this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2021
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[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 years ago (21 children)

I will never understand why people feel the need to express opinions on China without having any understanding of China.

[–] poVoq@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (20 children)

I will never understand why people think the government of China is functionally any different from other governments and such mafia-like structures around the world.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 years ago (19 children)

That's precisely because you don't understand how the government in China functions.

China is a state governed by the Communist party where Marxism-Leninism is the official state ideology. 87.6% of young Chinese identify with Marxism, and the party has 95 million members. The party is a grassroots driven organization, and members of the party directly engage in their communities.

Claiming that China is not functionally different from other governments shows further ignorance on your part. One simple test to consider is that China doesn't suffer from regular crashes seen under capitalism. One of the inherent contradictions within capitalism is that the capitalists always want to cut pay for their employees to minimize the costs, while they also require consumers with enough spending power to consume the commodities they produce. This is why capitalism results in regular economic crashes when wages fall below the point where consumption can keep up with the rate of commodity production. At that point you end up with overproduction and a crash. If China was capitalist then it should be experiencing these kinds of crashes regularly just like actual capitalist nations are in the Western world.

And a related point is that quality of life in China continues to steadily improve and the government is actively working on doing things like eliminating poverty, creating public infrastructure, providing healthcare, housing, food, and education for all citizens. Chinese government practically eliminated poverty, and in fact China is the only place in a world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening. If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:

If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.

The $1.90/day (2011 PPP) line is not an adequate or in any way satisfactory level of consumption; it is explicitly an extreme measure. Some analysts suggest that around $7.40/day is the minimum necessary to achieve good nutrition and normal life expectancy, while others propose we use the US poverty line, which is $15.

Chinese government is consistently directing labor towards public good. They used more concrete in 3 years than US in all of 20th century, they built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade. 90% of families in the country own their home, giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it's the most populous country on the planet and social mobility is also quite high.

And then there's the handling of the pandemic where it's all but eliminated in China with life getting back to normal and the economy growing, while we anxiously look at our fourth wave where our government left people out to dry to protect business interests.

Finally, the government has recently passed massive regulation on big business and released a a five-year blueprint calling for greater regulation of vast parts of the economy. The government has also openly stated that the era of capital expansion is over and the interests of the majority outweigh the interests of shareholders.

[–] Relected@lemmy.ml -1 points 3 years ago

this is the most far-left thing I have ever seen

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