Genuine question so please don’t hate on me. It seems to me that china now is more of a mixed market than a planned economy. Billionaires and class disparities definitely still exist in China and it seems like american communists almost romanticize china while ignoring obvious flaws in its system, only because they (rightfully) hate america and america hates China. China also supplies all of the world’s exploitative corporations with the vast majority of their goods. While China is probably better than the capitalist economies of the west, I don’t understand why a lot of people seem to hold it in the same regard as the USSR.
The government is run by socialists who are using a market to rapidly develop until they can transition to socialism while giving everyone a decent quality of life. They decided to cooperate with capitalist countries to do this. They don't claim to have transitioned to socialism yet so they still have class disparities. As a leftist you can critique their path to socialism, but as communists, we hope they succeed
Are they really on a path to socialism though? it seems to be that the class disparities are only growing in china since mao. the rich are only getting richer. I don’t see how the capitalists in china are going to give way to socialism in the future if they’re only getting more powerful.
I hope every socialist country succeeds, of course. It just seems to me that china is going down a different path, one that doesn’t lead to full communism.
A billionaire dies in China every ~39 days. The Chinese government consistently enforces the death penalty on the wealthy.
That doesn't refute the claim that, since China has increasing wealth disparity, they aren't on the path to communism. Killing billionaires could well be simply a means for keeping the capitalist class in line. I think it's entirely possible that the Chinese project at this point is more an attempt to simply remain in control of its capitalists and continue to use capital in a way that best benefits the interest of China as a state in the grand game of geopolitics. To remain riding the beast, so to speak, but without necessarily working towards a realized communism.
We could discuss how likely this is or whether it's a worthy project in itself - and whether it's possible to indefinitely retain control of capital in this sense - but it doesn't necessarily follow that executing billionaires means a state is communist in its aims.
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Is the government appropriating the wealth of dead billionaires? If not, you just got billionaires in different generation, what is the benefit to people
Yes, they absolutely do that lol
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idk... the thing is is you gotta compare it to where it was 10 years prior, and the 10 years prior, and so on. the day mao took power china was on the same level as africa. destitute, destroyed, and minimal industry. now they are where they are. its a dramatic leap in quality of life. the fact its taking so long is simply because china still hasnt finished modernization. that stuff takes time.
without the communist party, china would be seen as a backwater, like many parts of africa and south asia are
They're certainly at a crossroads, but you could argue that the Deng reforms were necessary and had to go on longer than the NEP in the Soviet Union because China was so far behind Russia in development at the time of its revolution. Russia before World War 1 was the backwater of Europe, but it was still a major imperial power which had 5-10x the industrial output per capita of China and a much, much larger proletariat. Mao's land reforms were an awesome and necessary step, but at some point it was obvious that China needed some sort of Capitalist development to build productive forces. The NEP was a temporary measure for the USSR to recover from the war/revolution. Deng's liberalization was a necessary step to actually build China's industry, and now we've reached the point where some hard decisions need to be made.