What I do see is a lot of confusion on how China is socialist when it appears awfully capitalist.
This runs dangerously close to the inverse of the "Socialism is when government does stuff".
Capitalism isn't when market participants do stuff.
The Chinese state bureaucracy has, time and again, demonstrated a willingness to prosecute corrupt business practices. The various industrial sectors are not calcified by the demand for profit, and so environmental reforms can occur far more rapidly. Neither are state bureaucrats beholden to the nation's investor class in a way that inhibits development of education, housing, or medical services.
I'd dig up links, but Google only wants to show me the crap trending on CNN from last week. But pick up a copy of "The Third Revolution" and - after you're done scraping off the neoliberal dog-whistling and agitprop - you end up with a picture of Chinese bureaucracy and economic management that is markedly dissimilar to Western Capitalism. Or just dig in and learn about the nation's fifteenth five-year plan, it's BRI initiative, and it's domestication of foreign technologies.
China isn't America. The Chinese economy is not following American neoliberal rules. The Reagan Revolution never happened in Beijing. It's still authoritarian and nationalistic, but it is not beholden to financial interests in any way comparable to Western governments.
China’s success story is a capitalist success story, or rather, a success story of authoritarian capitalism.
Compare China under balkinized colonial rule in the 19th century and China under a unified People's Republic in the 20th century.
I see substantial differences in everything from local autonomy to economic prioritization to legal standing of native peoples that would suggest a very explicit change in policy.
Maybe I've got my eyes too focused on the colonialist neoliberal ball, and I'm missing all the same sins playing out domestically. But I would argue the major distinction between Chinese domestic policy and western economic policy is that the Chinese government leadership is focused on satisfying the expectations of Chinese locals in order to maintain political security and autonomy. Westerners are attempting to upset Chinese locals, manufacture discontent and division in the Chinese state, and use the chaos to plunder the Chinese economic interior.
I might go so far as to compare the Chinese state as a massive multi-industry union and western capitalists as bosses attempting to fracture and exploit that union. Whether you believe the Chinese union leaders are clean or corrupt is incidental to the core class struggle - the solidarity they're trying to cultivate versus the disunity western agencies are attempting to inspire.
The point is, China’s economy is operating within the global capitalist framework
China's economy is operating alongside the western capitalist framework. There's an interface. But the systems remain distinct. The policies and goals of western society are not driving China's domestic agenda. Wall Street and the IMF are not writing up China's next five year plan. The CIA/MI5 is not setting China's production or infrastructure development goals. Beijing is not a puppet state.
They might still be adhering to capitalist growth strategies, but the benefits for western investors are incidental rather than engineered. The real strategy is to build a strong, unified Chinese state that can operate independently of western business.
Institutions of economic control - large brokerages and banks, military bases and technology labs, research universities, international embassies, HQs of major media and energy and manufacturing centers - have been controlled by western agencies.
Capitalism as an ideology might not belong to westerners, but - at the end of the 20th century - high value capital itself was under the dominion of Western institutions.
China's independence is rooted in its development of parallel competitive institutions. It isn't beholden to western centers of capital. And, as a consequence, westerners cannot extract rents from Chinese laborers either directly or through a captured Chinese bureaucracy.
What does not being a puppet state has to do with not being able to confront the realities of capitalism?
It goes to the very basis of Capitalism as an economic institution - the ability for one individual to garnish the labor of another. Chinese residents are not held hostage by western capitalist institutions in the same way Mexicans or Africans or Japanese residents have increasingly become.
This is seriously getting into crazy conspiracy theory territory where you seem to think that “global capitalism” is run by some cabal of Western “elites” secretly pulling the strings from behind.
If you're writing off the Petro-Dollar, the US network of military bases and clandestine agencies ( Five Eyes international spy network), western control of major arteries of trade like the Suez and Panama canals, and a century's worth of corporate conglomeration as "a conspiracy", I honestly don't know what to tell you.
This runs dangerously close to the inverse of the "Socialism is when government does stuff".
Capitalism isn't when market participants do stuff.
The Chinese state bureaucracy has, time and again, demonstrated a willingness to prosecute corrupt business practices. The various industrial sectors are not calcified by the demand for profit, and so environmental reforms can occur far more rapidly. Neither are state bureaucrats beholden to the nation's investor class in a way that inhibits development of education, housing, or medical services.
I'd dig up links, but Google only wants to show me the crap trending on CNN from last week. But pick up a copy of "The Third Revolution" and - after you're done scraping off the neoliberal dog-whistling and agitprop - you end up with a picture of Chinese bureaucracy and economic management that is markedly dissimilar to Western Capitalism. Or just dig in and learn about the nation's fifteenth five-year plan, it's BRI initiative, and it's domestication of foreign technologies.
China isn't America. The Chinese economy is not following American neoliberal rules. The Reagan Revolution never happened in Beijing. It's still authoritarian and nationalistic, but it is not beholden to financial interests in any way comparable to Western governments.
deleted by creator
Compare China under balkinized colonial rule in the 19th century and China under a unified People's Republic in the 20th century.
I see substantial differences in everything from local autonomy to economic prioritization to legal standing of native peoples that would suggest a very explicit change in policy.
Maybe I've got my eyes too focused on the colonialist neoliberal ball, and I'm missing all the same sins playing out domestically. But I would argue the major distinction between Chinese domestic policy and western economic policy is that the Chinese government leadership is focused on satisfying the expectations of Chinese locals in order to maintain political security and autonomy. Westerners are attempting to upset Chinese locals, manufacture discontent and division in the Chinese state, and use the chaos to plunder the Chinese economic interior.
I might go so far as to compare the Chinese state as a massive multi-industry union and western capitalists as bosses attempting to fracture and exploit that union. Whether you believe the Chinese union leaders are clean or corrupt is incidental to the core class struggle - the solidarity they're trying to cultivate versus the disunity western agencies are attempting to inspire.
China's economy is operating alongside the western capitalist framework. There's an interface. But the systems remain distinct. The policies and goals of western society are not driving China's domestic agenda. Wall Street and the IMF are not writing up China's next five year plan. The CIA/MI5 is not setting China's production or infrastructure development goals. Beijing is not a puppet state.
They might still be adhering to capitalist growth strategies, but the benefits for western investors are incidental rather than engineered. The real strategy is to build a strong, unified Chinese state that can operate independently of western business.
deleted by creator
Institutions of economic control - large brokerages and banks, military bases and technology labs, research universities, international embassies, HQs of major media and energy and manufacturing centers - have been controlled by western agencies.
Capitalism as an ideology might not belong to westerners, but - at the end of the 20th century - high value capital itself was under the dominion of Western institutions.
China's independence is rooted in its development of parallel competitive institutions. It isn't beholden to western centers of capital. And, as a consequence, westerners cannot extract rents from Chinese laborers either directly or through a captured Chinese bureaucracy.
It goes to the very basis of Capitalism as an economic institution - the ability for one individual to garnish the labor of another. Chinese residents are not held hostage by western capitalist institutions in the same way Mexicans or Africans or Japanese residents have increasingly become.
If you're writing off the Petro-Dollar, the US network of military bases and clandestine agencies ( Five Eyes international spy network), western control of major arteries of trade like the Suez and Panama canals, and a century's worth of corporate conglomeration as "a conspiracy", I honestly don't know what to tell you.