Negative Aspects of contemporary Chinese culture?
Negative Aspects of contemporary Chinese culture?
Hello! I would like to start off by apologizing because I know a thread like this gets posted every other day and it can border on (or actually be) concern-trolling, but I wanted to get a rough survey of opinions here on a topic.
Specifically, do you have any criticisms of China's contemporary culture? Its government? What are they?
I'm of the opinion that there are a lot of low-hanging fruit in this regard, like the patriarchal social order that [whatever one might say about its status in other nations] is certainly an ongoing problem for the matter of women's liberation. I also think it's both socially backwards and bad for national security to not have gay marriage, because we're all familiar with how the US loves infiltrating student movements.
I also rather regret how the CPC seems to be trending towards expanding the role of the profit motive rather than shrinking it. See these statements:
http://en.qstheory.cn/2023-05/04/c_882761.htm
http://en.qstheory.cn/2023-05/05/c_882998.htm
Do you agree with these points? Do you have your own criticisms? Am I totally off-base? Let me know!
(btw I'm also familiar with the idea of sharing criticism with comrades but finding public criticism to be counter-productive, but I don't want to spend all day listing caveats)
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Ok, so my thing is that I would say I'm a "soft" anti-Dengist, meaning that I think it has demonstrably worked and I think China is clearly still a DoP controlled by dedicated ML's, but I'm not 100% convinced it couldn't have developed along the lines of the USSR and gotten to this same point without the risk of redeveloping the bourgeois as a class. I'm sure someone who has studied China far more than me will swing by and call me a liberal or something though (and I'll deserve it lol)
I also don't quite understand why they're not more quickly moving back towards a fully planned economy, the forces of production seem plenty developed to me, and the United States has shown that they're going to move into full blown cold war (or god forbid even hot war) within the next few years, so I'm not sure how much foreign capital is even left to take in. Maybe they're waiting to have a completely self sufficient semiconductor industry or something like that?
Is that considered an "anti-Deng" stance now? I thought that was the general consensus about his reforms. They have worked, but also weren't without their own set of issues that did cause a lot of...I don't know if "backsliding" is the right word, but more tolerance of capitalist behaviour. We could always wonder about "what if" but we could also wonder what if Mao invented the anti-capitalist laser that strategically targets every capitalist in the world instantly and frees everyone. It feels like pointless circlejerking to be honest. The China in the world today is the China we have, for better and worse. Thankfully, things do seem to just be getting better and better there, though obviously not at an ideal pace, but we aren't idealists, we are materialists.
And in turn, I agree with your second paragraph. They do seem to be moving very slowly towards a planned economy. I'm not sure if this is due to them being concerned about western aggression, or just believing that their economy has too much inertia to shift quickly. Of course, this could also be because the Maoists are right and they're all just evil capitalists pretending to be socialists for some reason.
I am not Chinese nor do I live in China. So my opinions are just my opinions and not based on any concrete understanding of these things.
idk, I'm not super into all the terminology surrounding everything, I thought the general consensus was that China wouldn't have reached this height without his reforms. I agree it's not worth talking about too much, although we should always analyze the past of course. I might make a post asking about their shift to a planned economy, I'd be curious for people who understand China better to explain it to me
Yeah, me too. I haven't read much really up to date stuff on the matter, not since they before they started their most recent 5 year plan.
And the terminology obsession is for the terminally online anyway. Figuring out if something is more Althussertherian or Haywoodian or whatever doesn't matter. If a person can't explain their position simply, or another's position as they understand it, they probably don't understand the topic very well. (A person can explain something and still be wrong of course, but trying to "prove" yourself correct by referencing some obscure Marxist thinker is the hallmark of the pseudo-intellectual who is only concerned with "winning" pointless internet arguments.)
I think some of it is liberal propaganda and Deng's reform was mainly useful for survival in capitalist encirclement, as it produced a massive degree of impoverishment for the common people early on.
I don't really understand the economics, but I don't think that switching to a centrally-planned economy overnight is possible. It's not a matter of Xi Jinping restraining himself from pushing the button; it's just that the contradictions that arise from China's economic system haven't given rise to the need for complete nationalization. Not like it's a good thing; most of China's growth and innovation is from the private sector.
I gotta heavily disagree with that last line. Most of China's innovation is from state-owned or at least scientific state-supported funding, and the private economic activity is just raising funds.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=CN&name_desc=true
The PRC's GDP was just a little over $190 billion in 1980; with a population of approximately a billion people, that translates to a GDP-per-capita of just a little bit less than $200. It's clear that China's developmental model wasn't working, and that the implementations of state-guided market reforms were the primary factor responsible for China's rapid prosperity.
could you give PPP gdp? also, I don't think GDP is a great stat for this, it's always going to underestimate planned economies, they don't do all the financial mumbo jumbo shit.
I just thought too, we really need to look at what the trajectory of their economy from after they fixed all their shit from the great leap forward to when the reforms started.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_projected_GDP_(PPP)
I'm not sure why, but I keep getting access denied every time I explore the source for the data (IMF)... Anyway, according to the link above, it was a little bit over $300 billion. Not much higher than the nominal GDP.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locations=CN
There's also this link, but the data begins from 1990; but the point is clear - China's rapid prosperity really only began well after the reforms and opening up began.
I should add that Mao-era China created a healthy and educated population, but the reforms and opening up massively increased the nation's industrial capabilities.
but it didn't truly take off until the 2000's, I want to see the path that China's economy was taking before the reforms, idk how we would find that
Take a look at the first link. The GDP PPP wasn't much higher than the nominal GDP back then; as I have already shown you.
The data starts from 1960, 11 or so years after the founding of the PRC, but we can already see that the economy was incredibly small and only marginally increased until - like we have said - the reforms and opening up truly began to accelerate starting from the 1990s and 2000s.
Now, China's nominal GDP is only about $18 trillion but the GDP PPP is about $34 trillion! This could not have been done if the socialist market economy was not introduced.
Why could the USSR do it but not China? I understand that China was not quite as resource rich in some ways but it wasn't exactly a starved small nation like say Vietnam
Do what? The USSR was barely an economic threat to the US, and ultimately ceased to exist.
The PRC has not only survived the endless waves of imperialist sabotage, but also thrived. It is, without a doubt, the most prosperous country in the world, and those gains could not have been made without the socialist market economy.
Do what? The USSR was barely an economic threat to the US, and ultimately ceased to exist.
What? even going by GDP it was by far the 2nd largest economy which Like I said I think fucking sucks when measuring planned economies, and it collapsed because of the ideological rot of pizza man and his pizza co conspirators (+no automated computer economy
Sorry but do what exactly?
grow their economy to rival the US using planning, even using GDP it was the 2nd largest economy in the world by far
China did try the stalin model during Mao's era which only lead to new contradictions between private labour and socialized appropriation bc of its underdeveloped productive forces.
"What merits our attention here is that our socialist state was established by a proletarian party that has a grasp of historical materialism and is dedicated to communism. With such a party controlling the state power, it is possible for our country to promote changes in the relations of production according to its own will. If, instead of proceeding from realities, we try to change the relations of production according to our wishful thinking, the result may be that the relations of production will go beyond the requirements of the growth of the productive forces, which may thus be disrupted. In 1958, for instance, people’s communes, ‘large in size and having a high degree of public ownership’ as Mao Zedong put it, were set up throughout the country, and there rose the premature ‘communist wind’ characterized by the attempt to effect a transition to communism. All this made agricultural production drop greatly.” End quote. Xue Muqiao. “China’s Socialist Economy”.
just nationalizing every industry dont make sense economically when large scale industry is the basis for socialism. Therefore, abolishing markets in sectors of the economy which still are highly competitive is nonsensical and would lead to enormous economic inefficiencies.
“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.” End quote. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. “Manifesto of the Communist Party.”
The inherent implication of this is that a Marxist party should not abolish private property in onestroke. This is a common misconception. A Marxist party should instead utilize markets in an efficient way in order to develop the economy as rapidly as possible. Complete abolition would require incredibly high levels of economic development which humanity has yet to realize.
“Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke? No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity.” End quote. Friedrich Engels. “The Principles of Communism.”
"That’s how China still is to this day. People will often point out the fact that 60% of China’s GDP output is from the private sector and conclude that means China “abandoned Marxism.” What they don’t also realize that is 60% of China’s GDP output also comes from small-to-medium sized enterprises, meaning that the overwhelming majority of large enterprises are public."
"The transition to socialism is not characterized by an instantaneous jump to a pure socialist system. Rather, it is characterized by the dominance of the socialist system. As capitalism develops, the contradictions within it become more and more acute as large-scale industry contradicts with capitalism, but also lays the foundations for socialism.
The transition to socialism does not occur when this process has completed to its fullest, when the entire economy becomes under the control of a single monopoly. Rather, the transition to socialism occurs once the contradictions of capitalism have become acute enough, once there is enough large-scale industry, to establish public ownership and economic planning as the dominant form of ownership in society." end quote. Aimixin "introduction to marxism"
these two are a must read if u wanna understand this
a short introductory work that will clear some of your economic misconceptions
Aimxin directly discussing ab this topic
Hope this helps!
The CPC isn't deciding these things based on ideology. They are following popular sentiment. Don't start with a question about culture and just seamlessly transition to blaming the CPC
? Garbageshoot said "just give me anything that you can be persuaded to talk about" so I thought this would apply. And I'm not trying to "blame" the CPC, I don't think they're failing the country or anything that drastic, I just think there are alternative pathways that are less risky imo.
I was late in checking up on things but I appreciate what you shared
