Some Background:
-_-
Here's his tweet thread:
I've been trying to read 'more sophisticated' forms of leftist China apologisim, and basically the main argument seems to boil down to: 'The CCP has disciplined capital better than other places'. And while this may be true, it really misses the point.
What point does it miss? Shouldn't the next question be "how CCP has disciplined capital" and what others should learn from that?
Crucially, it does not change the fact that contemporary Chinese society is dominated by exploitative capitalist relations. Most dramatically, today's China is built on the backs of exploited internal migrants—with their subjugation to capital violently enforced by the state. But beyond this, it is highly unequal capitalist relations—not socialist ones—that pervade Chinese society at all levels, in both rural and urban areas. This is generally obvious to anyone who has done empirical research on Chinese development, labour, etc. And that is before we even get to the extractive, brutal, internal settler colonialism and forced labour in the interest of serving domestic and international markets...
Sure. Capitalism sucks. Everyone knows that. No one's saying that China has "socialist production relations", not even the CCP. What strawman are you arguing against here? The question should be "is there truth to the idea that China is building the conditions necessary for socialism?" which, in my view, it is.
So, if it is undeniable that contemporary China is an extremely unequal society, dominated by exploitative capitalist relations, which are enforced by state violence: how can leftists imagine it as a place with socialist potential and the vanguard of anti-imperialist struggle?
...because we see how China is better today than it was a decade ago? And that this change has happened directly because of the actions of the CCP?
First, I think that many (if not most) of the people producing this kind of analysis have not spent time doing empirically grounded research in China. In fact, many have not even been to China. As such, their imagined version of China is an abstraction, and one often built on prior abstractions, which reflects preconceived notions and theoretical frames. In short, these people should go spend a long time in a Chinese factory, construction site, village, etc.
...So many things wrong here. Firstly, China's fucking huge. Do you think someone who's been to Beijing for vacation or to Shanghai for business has "been to China"? But more importantly most of us, Mr. Academic Man, don't have the fucking money to just "go to China for a long time to do research." I've no doubt that if we could, most of us would love to go to a Chinese factory or construction site or village and see the conditions there in person. In fact, we would love to go there and ask them whether they're better off today than they were ten years ago, how much of a difference the Poverty Alleviation Scheme has made etc. And you know what we'd do then? We'd go to other exploited nations and see the situations there. Whether the lives of Chinese workers and villagers are better than the comparable workers and villagers in other parts of Asia and Africa and Latin America. That's how you measure progress.
Second, China apologism always seems to rest on an analysis of China in comparison, where China is depicted as better than or at least not as bad as other places. This is both whataboutist and classically orientalist in that China is defined by what it is not.
???
Just because other places in the Global South have suffered more severe forms of exploitation and extraction from global capitalism does not negate the pervasive existence of hyper-exploitative capitalism in China.
What??? No one's saying that China doesn't have capitalism? Who the fuck claims that? What the fuck are you on about? Goddammit.
And the fact that "other places in the Global South" that don't have a communist party in charge of their government "have suffered more severe forms of exploitation and extraction from global capitalism" is the fucking whole point you smug elitist bastard. You know the best thing you could do for all the oppressed factory workers and farmers and miners of the world? Make your country, Sweden, socialist. If there is no capitalism in the West, there will be no capitalism in the Global South.
And just because China has been a victim of imperialism and colonialism itself does not negate its current settler colonial practices in Xinjiang in the interest of securing and extracting resources, and ensuring unimpeded market expansion.
I don't know enough about Xinjiang to comment on it here. I think China made a mistake in being too "heavy-handed" in its approach to combat terrorism but the idea that Westerners can criticize China for that is too ludicrous for me to even engage with it. If anything, this is a further point to how the CCP has managed to "discipline capital" so that it doesn't end up invading a dozen countries and killing a million people. Xinjiang, for example, is in a much better position than Kashmir or Gaza, but I don't see the latter two being used to call for the end of capitalist exploitation in India and Israel.
Ultimately, even the most sophisticated attempts from leftists to create theoretical apologist frameworks to depict China as either being socialist or having socialist potential completely fail to reckon with the very basic and obvious realities on the ground.
Sure man, whatever.
These are imagined abstractions of China that reflect a deeply engrained Euro/US-centrism and the desperate desire to see in China the potential for a different/better world. Sadly, they are simply objectively inaccurate.
Yeah, of course, China sucks. Better things are not possible. West is Best.
"Second, China apologism always seems to rest on an analysis of China in comparison, where China is depicted as better than or at least not as bad as other places. This is both whataboutist and classically orientalist in that China is defined by what it is not."
Dear god, fuck everybody who throws around the term "whataboutism". That shit literally just means any comparison that liberals or left-anti-coms find unfavorable to their pseudo-reasoning. God forbid we actually compare nations with their fucking peers.
Anyone who ever used the word seriously gets the wall.
On the other hand it's a great way for someone to tell you they've never questioned their own immunity to propaganda, nor presented these views in a good faith disagreement.
Second, China apologism always seems to rest on an analysis of China in comparison, where China is depicted as better than or at least not as bad as other places. This is both whataboutist and classically orientalist in that China is defined by what it is not.
Face the wall, western man.
Comparing one thing to another is whataboutism.
Noone is allowed to compare anything.
whataboutist
didn't make sense against criticism of the USA lynching negroes then, but I guess it's supposed to make sense now
This is someone that people pay to know things about this topic
Orientalism is when you view China as just another country. To avoid orientalism, you must treat China as so fundamentally different that it can't be compared to anything else in the world.
Until another country starts fleecing its megacorps for billions and billions of dollars and putting the money in a public fund for all people’s needs, executing members of their billionaire class, maintaining and increasing its infrastructure well, and handling public crises with its people focused above its economy, I really don’t give a shit what some westerner has to say about China’s system
If I see someone say CPC at this point I know right away that they're not a complete shithead for sure.
Can someone explain that to me? I’ve seen it around but I’m quite dense and have no idea which one is right
China calls it Communist Party of China. Westerners call it Chinese Communist Party. Do if you say CPC, it means you're aware of this and choose to use the more legit option.
out of the loop, what is the difference between the two acronyms again?
The correct name is Communist Party of China (CPC) but libs and chuds almost universally use Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Why, I do not know. Perhaps because the -ese suffix makes it sound more foreign (therefore scarier!). Either way it's a good indicator that the person saying it has no idea what they're talking about.
CCP emphasises the 'Chinese' part of Chinese Communist Party. CPC emphasises the 'Communist' part. Also CCP is similar to CCCP which wakes old Cold War brainworms up.
Also because it makes westerners instinctively think of the cyrillic CCCP, which is a scary and dangerous acronym from the last cold war.
How do these people claiming that China is made up of a brutally exploited and subjugated population contend with the fact that Chinese people are consistently the happiest, most optimistic, and trust their government more than people in essentially any other country? Do they think they can do anything useful while viewing entire country as being miserable prisoners, when despite their hardships the reality is that the majority of people report being content and fulfilled? When they propose dramatically and destructively rearranging Chinese society to some scheme, do think literally think it will make Chinese people lives better?
These are the brand of fools that consume Western Propaganda uncritically.
In their mind, China being 'freed' from Socialism would be the greatest improvement in human rights possible in this day and age.
(In reality, it would just be a soft genocide as lifespan drops in half for the average chinese person.)
I think the professor's point is that empirical research on Chinese development, labour, etc. proves that China is made up of a brutally exploited and subjugated population. The fact that Chinese people are consistently the happiest, most optimistic, and trustworthy of their government is worth keeping in mind, but exploitation is an objective relationship, not a subjective one.
Ethnography cannot demonstrate an objective relationship. It's intentionally incapable of doing anything remotely like that. The link parent provided gets even sillier in claiming superlative exploitation... from an ethnography.
We could quantify exploitation in various ways, but that's very much not actually part of this discussion. Parent's link is pure sophistry, a lazy anti-communist's attempt at stringing together terms they don't understand in order to adopt a leftist aesthetic.
Income inequality rhetoric ignores that a class can reap the benefits of work via public investment (e.g. a bullet train), even if bosses make more as individuals. Working Chinese people are seeing the fruits of their labour despite billionaires and inequality. To recriminate them for not demanding more is recriminating the virtue of patience.
from https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
the full piece addresses this in more detail
only if you reject that surplus can be invested towards common interests. the surplus extraction is largely put directly into state coffers or subjected to taxation by a socialist state which is capable of dominating capital that way, so i say that point is moot. or did you think of foreign companies? in that case we'll have to meme about the left and zero sum fallacies
Simple; they reconcile this glaring contradiction by saying the see-see-pee lies about it, and that, even if you spoke to real human, they're just brainwashed drones who couldn't possibly know any better due to all the indoctrination, unlike us enlightened, unindoctrinated westerners
that great feeling you have when you don't see twitter for a whole day? more than a billion people live that way
Crucially, it does not change the fact that contemporary Chinese society is dominated by exploitative capitalist relations. Most dramatically, today’s China is built on the backs of exploited internal migrants—with their subjugation to capital violently enforced by the state.
Remind me what mode of production yesterday's China was built upon. That's right, a feudalistic agricultural economy where capitalistic subjugation came from imperial powers looting to their hearts content.
One could even say the post imperial and warlord era China the CPC had just liberated was even more worse off than the Soviet Union the CPSU had won after their Civil war. I dunno about you but that sounds like it might be kinda hard to mash the communism button and magic away class relations.
Reminds me of the westerners who want to 'free' Tibet.
Oh boy . Free it right back into feudal slavery for 99% of the population? How kind and enlightened of them!
Remind me what mode of production yesterday’s China was built upon.
History? Context? World politics? :grillman: I just wanna complain.
This scholar thinks that capitalist exploitation in China is news to anyone. Having an entire little fight entirely in their mind.
Friendly reminder that any ol' jerk can call themselves a Marxist
fucking settler colonial discourse in xinjiang again. i fucking hate this regime change orientalist concoction regurgitated by these zenzposting idiots in journal for central asian studies. he really just fucking reeled off about forced labour too.
china isnt controlling capital on the similar plane but better than other countries. those other countries themselves are capital. china is not. you fucking baffoon.
i dont expect this dude to be anything but allergic to stalin's writing but motherfucker, read one paragraph about socialist accumulation. yes we know the whole migrant labour thing sucks but guess what the state is moving to fix that shit. and what a profoundly fucking arrogant way to dismiss chinas entire reconstruction. like, wow.
and no, its not a "profoundly unequal" society. you've just not looked past wikipedia figures. income gini is high because there is a disconfiguration between coastal and inland economies. you're going to make a case of income differences in rural jiangxi and cosmopolitan shenzhen? gini wealth figures are well below global average, similar to canada, while your own shithead socdem country is literally top 3.
i really just gotta envoke vijay prashad to harvey here. WHERE IS YOUR IMPERIALISM? THERE IS NO IMPERIALISM IN YOUR EMPTY CRITIQUES. and china can't be anti-imperialist? motherfucker. talk to one proletarian outside your suedee labour aristocrat bubble. i beg.
@urorientalist by the powers invested you :xi-shining: :xi-shining: :xi-shining: :xi-shining:
That moment was so cool it literally shook Harvey’s entire world view and made him change his stance on China.
Seems like that moment really embarrassed Harvey, and good, he deserved it
"If only those Chinese had asked me, a white man and an expert, on how to do socialism in their country."
I don’t know enough about Xinjiang to comment on it here. I think China made a mistake in being too “heavy-handed” in its approach to combat terrorism but the idea that Westerners can criticize China for that is too ludicrous for me to even engage with it. If anything, this is a further point to how the CCP has managed to “discipline capital” so that it doesn’t end up invading a dozen countries and killing a million people. Xinjiang, for example, is in a much better position than Kashmir or Gaza, but I don’t see the latter two being used to call for the end of capitalist exploitation in India and Israel.
CW: Uncensored violence footage.
I recommend you watch this documentary on Xinjiang's terrorism. It is long but it is extremely worth it if you are unfamiliar with the subject.
Some of those attacks puts your regular American school shooting to shame. Lots of interviews with victims and attackers themselves. One of them tells you straight up why she did it and why it was wrong.
After you become familiar with the actual situation and the stakes in place you absolutely can't claim the CPC was "too heavy handed" here. The fact they fixed it with schools and detention for rehabilitation is about as good as you can hope for.
But seriously if there is one video on China you'll ever watch let it be that one.
Thanks, I'll definitely check it out.
The following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences.
CGTN is funded in whole or in part by the Chinese government.
Disclaimers like these only make me more biased towards the Chinese position, YouTube. Especially when your disclaimer for BBC is just "BBC is a British public broadcast service."
“BBC is a British public broadcast service.”
What bigger indictment do you need?
