i have it on good authority from about half of lemmy that china is a wonderful place where everyone feels safe and actually there never were any uyghurs, since that’s just western propaganda
itt: people confirming the premise. ni hao baybeeee
Being banned from .lm is a badge of honor.
Also North Korea is what all countries should strive to emulate.
No, seriously, I’ve seen a tankie on here say that.
Also, any source that disagrees with you, biased sources like Wikipedia, are just Fake News!
Western media is verifiably corrupt, they’re right
Or so says the propaganda machine of China.
Lol no dumbass, verifiable facts. Our media has been untrustworthy for longer than either of us has been alive, the only people claiming otherwise are incurable morons or lying.
Which facts are verifiable and which are fake, how do you tell the difference?
In this case specifically, by living through Iraq+Afghanistan and not being completely braindead.
After living and working in the US and now living and working in China (no not a teacher), I can say my life is definitely better in China than it was in the US. And no I’m not a bot or paid CCP stooge. Just a normal person lucky enough to have worked and lived in many places around the world.
There are too many things to mention why China is better besides the obvious like healthcare, social security, infrastructure, green energy, technology, cost of living.
I still don’t understand why western media portray China as a communist hell hole, worse than North Korea. Clearly no one bothers to really understand how China works.
And in regards to safety, yes it’s one of the safest countries in the world. Actually when you ask Chinese what is good about China, safety is one the core answers. No school shootings, no need for metal detectors at schools. I can leave my electric scooter unlocked with my phone on it, come back an hour later and everything is still there. If I tried that in my birth country, it would be gone by the time I turned around.
Thailand for example is much stricter and run by a military government. When I worked there, one morning we had tanks rolling down the street when the military overthrown the government. And don’t say anything about the playboy king or his family.
Anyway, I’ll get downvoted but if you are from any of the 62 visa free countries that can visit China, obviously not the US, I recommend you visit and have your eyes and awareness opened. Or just stay in your ‘China bad’ bubble.
China is a decent place to live, but just as capitalist as anywhere else, and is authoritian (again, like many other places, the US included in that to a decent extent).
And no doubt I’d prefer living there over the US. You couldn’t pay me to visit the US.
What drives me crazy though, is MLs and the Chinese state, claiming that they’re socialist.
I hecking wish they were… :(
Xinjiang is open for tourism, you can literally just visit and ask them yourself dumbass
Why people like china? They are trying to solve global warming problem. They are bringing innovations at scale and low cost. Their state is battling some capitalism schemes, like price inflation of goods and housing. Their billionares are little bitches of the party. Not the other way around. People there generally feel safe, better salaries compared to its neighbours, better medicine etc.
If usa or europe or russia rules the world, humanity is fuked. If china rules then everything will be fine.
You know other, better countrys exist outside of these 2, right?
i guess uyghurs aren’t human.
that tracks with chinese policy.
out of curiousity, how much do you get paid to post on lemmy? is it a decent gig?
They didn’t used to have billionaires, when Mao was in power. Strangely, a lot of Westerners seem to hate what China is now, but also hate what China was before, which seems very strange to me. “The reforms were bad and China should be more Maoist” that is a coherent position, “The reforms were good but should have gone further and become even more capitalist” that is also a coherent position. But “China is bad now because they allow billionaires but they were also bad when they didn’t allow billionaires” isn’t really coherent, it just seems like knee-jerk opposition to whatever they do or don’t do. Anyone who wants to offer critiques should be able to answer the simple question of whether the reforms were good or bad, whether they moved in the right or wrong direction.
On the off-chance that you actually want a serious answer to the question, let’s start with some history. Before the revolution, China’s average life expectancy was in the 30’s, it experienced frequent famines, had no access to medicine, and had had similarly awful conditions for literally thousands of years with no improvement for the average person. The revolution brought about huge improvements in life expectancy and the basic necessities of life (with the failure of the Great Leap Forward being an exception to this general trend).
However, while central planning works for providing basic necessities because the demand for those necessities is very predictable, it is not the most efficient regarding consumer goods. This was one of the failures that caused the collapse of the USSR, the desire for consumer good and the inability to compete domestically. Furthermore, despite the increases in life expectancy, virtually everyone in China still lived in extreme poverty. The reforms in the 80s were intended to address this, and they were wildly successful at it:
In the words of Deng, it doesn’t matter if the cat is white or black, so long as it catches mice. It doesn’t really matter if a policy is ideologically “pure,” so long as it provides clear material benefits for the common people.
Where I’m standing, the whole point of having any sort of political beliefs at all is to figure out which policies will improve people’s lives. And lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty over the span of 40 years, can you name a more successful policy, ever, in all of history?
You’re making a false dichotomy fallacy…
Like, the problem is that we don’t like neither because both are shit, just as USA, Russia and Ukraine are.
There are more than these two options, and is reasonably to want one of these.
Like, why aren’t they more like Iceland, Finland, Switzerland or Norway?
Honestly, these are the only countries I do like in the world, specially Switzerland and Norway.
Norway? Massive oil reserves and natural resources in a country with a small population. Imagine Quatar with a more sane government and much more sane (and richer) neighbours. Plus self-sufficiency in terms of agriculture.
Switzerland? It was the one neutral country where everyone parked their emergency money. They played all sides in ww2 and won. Everyone needs a neutral ground to negotiate and put their fuck-off money.
Both very exceptional cases.
Youre actually completely wrong about extreme poverty AND extreme poverty in China.
Thw World Bank’s definitions of ‘extreme poverty’ are completelt stupid. Thhe World Bank has stated that they consider 1.25USD/day to be ‘extreme poverty’ … who here could live off of 1.25USD /day? Could you live off of that? Even in China? Even in Nigeria you cant live off of that.
ALSO deng’s reforms increased the people in China living beneath the BASICS NEEDS POVERTY LINE which is a much better measure of extreme poverty since the BASIC NEEDS POVERTY LINE or BNPL measures rhe BASIC NEEDS that a person needs
Citations here and in the description of the video : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RStKklOC-Z4&t=926s&pp=ygUqYWxsIHlvdXIgcHJvYmxlbXMgaGF2ZSBzb21ldGhpbmcgaW4gY29tbW9u
Be better.
You’re losing
PROVE that Im losing.
You’re doing that for me, thank you!
And lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty over the span of 40 years, can you name a more successful policy, ever, in all of history?
Democracy. I really hate this untestable argument as if we could go back in time and do A|B test to see which framework would have lifted people out of poverty the fastest. Taiwan is richer and more free than China despite being democratic, so is Japan, South Korea - what now? Which dicks do we measure and do we start at the balls or just the shaft?
I really hate this untestable argument as if we could go back in time and do A|B test to see which framework would have lifted people out of poverty the fastest.
What?? Then why even discuss anything about anything?
If you’re criticizing China’s policies, surely the point of that criticism is that you think different policies would have been more effective.
It’s also not entirely an untestable counterfactual because we can examine every other political faction that had a reasonable chance of controlling China, and see what their leadership looked like in practice, and make reasonable extrapolations based on that.
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The Nationalists did absolutely nothing to help the rural poor, embezzled foreign aid, and were more preoccupied with hunting down their domestic enemies than repelling the genocidal fascist invaders. Chiang Kai-Shek literally had to be captured by his own bodyguards to be pressured into defending the country. Life expectancy remained completely flat during his rule.
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The fascist, genocidal Japanese invaders weren’t a good option for obvious reasons.
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How about having no centralized authority at all? That’s what they had during the warlord period, a time of chaos and conflict that left the country vulnerable and did nothing to improve things for anyone.
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Before that, there was the Qing dynasty, an authoritarian monarchy which was so assured of its superiority that they completely failed to adapt to foreign innovations and technologies, out of pride, even when it was clear that those technologies were superior.
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Then you have the various European powers, carving the country up to divy up the resources between each other, while getting half the country addicted to opium.
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And, returning to how things played out historically, we have the one and only faction that had any intention whatsoever of helping the hundreds of millions of starving farmers, which doubled life expectancy within a generation and then adapted to changing conditions and enacted policies which, again, brought 800 million people out of extreme poverty. And the whole reason they won the revolution was because the starving Chinese peasants could tell that they were the only ones who gave two shits about helping them.
Which dicks do we measure and do we start at the balls or just the shaft?
I’m the one trying to avoid this pointless dick-measuring contest between countries with vastly different conditions, despite everyone else trying to draw me into it. I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t know why we’re comparing countries. Why don’t you ask WoodScientist whose dicks we measure, since he’s the one trying to measure dicks?
What?? Then why even discuss anything about anything?
I’m confused by your reply here. This is entirely limited to this scenario of false attribution. As we can’t verify this in any meaningful extend due to - as you yourself pointed out - every country and culture being invredibly different. So why are you OK with attributing success to chinese policy but not failure?
At the end of the day the historic justification magic doesn’t matter. I see today how unjust and miserable China is despite what tiktok might paint you. Not having internet is my litmus test and China fails this, I don’t understand how can people justify this. And please don’t try to diminish the great firewall of China - it’s really fucking bad.
As we can’t verify this in any meaningful extend due to - as you yourself pointed out - every country and culture being invredibly different. So why are you OK with attributing success to chinese policy but not failure?
I’m so confused by this conversation. Let’s recap.
Originally, OP asked why China has billionaires if it’s aiming to be socialist. I replied that the reforms that allowed billionaires also resulted in 800 million people escaping extreme poverty. WoodScientist randomly started drawing comparisons between the PRC and Taiwan, and I said that it’s apples and oranges, and that I didn’t see the relevance to what I had said. Then you started providing even more reasons why the comparison isn’t really valid, acting as if that contradicted my position in some way, which was even more confusing. You added that you didn’t like looking at other possible routes China could have gone, because it’s untestable.
Now, having established that you don’t like comparing China to other countries (calling it “dick measuring”), and also that you don’t like comparing other historical possibilities (calling them “untestable”) you’re now accusing me of being unwilling to attribute failure to Chinese policy.
First of all, which failure are you talking about? There are plenty which I’m willing to acknowledge. But also, on what basis could you call any policy a success or failure? You’ve thrown away all your epistemology. If we discount comparisons to other places, and also discount comparisons to other possibilities, then what can we look at to determine if a given policy was a success or failure?
I see today how unjust and miserable China is despite what tiktok might paint you.
Do you? What’s your point of reference for that? Some hypothetical ideal that exists only in your mind?
All I did is call you out that you can’t draw conclusions from n=1 of a policy so you can’t attribute chinese authoritarian policy for “getting people out of poverty”. So your glazing of Chinese autocrats is exactly that - glazing.
That’s completely absurd. This is the dumbest thing anyone’s said this conversation.
The sample size isn’t “n=1” it’s n=800,000,000. It’s clearly visible from the graph that I posted that the reduction in poverty began immediately after the reforms, and then continued extremely consistently on an extremely large scale.
In case you need a refresher on what the data looks like:
You’re just so committed to shitting on every single thing that China does that you’re willing to throw out all reason and logic, completely ignore obvious facts, and throw out any means of evaluating any policy just to avoid the conclusion that China may have done a single thing right.
What other possible explanation even is there? You’re just very objectively wrong.
Lol keep moving the goal post boot licker
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First and foremost, there’s no such thing as a “communist country”. Communism is a very late stage of socialist development when all class contradictions have been abolished. We don’t know what that might look like, but the consensus is that we can’t really talk about a country being communist but rather an overall state of the world.
Secondly, China has a fairly good grip over its billionaire class. They don’t have the class power their class has in the US, Europe, or the rest of the western capitalist world. The capitalist class in China is subject to the wishes of the working class represented by the party with its over 100 million members.
Cope
In what way? There’s nothing to cope about
You know exactly what way.
You’re losing and you know it
I’ve never won harder
Embarassing if true
100% they have a class based system it’s just not talked about.
They do have a bourgeoisie class and a peasent class.
They have doctors, lawyers, construction workers, government employees, billionaires and unprecedented wealth within families.
Then they have the peasant class the rice paddy farmers, the package sorters, the food delivery drivers, the minimum income workers living in cramped apartments and the unemployed.
Yes, that’s why it’s not communist. But it is socialist, because the working class controls the government and holds the reins of the economy.
Yes, exactly like the working class in the US controls the government and holds the reins of the economy.
Except not. Tell me more about how ignorant you are about political economy theory and how China actually functions.
ohhhhhhhhhhh it’s evolved. I’m going off of an old system:
Class structure and earnings
In the last half century, China’s class structure has undergone a major transformation, evolving from a simple system of three socialist strata (cadres, workers, and peasants) in the pre-reform era to a hybrid class system mixing capitalist features with aspects of the previous socialist class system. The Chinese market-oriented reforms and the expansion of the private sector changed property relations and generated a class structure with striking similarities to that of other capitalist societies (Bian Citation2002). Previous research has adopted multiple approaches to understand the class dynamics and earnings in transitional China. Some research on urban China applies Goldthorpe’s neo-Weberian class theory to the Chinese context (Zou Citation2015) while others have adapted Wright’s neo-Marxist class framework to explain class-based earnings inequality (Li, Qin, and Chen Citation2012; Lin and Wu Citation2009). Lin and Wu (Citation2009) compared different class schema and concluded that a modified neo-Marxian class approach (albeit one that incorporated hukou) best captured the evolving class structure in transitional China. They also demonstrated that class has become the major source of earnings disparities among Chinese workers.
Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21620555.2021.1878019#d1e358
Hukou: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou
Hukou is incorporated into almost every Chinese socioeconomic and political system
The capitalist class in China is subject to the wishes of the working class represented by the party with its over 100 million members.
LMAO. Do you actually believe that garbage yourself?
The simple truth is that China is the most efficient capitalist country in the world right now - they combine a totalitarian regime with a huge economy and an actual self-serving but smart understanding of capitalism. They are simply better at playing that game that the rest of the world.
What we don’t see from the outside is to what degree becoming rich enables you to take influence on the political system. What we do see is that the Chinese “communist” (muhaha) party has an iron grip on the country, but also that they are strongly intertwined with what you call “the capitalist class” (i.e. rich parasites).
Wordy and condescending but does absolutely nothing to prove them wrong, great job!
an actual self-serving but smart understanding of capitalism
Welcome to marxism-leninism. Socialist state building is about achieving progress for the people. That can mean building up production forces and engaging in capitalism, as long as the capitalist class is subject to the peoples wishes.
as long as the capitalist class is subject to the peoples wishes.
Yeah I think that’s the part where you missed the news flash about the Chinese state.
So much ignorance on display here in this thread. People talking out of their ass with no clue or care why and how China has implemented economic reforms and development policy. No clue what communists even are much less the details of how they manage the economy of a developing socialist state within a capitalist global economy. Just thought-terminating clichés about billionaires and so-called “state capitalism”.
Fun fact: you can actually read the justifications for why socialist countries managed by proletariat governments have implemented limited market systems in their economies in China, Vietnam, Cuba, USSR, even Korea. Their thoughts are public!
What do you mean? Are the Chinese billionaires a good thing?
I think the billionaires are just a symptom of the capitalist global economy. China uses the wealth generated by the billionaires to further their goals of working towards communism.
Interesting, and I thought it was the workers who generated the wealth. Perhaps it should not belong to them after all then. Why tax the billionaires at all if they’re the ones generating the wealth?
Billionaires don’t escape taxes in China the way they do in the west. Poor people in China don’t pay any taxes at all. This is possible because the wealthy are taxed.
Are you an actual child? Serious answers only please
What do you mean?
I mean that if you have a valid excuse for being this painfully naive then I would like to know in advance before I hurt your feelings about it
You’re why I do this. I’ve never seen an easier group to ragebait than .ml users/lemmy communists. I don’t care even a tiny bit about China or their billionaires. The fact you’re viewing a shitpost through the lense of winning and loosing is the best thing I could have hoped for making this post. Look through every comment I’ve made here, are any even slightly high effort? Its all the easiest bullshit talking points to keep people unable to discern context riled up. I’m having a fantastic time.
Not even a little believable, you’re either some sort of deeply incompetent fed or profoundly lonely, maybe both lol
If you love capitalism and are just being a silly goose say “your mother”.
Because they’re marxist leninist and think socialism is something you work towards and isn’t achievable by pressing the big red communism button.
Just a few more billionaires and the state will wither away.
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
Cos playing at communism at best. China is a totalitarian fascist state.
Words mean things, try looking them up before using them in sentences
Im just gonna drop this here and I dont care who I upset https://sci-hub.st/10.1080/13563467.2021.1899153
Absolute clownery
if they are aiming to be a communist country?
lol
that one study by jason hickel et al. in. 2022 has pretty much proveen that china does NOT ever aim to beccoming a communist country because those in power inchina are a-okay with screwing over chinese workers in unequal exchange trade deals.
Also deng xiaoping was a capitalistic rat : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GCf1obSZ334&pp=ygUMYnVyeWluZyBkZW5n
Don’t tell that to @amnesigenic@lemmy.ml
amnesigenic is spamming me cause theyre salty and they know Im correct.
Unless someone cames back at me with sources that prove Im wrong? Im correct. Done and done.
They suck big time and are completely ignorant of that verifiable fact. Super easy to fuck with though, which is pretty cool. Regardless of proof and information you provide, it will be inadequate. Literally the epitome of why .ml is so meme’d on and cringe. Bummer because they could be cool.
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
Lol stay mad loser
that one study by jason hickel
Lol not helping your credibility kiddo
What’s your beef with Hickel? Isn’t he the exact type of qualified academic you’d want to cite? What about the video ?
Hickel is fine, especially when he completely disagrees with you about China. Picking one study and ignoring the entire rest of his work to support your dumbass argument is embarassing enough, failing to link that study as well makes it extremely clear that you’re completely full of shit
IMHO China is a more capitalist country than the USA. 12h workdays 6 days a week (996), with overtime 16h, no labour rights, no representation, only the party gets that. Flooding the markets with goods sold at a loss, to drive the other countries’ industry out of business. The taxpayer subsideses the loss. And once China is the monopoly, they can charge what they want.
IMO these MAGA cunts should wet themselves at the sight of China. After all, China is more capitalist than the USA, lol.
IMHO China is a more capitalist country than the USA. 12h workdays 6 days a week
Communism doesn’t mean that everybody can slack off. If people don’t work enough it’s difficult for them to catch up with Capitalism, like USSR and Eastern Europe have shown.
All that work has paid off for China. Unlike any other country they have a shot at being independent from the West.
Capitalism means that the people who control the means of production also control politics. That’s not true in China, so that people there can hope for a better life despite AI and robots.
All that work has paid off for China.
True, they’re minting new billionaires faster than any other country in the world.
They’ve also lifted 800,000,000 people out of poverty in 40 years.
Yes, they industrialized. Same thing happened more or less everywhere else, just earlier, because China stayed an agrarian society for longer than many other countries.
The reason other countries can’t say the same though, is that they don’t have 800,000,000 people in the first place. Well India does, but then they’ve also lifted a few hundred million people out of extreme poverty in the last decade or so. We’ll see what the numbers are like for 2015-2055 in… 29 years I guess.
👍
lol
They are not treated like Iraq or Iran. That alone is a success, for every citizen.
The difference to the West is that the party stands above the billionaires. That means they have working healthcare despite billionaires.
We have working healthcare in most of the west, with fewer billionaires. I’d in fact say much of the west has even better healthcare than China.
The US doesn’t, but then both the US and China are ultracapitalist nightmares.
How exactly are the billionaires good for China’s healthcare?
Compare China to other countries that were poor in the 1970ies and China becomes impressive.
The USSR tried without billionaires and they are gone.
Europe has good healthcare because we had to look good compared to eastern Europe. We are cutting costs and in 10 years we likely will be much closer to the US system.
And China will also have to cut costs when having an aging society really hits them. Rampant capitalism won’t save them there.
Rampant capitalism won’t save them there.
That’s why they have an advantage over the west. They can put a limit to the Capitalism.
Tankies are the greatest right-wing propaganda that lefties still fall for both by believing in it and by believing that it’s actually coming from sincere leftists.
define “tankie”
Tankie (n): a Fox News Republican with a progressive streak. Core defining features are a love for historical despots and the belief that any source that disagrees with them is “Fake News.”
Centrists read a history book before trying to use historical terms challenge: impossible
As an old opponent of the Iraq War, I remember when “progressive” was reanimated to differ from the Democratic loyalist idiots like Clinton and Biden. And now you centrists have wrapped yourself in it, because you know your agenda has no value.
China does not claim to be a fully communist society yet. Official ideology describes the country as being in a long-term developmental phase of socialism; communism is portrayed as a future goal. However, if they continue as they have been treating people like mere numbers, keeping them in poverty under total control, while billionaires amass wealth they will never achieve that anyway. In a society that ideologically advocates for overcoming class distinctions and capitalist exploitation, enormous private fortunes exist. Entrepreneurs like Jack Ma have at times amassed wealth running into the billions. At the same time, the Party controls key sectors of the economy and can exert massive pressure on companies. That transitional phase has gone spectacularly wrong. That is not how communism is defined. Private property is accepted only as long as it remains compatible with the Party’s political interests. This is very convenient for the government: it can harness the productivity and innovation of capitalism without adopting the political power structures of a liberal political system.
Oh Jesus Christ. They’re as communist as you can humanly get currently. I hate this crap where people go “well xyz isn’t full communist”. No country can or will be 100% communist, socialist, or capitalist. It’s basically impossible. They can claim whatever they want. Half the shit they say is made up anyways.
But. they are at communist as possible.
But. they are at communist as possible.
Educate yourself. China is de-facto the biggest and most successful capitalist economy on this planet, under a totalitarian regime that uses “communist” in their name like televangelists use “christian”.
Try harder
Because communism never was about equality. It was always about the iron boot in your face.
What better way to aquire power than siding with the masses against the powerful?
What better way to aquire power than siding with the masses against the powerful?
Siding with powerful against weak masses.
Thats my point; communists always side with the weak, the notion that communists simply want to obtain power is silly.
communists always side with the weak
This is “Hitler did nothing wrong” level of stupid.
Blocked
This is projection followed by you running away from an argument you have absolutely no response to, fucking embarassing
China has maintained enough of a market system to avoid our usual direct efforts at overthrow or embargo, as long as our billionaire ruling class sees their markets as an opportunity outweighing the threat of their government they’ll block any push by our government to interfere with their access to those markets. Not only did that work perfectly but they actually managed to get their greatest global rival to voluntarily de-industrialize and hand the vast majority of our productive capacity over to them without a single shot fired. Every last bit of argument here and elsewhere about whether they’re communist or not is just cope from people whose civilizations have never pulled off anything half that slick in their entire worthless existences.
They do have famously good working conditions, high wages and quality of life. Their working class is in a meat grinder to an extent I haven’t seen anywhere else. Especially unskilled laborors.
Cool story kiddo
Cope
Lol no u
If the United States is your favorite country say “your mother”.
Your mother
China is communist. It is a government-controlled capitalist. But the government still has the majority of control
I think you missed an important “not” there.
Try harder