https://twitter.com/zhengwei75/status/1742398260768395562?s=19
"Can you imagine what the world would be like if politicians were held accountable for crimes?"
Show
lol right, imagine having actual accountability in the government
Anti-democracy disney villain authoritarianism is when leaders are held to account for their actions. This goes against Freedomtm !
"no one is safe"
USA version : citizens get killed by cops / alt right mass shooters
China version : if you happen to be a high ranking member of the state you are held accountable for power abuse
"no one is safe"
That's right, no one should be insulated from a criminal investigation.
My man
is just the clean-up hitter for the last 60 years of Chinese politics.I'm excited to hear liberal media announce that, yes sure China bad, but these were all of the good ones.
the maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry
Can't trust South China Morning Post + paywall, anybody have more info on this?
SCMP has a liberal bias and will often put an anti-China spin on their reporting but factually their articles tend to be pretty solid. They are nowhere near as bad as western mainstream media which will very often shamelessly lie and serve directly as the mouthpieces of the intelligence agencies.
They can't help themselves can they? Always got to throw in a spot of Orientalism every time. I'm also wondering how many of these "purges" were just officials retiring, I remember someone saying that a lot of officials retired last year as well (though I don't remember reading anything about it so I could be wrong)
apparently they've decided to go after corruption cases even after they've retired - which seems entirely like a positive to me.
Source: https://archive.ph/zJRoi#selection-2981.0-2988.0
Twenty-seven of the 45 senior cadres who had faced detention by the disciplinary watchdog were found to have retired from their positions when they faced investigation, according to further research.
Weasly scum...
“Among the officials arrested in recent years, not many were caught for corruption in their current positions. Most of the problems occurred in the past few years, or even more than 10, 20 years ago. The CCDI is no longer following the previous unspoken rule that retired officials will be spared from investigation,” he said.
Oh wow... they'd reap what they'd sow
“Now, no one is safe. As Xi digs deeper, he just finds more problems that accumulated over the past three decades due to rapid economic development and lax party discipline. And there is no sign of him stopping the digging.”
Wait, which Hexbear or Lemmygrader decided to write this shit... it sounds like the satire they would make, from the POV of an anti-China watcher. The type of Millions Purged or some shtick...
A total of 294 senior officials have been sacked by the CCDI in the 11 years since the anti-corruption campaign was launched, according to the Post’s count.
However, this number does not include most of the corruption probes in the Chinese military, which conducts its own investigations through the Discipline Inspection Commission. The agency, which operates within China’s top military command – the Central Military Commission (CMC) – led by Xi, operates under extreme secrecy. Beijing announces such cases very selectively, as it did for the investigations of former CMC deputy chairmen Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong during Xi’s first presidential term. They were the highest ranking officers in the People’s Liberation Army to be targeted since the anti-corruption drive began.
“I suspect only a tiny amount of information regarding these cases will be released to the public, just for minimal formalities.” The CCDI will begin its third plenum from next Monday to lay out the work priorities in the new year for tens of millions of discipline inspectors across the country.
The purge has arrived, kids... be ready for imminent struggle secessions and self-criticism!
What I don't like about the PRC is that it didn't make into law that there can't be billionaires. Whatever you think of China, whether it's socialist, or state-capitalist, or capitalist in economy with socialist social relations run by a communist party, the fact that there are billionaires, even when they are kept in check by the government and do not control the state apparatus, I think it would have been an amazing precedent to say that billionaires should not exist. Every penny above 1 999.999.999 yen or dollar or euro (already a ridiculous amount but ok) should flow back to the people. It undermines the socialist project that I want to believe China is still building.
I know this has nothing to do with the article. I just wanted to say this.
They tax rich people more than the US does, its also in line with Dengs thinking here https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1987/133.htm
I think a better marker for China is, is poverty increasing? Do the poorest people get what they need? I would say thats yes they get everything they need (housing/healthcare) and there circumstances are improving too through investment. In cities larger than London rent is 70% cheaper on average like in Shenzen and quality of life is higher. It would be hard to care if billionares exist if you lived in a society that provided everything you needed, and also held said billionares accountable; which again I would argue China does as demonstrated by the high profile rich people they have executed or imprisoned in the last decade.
Is it perfect? No, but they seem to be willing to do more then we do.
Yes, I find that the more I study the theory behind the decisions of the CPC, the more they make sense. Most negative assessments of them as an AES nation come from a place of ignorance.
The CPC strategy is based on the idea that an effective and enduring transition from feudalism or capitalism to communism is not made in a single generation, it takes many years and multiple generations to achieve. Given how the revolution occurred ~75 years ago and their strategy is not to make great progress overnight, they have been very successful in their efforts.
What we are seeing is a nation that is currently transitioning towards the goal of communism, not the end product of that transition. It's likely that their patience and methodical progression has contributed to how resilient they've been in the face of external pressure from capitalist forces and they may not have been able to resist that pressure as effectively over a shorter time scale.
Just because they seem willing to do more than us, ans I don't argue that thet do because they do, I can still criticize them for not taking that decision. Billionaires have no need of existing.
Billionaires have no need of existing.
Unfortunatly, they sort of do. Neo-liberalism or state capitalism seems to be a required stage in the devolopment of an ecomony towards socialism and the Chinese model seems to be the best compromise existing today between socialism and state capitalism as it manages to provide 90% housing, modern standards of living, wide spread education, high speed rail & subways etc to billions of people while still retaining Marxist ideological reasoning.
The Chinese understanding of this means basically 'speedrunning' through capitalism while keeping the products of it on a tight leash, so far that seems to be working. Income gaps are widening in China though, but people still retain a much lower cost of living in comparable economies such as California. I dont think billionares should exist either but I dont think its the biggest issue facing China either.
Yes I understand the development of state capitalistism to build up production forces on the road to socialism. It's still not an answer qs to why billionaires should exist.
Part of building up production of forces is building up a surplus of profit that can be transferred to wealth, that means allowing private entities under state control. Allowing private entities means that said entities can now decide to pay people at the top enough they become billionares.
Its not the existance of them, every single devoloped country on earth has billionares, its how you manage them that matters; China executes and imprisons the ones that misbehave.
This is a justification but still not an explanation for why China allows (or should allow) billionaires. If you take all the money above 1B Yen and transfer it to the state you also have a build up of capital to be used by the state to help the people.
I think the question is- does such a seizure (however justified) and resulting turmoil and consequences benefit China- whether it be in regards to its role in the emerging multipolar order, and its continued development under state-controlled markets/capitalism?
Personally, I don't think so. The present course is seeing China outcompete the west, diplomatically, economically, and increasingly technologically- it harnesses the productive, competitive advantages of capital, while maintaining the dictatorship of the proletariat, and its present approach has also shackled western capital to it (despite their attempts to contain and destroy China), and rather than alienating non-AES states and non-socialists across the global south, presents a development model and partner that they not only can work with, but can engage deeply with and admire.
The seizure of all Chinese billionaires' assets out of nowhere, would imperil all this. And for what? China already has capital controls and countless other regulations in place to manage its capitalist class. Unlike the west and most of the world, China also actually enforces these, with harsh- if necessary, even lethal- consequences for criminals regardless of wealth. The rules are already in place, capital is subordinated to proletarian rule, while still being open for business. Such disruptive actions in contrast could stand to imperil the unique balance that has over time, been perfected (not that it's perfect- but it is undeniably an achievement, perhaps unmatched in human history), and this is during a time of critical development in various fields- increasingly competing with the west technologically, working alongside many partners for the integration of Afro-Eurasia and the global south, expanding China's development and prosperity to every remote corner of the country, resisting encirclement and entanglement in the face of a increasingly deranged and declining west, and creating the foundations of soft cultural/economic/political power that can compete with the west, and building China's infrastructure and industries up to ever greater heights. Why risk all this, for some puritanical short-term (if even that- I doubt it) gain?
Once again I feel I have to state- the present system China has fashioned, has produced results unlike that which any other state has delivered, and this is without imperialist loot, plunder, and lebensraum no less. And the present system is not done yet- China has not yet reached its full potential, but also, its work is not done in uplifting all of China and playing its part in the uplifting of the world in turn. That's not to say that it is perfect and can be left stagnant- but such rash actions could threaten everything.
This is a good answer. Thanks. I am doubtfull of your position that capital is subordinate to the prolitariat in China, as I do not see much examples of that. The prolitariat in China, while getting marginally less poor (yes, I've read the UN report), is still mostly the world's construction basket. So while I believe that capital is regulated, I don't believe it's subordinate to the proletariat. That said, currently it's better to not start implementing huge changes in economic law, i.e. take all billionaires money as it would create unrest and also ammunition for thr US to use against China. However, I would have liked to see this as an initial block back before there where billionaires in China. I still have yet to see a good point for them actually existing.
Its pretty consistent with Dengs/Xi's and Chinas political apparatus's understanding of how they are building socialism. The excess that neo-liberalism provides generates enough structures that can then in turn be used to advance socialism.
Its not the existance of them that matters, its how they are regulated and taxed.
If you just took billionares money (which they already do, through tax...) then there would be no incentive to build up productive forces, within the private sphere.
What's hilarious is you saying euro, dollar, yen, like these all aren't different amounts. Weird that this arbitrary number is what's holding you back from thinking China is trying to build something. Sounds like you need more theory
It's an arbitrary number because it's a number people can latch on to. A billion dollars... or yen.... or euro.
Yeah theory, everyone just always assumes someone needs more theory. Assumes the person hasn't read theory. And it's a divergence strategy: uh oh, don't know, more theory!
What are we going to do with billionaires after the revolution comrade?
This is such hyperbole from the SCMP. They should not be bothered with.
Liberal dictionary on China, PRC:
- Purge: layoff, fire, sack
- Rule: lead
- Regime: government, organization
- Crackdown: regulate, supervise, enforce
Example usage:
"Rulers of tech regime Amazon/Meta/Google purged thousands of employees to crackdown on rising economic difficulties" https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/03/20/amazon-layoffs-2023-pxt-aws-twitch-advertising/11508561002/
