very interesting recent speech about xi's intentions on the present direction of common prosperity.
seems like this bit about social democracy is getting some controversy - online :hahaha:
" It is necessary to improve the system of public service policies and systems. To promote common prosperity, we must not engage in "welfare". At that time, some Latin American countries engaged in populism, and high welfare raised a group of "lazy people" and unearned incomes. As a result, the national finances were overwhelmed and fell into the "middle-income trap", unable to extricate themselves for a long time. Welfare benefits can't come down if they go up, and "welfareism" that exceeds one's ability is unsustainable and will inevitably bring about serious economic and political problems! We must adhere to doing our best and do what we can, focusing on improving the level of public services, accurately providing basic public services in the fields of education, medical care, elderly care, housing and other areas that the people are most concerned about, and taking care of the basic living bottom line of the people in need, without raising the bar. Appetite, not empty promises."
also interesting bit explaining xi's approach to market socialism
" The second question: correctly understand and grasp the characteristics and behavioral laws of capital. Marx and Engels did not envisage that a market economy could be developed under socialist conditions, and of course they could not foresee how socialist countries would treat capital. Although Lenin and Stalin led the socialist construction of the Soviet Union, at that time the Soviet Union implemented a highly centralized planned economic system and basically did not encounter large-scale capital problems. To engage in a socialist market economy is a great creation of our party. Since it is a socialist market economy, it will inevitably produce various forms of capital. Although there are many differences between capital in capitalist society and capital in socialist society, capital is all about chasing profits. "The people of the world are wealthy, and the wealth of the world is governed by the law." We should explore how to play the positive role of capital under the conditions of a socialist market economy, while effectively controlling the negative role of capital. In recent years, due to lack of awareness and lack of supervision, some areas of our country have experienced disorderly expansion of capital, wanton manipulation, and profiteering. This requires regulating the behavior of capital, seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages, not allowing "capital predators" to act recklessly, but also giving full play to the function of capital as a factor of production. This is a major political and economic issue that cannot be avoided."
he goes over a lot of important shit to take note of so def check it out hexers :logo:
It's actually quite remarkable to see a world leader coherently and honestly outline their policies and intentions. Being in an Anglo democracy does not prepare you for that at all.
yea i think he is trying to get across that despite being "socialist" the current goal (whether this is the best path or not being unclear obviously) isn't to redistribute wealth by buttressing people's material wealth but rather to create robust social systems.
obviously there is extreme wealth disparity if you compare the most economically active to the least economically active and you could argue for much stricter redistribution but im not a chinese demsoc so i assume that they just have a good reason for it :party-blob:
It seems to me that he is referring to corporate welfare / providing universal welfare to rich people who dont need help and the fact that welfare is not possible in many parts of undeveloped and insecure rural China. He goes on later to talk about bolstering public services to a base level and ensuring their quality with the implication that they will do public 'welfare' in the future when it is not an empty promise. They seem to be very worried about promising something and then not following through or failing.
If in the west, the governments have to provide more and more welfare directly to their people it is in part because wages cannot catch up to the increases in productivity and increases in cost of living, you start shrinking your middle class and China does not want that to happen.
Welfare isn't the reason that the Western middle class is shrinking. Substitute incomes like state pensions, unemployment benefits and so forth are counted in the part of the national income that goes to labour, so their decrease means per definition that the income of the non-capitalists shrinks. The shrinking of the welfare-state is an important aspect of the well known decrease of compensation/productivity: if workers have alternative forms of income, then capitalists are obligated to raise wages. So in reality we're seeing the opposite of the argument you're making here.
I think an interesting example of "Welfareism" here would be how Walmart has guides for their employees to fill out financial assistance for housing and food rather than actually paying enough to not need assistance. Welfare for the working popukation is a good fix to a bad society, but you would rather not have that bad society to begin with. This type of welfare is a bandaid for a wound that should never have occurred the first place.
Obviously those who are disabled or unable to work full hours are a different group and I don't think that support belongs in the same category as support for the working poor does.
I ran it through a different translator because all Chinese translators suck so maybe we can piece it together better:
Entering a new stage of development, China's development of the internal and external environment has undergone profound changes, facing many new major issues that need to be properly understood and grasped. Here, I focus on a few issues.
The first issue: the correct understanding and grasp of the strategic goals and practical ways to achieve common wealth. "The nation that is called wealthy cares about the wealth of the people." The creation and distribution of wealth is a major issue that all countries face. Some Western countries have a long-standing disparity between rich and poor and polarization while social wealth is growing. Some Latin American countries do not have high income, but the distribution gap is huge. Under our socialist system, we must not only continue to liberate and develop the social productive forces, create and accumulate social wealth, but also prevent polarization, and effectively promote the all-round development of people and the common prosperity of all people to make more obvious and substantial progress. In the past, we were egalitarian at the low-income level, and after reform and opening up, some regions and people got rich first, while the income gap also gradually widened, and some inappropriate gathering of wealth brought risks and challenges to the healthy operation of the economy and society.
Common prosperity is the essential requirement of socialism with Chinese characteristics. How should the path of common prosperity be taken? We are exploring it. To achieve the goal of common prosperity, we must first make the " pie" bigger and better through the common struggle of the whole nation, and then properly handle the relationship between growth and distribution through reasonable institutional arrangements, so as to cut and divide the " pie" properly. This is a long-term historical process, we have to create conditions, improve the system, and steadily move towards this goal.
To promote high-quality development in the strengthening of employment priority orientation. Employment is the foundation of people's livelihood. To improve the employment impetus of economic growth, and constantly promote the expansion of employment and quality improvement. We should support the development of small and medium-sized enterprises and give full play to their role as the main channel of employment. To learn from the lessons of some Western countries' economic "de-realization", we should continue to grow the real economy and create more high-quality jobs. To increase investment in human capital, improve the quality of education, strengthen vocational education and skills training, improve the quality of the workforce, better adapt to the needs of high-quality development, and effectively prevent the risk of large-scale unemployment.
To play the function and role of distribution. To deal with the relationship between efficiency and fairness, and build a basic institutional arrangement for the coordination of the primary distribution, redistribution and three distributions. To adhere to the distribution of labor as the main body, increase the proportion of labor compensation in the initial distribution, and improve the policy of distribution according to factors. We should play the regulating role of redistribution, increase the regulation of taxation, social security and transfer payments, and improve the precision. To play a good role in the third distribution, guide, support the willingness and ability of enterprises and social groups to actively participate in public charity, but not to engage in moral kidnapping type "forced to donate".
To improve the public service policy and institutional systems. To promote common prosperity, not to engage in "welfarism" that way. When some Latin American countries engaged in populism, high welfare to support a number of "lazy" and unproductive people, the results of the national financial burden, falling into the "middle-income trap", long-term can not extricate themselves. Welfare benefits will not come down once they go up, and "welfarism" that exceeds capacity is unsustainable and will certainly bring serious economic and political problems! We must insist on doing our best and living within our capabilities, focusing on improving the quality of public services, providing essential public services with precision in the areas of education, healthcare, pensions, housing and other areas of greatest concern to the people, and holding the fundamental living floor for the needy, without dangling high appetites or making empty promises.
The second issue: correctly understand and grasp the characteristics of capital and the laws of behavior. Marx and Engels did not envision that a market economy could be engaged in under socialist conditions, and certainly could not foresee how a socialist country might deal with capital. Although Lenin and Stalin led the socialist construction of the Soviet Union, at that time the Soviet Union practiced a highly centralized planned economic system and basically did not encounter the large-scale capital issue. Engaging in a socialist market economy is a great innovation of our Party. Since it is a socialist market economy, it is bound to produce various modes of capital. Capital in a capitalist society and capital in a socialist society are certainly different in many ways, but capital is all about chasing profits. "The one who unites all the world's wealth is wealthy, and the one who manages all the world's wealth is the law." We have to explore how to leverage the positive effects of capital under the conditions of the socialist market economy, while effectively controlling the negative effects of capital. In recent years, due to insufficient understanding and lack of supervision, some areas in China have seen disorderly expansion of capital, reckless manipulation and profiteering. This requires the control of the behaviour of capital, to avoid harm, not only to prevent "capital predators" from acting freely, but also to develop the role of capital as a factor of production. This is an inescapable major political and economic problem.
In practice, the following points should be taken care of. To set the " red and green lights " for capital. The " red and green lights " apply to all vehicles on the road, treating capital is also the same, all kinds of capital can not run rampant. We need to prevent some of the capital from growing wildly. We must fight against monopoly, profiteering, sky-high prices, malicious speculation and unfair competition. We must strengthen the effective supervision of capital in accordance with the law. The socialist market economy is a law-based economy, and capital activities should be conducted in accordance with the law. Checking the disorderly expansion of capital, it is not to do without capital, but rather to the organized development of capital. Laws and regulations are unsound to hurry to improve, there are laws and regulations to strictly enforce supervision. We must support and guide the standardized and healthy development of capital. We must adhere to and improve the basic socialist economic system, unswervingly consolidate and develop the public sector economy, unswervingly encourage, support and guide the development of the non-public sector economy, and promote the healthy development of the non-public sector economy and the healthy growth of the non-public sector economy.
The third issue: the correct understanding and grasp of the security of supply of primary products. For a large country like ours, securing a good supply of primary products is a major strategic issue. We must strengthen strategic planning and make early adjustments to ensure security of supply.
We must adhere to the priority of saving. " What is taken with a system, measured by the use of the abundant, no system, measured by the use of the lack of." We must implement a comprehensive conservation strategy and promote conservation actions in all areas. In the area of production, we must promote comprehensive conservation of resources, intensive, recycling, reduce energy consumption per unit of product material consumption, accelerate the technological transformation of manufacturing industries, and improve input and output efficiency. In the field of consumption, to enhance national awareness of conservation, advocate simple and moderate, green and low-carbon lifestyle, oppose extravagant waste and excessive consumption, in-depth "CD-ROM" and other food conservation actions, and widely carry out the creation of green organs, green families, green communities, green travel and other actions.
To enhance domestic resource production security capacity. To increase exploration efforts, the implementation of a new round of strategic action to find a breakthrough in mining, improve the level of development and protection of marine resources, mineral resources. To clarify the strategic bottom line of self-sufficiency in domestic production of important energy resources, play the role of state-owned enterprises to support the bottom, accelerate the application of advanced mining technology development of oil and gas and other resources. To strengthen the construction of the national strategic material reserve system, in critical moments to play a regulating role in the bottom line. To promote waste classification and resource recovery, expand the use of domestic solid waste, and accelerate the construction of waste recycling system.
I think its kneejerk to assume that Xi is saying what a liberal might say re: 'Welfare bad' but I think he is actually making the distinction that China doesn't have the doctors and specialists to staff a universal welfare system and that it is necessary to focus on that first prior to making a universal welfare system that will be overloaded instantly. Its an empty promise for China to say 'we have universal healthcare' when in fact there is no one to be doing the welfare in rural areas.
People really do not understand the amount of work that needs to be done to bring rural China up to par with the big coastal areas. The effort is gargantuan. Right now China is focusing most heavily on making sure people have modern housing and not mud huts that have cliff faces fall on them every time a monsoon comes through. That can be seen as welfare but it certainly isnt comprehensive.
I think he is actually making the distinction that China doesn’t have the doctors and specialists to staff a universal welfare system and that it is necessary to focus on that first prior to making a universal welfare system that will be overloaded instantly. Its an empty promise for China to say ‘we have universal healthcare’ when in fact there is no one to be doing the welfare in rural areas.
If that would be true, it would be an extremely fair point, but I don't think you can make such an argument about China anymore. China awarded 50% more STEM PhD's then the US last year, and that divergence is only expected to grow. But those numbers are actually an underestimate of how good China is doing, because the US counts many social sciences PhD's as "STEM", and the US loses about 10% of their PhD graduates, who move to the rest of the world. Granted, China has a much higher population, but still I'm inclined to say that their overall scientific development is really high.
I agree that they are making huge progress, and especially the proportion of STEM degrees to other degrees is very important for building their country later. However, you must note: China has a population 4x the USA's. So to begin to catch up, they need to award 400% more STEM degrees than the USA does. But there is still the matter of material development. The CPC has luckily addressed this issue recently and cut out a lot of exploitative practices in education to boost the numbers.
whatever your opinions it's definitely important to hear from his own words what he says he plans on doing :shrug-outta-hecks:
Yeah, true. We often only hear anything about Xi filtered through western biases. I'm probably also quick to bite anyone that dares suggest helping people that can't work is bad for the economy, especially after what's been happening with covid. It really isn't. Those on welfare spend their money back in the community. I just hate valuing people based on their ability to "work". But I'm probably preaching to the choir here lol.
" At the ninth meeting of the Central Finance and Economics Committee, I made a comprehensive deployment of the "dual carbon" work, emphasizing that we must adhere to the principles of national overall planning, conservation priority, two-wheel drive, smooth internal and external, and risk prevention. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has issued opinions on the carbon neutralization work and approved the carbon peaking action plan. Achieving the goal of reaching the peak and carbon neutrality must be firm, but it cannot be accomplished in one go. To be based on national conditions, it is our basic national conditions to focus on coal, and the realization of carbon peaking must be based on this reality. While doing a good job in the clean and efficient utilization of coal, speed up the flexible transformation of coal-fired power units, develop renewable energy, promote the optimal combination of coal and new energy, and increase the consumption capacity of new energy. We must pay close attention to tackling key green and low-carbon technologies and accelerate the promotion and application of advanced technologies. It is necessary to conduct scientific assessments, improve the "dual control" system of energy consumption, create conditions to realize the transition from "dual control" of energy consumption to "dual control" of total carbon emissions and intensity, and accelerate the formation of an incentive and restraint mechanism for reducing pollution and carbon emissions. Relevant departments in all regions should coordinate the work of "dual control" and "dual carbon" to prevent simple decomposition. To ensure energy supply, achieve multi-objective balance, and increase energy supply through multiple channels, large enterprises, especially state-owned enterprises, must take the lead in ensuring supply and stable prices, and will never allow major incidents such as large-scale "power outages" to occur again. It is necessary to further promote the energy revolution, promote energy consumption, supply, technology, and institutional reforms, strengthen international cooperation, and accelerate the construction of an energy power."
seems like the power outages he blames on certain people being adventurist on renewable energy? i get that he's a conservative dude and believes in slow change, but i do wish xi would hit the solarpunk button :bird-mad:
He mentions carbon peaking, which makes me think there's a definite roadmap for the rise and decline of coal in China in the near future.
It could be that this really is the most practical way of decarbonising a large economy like that of China. If so, I look forward to seeing what the outcome will be.
or maybe supply chain issues actually? would fit in with one of his earlier objectives of self sufficiency for china
