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.

  • emizeko [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    check out https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/

    • shoe [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      extremely interesting article. i definitely understand more of why china is doing what it’s doing than i did before.

      While I do see the advantages in keeping billionaires within the reach of law while allowing them to conduct business, I still cannot wrap my head around the idea that people with such vast amounts of wealth will never undermine the communist leadership. Maybe that is a shortcoming on my part for not being optimistic enough.

      “ Here's why: there's no way a group of billionaires could control the Politburo as billionaires control American policy-making. So in China you have a vibrant market economy, but capital does not rise above political authority. Capital does not have enshrined rights. In America, capital - the interests of capital and capital itself - has risen above the American nation. The political authority cannot check the power of capital. That's why America is a capitalist country, and China is not.”

      While that may be true now, how long will it hold?

      Still, definitely a very interesting read and I hope their experiment works. I guess it will take time for me to fully agree with it, if ever.

      • Mardoniush [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Oh, they tried, billionaires or their flunkies tried to infiltrate the CPC and corrupt it in the 90s-2000s as capitalist accumulation reached a peak. Caused massive corruption issues and a lot of bad shit even as people were lifted from poverty.

        One of the reasons I'm so positive about Xi despite him doing some things I disagree with is that he reversed this, forced new party members to have proper ideological vetting and theory education, and put the billionaires on notice.

        Additionally, the CPC isn't a monolith. There are NEPmen and Nationalist minority factions, and there are hard-left Neo-Maoists and Cyberneticists like the Shanghai Branch.

      • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Important to note that Chinese billionaires do not control the military, do not have control over the financial system, and you can see that when they start to even speak out too much in public. China is willing to merk billionaires of they don't accept that the CPC is in charge. The party is also able to pursue projects of genuine good that imperial countries would never even consider today.

        China might have billionaires, but that seems to be worth something in assuaging the fears of foreign investors from the imperial core. It's notable that in terms of a more reasonable definition of poverty, China is essentially solely responsible for the global decline in poverty from the 1980's on. So they might have billionaires, but they also have Xi Jinping and a party that doesn't give a shit about what those billionaires want for themselves.