I think the key difference is that Xi has a very strong vision for China and is actually practicing what he preaches; enriching the nation rather than enriching himself. Like a strict father, head of the family.
While the debacle that is the US government is all about enriching themselves and their associates rather than the nation. Like goblins in a mine.
Classless society when?
When the foundations for classes are erased, through full public ownership in a global Socialist economy. Industry has to advance to that level.
Just the fact that financial crimes over a certain amount are punishable by death in China (and people have actually been executed for them) says a lot. It’s a law that literally applies only to the rich because a normal person would never even get to glimpse the amount of money required for execution to be on the table.
Nobody deserves the death penalty. It’s just cruelty with no benefit for the society. Studies show, time after time, that it has little to no deterrent effect. Its only purposes are either narrow-minded vengeance or preventing a person from being freed once the current government fails.
That said, I’m all for confiscating all wealth from anyone worth over a billion dollars and placing them under arrest until they can effectively demonstrate they are no longer a parasite on the society.
The fact that rich people are routinely executed in China is one of the clearest indications that dictatorship of the proletariat has been achieved. And this is precisely why China terrifies the west so much.
I think I would extend it thus:
In America, the rich controls the government - to screw everyone else in the country (and sometimes those outside). In China, the government controls the rich - to screw everyone else in the country (and sometimes those outside).
…and with a bonus few:
In Russia, the top of the government controls the rich who control the rest of the government - to screw anyone they can get away with screwing while waving the “just remember we have nukes” flag. In Europe, the leaders keep flip-flopping about who they should be screwing so they just take turns footgunning while announcing “I meant to do that”, and then slapping each other on the wrists for appearances. In the UK, the rich and the government take turns visiting the pawnshop with anything that isn’t screwed down, then acting shocked when swathes of the government end up effectively owned by other governments.
Completely vibes-centric analysis. If the Chinese government were screwing the population, how come every western polling org agrees that the government has at the very, very least 86% approval rates, far above any EU nation, let alone the US?
I don’t even understand how Russia, not even mentioned here, ends up taking like 4/5 of your comment.
Firstly my comment was clearly the comment-equivalent of a shitpost to express generalised disdain for the morally bankrupt hypocritical preschool-behaviour of almost all centralised human power-structures on the global stage, so its slightly disturbing that your threshold for considering something as “analysis” sits that low.
I’m not sure why you are trying to defend China by comparing it to EU & US for me. I lampooned them too. I am an equal-opportunity cynic.
I don’t even understand how Russia, not even mentioned here, ends up taking like 4/5 of your comment.
Did you notice I used the word “extend”? …and mentioned several major countries? I think your mistake is in assuming I am either an AI bot or an intellectually equivalent human “bot” with the naive agenda of waving one team’s flag by trashing all the other flags, and hoping to be on the “winning side” of a zero-sum argument. I am old & cynical enough, especially having actually lived and worked in almost all of the mentioned countries, to have very slowly and very bitterly developed justified disillusionment with the suit-and-tie pantomime masquerading as “leadership” pretty much everywhere on the planet, and know there is no “winning side” for humans the way things are on this planet. If Russia gets more airtime in my tirade at the moment then I’d just say they (who am I kidding, “he”) needs to stop making it so damn easy by generating a virtual firehouse of cruelty purely to make line go up.
I refuse to cheerlead for any nation-state until the world becomes a very different place. Until then I only cheerlead for every single person on their path to growing up, stopping obsessively treating the very administration of people’s lives like a football match, getting off the cruel->“fake nice” spectrum, and getting on the “actual kindness” and “mutual respect” bandwagon. But lately I’ll admit I find myself doing that cheerleading rather halfheartedly and dispiritedly.
Fascists
Vs
Communists
I dont think China counts as Communist, kinda like how the USSR was state socialist. Although personally I would call China mixed economy state socialism.
I don’t think China really counts as Fascist.
FYI
Removed by mod
“can i run the government?”
yes, just place your head through this hole and we’ll pull the big lever that makes you god-king
I’m not living in USA but I think people got exactly what they voted for, didn’t they?
Now the question of it being an educated vote and people being equipped to navigate modern media with modern disinformation techniques is another subject.
Not really. The people get only two choices of candidates who are selected by campaign popularity. Those candidates have to raise the money for it by themselves, which means making truthful private campaign promises to their donors while making false promises to the public.
That’s fair. In France law requires transparency on how you fund your campaign and sets a limit. We often have candidates who bend the rules but justice at least make it harder.
Ofc it’s hard to compare our two countries, the US is a fking continent.
If france is anything like the UK, I’m sure there are many ways for the capitalist class to exert influence over their choice of candidate.
In France our main concern is about “Bolorisation”, which is about two billionaires owning most of the mainstream medias (including Vincent Bolloré, hence the name). We still have major independant papers but they hardly choose what’s on the public debate.
Yeah that’s what I meant by my initial message, there people still have access to somewhat reliable source of information, mostly thanks to publicly owned TV and radio, but it’s very very very fragile right now. Education to media and information would be critical to navigate this mess, but we suck at this.
And both governments are disgusting
Without an educated, informed population and effective, constantly maintained checks and balances on those in power, the end results of either communism or capitalism are going to be exactly the same.
All these things happen far more naturally under communism because systemic pressures favor these things.
What do you mean by “these things”?
I mean that communist system demonstrably results in far better education, and stronger checks and balances than capitalism. Communist countries focus on building infrastructure such as schools and housing, and make education free for everyone. Meanwhile, public ownership of the means of production means wealth isn’t concentrated in the hands of the few. This precludes the problem such as oligarchs owning media and then manipulating public opinion in their own interest. Hope that clears things up for you.
Power and wealth control governments … every government.
Once humanity figures out how to provide more equitable power and wealth to every person everywhere, then we might be able to evolve beyond jungle rules.
In the meantime, it doesn’t matter what you want to call it … communism, socialism, capitalism, liberalism, whatever … as long as we allow unlimited wealth and power to flow to small groups of people, any system will always end up with the same results.
Inequality absolutely needs to be eliminated to have a truly equitable society. That said though, it’s pretty clear that China does have a dictatorship of the proletariat in place. If it didn’t then same things we see happening in capitalist societies would be happening there as well.
I don’t support the CCP, but I do think about these things. How do you create an open system like a democracy that leverages some of the benefits of capitalism, while also insuring economic inequality is minimized and every citizens basic needs are met, without gradually seeing the rich gain influence in that system over time, corroding the protections that make it work? I think as long as the system is open, the rich will use their power to gradually gain advantage and then destroy the system itself. I think the only real shot at it would be for wealth to be seriously capped. Like, no one person can have more than 100% more wealth than the bottom 1%. Anything above that should be taxed away. Also, corporations are not people and corporations should not have shareholders that are not workers.
Honestly I’m not the biggest fan of everything in China but these are the types of problems the Chinese government seems to try to figure out a lot more than our governments do.
The PRC largely keeps their bourgeoisie in line by holding almost all of Heavy Industry and large firms in the Public Sector. The owner of a rubber ball factory has far less influence over the economy than the Rubber Factory. In the PRC, banking, energy, steel, infrastructure, and many more critical industries the Private Sector must rely on are held in Public hands. That’s the basis of SWCC.
Time will tell if this was the “correct” choice, but so far the gamble appears to be paying off. There’s a long way to go, but the path forward is open and not closed.
