No, China does not have state capitalism. Presumably, what you refer to as “state capitalism” is the fact that much of the economy is under state ownership. However, there is a fundamental difference between regular capitalism and what you refer to as state capitalism here. The purpose of labor under actual capitalism is to create capital for business owners. Capital accumulation is the driving mechanic of the system, hence the name. Meanwhile, the purpose of state owned enterprise is to provide social value such as building infrastructure, producing food and energy, providing healthcare, and so on.
I’d argue not. First, the majority of people in a space disagreeing with your stance doesn’t make it an “echo-chamber” to begin with. Secondly, Marxism is thoroughly demonized throughout the English-speaking internet, while liberalism flourishes in real life and online. Spaces with higher concentrations of Marxists cannot avoid contact with liberals throughout their lives, while liberal spaces can shut out all Marxists from their real lives and online lives.
The PRC is Socialist, the overwhelming majority of large firms and key industries are publicly owned, and the CPC has “golden shares” for medium firms so even those it controls. The rest, everything else depends on the publicly owned key industries, so they have to work on the terms of the public sector to do business.
Its not public ownership when an authoritarian state owns a company. Its only public ownership if the state is a democracy.
They’re a capitalist country with an authoritarian government. They may want to transition to a true communist society in the future but they need capitalism to build their countrys economy.
The PRC is democratic, in fact the public in China feels its desires are better represented through policy than in Western Countries, especially the US. It’s absolutely public ownership, this is an extremely confused idea on what Capitalism even is. Private Property is distinct from state property.
Further, markets are not “Capitalism.” The PRC does have private property, but limits it to medium and small firms, and cooperatives. The overwhelming majority of the large firms and key industries are publicly owned, as is the job of a Socialist government, to facilitate this gradual extension of Public Ownership to the entirety of the economy as it develops to the level that such ownership makes economic sense. This gradual transformation in society is the Socialist mode of production.
Lastly, “true” Communism isn’t a thing. There is Communism, and there’s Socialism, and there’s Capitalism. Applying descriptors like “true” or “false” is a moralistic judgement, not a scientific one, and Marxists reject moralistic analysis in favor of scientific analysis.
I think you may get better results if you talk about what people understand in their own lives. People understand how utterly undemocratic the private sector of the economy is. They also understand how unrepresentative the reps the dominant parties present for election. They understand who pays for their politics. People also understand how democracy works in non-partisan settings like municipalities, school boards and so on. Often people don’t realize these things and need help to connect the dots and build a complete picture, but they understand what’s going on. Once the picture is in place, they get it. Then from there you could draw parallels between parts of that picture and China to explain in terms people understand. E.g. the political democracy works similar to municipal democracy, no parties, just candidates and elections.
I agree that you have great points on how to communicate with people willing to learn, but unfortunately many people like Fizz here are entirely unwilling to learn even if we are to be as kind and understanding as possible.
My point is that this could work to pierce the programming which makes people unwilling to learn. Two years ago I might have reacted to what you’re saying just the same as Fizz does today. What helped chip away at my programming is the sort of explanations that take what I understood already. Also the audience isn’t Fizz alone but also the multitude who only read the discussions. I’m only saying this because you’re spending a lot of time and effort to talk to people already. Not because I have the right to demand more work. 😄
You’re sitting here trying to tell me that the one party authoritarian state who regularly crushes citizens freedom of expression is actually democratic. Yeah I’m sure they wander to the voting booth and make the touch decision of voting for the CCP or nothing with the CCP waiting over their shoulder.
You have a biased perception of what constitutes democracy, you take the western, liberal model to be the only form of democracy, and reject other models. This is a rather narrow-minded approach to political analysis, rather than immediately condemning others for not conforming to what you consider to be standard, it pays immensely to ask instead, “why?”
In western liberal democracy, democratic input is largely restricted to which party you want to represent you, not how each party functions. In China, you can’t really depose the CPC, but there is a much larger and more comprehensive scope on what you can influence. Public policy is comprehensively considered and voted on, tested, and local governments have large degrees of input from the local pooulation, laddering up to the regional and finally national level.
I think you’d do yourself a massive service if you asked the question “why do Chinese citizens overwhelmingly approve of their government, and feel that they have genuine democratic input despite having a different democratic model than my own?” Rather than simply looking at a different system and condemning it as wrong on the basis of it being a different system.
No, you can’t just rewrite the definition of democracy and take out all the key parts just so you can apply it to China and try and washing over all their flaws.
Didnt the CCP weld people into their homes during covid. People have no human rights to the CCP. They are just tools to be used to further the parties goals.
Fine I’ll ask myself “why do Chinese citizens overwhelmingly approve of their government, and feel that they have genuine democratic input despite having a different democratic model than my own?”
Probably because their government dominates every part of their life. Constantly propagandises them and viciously cracks down on any dissent. They also have been having a ton of economic growth which usually results in favour for the party in power.
They think they have democracy because they have been mislead to what democracy is and theyve been told they have it “its not authoritarianism its just democracy with Chinese characteristics” and those characteristics are stripping all rights and power from the populous.
No, you can’t just rewrite the definition of democracy
Interestingly, not even the ancient greeks would consider what modern-day western states are, as democracies. Both Aristotle and Plato considered any system based on elections to be undemocratic oligarchies, since only the wealthy have the money to finance campaigns or the prestige to win the popularity contest.
They rightly considered democracy as meaning rule by the poor, which is the opposite of modern day bourgeois democracy.
Furthermore, you just assert without basis that the people of China “have no rights” and that they are “constantly repressed,” repeating verbatim US State Department talking points without genuinely engaging with Chinese people and how they view their system. You even contradict yourself, you say that Chinese people support their system because it works for them, but also that they are scared of it and in constant fear, yet support it anyways. It’s a non-falsifiable orthodoxy describwd by Michael Parenti, in Blackshirts and Reds,:
In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
China is a democracy, even studies by conservative western institutions show Chinese people have higher satisfaction with their government, more belief in the importance of democracy, and more belief in the democratic nature of their government than western European and American citizens do for their own governments.
They have a more comprehensive democracy too. Consultative processes and deliberative processes are enshrined in institutions in a way that they are not within western bourgeois democracies.
I’m not sure that link helps you at all. It doesnt mention anything about china being a democracy and proves my point.
“95.5 percent of respondents were either relatively satisfied or highly satisfied with Beijing” while 11% were satisfied with local government.
Bro cmon dont tell me you dont see what’s happening here. China plays propaganda for its citizens constantly and punishes anti government thought. But not for the local government. This poll doesnt accurately capture sentiment became people do not have freedom of expression in china. I’d believe that most people like the government, its done very well but 95.5% is a joke.
Here is a chart sourced from its its 2024 report. As you can see Chinese people have more faith in democracy and the democratic nature of their government than westerners do.
The whole brainwashing thing is nonsense, as Cowbee pointed out you misread the data on the 11 percent. It seems like you are misreading data to support your preconceived notions.
None of that is democracy. Perceiving democracy based off a few unrelated vauge measurements is not democracy. Thats such a weak citation.
I haven’t read the cowbee comment yet but I have absolutely no faith that they have any point.
So you think 95.5% is accurate and there is no brainwashing going on. People must just love authoritarian regimes because they always report near perfect satisfaction polling results.
“Brainwashing” doesn’t exist. It’s a theory pushed by the United States during the Cold War to offer an explanation for why citizens in Socialist countries supported their systems. Read Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” if you want to learn more about the subject.
You misread. It said 11% were very satisfied, the satisfaction rate with local government including “moderately satisfied” is 70.2%.
Further, the study acknowledges and accounts for your fears of “brainwashing” (which, itself, is a baseless theory):
Although state censorship and propaganda are widespread in China, these findings highlight that citizen perceptions of governmental performance respond most to real, measurable changes in individuals’ material well-being. Satisfaction and support must be consistently reinforced. As a result, the data point to specific areas in which citizen satisfaction could decline in today’s era of slowing economic growth and continued environmental degradation.
Yeah I was wrong on that. The article framed it weird by talking about the 95% rate then saying local government was considerably less favourable.
It is obvious to anyone that people living under and authoritarian regime are not able to freely express themselves and that was not accounted for in the paper you linked. The paper even confirms people are heavily propagandised and is more highlighting the trends match economic growth.
The article is written by a generally anti-China group, hence why they tried to spin it as being unpolular locally, rather than just less popular. The central government being more popular makes sense, as its the one that tends to enact the most major changes that have uplifted the living standards of Chinese citizens.
Further, the Cambridge examination is biased. If you read the paper, they state that at the outset, their desire is to prove that Chinese citizens are in constant fear of the CPC in order to discredit the Ash study. Even then, we can see that approval rate for the CPC is overwhelmingly positive, while party approval rarely exceeds 50% in western countries.
In the end, you have a hypothesis that is non-falsifiable: if the CPC’s approval is high, it’s because the citizens are in fear and are brainwashed, if the CPC’s approval is lower (though we will see it’s somehow never negative), then this must be “truly accurate” and indicative of fear and brainwashing. You set out from the beginning to prove your hypothesis, not to understand why China is constantly improving and why the public supports their system, when both surveys tell you: it’s because the system works, and the people have dramatically improving conditions year over year.
Finally, repression of speech most directly applies to businesses and wealthy individuals, not to random citizens. China is Socialist, it oppresses the bourgeoisie and restricts their speech, so that the US and hostile powers don’t try to use their heavy financial Capital to fund misinformation campaigns and foment political instability in order to get China to open up its markets for total foreign plundering, like what the US did to the USSR.
No, China does not have state capitalism. Presumably, what you refer to as “state capitalism” is the fact that much of the economy is under state ownership. However, there is a fundamental difference between regular capitalism and what you refer to as state capitalism here. The purpose of labor under actual capitalism is to create capital for business owners. Capital accumulation is the driving mechanic of the system, hence the name. Meanwhile, the purpose of state owned enterprise is to provide social value such as building infrastructure, producing food and energy, providing healthcare, and so on.
China is capitalist.
It’s not, but I’ve learned that there’s no point debating this topic with aggressively ignorant people.
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People disagreeing with you doesn’t mean it’s an “echo chamber.”
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I’d argue not. First, the majority of people in a space disagreeing with your stance doesn’t make it an “echo-chamber” to begin with. Secondly, Marxism is thoroughly demonized throughout the English-speaking internet, while liberalism flourishes in real life and online. Spaces with higher concentrations of Marxists cannot avoid contact with liberals throughout their lives, while liberal spaces can shut out all Marxists from their real lives and online lives.
The PRC is Socialist, the overwhelming majority of large firms and key industries are publicly owned, and the CPC has “golden shares” for medium firms so even those it controls. The rest, everything else depends on the publicly owned key industries, so they have to work on the terms of the public sector to do business.
Its not public ownership when an authoritarian state owns a company. Its only public ownership if the state is a democracy.
They’re a capitalist country with an authoritarian government. They may want to transition to a true communist society in the future but they need capitalism to build their countrys economy.
The PRC is democratic, in fact the public in China feels its desires are better represented through policy than in Western Countries, especially the US. It’s absolutely public ownership, this is an extremely confused idea on what Capitalism even is. Private Property is distinct from state property.
Further, markets are not “Capitalism.” The PRC does have private property, but limits it to medium and small firms, and cooperatives. The overwhelming majority of the large firms and key industries are publicly owned, as is the job of a Socialist government, to facilitate this gradual extension of Public Ownership to the entirety of the economy as it develops to the level that such ownership makes economic sense. This gradual transformation in society is the Socialist mode of production.
Lastly, “true” Communism isn’t a thing. There is Communism, and there’s Socialism, and there’s Capitalism. Applying descriptors like “true” or “false” is a moralistic judgement, not a scientific one, and Marxists reject moralistic analysis in favor of scientific analysis.
I think you may get better results if you talk about what people understand in their own lives. People understand how utterly undemocratic the private sector of the economy is. They also understand how unrepresentative the reps the dominant parties present for election. They understand who pays for their politics. People also understand how democracy works in non-partisan settings like municipalities, school boards and so on. Often people don’t realize these things and need help to connect the dots and build a complete picture, but they understand what’s going on. Once the picture is in place, they get it. Then from there you could draw parallels between parts of that picture and China to explain in terms people understand. E.g. the political democracy works similar to municipal democracy, no parties, just candidates and elections.
I agree that you have great points on how to communicate with people willing to learn, but unfortunately many people like Fizz here are entirely unwilling to learn even if we are to be as kind and understanding as possible.
My point is that this could work to pierce the programming which makes people unwilling to learn. Two years ago I might have reacted to what you’re saying just the same as Fizz does today. What helped chip away at my programming is the sort of explanations that take what I understood already. Also the audience isn’t Fizz alone but also the multitude who only read the discussions. I’m only saying this because you’re spending a lot of time and effort to talk to people already. Not because I have the right to demand more work. 😄
Fair enough, I’ll keep it in mind!
You’re sitting here trying to tell me that the one party authoritarian state who regularly crushes citizens freedom of expression is actually democratic. Yeah I’m sure they wander to the voting booth and make the touch decision of voting for the CCP or nothing with the CCP waiting over their shoulder.
You people are delusional.
You have a biased perception of what constitutes democracy, you take the western, liberal model to be the only form of democracy, and reject other models. This is a rather narrow-minded approach to political analysis, rather than immediately condemning others for not conforming to what you consider to be standard, it pays immensely to ask instead, “why?”
In western liberal democracy, democratic input is largely restricted to which party you want to represent you, not how each party functions. In China, you can’t really depose the CPC, but there is a much larger and more comprehensive scope on what you can influence. Public policy is comprehensively considered and voted on, tested, and local governments have large degrees of input from the local pooulation, laddering up to the regional and finally national level.
I think you’d do yourself a massive service if you asked the question “why do Chinese citizens overwhelmingly approve of their government, and feel that they have genuine democratic input despite having a different democratic model than my own?” Rather than simply looking at a different system and condemning it as wrong on the basis of it being a different system.
No, you can’t just rewrite the definition of democracy and take out all the key parts just so you can apply it to China and try and washing over all their flaws.
Didnt the CCP weld people into their homes during covid. People have no human rights to the CCP. They are just tools to be used to further the parties goals.
Fine I’ll ask myself “why do Chinese citizens overwhelmingly approve of their government, and feel that they have genuine democratic input despite having a different democratic model than my own?”
Probably because their government dominates every part of their life. Constantly propagandises them and viciously cracks down on any dissent. They also have been having a ton of economic growth which usually results in favour for the party in power.
They think they have democracy because they have been mislead to what democracy is and theyve been told they have it “its not authoritarianism its just democracy with Chinese characteristics” and those characteristics are stripping all rights and power from the populous.
Interestingly, not even the ancient greeks would consider what modern-day western states are, as democracies. Both Aristotle and Plato considered any system based on elections to be undemocratic oligarchies, since only the wealthy have the money to finance campaigns or the prestige to win the popularity contest.
They rightly considered democracy as meaning rule by the poor, which is the opposite of modern day bourgeois democracy.
This is a childish response. Democracy is not simply limited to “choosing the party in power.” China ticks all the boxes of democracy even in the Wikipedia article on democracy, elections are held for representatives and policy is guided by what the people themselves want. Here’s a good article comparing the US system with the PRC’s system.
Furthermore, you just assert without basis that the people of China “have no rights” and that they are “constantly repressed,” repeating verbatim US State Department talking points without genuinely engaging with Chinese people and how they view their system. You even contradict yourself, you say that Chinese people support their system because it works for them, but also that they are scared of it and in constant fear, yet support it anyways. It’s a non-falsifiable orthodoxy describwd by Michael Parenti, in Blackshirts and Reds,:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/
China is a democracy, even studies by conservative western institutions show Chinese people have higher satisfaction with their government, more belief in the importance of democracy, and more belief in the democratic nature of their government than western European and American citizens do for their own governments.
They have a more comprehensive democracy too. Consultative processes and deliberative processes are enshrined in institutions in a way that they are not within western bourgeois democracies.
I’m not sure that link helps you at all. It doesnt mention anything about china being a democracy and proves my point.
“95.5 percent of respondents were either relatively satisfied or highly satisfied with Beijing” while 11% were satisfied with local government.
Bro cmon dont tell me you dont see what’s happening here. China plays propaganda for its citizens constantly and punishes anti government thought. But not for the local government. This poll doesnt accurately capture sentiment became people do not have freedom of expression in china. I’d believe that most people like the government, its done very well but 95.5% is a joke.
Not a dude, please don’t “bro” me
Here is another helpful link, on citizen perception of the importance of democracy and whether their government is democratic.
It was founded by a former NATO secretary so it has a pro-western bias.
https://allianceofdemocracies.org/democracy-perception-index
Here is a chart sourced from its its 2024 report. As you can see Chinese people have more faith in democracy and the democratic nature of their government than westerners do.
The whole brainwashing thing is nonsense, as Cowbee pointed out you misread the data on the 11 percent. It seems like you are misreading data to support your preconceived notions.
None of that is democracy. Perceiving democracy based off a few unrelated vauge measurements is not democracy. Thats such a weak citation.
I haven’t read the cowbee comment yet but I have absolutely no faith that they have any point.
So you think 95.5% is accurate and there is no brainwashing going on. People must just love authoritarian regimes because they always report near perfect satisfaction polling results.
“Brainwashing” doesn’t exist. It’s a theory pushed by the United States during the Cold War to offer an explanation for why citizens in Socialist countries supported their systems. Read Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” if you want to learn more about the subject.
You misread. It said 11% were very satisfied, the satisfaction rate with local government including “moderately satisfied” is 70.2%.
Further, the study acknowledges and accounts for your fears of “brainwashing” (which, itself, is a baseless theory):
Yeah I was wrong on that. The article framed it weird by talking about the 95% rate then saying local government was considerably less favourable.
It is obvious to anyone that people living under and authoritarian regime are not able to freely express themselves and that was not accounted for in the paper you linked. The paper even confirms people are heavily propagandised and is more highlighting the trends match economic growth.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly/article/do-chinese-citizens-conceal-opposition-to-the-ccp-in-surveys-evidence-from-two-experiments/12A2440F948D016E8D845C492F7D0CFE
This paper suggests its off by about 28 points due to peoples fear of expressing anti government beliefs.
The article is written by a generally anti-China group, hence why they tried to spin it as being unpolular locally, rather than just less popular. The central government being more popular makes sense, as its the one that tends to enact the most major changes that have uplifted the living standards of Chinese citizens.
Further, the Cambridge examination is biased. If you read the paper, they state that at the outset, their desire is to prove that Chinese citizens are in constant fear of the CPC in order to discredit the Ash study. Even then, we can see that approval rate for the CPC is overwhelmingly positive, while party approval rarely exceeds 50% in western countries.
In the end, you have a hypothesis that is non-falsifiable: if the CPC’s approval is high, it’s because the citizens are in fear and are brainwashed, if the CPC’s approval is lower (though we will see it’s somehow never negative), then this must be “truly accurate” and indicative of fear and brainwashing. You set out from the beginning to prove your hypothesis, not to understand why China is constantly improving and why the public supports their system, when both surveys tell you: it’s because the system works, and the people have dramatically improving conditions year over year.
Finally, repression of speech most directly applies to businesses and wealthy individuals, not to random citizens. China is Socialist, it oppresses the bourgeoisie and restricts their speech, so that the US and hostile powers don’t try to use their heavy financial Capital to fund misinformation campaigns and foment political instability in order to get China to open up its markets for total foreign plundering, like what the US did to the USSR.