

        As others have noted, the West and above all the US have vested interests here, so you should take what they say with massive grains of salt (although, ofc, propaganda is not actually mostly about telling lies, but about not telling truths, or the way that you communicate and present information). Also, by contrast, we do in fact know as a matter of record that the US has been actively supporting potential neoliberal puppet governments in exile and that it has supported Islamist terrorists (and as much as some people on here like to larp as Hamas or the Iranian government members, even just for the bants, these people are the most rabid forces of reaction in their countries. If anyone doubts this I invite you to actually speak to communists and feminists who are active in these countries).

        • On child labour: we can expand this to discussion of wage labor in general; here we have to be honest: the CPC actively made a deal with the devil . I personally think that we both have recognise that this was under pressure from imperialist pressure and the Sino-Soviet split (one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century), and CR traumas, but also a calculated move by factions in the CPC who were objectively reforming (they still took themselves to be communist, and I genuinely think they thought they were engaing in market socialist which would lead to socialism proper). It's worth noting that Reform and Opening up were not the start of Chinese economic development. This had advanced immensely during the Mao era. Personally, I don't think they needed to take this route, and that they opened up far too many areas to capitalistic practices (notably, housing and finance).

        • On LGBT+ issues, it is true that China has very far to go (including the CPC, which in many respects remans socially conservative), as does literally everywhere else. But this does is often overblown and is used to generalize about and thus demonize the entirety of China and every aspect of the CPC. As always, these are processes that take time. What matters is what the actual, concrete, material tendencies are. I think they are. Young Chinese people, especially in urban areas, seem far more progressive in this regard. Unfortunately this sometimes feeds into perceptions that the urban, often more middle class individuals who are both more politically liberal and more open wrt LGBT are evidence that LGBT people are a western, decadent, liberal imposition, which is ofc absolute fucking nonsense.

        • On internet and media censorship, there are areas which make me uneasy, but at the end of the day they have very good reasons to do so. The propaganda-media (which is basically all capitalist media, i.e. almost all of it in the West)

        This obviously raises the very complicated question of the nature of the CPC. This is not an easy question to answer. i'm not going to get too into this now because then I would write an essay, but suffice to say that the modern CPC-state parallel structure has an ambivalent relationship to these issues that are not surmontable (or don't see so to me) in the capitalistic conditions they have decided to tolerate and actively develop. As people have correctly noted, while Chinese development since Reform and Opening Up was influenced by reflection on the NEP in Russia in the 1920s, it is nevertheless not equivalent, because the latter was a form of supposedly state capitalism aimed to develop forces of production in order to soon and quickly nationalize and move to socialism proper, whereas the current Chinese development path is something more akin to a form of economy which is partially state-capitalistic, and which aims at far longer, more evolutionary developments into socialism, from what I understand. The current CPC does, indeed, seem to contain many people who genuinely take themselves to be communists and to be engaging in a long-term, civilizational project of socialist construction. At this time, they are betting on using the concrete mechanisms of industrial capitalism to beat the West at its own capitalistic game. They are in it for the long run and are, imo, far more farsighted than the ruling class in the West. Partly this is due to the fact, while there was substantial bourgeois infiltration in the CPC from the 90s, nevertheless the capitalist class is not itself in political power, and this is what makes it ambiguous and difficult to call it capitalism. My personal view is that we're seeing emerge in China a new form of socio-economic development which requires serious reflection within political economy, because imo it does not seem to be working exactly like other capitalists economies, but nor is it really socialism, even if it aims to develop socialism, and even if it is in fact tending there.

        • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          If you want to look at first hand footage of China's development, I recommend the following documentaries:

          • PBS - China in Revolution (CW: this is a very lib take on the history, especially once the Revolution occurs in 1949, so take with a massive grain of salt the interpretations).
          • How Yukong Moved the Mountains (one of my personal favorite documentaries).
          • West of the Tracks, by Wang Bing (one of the greatest documentaries I have ever watched).
          • Behemoth
          • Ascendance

          Literature (obvs just lib-gen this shit if you cant find free googling):

          • Jonathan Spence: Modern China; a decent, if very lib, general overview. Good intro but take with massive grains of sale
          • Maurice Meisner: Mao's China and After, The Deng Xiaoping Era
          • Cambridge History of Modern China
          • Joan Robinson - The Cultural Revolution in China
          • Charles Bettelheim - Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organization in China ; Questions about China after the Death of Mao Tse-tung
          • Andrew Walder: China Under Mao ; Inside China's Cultural Revolution; A Decade of Upheavel (with Dong Guoqiang) ; The Beijing Red Guard Movement
          • Dongping Han: The Unknown Cultural Revolution
          • William Hinton: A Turning Point in China; The Great Reversal
          • Yang Jisheng - The Great Chinese Famine
          • https://www.qiaocollective.com
          • Wheelright and McFarlane - The Chinese Road to Socialism - The Economics of the Cultural Revolution
          • Mobo Gao - The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution
          • Kelly and Esch - Black Like Mao
          • Alejandro Russo - Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture
          • https://foreignlanguages.press/works-of-maoism/the-great-debate-i-documents-of-the-communist-party-of-china/
          • https://foreignlanguages.press/works-of-maoism/the-great-debate-ii-documents-of-the-communist-party-of-china/
          • Peter Nolan - China's Rise, Russia's Fall
          • Isabelle Weber: How China Escaped Shock Therapy
          • Wei Weig Zhang - Transforming China
          • Pao-Yu Ching: From Victory to Defeat ; Revolution and CounterRevolution
          • Yiching Wu: The Cultural Revolution at the Margins
          • Alain Badiou: Petrograd and Shanghai
          • Moufawad-Paul: A Critique of Maoist Reason
          • Xi Jingping: Governance of China
          • Blanchette: New Red Guards
            • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
              ·
              1 year ago

              I mean they aren't theoretically impressive works, but they are very interesting from an external perspective on the ideological production of the current CPC, given that these texts are read by people in the CPC and in courses on Chinese Marxism. They appear establish the currently ideologically hegemonic party line within the state and party, which bureaucrats and party members are expected to know.