So how has this "communist" country been eating our lunch? It's supposed to be a failed system right?

[brewens]

It's just that you hear "Communist China" all the time now when we hadn't for 50 years or so.

Millionaires in suits trying to whip up the base with the commie shit need to be asked how much money they have made with their Chinese investments over the years.

[keithbvadu2]

1. Trump. Romney.

[Hekate]

8. Romney was correct

[blm]

2. China is ruled by a muscular fascism.

[Pinback]

3. China has state capitalism, not anything like the communism of the Maoist days.

Autocratic government plus a dog-eat-dog financial framework make for a society where the masses serve the few.

There was plenty to dislike about the old communist regime, but calling China “communist” is about like calling Republicans the “party of Lincoln.”

Most Republicans know better, but they also know it’s a propaganda tactic that still works on much of their base.

[Volaris]

14. After watching this, im not too worried aboit China

?si=UFbwVJ5aAEiXmw7z

[MutantAndProud]

31. Sanity; thank you for the post

[Ponietz]

32. Would you please summarize?

[Volaris]

36. Chinas population is such than within 50 years, theyll

Have trouble feeding themselves, let alone posing a real threat to America.

[Ponietz]

38. The dumbasses killed all their sparrows over 60 years ago

Even those that took refuge in the Polish embassy. Mao was as demented as Scump. Over 55 million died of famine.

Now, the scale of industrial pollution there beggars belief. They’ve poisoned themselves beyond anywhere else in the world.

Fentanyl is their revenge for the Opium wars. Their brilliant scientists, with AI, I am sure, have already engineered a “solution” to the world’s troubles via virus.

[MutantAndProud]

37. It really deserves its own thread; many issues

Relating to the future of domestic and international issues, covering granular topics such as intelligence, manufacturing, supply chains, the wars in Ukraine and the strain on Russia/China and their internal state statuses… many good topics and excellent overviews. In sum: we will have crunch factors but do not have anything nearly as drastic to worry about compared to our competitors

[Ponietz]

39. Thanks

You saved us a couple hours.

[Igel]

20. You're too binary.

Capitalism: You can accrue wealth and start businesses and control them.

Corporatism: You can accrue wealth and start businesses, but ultimately the government bribes or controls you.

Mixed capitalism: You can accrue wealth and start businesses, but you're constrained by bureaucrats.

Socialism: You can't really accrue wealth and start a business because the state owns it all. But you can run a business, if you acknowledge your overlords.



China is corporatist. Or was. Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, everything for the state. Very Mussolini. Very Hitler--pro-universal education, universal health care, insisted on (state-controlled) unions on corporate boards. But if you made buttons, whatever. You made steel, useful to the state, you were told quotas and output levels. You needed to know who held the other end of your leash.

Capitalism? No leash. Socialism? You'd beg for a leash, but as it is the entire territory is linked to a shock collar.

Think of "mixed economies" as deviating from "total control" in two ways. Orders on the one hand (because you're pwned) and regulations on the other (to preserve the illusion of liberty).

[mdmc]

40. yes

[TexasDem69]

4. China is communist

And that’s a shitty form of government. Other than that, I’m not sure I understand your point. Are you saying communism is better than capitalism?

[brewens]

13. They call their political party the Chinese Communist Party but how are their billionaire Chinese

communist oligarchs?

And I have no idea how you decided you wanted to pretend I was saying communism is better than capitalism.

[Xolodno]

17. Uh, no.

Communism is a an economic system, not a system of governance. You can have democratic nation and communism at the same time. Likewise, you can have capitalism with an autocratic system, many examples of that in history.

[WarGamer]

5. Mehhh... it's an Authoritarian State...

They don't play by the same rules as the US form of "democracy"... small "d" intentional.

[617Blue]

10. Commies fascists - authoritarians. Dont forget..

Putin was kgb commie before he became a fascist kleptocrat.

[Progressive dog]

6. Well, China says they are communist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party

[Emrys]

15. The Nazis claimed to be socialist.

They were, in fact, fascists.

[Progressive dog]

16. Communists have always run dictatorial regimes

and have always been close to fascism. That is what communism is.

[Hekate]

7. Call it what you will, but it's a top-down authoritarian dictatorship

And our homegrown capitalists have been in bed with them since Nixon. Both profiteers and consumers have been having too much fun to want to talk about the fact that China is what it has always been

[lapfog_1]

9. they are about as far from communism as you can get.

more like a fascist dictatorship ( state / corporations are joined )...

As for TikTok... I understand you never want to tell the opposition what you have learned about them... but they should release what they have on what China has on ordinary TikTok users... perhaps that will get the 20 somethings to stop using this app.

[ripcord]

11. Has anyone else noticed

That "communist" countries have all had totalitarian governments of some kind?

[comradebillyboy]

27. It's a feature.

[Voltaire2]

12. It's an authoritarian state with a mixed economy

and more than 30 years ago they reformed the Maoist planned economy by allowing and encouraging and subsidizing private companies and of course foreign investment.
It was the reform Gorbachev didn’t do. The CCP did not reform the political system other than purging its Maoist faction.

The Marxist Leninist theories they use require the development of a capitalist mode of production and its related workforce.

[Crunchy Frog]

23. I remember even back in '89, they were making so many of our commercial products

that I completely failed in my attempt to boycott them following the events in Tiananmen Square.

At this point, if they were to disappear off the face of the Earth, our own economy would probably suffer total collapse.

[RainCaster]

29. If China suddenly disappeared, the world would have a small hiccup

Then, as new factories were built and came on line, the pace would pick up again. But this time, there would be more money spread among workers across the globe. It would not be so concentrated among oligarchs.
That's just my opinion.

[Xolodno]

18. They've transitioned from Maoist Communism...

...to Market Socialism. But it is still an autocratic system of governance. Economic systems and Political systems are two different animals.

[The Bopper]

19. You forget

Unregulated Capitalism will find the cheapest labor and costs to make the largest possible “profit “ possible. Communism, socialism or fascism doesn’t matter. And patriotism fled it 40 years ago.

[Crunchy Frog]

21. They're not really a communist country though

or even really pretending that they're trying. They're just a heavily authoritarian state with one party rule, and that party happens to call itself "communist" for historical reasons.

I guess their current economic system might be classified as a sort of modern day mercantilism.

Unlike russia, they have a strong cultural tradition of valuing things like education and hard work and they have a long history of producing innovative technologies and high quality commercial products. Their economic future depends partly on just how dysfunctional their politics and society get.

I'm not too comfortable about our own country's level of dysfunction.

[brewens]

22. That's my whole point. They say communist because that clicked with the inbreds in their focus groups.

It's bringing back the red scare shit and they fall for it.

[Marcus IM]

33. And it works well here too.

Look at the confusion on this thread.
Don't know what it is, but hate it.

[Dave says]

24. Republican wet dream

“They're just a heavily authoritarian state with one party rule”

[Voltaire2]

25. marxist leninist theory requires the development of a capitalist economic system as a prerequisite

for the development of a communist society. In the USSR and in China under Mao, this was done generally using state controlled enterprises with central planning. The current Chinese system has a mix of both private enterprise and state owned enterprises, with both market based planning and state planning. Neither the USSR or China intended to transition to a fully communist society after their respective revolutions, instead they were (and in China's case still are) intending to build the economic and social structures that would enable this transition.

[Elessar Zappa]

26. They call themselves communists.

The party in charge is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). That’s why people in this country call them a communist country.

[yardwork]

28. China isn't really communist, for starters.

People confuse communist with authoritarian.

[Quixote1818]

30. The're not eating our lunch right now. Their economy has been terrible the last two years

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/27/economy/china-economy-challenges-2024-intl-hnk/index.html

[RandySF]

34. China is crony capitalism with political and religious repression.

Add to the mix the illusion of upward mobility fed to the public on a daily basis.

[gulliver]

35. Communism is a simplistic, idiotic idea.

It's a data-less, utopian speculation by people who didn't know they were abject morons.