秦始皇帝

In other words, in all likelihood, waves at the Chinese intelligence system running this thread.

Why do you people always feel the need to add some dehumanising shit like this at the end of your replies.

“Oh you don’t hate China you must be a bot, shill, intelligence officer, brainwashed etc etc.”

You suck.

owning a home implies personal democratic freedoms.

No? Democracy and “democratic freedoms” has nothing to do with home ownership. And even if it did odds are we have better democratic freedoms than you. There’s a reason we rank at the top of the democratic perception index and that even according to Harvard our government satisfaction rate is over 80% whereas most Western countries struggle to break 50% outside of massively exceptional circumstances like Bush hitting 90% due to 9/11.

Unless you’re wealthy you’re not leaving the town or city you were born in, not without losing your welfare benefits, so you better have a decent job offer if you try.

I’m assuming you’re referencing the hukou system here. This interpretation hasn’t been accurate for a while now. Cities under 3 million population have essentially removed settlement barriers, and even megacities are piloting residence-based public service access.

The hukou system was also an unfortunate necessity when it was originally put in place. Go to Mumbai. Look at Dharavi. One point seven five square kilometers holding over a million people in informal settlements with no basic infrastructure. That is what happens when capital accumulates without a mechanism to regulate the pace of urban absorption (the original reason for implementation of the hukou system). The hukou system, however imperfect, prevented that outcome. The hukou system functioned as a valve. It allowed industrialization to proceed at a speed that absorbed labor without collapsing urban systems.

It’s also important to look at the positives of the system as it remains despite its many shortcomings. Every rural hukou holder retains rights to a homestead plot and contracted land. This is the basis for China’s near-elimination of absolute homelessness. When a rural worker in a city faces unemployment or illness, there is a place to return to. This safety net reduced the fiscal burden on early-stage industrial capital, yes, but it also prevented the formation of a permanently dispossessed urban underclass.

unless you’re suggesting that arresting U.S billionaires is an act of war.

When they’re there as part of a US delegation it absolutely would be did you think this through at all?

Cowbee ends up thinking for you guys.

Don’t even know what you’re trying to imply with this.

Let me put it this way, I think that if this meeting between U.S. billionaires + Trump in China ends without a single one of these individuals being arrested — I have my answer on where China really stands.

“If China doesn’t declare war on the US they’re not real socialists”.

It is not “playing the racism card” to point out racism when it appears. You treated Chinese people’s own analysis of our country, revolution, party, state, and social formation as irrelevant unless it is validated by your approved sources, which in practice most likely means Western, liberal, Trotskyite, anarchist, NGO-adjacent, or white academic sources. That is chauvinism. Disliking the word does not change the content.

Your definition of socialism as “a state where workers own the means of production” is not a definition. It is a slogan. What does “workers own” mean concretely?

Does every worker become a petty bourgeois small proprietor? Does every enterprise become a cooperative competing in the market? Does ownership mean legal title, political power, control over investment, planning authority, abolition of capital as the commanding social force, public ownership of the strategic sectors, or the dictatorship of the proletariat? You have not specified any of this. You have taken a phrase, emptied it of historical content, and analytical value and used it as a purity test against real revolutions.

A serious definition must begin from transition. Socialism is not communism. It is not classlessness, statelessness, or the immediate disappearance of contradiction, commodity forms, inequality, bourgeois right, or inherited backwardness. Socialism is the transitional form in which the proletariat holds political power, public ownership is primary, the commanding heights are controlled by the state, planning stands above capital accumulation, and remaining capitalist elements are subordinated to the strategic direction of the workers’ state. It exists under pressure from the capitalist world system, sanctions, military encirclement, technological dependence, uneven development, and contradictions inherited from the old society.

That is why socialism has contradictions. If those contradictions had vanished, it would no longer be socialism. It would be communism.

Your claim that China is “not led by workers” is asserted, not demonstrated. China is not a liberal parliamentary market where parties compete for donors, media access, and bourgeois legitimacy. It has people’s congresses, mass organisations, party leadership, consultation, supervision, cadre evaluation, local elections, and planning. The roughly three million deputies to people’s congresses are overwhelmingly drawn from workers, peasants, technicians, professionals, cadres, soldiers, ethnic minorities, and other strata of the working class. Around two and a half million of those are directly elected at county and township levels.

You may reject it because it does not resemble your idealist puritan utopian notions of how “it should be”, but that only exposes the poverty of your framework. On which class rules, which class commands the state, which class directs development, and which interests discipline capital, China is not ambiguous it is the working class wielding the state in their interest.

Your statement that China’s means of production are “mainly owned by individuals” is simply false. Land is publicly owned. Finance, Energy, telecommunications, transport, heavy industry, strategic infrastructure, defence, banking, and the decisive commanding heights are publicly owned or state controlled. Even outside the core state sectors, the firms with serious macroeconomic weight are disproportionately public or under decisive public discipline. Private capital exists, but it is secondary. It does not command the state. It operates within limits set by the socialist state and can be cut down when it exceeds them. This is the decisive distinction: under capitalism, finance disciplines the state. In China, the state disciplines finance.

That is why Jack Ma and Ant Group were checked when they attempted to push China toward capitalist financialisation, consumer debt expansion, and parasitic fintech power. In a capitalist state, that sort of figure is protected, celebrated, and integrated into policy (just look at the capitalist nations reaction to the incident). In China, he was reminded that capital does not rule the republic. That example alone tells you more than a hundred abstract slogans about “worker ownership.” (not to mind how it’s far from an isolated example)

Your dismissal of the vanguard party as a “perversion” is pure idealism. Class consciousness does not magically arise from suffering. A revolutionary programme does not spontaneously appear because exploitation exists. The working class is fragmented by region, skill, nationality, gender, wages, imperialist bribery, religion, media, trade-union economism, and every ideological weapon the bourgeoisie possesses. Without organisation, theory, discipline, continuity, and a party capable of concentrating the advanced experience of the class, the working class remains trapped in defensive struggle.

A vanguard party is not a bourgeois party with red flags. It is not a club competing in a marketplace of opinions. It is the organised political form through which the most conscious elements of the working class and oppressed masses lead the struggle for state power, defend the revolution, suppress counter-revolution, coordinate development, and prevent the bourgeoisie from restoring its dictatorship.

Every successful socialist revolution required such an instrument. Russia required it. China required it. Vietnam required it. Cuba required it. Korea required it. This was not an accidental deformation. It was the organisational answer to class struggle under real historical conditions. You have no real alternative only fantasy. Eight billion people do not spontaneously become revolutionary strategists. Workers scattered across global supply chains do not spontaneously defeat imperialism. A peasantry emerging from semi-feudal relations does not spontaneously build socialist industry. A revolution without a leading political centre is not “more democratic” or “more pure”. It is merely easier to destroy.

Your idea that “parties are for democracies” is equally confused. Bourgeois parties administer capitalist dictatorship behind a pluralist curtain. A communist party in a socialist state has a different function: securing proletarian leadership, maintaining revolutionary continuity, disciplining capital, and coordinating the transition. Socialism needs mass participation, supervision, criticism, rectification, planning, local election, cadre accountability, and organised proletarian leadership.

On wealth concentration: yes, China has billionaires. Yes, this is a contradiction. No, the existence of contradictions does not automatically make a society capitalist. Again, socialism is a transition. The question is whether capital is sovereign or subordinated. Does private wealth command the army, land, banks, party, courts, planning system, currency, and state? In China, it does not.

Chinese billionaires are not sacred political subjects. They are regularly investigated, disciplined, removed from public life, or have entire business models destroyed when they threaten social stability and state direction. Under capitalism, billionaires buy media, elections, legislation, housing, universities, infrastructure, and foreign policy. Treating these systems as identical because both contain wealthy individuals is simply surface-level moralism with academic pretensions.

The claim that China is “transitioning out of socialism” is especially absurd. A country transitioning out of socialism does not keep land publicly owned, strengthen state planning, discipline finance capital, expand public infrastructure at historic scale, eliminate extreme poverty, build world-leading public transport for a financial loss, expand party cells in private firms, centralise strategic industries, subordinate billionaires to political authority, and maintain communist party leadership over the army and state.

That is not a transition out of socialism. It is a socialist state using markets, capital, and uneven development as instruments within a broader strategy of national development, proletarian state power, and long-term transition.

You are confusing markets with the rule of capital. You are confusing private firms with capitalist state power. You are confusing inequality with capitalism as such. You are confusing socialism with the immediate abolition of every inherited contradiction. Above all, you are confusing an abstract moral image of socialism with the actual historical process of revolution, construction, retreat, correction, struggle, and development.

This is not a serious critique of China. It is a critique of a China that exists mostly in your head.

Socialism is not proven by aesthetic purity. It is judged by the class character of the state, ownership and control of the commanding heights, the subordination of capital to political power, the direction of development, and the organised capacity of the masses to exercise power through institutions built by their own revolution.

By those standards, China is not “capitalist because billionaires exist.” It is a socialist society with serious contradictions, operating inside a capitalist world economy, using controlled capitalist mechanisms under the leadership of a communist party and a workers’ state.

Some links are Chinese domestic opinions, which don’t really help - we all already know that China sees itself as socialist.

Chinese people’s analysis, views and opinions on our country its guiding ideology and political system are irrelevant in your eyes? This stinks of western chauvinism. Is it only real socialism when white people agree it is?

China has domestic billionaires. Billionaires that have grown fat on the backs of their workers. This is not socialism.

Please define socialism. If a workers state lead by a vanguard party managing the transition out of capitalism and defending revolutionary gains isn’t socialism because contradictions remain then I venture to say no state will ever be socialist.

I would say it’s a non 0 amount of people but not any amount of note. Struggle is what brings consciousness to the forefront after all.

More compelling than “fast replies to recycled drivel means everyone is using ai”.

Yeah there are a couple .mlers I’ve had conversations with that were genuine and didn’t seem weird. They actually provided a lot of good information about things I wasn’t aware of, specifically some of the things I’ve referenced in this thread.

Very cool but completely irrelevant to the claim that people on ml can respond to your recycled drivel with well sourced comments quickly and thus are all secretly using ai.

I’m not anti-communist

You’re doing a great job cosplaying one then.

I guage the time it takes for them to respond with their essays. Something strikes me as off when I respond to someone and within 5 minutes I get an essay with 10 sources all neatly formatted. Is it AI? Are they canned templates tuned for individual threads? Don’t know, I do know something is off and I don’t trust it — you clearly don’t think the same.

Hove you considered the fact that anti-communists such as yourself tend to revolve 5-6 talking points/narratives which means whenever you recycle it many people can simply search the keyword in their own histories and copy paste a reply with minimal edits. If you were more creative you’d definitely see less fast replies.

On your first issue I can’t really talk on this as I don’t know what specific criticisms you’re talking about and people who are on here and in general are not a hive mind and believe different things for different reasons. However if I were to make an educated guess I would say most of it comes down to stick in your eye Vs speck in ours as you fall sort of generally under the status of US client state and at current most of Europe, the US and their client states are sliding fast and hard towards fascism once again.

On your first experience that sounds like an extreme reaction by any chance do you remember what you said specifically? On the firewall more generally: The firewall was created to foster and protect China’s fledgling digital infrastructure and data sovereignty. China built its own ecosystem instead of depending on foreign companies. We have seen what happens when foreign platforms operate with impunity: Facebook facilitating genocide in Myanmar, coordinated anti-vax disinformation campaigns in Southeast Asia, algorithm-driven radicalization. The firewall makes those kinds of external influence operations far harder or close to impossible to run at scale. I support it and so do many others as the alternative is plain to see.

On the second experience again I’d have to hear the joke it is possible you said something racist bigoted or otherwise harmful without realising due to possibly lacking context. Also it’s CPC not CCP. CCP is the acronym pushed by the US to attempt to pull it closer to the CCCP in people’s mind so they can reuse coldwar/redscare propaganda.

Then on your third experience again hard to say without knowing exactly what their criticism was but sounds like they had their own issues.

On your closing paragraph I think 3 anecdotes really doesn’t give a good view of a society of 1.4 billion people, in reality criticism is extremely common from didi drivers to friends to colleagues and smalltalk. Not to mind the local party offices whose entire purpose is recieving feedback and criticisms and then acting on them to build up merit to be able to run for higher office.

On communist Lemmy communities I really rarely see people being called US bots, in fact I have never once seen it. If you come in regurgitating propaganda with a smug attitude and doubling down in the face of facts contrary to your narrative you’ll definitely get some sharp responses, however people seem to generally prefer to educate than deride so long as you ask in good faith and are polite (communists also appear to want to minimise ableist or dehumanising language even against people they don’t like as opposed to the more “liberal” instances). On the other hand what is extremely common and has happened to me personally many times is non communist Lemmy instance users calling me and others a bot, brainwashed, shill, government agent etc. when its pointed out that reality doesn’t actually match with the narratives they have internalised.

I think if you have genuine curiosity and questions you should try asking around on communities like AskLemmygrad or any other other lemmy.ml, hexbear, lemmygrad communist communities that take questions and you’ll likely be pleasantly surprised.

The fact you don’t know the difference between the state and the government really exemplifies the fact you have no real grasp of reality beyond vibes. I would highly recommend you do some introspection and question why you think/believe the things you do.

Ignoring the distinction between possible ambition and material reality is intellectually bankrupt to put it lightly. You label Russia and Iran imperialist seemingly solely because they are capitalist. By that metric every African nation is imperialist. That is pure unadulterated idiocy. Imperialism requires the capacity to enforce unequal exchange globally. These states lack it and thus at current cannot be labeled imperialist as they are not.

Your second paragraph reeks of Western chauvinism. Russia halted the ethnic cleansing and a decade-long shelling campaign in the Donbass. That is liberatory for the people there regardless of Moscow’s motives or it being a side effect of the struggle against Washington as I already pointed out. Iran has tens of thousands in the streets supporting its stance against the genocidal Israeli regime and US empire. This contradicts your caricature. Yes Iran is capitalist with internal exploitation. But compare it to Libya after Western intervention. The alternative to these regimes is not liberal democracy. It is neocolonial destruction. Iran also funds Hamas Hezbollah PFLP and AnsarAllah among others which directly aids the oppressed against their oppressors. You dismiss this because it inconveniences your moral narrative.

Your third paragraph is hysterical projection. I discuss structural positions and class relations. Not heroes or villains. Not altruism. You cannot grasp dialectics so you reduce everything to childish morality tales. Again I very clearly stated multiple times that the good is mostly side effects of their material positions and struggles quite literally the opposite of your moral hysterics seeking to condemn condemn condemn with no analysis.

You close by calling dissenters a cult while dodging all of the substance to continue to push your doctrine. You refuse to engage because you have no counter-argument. Only insults. Your “reason” is just ideological compliance with the imperial core. The irony is palpable.

Authoritarianism isn’t real it’s a pejorative used by the unintelligent and uninformed to smear those the west deems bad. All states, movements, groups under class society are authoritarian. The question is not is there authority (as the answer is obviously yes exercising authority is not optional so long as antagonistic class relations remain) but authority of what class, used for what ends.

And what of Taiwan? A forward base of imperialism kept split from the mainland by the US intervention around the start of the Korean war stoping the full resolution of the Chinese revolution. “The union were so imperialist when they stopped tolerating the confederacy”. You should investigate things before slinging lazy gotchas and talking points you don’t seem to even grasp the reality of.

Also I don’t think you really understand what imperialism means. Imperialism is a specific thing. It is the division of the world among great powers to enforce super-exploitation via financial dominance and military coercion. China does not partake in this on the contrary China offers non coercive developmental pathway alternatives to the global south breaking the reliance on IMF loans and the conditionalities attached. As well as backing states in resisting foreign interference such as the DPRK, Cuba and Iran.

Reading through your comments in this thread and a quick look at your profile I’m left with a few questions I hope you can help me answer:

1. Have you ever studied political economy in any meaningful way, as in read/studied any theory or the like? A brief overview/list would be appreciated.

2. Have you actually investigated China at all or simply osmosised what the imperial core has been repeating without looking any deeper?

3. You say the government is only benevolent to some people the implication of course being some Chinese people are being abused/exploited could you tell me which group(s) of us you believe that is?

4. You appear to be against socialist revolution that wields the state against class enemies of the working class such as the reactionaries and bourgeoisie could you explain your idea of what is to be done?

5. Arguing online in meme communities on what appears to be a company account with your full name and past employment linked in your bio is an interesting choice, does your employer know or are you the employer?

You appear to have confused intent with material position. Having imperialist ambitions does not make a state imperialist, just as an athlete’s desire for Olympic gold does not make them an Olympian if they have only ever managed bronze or silver in local leagues. For example most African nations are capitalist yet calling them imperialist is patently absurd as they lack the capacity to dominate global markets. Russia and Iran are similar in the fact that they occupy a semi-peripheral position where true imperialism is structurally impossible for them. They cannot export finance capital on a global scale or enforce unequal exchange through their own monetary systems or military.

Also imperialism is a specific thing. It is the division of the world among great powers to enforce super-exploitation via financial dominance and military coercion. It is not merely invasion. In the current conjuncture, Russia and Iran act as anti-imperialist forces not out of moral virtue or altruism but because direct competition with the US-led core is impossible. Their survival depends on weakening the hegemon’s grip. By funding resistance groups like Hamas or the PFLP, they disrupt the imperial chain of command. This fragmentation weakens the core’s ability to extract surplus value globally. Every blow to US hegemony creates space for other nations to resist neoliberal integration.

Your GameStop analogy fails on two counts. First it assumes parity between Iran/Russia and the imperial core which is factually absurd. Second it misses the structural dynamic entirely. A more accurate comparison is Company A funding unionization efforts at Company B to drain B’s resources and weaken its competitive edge. This action benefits Company A strategically but also materially improves conditions for Company B’s workers. The motive is self-interest yet the outcome aids the oppressed. Russia and Iran support anti-imperialist struggles to degrade US hegemony. This creates space for national liberation movements globally. That these states act from geopolitical necessity rather than altruism is irrelevant. The material result is a fractured imperial order that allows victims of super-exploitation to resist.

I’m glad my government isn’t a friend of yours if they catered to the sensibilities and whims of every white saviour who condemned them and us without any meaningful investigation instead of working for the people of China and the advancement of the struggle against imperialism it would clearly end terribly for us.

中华人民共和国万岁！

毛主席万岁！

人民万岁！

Look, China IS an authoritarian and oligarchic country.

Authoritarian is a largely meaningless pejorative to simply signal “enemy of the EuroAmerikan empire”.

But more importantly do you actually know what oligarchy means?

The Chinese government is made up of roughly 3 million deputies with the vast majority being directly elected at the town/city and county level (~2.5 million). The CPC has over 100 million members that’s over 1 in 14 people. The NPC has ~3000 members made up of workers from every strata of the working class where all 55 ethnic minority groups are guaranteed at least 1 representative with many having more. If China is an oligarchy then so too is every nation on earth and if that were true what point is there in specifically using it to label certain countries other than as short of hand for not aligned with the imperial core much like “authoritarian”.

“unlikely event that it’s true.”

The US funding of opposition groups via NED/USAID, the 2014 ousting of Yanukovych, and the Donbas shelling are all widely documented.

“None of this justifies invasion and war”

Defending a population facing ethnic cleansing is one of the few true justifications for just war. Although in this case the liberation of the Donbas is likely more of a happy side effect of the brutal struggle between Washington and Moscow in which the Ukrainian people have become an unfortunate chess piece since the West brought the banderites to power to use as a spearhead in said struggle.

But all of this is sort of beside the point I was trying to make that hasn’t appeared to have landed. You said:

“defending itself … by attacking a different country that’s not part of NATO.”

This is reductionist to put it lightly. When a neutral government is replaced by one openly backed and funded by a military bloc that has spent decades encircling them, that very clearly constitutes a threat even if they have yet to or with how things are going never will become a true member (as the west pushes to fight to the last Ukrainian). Especially given the track record of Western funded groups/client states: The Mujahedeen, Isis, nuclear arms in turkey starting the Cuban missile crisis and so on.

If someone brandishes a knife at you you don’t have to wait for them to actually stab you for it to be self defence when you punch them in the face. Also I want to make it extremely clear here to avoid strawmanning that this is neither an endorsement or condemnation of the invasion but rather pointing out that taking reductionist/absolutist detached from reality positions on it helps nobody and only detaches you from meaningful understanding.

If you can’t explain why things happened the way they did or what’s likely to happen next without relying on idealist (and likely racist) notions of some evil Russian soul or mass brainwashing (as many westerns are fond of doing) then you’re not really worth listening to as you have no analysis or real understanding and you’re only doing yourself a disservice isolating yourself from the reality of the matter and spreading confusion and nonsense.