full image - Repost: Is China Communist? Will they collapse? This in more in TODAYS EFFORT REPOST (from Reddit.com, Is China Communist? Will they collapse? This in more in TODAYS EFFORT REPOST)
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Destiny talked a bit about the China memes today, so reposting an old post relevant with some addendums.Is China communist?China is a state capitalist economy ran by a communist party. The organization of China, from its economy to its political structure, cannot be understood if you ignore its Marxist ideological underpinning. The behavior of the Chinese party and its capitalist economic policy is not run based on liberal or Western economic theory, but rather based on Deng and his successors reformist ideas.So capitalism is responsible for Chinas success!Yes. And this is in no way contrary to Marxist theory. Their argument is that capitalism is an extremely powerful economic force and should be used as a tool until the economy is sufficiently developed such that it can transition towards socialism, which the Chinese communist party official ideology claims it intends to do by 2050. The way by which China’s capitalism is run, however, is highly informed by Marxism. First, the Chinese communist party has wide ownership of a variety of industries and has traditionally required some Chinese ownership of foreign firms operating within China as well. State owned industries (SOEs) have half to two-thirds government ownership and are granted huge preferential lending and support. This is specifically because China believes that if there is not a communist party apparatus controlling the capitalist forces China will become just another normal capitalist state.Isn’t the Chinese communist party full of billionaires and capitalists?The Chinese community party government itself is not. The cases of billionaires in the CPC legislature are all part of the seven non-Communist parties of the United Front, a puppet party allocated symbolic seats by the CPC. They exist to have state-capitalist economic connections and some influence in policy makers, but they are entirely a symbolic puppet party and do not have serious influence.The party itself certainly does have the super wealthy. The CPC represents ~7% of China’s population, and includes many influential capitalists including Jack Ma, China’s wealthiest man. CPC entry is primary a way to network and gain connections with other powerful members of society, but it still includes wide ideological training and requirements. Jiang Zemin, successor to Deng Xiaoping, was the first to allow capitalists party entry in 2001 as well as including them explicitly under the CPCs ideological goals in the Three Represents.So, are China’s leaders capitalists?Xi Jingping, the current paramount leader of China and the most entrenched personally since Mao, grew up in great hardship. A princeling, or a child of China’s first generation revolutionaries, Xi’s father Xi Zhongxun fell out of favor with China and his family suffered greatly during the cultural revolution. He lived in poor rural housing, was arrested for attempting to leave the country, and was rejected seven times by the Communist Youth League before finally entering. Similarly, he was rejected ten times from CPC entry. He studied chemical engineering, Marxist ideological thought, and law to get his start in politics, working his way up from the rural provinces to power.Li Keqiang, the current premier of China, was born to a party official and was sent to rural labor during the cultural revolution. He would reject his fathers offer of grooming him to power, working his way up in party leadership after earning a law degree and PHD in economics.Li Zhanshu, the chairman of the standing committee, joined the communist party at twenty five and worked as an office worker, going through night school to earn his degree and later working his way up through the provincial party system.Wang Yang, Chairman of the political advisory body of China, was born to an urban family to a manual laborer. He worked as a food processing worker before joining the Communist Party of China and going on to study political economics. He then worked his way up through the provincial administration to power.These are just four of the most powerful men in China, but a few things are the same; none of them are from wealthy families, none of them are capitalists or businessmen, and all of them worked their way up from the local provincial government all the way to power. China’s leadership is an extremely competitive and meritocratic system. Ideological adherence and constant support of the party is key to power. While many of the leading figures families are wealthy or have gained patronage through their political ascendance, the persons in power themselves are not capitalists. The degree of corruption certainly varies, but especially under Xi Jingping blatant corruption has been curbed.Isn’t China fascist?This one is a bit more vague when it comes to how you define fascism, but I would argue that calling China fascist makes it far harder to understand the particular way their human rights abuses are expressed and why their authoritarianism has continued with wide public support.The first question is if China is ethnonationalist. Prior to Xi Jingping this would be an easy “no”, but honestly under Xi the lines are much less clear. Traditionally China has treated “loyal” ethnic groups fairly well; Mao and the early PRC recognized 56 ethnic minorities composing around 8% of Chinas population. Most of these minorities are currently supported by the CPC, including exemptions from the one-child policy, ethnic autonomous areas, and affirmative action in party and education. The treatment of non-supportive ethnic minorities, namely Tibet and Xinjiang, has ranged from “pretty bad” to “genocide”. There have been periods of softening suppression of both regions, but the CPC has never had anything close to an equitable arrangement with either ethnic group. Focusing on the more current issue, the Uyghurs have a long history of ethnic conflict and separatism with the Chinese state, and this has lead to a variety of attempts to suppress or control Xinjiang. Hu Jintao, the previous leader of China, believed that if Xinjiang was sufficiently economically developed the Uyghurs would integrate with Chinese society and cease their resistance. However, under his tenure, for a variety of reasons including the unequal investment in Xinjiang and Han settlement and economic favoritism, terrorism increased under his tenure and peaking in 2014 under Xi Jingping at 322 deaths from terrorism. The current genocide in Xinjiang, in which over a million ethnic Uyghurs have been separated from their families and put into “reeducation camps”, is a result of Hu Jintao’s efforts being viewed as a failure. As such, Xi Jingping decided harsher measures and direct cultural suppression was necessary.Why does this matter? This sounds pretty fucking fascist.The key distinction between China’s authoritarian communist regime and a fascist regime is the motivation and potential scale of genocide. Unlike in a fascist regime, which is ideologically in favor of a single racial group, China’s government is entirely okay with and even supports minorities such that they cause no problems for the government. Areas where genocide in China are likely are ones with ethnic resistance, not just any minority group like in a fascist regime. Furthermore, it seems very unlikely that China’s government would go so far as to enact extermination camps or efforts even on resisting ethnic groups. Enacting a cultural genocide similar to the boarding schools of Bative Americans is less costly to the state and more inline with the party ideology.Alright, what about the China police state?This one again is complicated. Why do China’s people even in independent polling support the government if they are constantly oppressed by a police state? Simply, they aren’t, at least not explicitly. China’s government is extremely harsh towards ideological protests, but is very conciliatory towards non-ideological local protests. China has over 100,000 “mass incidents”, or protests, a year. Of these, it is very rare that any police force at all is used to limit them. Rather, China engages in what some scholars have called bargained authoritarianism. ~30% of these protests have been directly responded to and rewarded with economic compensation. The Chinese government sometimes goes so far to support local protest movements. Why? Firstly, if people are free to protest over issues of corruption, local development, or environmental exploitation, the government is able to self-correct and solve issues effectively at a local level. Beyond that, these measures act as a release-valve for the Chinese people. If a company moves in, pollutes your river, and the government does nothing, you will begin to view the government with suspicion and wish to organize against it. Instead, if when a company moves in, you protest, and your local government meets with you, adjusts local regulations, and directly pays for your injuries, the government is seen as the defender of the people against exploitation. Non-ideological protests are used as a release valve to prevent a boiling up of unrest. This is also in part why ideological protests and dissenters are met with such swift and brutal reprisal; if these 100,000 protests became ideologically oriented, what is currently a release valve could become a ticking time bomb for the government.So China good?No you dumbfuck. They are still committing genocide and have an authoritarian structure. There are arguments that they could have a positive impact on the third world as they compete with the US for influence, but they just as equal could become new proxy conflicts. Understanding the nature of why China is bad is necessary to critique it well. I obviously also strongly disagree with their interpretation of Marx and their specific ideology, but I think its silly to say just because I disagree it isn't a Marxist one. I also strongly disagree with Lenin, but I think it would be silly to say Lenin wasn't a communist.TLDR: China is a capitalist economy with a communist ideology running it. Its leaders aren’t capitalists, and China is only genocidal towards people who resist the CPC. It is chill with u protesting ur shitty conditions but will shoot you if you ask questions about why you keep having to protest those shitty conditions.ADDENDUM:Why does the west constantly think China is going to collapse?Western observers consistently misunderstand the dynamic between local and state governments and the people. From as early as Mao, the central government has blamed the local cadres for failures of the state, and the people have appealed to the central government against the local government to help them.When there is an issue worth protesting, the protests are almost always against specific policies of the local government, and they almost always are asking for the intervention of the central government to help them.The West sees these protests against a local government, even on a mass scale, and assume people are ready for revolution, when in truth they still hold a very good opinion of the state, because they view the central government as the solution to their problems, not their enemy.TLDR 2: Chinese protests are asking for help from the central government, not against them, and Westerners don't get that.
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