I disagree, but I wanted to hear the thoughts of my fellow Chapos
I don't know who is that guy and I won't watch the video, but is really funny to see white people always preaching about things the have no idea about, especially Anglos. I'm really shocked by their lack of self awareness, their shameless show of ignorance, and their utter arrogance — usually accompanied by a tablespoon of crypto-racism. The case is especially clear when talking about China. I'm a Spanish living and studying in China, and it's honestly laughable when I see Westerners (especially Anglos) with their preaching, and galaxy brain takes on the country. Both Anglos on the right and on the left always manage to have really ignorant takes that are often racist, imperialist, and just absolutely clueless. It just shows how less the West knows about China, and how lazy Western people are to learn more about it; it's easier to read some digested propaganda, and then act like they are some expert on the matter.
Now, about this video, China is absolutely socialist, and is advancing more and more towards socialism. That doesn't mean everything is perfect, and there no problems related to its capitalist elements, but to say that China is the future of capitalism... lmao. It always strikes me as pretty racist too, and I guess it does because unlike those
clownsWesterner preachers that you guys like to hear so much, I actually know about China.-
First, in every Chinese university is mandatory to study communism and pass the subject.
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Second, Chinese begin to study communism since they are young — they even have to read, and learn extracts from Das Capital.
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Third, the Chinese Communist party and its members are continuously doing analysis, and debating. To think Chinese aren't aware of the problems of their country, the contradiction of capitalism, and don't know about Socialism, is just stupid and honestly racist.
Why is it racist? Simple, because that take just shows these people have a white saviour complex, and a "those savages need me to teach them the truth, because they don't know any better" kind of actitude. China has the biggest and largest communist party in the world; is probably one of the countries where communism and Marxism is studied the most; has Chinese communists outside and inside the party analysing the problems/situation/contradictions of the country; and continuously helds communist activities all around the country. But somehow Chinese don't know any better, they don't know about socialism, turns out their country has been turning into the future of capitalism, they need some Western leftist to enligh them, and show them the truth.
The funniest thing is that those guys later are the first ones to suck off Vietnam, despite Vietnam basically going the China route. The logic of Western leftists is always mind blowing.
I don’t know who is that guy and I won’t watch the video
opinion discarded
Watches a guy that knows nothing about what he's talking about (like 90% of Westerners when talking about foreign countries)
Opinion discarded
I don’t know if he has any explicit experience with China, but he definitely has considerably more experience with AES than you do.
Experience doing what? Preaching? The guy can't speak Chinese, didn't live in China, probably barely knows about Chinese culture and history. Experience? Sure, bud.
Also, being a random laowai in China doesn’t make you an expert on China, you know that right?
Congrats for knowing one Chinese word. Sure, living for 5 years in this country, being fluent in Chinese, studying economics in a Chinese university (being taught fully in Chinese), and having family and friends here doesn't make me an expert, but It surely makes me someone that knows more than a guy that doesn't know Chinese, hasn't live in China, and probably has no experience with the country besides visiting it, and a few conversations with some Chinese (maybe). Sorry if I hurt your feelings by calling out your idol. You realise that someone being famous or regarded as an intellectual doesn't necessarily makes everything they say right, correct or informed, right?
我也住在中国, but I’m not arrogant enough to act as if that makes me an objective authority on China.
你是中国人吗？那你应该知道大部分外国人不了解中国。我从来没说我知道关于中国的一切，我只说中国有不少共产主义者（包括共产党员）在考虑中国的问题。Zizek从来没在中国住，他对中国的印象不太正确，你真的觉得他了解中国比中国人更多吗？我觉得只有中国人可以解决中国的问题。
Nor does living there make our opinions objectively correct. Differences of opinion exist
对，不是更正确的，不过最可能是更有根据的。
Anyway, it’s not like there aren’t Chinese that agree with the perspective that 21st century China is too capitalist-focussed
当然，我就说这个，中国人知道自己国家的问题。但是Zizek没说“中国有资本主义的问题”，他说“中国是资本主义的未来”。你觉得中国人同意吗？你真的觉得这个看法有道理吗？
Are my Chinese MZT friends just cringe anglos or something? Or the opposite; I’ve got Party-member friends who describe themselves as capitalist and admit they’re just in it for the networking; they’re anglos?
你不能比较“中国有资本主义的问题”和Zizek的声明，它们完全不一样。What do bad party members and your MTZ friends have to do with Anglos? One thing is thinking China has problems with capitalism, I expressed Chinese communists are well aware of this; and other thing is saying China is the future of capitalism, which is exaggerated and fairly wrong. Regardless, I don't understand where does your logic come from, I never claimed you are an Anglo for thinking any of those. In fact (as I already said), I expressed how Chinese are aware of the problems of capitalism, I never said they are Anglos. Don't distort my words.
primarily because he was fighting for the sovereignty of Slovenia when it became clear the Serbian political leadership had long abandoned Yugoslavia.
hard to be a 'communist' in a land where all your comrades are actively killing it and making political moves for its aftermath.
I don’t know who is that guy and I won’t watch the video, but is really funny to see white people always preaching about things the have no idea about, especially Anglos.
I’m a Spanish living and studying in China,
First, I'm not white. Second, I know what I'm talking about (certainly more that your beloved preacher, at least).
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The more I study economics the more I realize is that unless the person is a Marxist economist he will almost certainly have no fucking idea what he is talking about, and if he happens to be right it should be seen as a miracle.
When it comes to random people talking about China's economic policies you can be sure they have the most superficial analysis possible, you know something something government controls therefore authoritarian, if capitalist therefore authoritarian capitalist, great me great thinker yes yes.
As you pointed out in China the government controls a large part of the economy, Marxist economist Michael Roberts is someone I like to quote whenever possible.
I remind readers of the study I made a few years ago of the extent of state assets and investment in China compared to any other country. It showed that China has a stock of public sector assets worth 150% of annual GDP; only Japan has anything like that amount at 130%. Every other major capitalist economy has less than 50% of GDP in public assets. Every year, China’s public investment to GDP is around 16% compared to 3-4% in the US and the UK. And here is the killer figure. There are nearly three times as much stock of public productive assets to private capitalist sector assets in China. In the US and the UK, public assets are less than 50% of private assets. Even in ‘mixed economy’ India or Japan, the ratio of public to private assets is no more than 75%. This shows that in China public ownership in the means of production is dominant – unlike any other major economy.
And now the IMF has published new data that confirm that analysis. China has public capital stock near 160% of GDP, way more than anywhere else. But note that this public sector stock has been falling faster than even the neo-liberal Western economies. The capitalist mode of production may not be dominant in China, but it is growing fast.
Of course China's socialism by 2050 and other plans may not pan out or capitalism may develop even further in China despite our hopes, but to say that China is the "future of capitalism" is unimaginably misinformed as to be laughable, the structural, political and economical changes necessary for western capitalist countries to adapt to the Chinese "model" would be akin to a revolution in of itself and this never happened even after WW2.
Well, the number of straight up capitalists and conservatives in the comments is frightening. I did not know Zizek has this many right-wing fans. Also, you can see the impact of Prager U in the comments. So many comments with the same talking points as their China capitalism video.
On to Zizek's argument. Yeah, authoritarian governance with capitalist economics...that's fascism. And yeah, that's what a lot of countries are heading towards. He mentioned Modi and India, but it's also true of Brazil, Turkey, Philippines, Israel, France etc etc etc. Just so many countries in both the Global North and the Global South giving in to religious or ethnic or whatever supremacist views. And yeah, all of them, somehow happen to be hyper-capitalists supported by big industry in their own country and from abroad.
But there are also revolutions happening against them all the time. Recently, in India, BJP got humiliated in a couple of major state elections. There are far, far more people today that are openly critical of Modi, BJP, RSS etc. Look at how Lula is polling before he's even announced his candidacy. MAS, of course, won in Bolivia. These aren't nothing. There are rebellions and uprisings happening all the time. Yes, it's harder and rarer for us to win - we don't have capital on our side. But we have labor on our side and that's all that matters. They can keep the people hooked on anger and hatred and fear for only so long.
I have this funny feeling that the Naxalites and movements like MAS are going to spearhead global communist revolution. The brigades of explicitly Maoist feminists resisting gangrape and organizing massive strikes, while having folk songs made of their struggle, are the things revolutions are made of.
I don't want to be too hopeful but the accounts I've read do give me some.
I kind of want to ask him to expand more on his ideas about authoritarianism and what he specifically sees it manifesting as if things develop this way. For me it seems like the opposite to what he describes is happening. In China it's specifically because you have strong controls against neoliberalism that it hasn't had to resort to the type of authoritarian measures you see in the US where the militarized police handles the fallout from failures in economic policy and then the national guard handles the failures of the police.
It's also hard not to see the shift from Larry Summers to Janet Yellen as an explicit rejection of the path Zizek is describing. As much as Biden saber rattles against China the US seems to be learning from it and rejecting a lot of neoliberal norms to the extent the huge austerity push people expected is not happening. Instead of social authoritarianism we're seeing Biden for the most part acquiesce to whatever social project people want to try. I don't think we converted anyone high up into socialist, but it's clear there are people with power who consider Obama's economic policy a failure and will not return to it.
Zizek doesnt agree with Losurdo on this which is exactly why I recommend everyone read Losurdo instead of Zizek's trot bs lol
https://sociologicalfragments.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/losurdo-defence_of_modern_day_china-1.pdf
"The campaign of the West for the “democratisation” of China is taking place just as many political analysts are forced to see the decline of democracy in the West. A few years before the economic crisis, one could read in the International Herald Tribune that the United States had become a “plutocracy”; now the forces of private and corporate wealth have already taken hold of political institutions, while the rest of the population is cut off (Pfaff 2000). Nowadays, on the left as well as among those completely opposed to the Marxist tradition, it is common to read that in the West, and primarily in the United States, plutocracy has taken the place of democracy. We can conclude that the on-going campaign for the“democratisation”of China is actually a campaign for its plutocratisa-tion, to turn in the opposite direction the “political expropriation” of the bourgeoisie that has taken place since 1949 in the big Asian country."
Good quote
I think you can hold both that the attempts at Western "democratization" in China are a cynical, imperialist political ploy to destabilize and discredit a competitor AND that the current construction of Chinese socialism has nothing to do with socialism, and that the Chinese state is not attempting to build socialism whatsoever.
Before the China stans call my some ignorant Anglo, please explain to my ignorant Yankee ass how China is building socialism. I recognize that in terms of global capitalist domination, it is FAR preferable to have China as the world's superpower rather than the US empire and it's western European satellites. I sincerely hope China can subvert US domination. But I have seen no evidence that China is actually building socialism and empowering the working class and displaced peoples at the expense of the capitalist class. How can a country that allows billionaires to exist while it's working population continues to suffer under (granted conditions are gradually improving) capitalist domination claim to be advancing socialism?
Love to see westerners ramp up the anti Chima sentiment. Even the so called "leftists". Now this will be used by liberals and v*ushites.
The point I like is that China is just doing a better version of the "authoritarian" capitalism that everyone else is doing in secret. Like instead of Facebook rating your social status behind the scenes, it is the communist party doing it out in the open. If this is true, does this have to do with the wild success China has experienced lately? Michael Hudson would say yes but there are also many ad-hoc reasons. One of the reasons for 'yes' is that China regulates financial capital while letting industrial capital thrive. Not every country can do this; arguably China can only do this because other countries do the finance, but those countries still need manufacturing. Regulating finance would be an example of the "authoritarian" nature of Chinese capitalism.
