Struggle session engage. Post your pathetic arguments so that I and the other China Good Posters can dismantle them and you can learn.
Key points:
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China is a democracy. It is arguably the most functional and responsive democracy in a major country today. Its citizens consider it more democratic than the citizens of almost any other country do their own.
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China is on a clear path to socialism and economic justice. No nation in history has ever reduced poverty in anything like the way China is doing it.
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The vast majority of people in the PRC support the CPC. This is not due to being brainwashed. Americans are brainwashed and still hate their government.
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Almost everything you hear about China in the West sits on a spectrum between malicious misrepresentation to outright fabrication with no basis in reality.
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China's ascension to the premiere global power is an extremely good thing for world peace and the global socialist movement. While China does not actively support other socialisms (sadly it's not as good as the USSR in this regard) it does not do imperialism. China will allow socialisms around the world to flourish simply by not actively crushing them like the US and Europe.
So, China is clearly better than the US, considering that workers in BRI countries complain about price dumping, but countries in the American sphere complain about death squads. That said, we need to listen to workers and socialists who aren't in power. The NPA says they're getting shot with Chinese bullets. Workers in China still go on strike. Class struggle still exists in China, even if the state and party buffer it.
Now, call me old fashioned or internationalist, but our loyalty isn't to socialist states, but to the global working class (and the non working, but still dispossessed.) This means supporting China against the US, but also supporting Chinese workers against their bosses and the cops who back them up.
Now, call me old fashioned or internationalist, but our loyalty isn’t to socialist states, but to the global working class (and the non working, but still dispossessed.) This means supporting China against the US, but also supporting Chinese workers against their bosses and the cops who back them up.
This shit right here. :Needle-inject:
Yeah we need more support for the workers of China, remember American corporations are still in China, and Apple factories there still have suicide nets, etc.
But lower rates of suicide than American workers. There were 14 suicides in the article that first broke the suicide nets story. To match the American suicide rate there would have to be 110 suicides there per year.
Yes, it's true, American workers have much higher rates of suicide because hellworld, etc. Still we should have international solidarity.
Too small. Cuba is even More Good than China, but it doesn't have the population or economy to be a major player on the world stage.
Also in the minds of American neocons who rail against expert Cuban advisors demolishing their imperialist efforts throughout Latin America
bro please we have to emargo this tiny island nation with 11 million people to our 340 million bro, they will literally invade us and collapse our government please bro if we don't starve out their population imagine what they would do please listen to me
They seem very intent on fulfilling their ambition to be a medical superpower and punch far above their weight in terms of medical advancements so kinda, yeah.
Yeah loosening the grip of the US on international trade is the only way to end the economic siege on smaller burgeoning socialist states.
In our current world - most definitely, but in a hypothetic future scenario where America and the NATO world order decline and China becomes the only superpower similar to the US today, what mechanisms are in place to prevent China from throwing its weight around in the same violent way America does now?
I agree with the first part and concede that China hasn't shown the same predisposition to violence as America in its formative years. But the argument could be made that this was so (at least in part) because of the geopolitical constraints that prevented China from having even a modicum of success via crude outright violence. As to the second part power usually does corrupt, the definition of corruption being its slowly creeping nature and insidiousness. It's very naive to rely on the goodwill of individuals at the top, which is why I am honestly asking about the mechanisms in place that will prevent a country and a ruling circle from taking the easy self-serving path once all constraints prompting self-restraint have been lifted.
I wasn't arguing that China arouse out of the same impetus as the American colonies. I don't think we even need to doubt the revolutionary socialist origins of the modern Chinese state. And yes this is to a large extent the reason it has generally not acted in exploitative ways in its foreign policy. It has acted self-servingly as a nation state though (as opposed to an internationalist revolutionary base): in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Cambodia, even as far as Angola. So starting from the pivot to the West (even if we take as an article of faith that it did so as a particularly clever kind of 4D chess to subvert western hegemony for the socialist cause) China displayed behaviour in line with a classical nation state as opposed to a revolutionary state (that the USSR was at least pretending to do up until its dismantling, even if the pretence rang more and more hollow with passing years). The Dengist reforms certainly didn't add to its socialist character but arguably took it away, giving more power to an emerging national bourgeoisie.
Will China become more violent in the future in a way detrimental to socialist and labour uprising around the world? Maybe, maybe not. Obviously the present is more immediate, which is why I unequivocally stand by supporting China over the West in pretty much any current conflict. As to the inner checks and balances, the possibility of wrestling the power the bourgeoisie do undisputedly have in China from them and the end to the "party princeling" lines of succession still prominent (even if not exclusive), the stride towards completely scientific planning of the economy - I will gladly enlighten myself if you share some relevant reading materials pertaining to the inner workings of the party and maybe in my turn share in your optimism towards China's path.
Is this addressed to me? I don't think I've downbeared anyone in this thread.
Ah ok thanks! We certainly seem to have well working checks and balances here at least :)
Do you mean South Koreans? I dislike many of their unification fantasies because they're no different from Indian reunification fantasises, where the idea is to rescue the poor, propagandised children of the fail state.
Horrible take to call China the best hope for socialism today when Cuba still exists and is incredibly internationalist for a country of its size and relative wealth.
It played a very meaningful role in the pink tide that sweeped latin america.
Counterpoint: "good" and "bad" are childish liberal concepts that materialists shouldn't be using.
So much this. It's not even very useful to make more specific generalizations like "China is democratic" (or not). These struggle sessions should focus on specific policies of the countries involved, anything else is unmoored from proveable, materialist debate. And also, unlikely to change any minds.
Socialism is not an aesthetic, a country, or even an ideology. It's a goal, and actions either move us towards it or they don't based on quantifiable material outcomes.
Economic systems don't have any moral content to them dummy, that's my entire point.
Especially in the context of historical materialism, the outcomes are entirely predecated on contexts in which they are pursued. The outcomes related to socialism are for the betterment of humanity and a more livable natural world, that's why we should pursue it. But that's all in the present context. 700 years in the past living under feudalism, the context might be that building industrial capacity under capitalism would be better for humanity. Or 700 years in some glorious future there's the possibility that socialism is a reactionary position to stop the final implementation of communism.
Okay but I don't know of any bad socialists. Saying that nothing is good or bad just sounds galaxy-brain ("childish liberal concept"). I'd say Hitler and the CIA are bad, the Soviet Union and Fidel Castro are good. And also, China Good. I agree with the Chinese government more than I disagree with them. They are creating progress in the world, not preventing it like the United States.
I agree with the Chinese government more than I disagree with them.
But that's not a moral argument. By that logic any neoliberal can just plug "America" in there and make the same contentless argument.
I will dig up some links one day and post to c/sino, but here's the situation:
- In China, the government has literal websites and apps where people can leave their views and opinions about various policies. The local government uses these opinions to inform themselves on whether this policy is popular, whether its effective, and the people's grievances with said policy.
-Very popular social media sites such as Weibo and Sina are also used to assess the opinions of the masses on politics
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There is voting for politicians, especially at the local level. The system is called the "Three ups and the three downs" （三上三下). Beyond the local, lower levels, the government promotes those who have performed the best. The government officials essentially have to compete with each other at every level, and this is what brings great efficacy to the system in China. This competition extends up the government to entire provinces, competing for the best performance and highest satisfaction.
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The people express dissatisfaction with their local government by protests. By protesting, the central government in Beijing knows there is an issue, and this is usually sorted by removing the local official and replacing them. Interestingly, this is why the more protests there are in China, the more support there is for the CPC. You can think of it like this, the Central government is the one you call upon when local officials act up, and when they sort it out, you are even more satisfied with the CPC than before.
-That's all I can think of for now, I'll add more to an effortpost in c/sino one day, please look out for it!
Beyond the local, lower levels, the government promotes those who have performed the best.
i've heard this being called "confucian meritocracy", got no idea if it's a good expression for it, but it honestly looks far better than periodically choosing officials from a list of candidates to me
In China, the government has literal websites and apps where people can leave their views and opinions about various policies.
And a history of murdering the people who complain when prompted like this...
Yeah sure, they kill gazillions of their own people.
Edit: No but seriously, you maybe don't understand just how varied political opinion is in China, but there is PLENTY of variety, with plenty of people behind each variety as well. Obviously the overton window is shifted left in chinese politics, but there is variety, and they are allowed to express it. Otherwise, I wouldn't have headaches when I go onto Weibo, the platform notorious for white worshippers and capitalist-shills.
So you're denying that people died in the cultural revolution?
Or you just think murdering statistics worth of people is a joke?
you maybe don’t understand just how varied political opinion is in China, but there is PLENTY of variety
This is a roundabout way of implying without sticking your neck out and saying "China doesn't kill political dissidents"
Are you actually claiming this? Or that free speech is allowed to go further than posting?
Lol when tf did I say no one died in the cultural revolution? Don't stick words into my mouth and try to argue against it, bad form.
Also, when did I say that murdering political dissidents is a funny joke?
I'm saying that there is political dissident, and no, not all of them are killed because if they were, most of China would fucking disappear. You know that there are multiple parties within China right? Including the KMT? So yes, there is freedom to have different political views, and even have a place in government.
Furthermore, I'm not sure why you are so obsessed with free speech. It is not very useful to bitch about Trump on twitter, when you're dying of Covid because he is incompetent. So yes in a sense, the west is very free in speech, and you are also free to starve in the streets, free to go into lifelong debt for education etc.
And don't get me started on how the West kills political dissidents. You're beyond naive if you thing the free and mighty west doesn't kill rebels, and then co-opts their image and whitewash them of all their revolutionary intent. That shit takes real skill.
There was a thread about it on this very website a while ago.
This site has a pretty robust search feature, and if you're making these claims, you should be able to back them up.
Yeah, fuck me for piping up about a discussion I remember and not remembering the exact search terms that will bring it up. Next time I just won't participate and only people who agree will participate in the 'convince people who disagree' thread.
Really fucking helps when all the post titles are ironic shit like 'is dis u?'
I've been trying to find it this whole time people have been downvoting me and replying with snide shit and I'm already past 'fuck it'.
I mean if you're admitting you don't really know what you're talking about that deeply, and you're just saying something you remembered you saw in another thread - but can't remember any details at all about that thread, and can't provide other sources backing up your (quite extreme) claim...I expect you to get shit on, sorry.
Well I have the memory of all of the revisionists on this website acknowledging it then and pretending they don't know what I'm talking about now, so I give this 'convince people china is not actually bad' thread an A+
"the cultural revolution never happened because you can't find a thread with an unsearchable title"
A+ outreach. I love the pompous frills from this last reply.
I guess the only way to have an actual conversation about Mao or the Chinese government is to keep a list of every negative thing you ever hear about them, which I guess I must now actively seek out. Hope that was what you were going for.
Of course none of the 'China experts' in here will help jog my memory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
"If you can't find a thread with an unsearchable name, that means you didn't actually see the thread or read what it was about"
Cool.
The bullet points are good but you need to back up the democracy stuff more because it’s not really widely known how regular Chinese people participate in politics.
i don't know much about how the system itself works, but i think we have some weird normative conceptions of democracy that aren't very helpful and this is the wrong way to go about it tbh
i only consider 2 basic things when i'm thinking about democracy to avoid falling into normative stuff:
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we can't define anything as a straight up democracy or dictatorship, because like everything in reality these values exist in degrees
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the more responsive the government is to popular demands, the more democratic i consider it to be
the chinese government is pretty responsive to popular demands, much more so than mine (brazil), so i don't really mind how they're elected or acquire administrative powers or whatever
the more responsive the government is to popular demands, the more democratic i consider it to be
I like that framework alot.
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Tbh there's just a limit to how much effort I can put into this right now
I'm relying on a lot of other good posters in here to help pick up some of the slack and utilizing my real skill of shit-stirring
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
How is China on a clear path towards socialism though? What are the mechanisms that will ensure it gets more socialist with time? How can you predict that, for example, in 2025 China will be more socialist than China in 2020?
This goes into what Xi JinPing is trying to achieve, and dissects his speeches. You can tell that he really is about this life, seriously give it a read.
More than anything, I always want to know why people think that China will suddenly turn around and say, nah, I'm going to stop being socialist now? The success that China has from being socialist is always most noticeable when comparing China with India., why would China give up on the strategy that works best for herself?
Furthermore, why would China play this game of being socialist for so long if they weren't truly socialist? Why not just go full mask-off?
Very interesting read. Interesting to see Xi straight up admit the cultural revolution was a mistake.
I might be called a dengist/revisionist, but I genuinely think it was good for china to reform and open up.
The cultural revolution had its role, but it was also full of mistakes. I mean, how can you possibly expect to succeed as a dogmatically communist country when you just escaped semi-colonialism, several wars, and have barely developed?
So yeah, I'm glad that the top leadership can see that China has made mistakes, acknowledges them, and also is willing to learn from these mistakes.
Which is why going through this massive struggle session is infuriating, most liberals think that those who defend China are saying China made no mistakes.
Clearly, this is not the case.
China made mistakes. People paid for this in lives and blood.
Most of the "CCP shills" are trying to dismantle the misconceptions most people have of China. There is never any useful conversation about China when everyone is repeating the same, debunked propaganda.
Quite simple: the Chinese aristocracy cede power, money, and influence to the proles, just like every other time in history it's happened.
The wealthy in China are not the ones calling the shots politically. It's not up to them.
Are they held hostage though? The USSR also compulsory educated their entire citizenry on a Marxist-Leninist analysis of exploitation and violent class war. In 1991 practically no one was willing to take up arms against the dismantling of the first proletarian state. The vast majority were either gleefully cheering on the destruction or sitting on the sidelines, still convinced that the big wise men in Moscow know what they're doing and will take care of the populace.
Because the communist party says so and they aren't controlled by capitalists so why would they say something they don't want to do? You think chapos are the target audience for Chinese press releases or speeches?
Okay, but where's your actual counterargument? China says they are building socialism, they have a number of socialist-style systems, including the way their electoral system works, and they want to create a "modern socialist system". Why are you a better judge of what is socialist than someone in the communist party?
Which is why it is infinitely more productive in a thread especially addressed to newcomers to actually talk about the "socialist-style systems" and their inner workings instead of just saying shut up and believe.
Consider this OP- China bad ackchyually, because the US alphabet agencies and MSM told me it was true 😎😎
Well that's completely fair, as we all know, people living in the imperial core actually know better than the people who live there, and the fact that they do not live up to standards poisoned by imperialist thinking is a completely correct stance to take
Dude congrats in making the best struggle session on the site, its been like 4 hours and its still in the front page, Mao would be proud :chairman:
Real talk, this is totally a capitalist talking point about China. The "poverty eradication" has come in many cases at the expense of the working class. If you've been in China at all and talked to people, you'll have met folks who lost their iron rice bowl jobs (and housing) as a result of privitisation and have never recovered. Pension plans are also being phased out, retirement ages raised, etc. Go talk to some Chinese Maoists or hard-core Marxists; many are pessimistic about the changes.
This isn't to downplay China's successes, which I could go on about at length. It just rubs me wrong when we talk about China's successes through a western, capitalist lens. It's the wrong way to do it and it puts emphasis on the wrong topics. When we discuss the success of communist or socialist governments it makes no sense to apply capitalist metrics.
When we discuss the success of communist or socialist governments it makes no sense to apply capitalist metrics.
you're mistaking a materialist metric for a capitalist metric
from marx himself:
[...] it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. “Liberation” is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse.
the whole thing about marxism/materialism is that you cannot will capitalism away, you have to develop away from it (it's the main difference between idealist and materialist interpretations of history)
feudalism didn't replace roman slavery because some people decided to, and capitalism didn't replace feudalism because some people decided to; both happened because the newer system proved to be better at producing and distributing whatever it is that we use in our lives
So in good faith, how are we measuring "poverty eradication"? Typically this is claimed using GDP, which for me is a non-starter.
I say this because when I look at the results of the dismantling of the danwei system, what I see is human wreckage among working people without much education. I know people who have become permanently unhoused because they lost their state housing and weren't able to buy a place of their own. I know people who have lost their pensions. The migrant labor phenomenon started because of this, and it is further perpetuating the class divide because children of migrant laborers often cannot go to school in the cities their parents have moved to because they don't have a local hukou ~...thus perpetuating the underclass~. Basically, I'm looking at the material conditions we see anywhere else in the world when we privatise things.
Conversely, there are lots of people making lots of money, buying apartments and cars and slowly squeezing out what we once would have thought of as the lower middle class in China.
There are much more important measures that I think we could use - for example health outcomes and educational achievement in rural vs urban areas; I haven't looked at it lately but within the last decade literacy rates were still measured differently depending on whether you live in a city or in the countryside.
editing for clarity...using strikeouts
can you give me any numbers for those? genuinely asking, those are flaws that i'm aware exist, but i've never found actual numbers to see how significant they are
and while per capita gdp is a bad measure, i like looking at tiered per capita disposable income, and it's hard for me to see any class squeezing when this metric has shown an average 8% growth for all tiers for the last 7 years or so
When I get time I can look, but some of the sources may be in Chinese rather than English. There's been some pretty interesting academic research about it.
alright i'm cool with them being in chinese since it's mostly numerical data anyway (so the bad translation won't be that much of a problem)
The funny thing is, when Pinker and his ilk make that global poverty reduction argument for capitalism, the vast majority of that is in China. This only goes to 2011 but the trend hasn't changed. China has reduced poverty below levels in a lot of long-industrialized Western nation and is continuing to do. This is the primary reason for the enormous popular support of the CPC's leadership. People feel the material improvement in their lives every day.
deng was worried about that too, he has a famous phrase where he says (in a very chinese way lol) that when you open the window the flies will come in
my problem is with takes like "the CPC isn't marxist anymore", it's dumb and pretty reductionist, and usually anti-materialist too (which is kinda funny, to use a non-marxist conception of reality to state that a party has abandoned marxism lol)
however, having doubts over whether the CPC can control capital as they administrate this historically necessary stage, that is a perfectly valid discussion to have imo. so far i think they've proven to be able to do so, but it's hard to know for sure, especially in the future
funnily enough, i think consolidating companies (which implies concentrating wealth) might be easier for the transition, as it's a lot better to remove a small number capitalists than millions of small business tyrants
You are absolutely correct. It's being done explicitly to pat themselves on the back with rhetorical redundancy.
Please give this a watch, its a PBS documentary that was banned from being released because it was too pro-beijing.
This goes into the issue of poverty alleviation in China, and why it has to be done.
You make the point that they're moving away from a way of life where they've been for generations, into factories etc. But, have you considered that the land in China is not always amenable to farming? Many farmers in China that are still very poor have land that are frankly shit for farming. They barely eek out their survival, and they are isolated from the rest of the country, for generations. This kind of poverty is truly soul-destroying. Getting ill is a death sentence, and a bad harvest could sentence your entire family to death.
The next point I wanted to refute was that everyone is being sent to factories to work. This is not true, and many times the farmers are simply relocated to better land to farm. Not all of them become factory workers, there are other jobs available in China, such as working in the service industry.
And also, please don't assume all factories are like Foxconn, that taiwanese company is incredibly extreme compared to the other factories in China. Nowadays, factories in China are a lot more modern.
That documentary was not banned from release, it was shown once, then pulled due to a problem with funding the documentary. PBS explicitly said there was no problem with editorial integrity except with the funding. There's definitely some ideological fuckery going on, but the thing is not banned in any way.
It's a brilliant cover isn't it?
Perfectly filmed and edited, all ready to go.
Pulled from cables, because suddenly, funding becomes a problem.
video link seems to be broken, is there another source? (or is my internet bad...very possible)
Yep, here's the youtube link.
Sorry I just automatically link invidious videos, haven't considered it might not load well.
I get random 500 errors from invidious, probably just too many incoming connections or something
Mega link: https://mega.nz/file/YagzVZTZ#vS7dPwnv5DVsbaB_GP4t3I61CWFzxdIRxix9ivHDsgI
The neoliberal Pinker brag lines about reducing global poverty are lies. If you remove China and socialist nations from the data global poverty has been increasing. Capitalism INCREASES poverty, neoliberal austerity INCREASES poverty. You have fallen for a distortion of facts and given too much credence to their framing
He’s wrong because he is stealing socialist valor and taking credit for the actions of socialist policies, saying that neoliberal global capitalism actually reduced the poverty - when in fact it was pretty much entirely China.
Proletarianization is necessary component of a move from agrarian pre-capitalism towards socialism. Saying that it’s “not a good thing” just makes you a reactionary luddite - the morality of it is irrelevant. It’s going to happen, and if you resist it you will be undeveloped and easily exploited and conquered by imperialists
Can’t believe there anti-capitalists here who want pre-capitalist agrarian societies instead of post-capitalist socialist ones. How do they expect to have a democratic proletariat state with no proletariat majority class?
Wonder if the user above supports Pol Pot or anarchiprimitivism
china good discussions made me realize how insidious american thinktank propaganda is, so china struggle sessions are always welcome for me.
Pleas tell that to the guy in the bottom of this thread calling me a stupid fuck for saying this same thing.
Three points.
- Any imperialist designs on China has to be fought tooth and nail.
- China is doing several things well, and worth emulating, like state's role in economic planning.
- However, I don't subscribe to all the values of CPC. I admire many things, and I am on reddit forums daily debating the libs on all demonisation of China. But I can't just offer uncritical support to CPC, because I disagree with some of their values.
There are 2 reasons I see that leftists should provide support for China.
The first is the desire for a far more multipolar world, this is absolutely a good thing including for the working class of the existing hegemonic powers. This includes things like the BRI challenging IMF based funding schemes.
The second is their major accomplishments around poverty reduction. Their existing economic and political framework is absolutely something that should be exported to developing countries in comparison to the DC consensus which leaves countries perminently middle income trapped. It is however worth pointing out that lower population countries might not be as successful in these efforts, but tons of African nation's given their booming populations would benefit.
Outside of this, China on a domestic level isn't especially good, they are not a model for what communism should look like when compared to either the USSR or Cuba. They are deeply invested in expanded consumerism, freedom of movement is massively limited to the upper eschelons of their society, healthcare access varies a fuck ton depending on where you live.
I understand you can argue that they are doing some sort of NEP like Lenin did, and I have read translated documents from China so I do know they do have at least some egalitarian goals, but I have tremendous skepticism about how this will play out over the long term. Xi is absolutely a far better leader than the Shanghai clique guys were, and I'm still convinced that such deeply pro business and anti socialist forces could take things over again.
