It’s like China is just that one country (aside from the Khmer Rouge) that every ML (aside from Dengists like us) agrees to hate on.
Fellow Traveler and leftypol uploaded videos criticizing them, the Shining Path hung up literal dogs to protest them, Maoists go all insane saying that it’s some red fash social-imperialist nation because (insert nato propaganda here). And Hoxhaists claim that China was never socialist and that the only socialist nation ever was USSR before Khrushchev and almighty holy Albania.
What is it that makes China so controversial even among MLs? I get that it’s not perfect and every AES state has their Ls, but jesus.
It’s important to remember that China before Xi’s reforms was pretty much a capitalist hellhole. Corruption, environmental degradation and poverty were rampant, while the high rates of profits in China kept western capitalism on life support. Things have improved from 2010 onward, but even the CPC’s official stance is that Deng made some rightist errors. The CPC’s ability to improve things and correct past errors doesn’t mean that they don’t make any errors. And given that the CPC made rightist errors, it is only expected that it would receive criticism from the left.
Furthermore, the CPC itself claims that it is only in the very early stages of building socialism. As a result, there are a lot of similarities with capitalism such as a very high Gini coefficient and long working hours. The western left has correctly learnt from its past struggles that reducing working hours and levels of inequality improves productivity and living standards. They have fought against the bullshit excuses from their ruling class which has argued the necessity of poor working conditions for decades. They do not however realize that China does not have the luxury of setting its own working conditions to whatever it wants. It has until very recently been at the whims of the imperialists, who only invest in countries where they can squeeze profits.
The CPC has also made errors in recent years by becoming more nationalistic and has moved slower on LGBTQ rights than is expected of a socialist country. We cannot even justify these mistakes by appealing to the economy or national defense. These latter mistakes are just pure mistakes.
China before Xi’s reforms was pretty much a capitalist hellhole. Corruption, environmental degradation and poverty were rampant
Those issues do not justify calling China during that period a “capitalist hellhole”.
even the CPC’s official stance is that Deng made some rightist errors
Could you provide the source for this?
The CPC has also made errors in recent years by becoming more nationalistic and has moved slower on LGBTQ rights than is expected of a socialist country.
China’s nationalism is controversial to some, probably because they think it’s like the toxic “America First”, or that it is not a very communist stance, but I do not see it as a mistake. Nationalism is fundamental for the survival of any nation that wishes to be independent and not controlled or invaded by foreign powers.
LGBTQ rights are important in the sense that they are treated as normal people, not “special” people. China is certainly lacking some LGBTQ rights that are available in other countries like same-sex marriage.
Those issues do not justify calling China during that period a “capitalist hellhole”.
That might be a bit exaggerated, but it is a well known fact that working conditions in the early 2000s in China were very poor.
Could you provide the source for this?
I saw this in a lecture by this Chinese professor.
Here is the video. Unfortunately, the translations seem to be kind of cut in places. There is a part where it says a “he” made errors and failed to do certain things correctly, but now that I look at it, this may be referring to Mao and not deng. In that case, I am probably wrong about this point.
However, it is still true that the cpc’s official stance is that many problems exist in the early swcc era. Starting at about 2:40, the professor explains that a party reportly bluntly states that development in china has been rather uneven, unbalanced and lopsided. There are significant issues with party loyalty and corruption. Gaps between rural and urban areas are large. Many cadres don’t promote scientific innovation well and so on. It might not be correct to pin all of this on rightist errors by one man, but these are errors.
Nationalism is fundamental for the survival of any nation that wishes to be independent and not controlled or invaded by foreign powers.
I disagree with this stance. Nationalism is necessary to wage national liberation struggles, but once a country has been made independent of imperialists, nationalism becomes an obstacle to socialist development. I have not looked too deeply into Chinese nationalism, so I cannot claim to be an expert, but china has reached a point of development where it should no longer promote nationalism. China’s policy of peaceful coexistence would be helped by promoting a more internationalist stance in culture.
the professor explains that a party reportly bluntly states that development in china has been rather uneven, unbalanced and lopsided. There are significant issues with party loyalty and corruption. Gaps between rural and urban areas are large. Many cadres don’t promote scientific innovation well and so on. It might not be correct to pin all of this on rightist errors by one man, but these are errors.
Maybe you could further explain how uneven development or any of the other issues are “rightist errors”, there is a fundamental divide between people who outright reject Deng Xiaoping’s policies and those who accept them with criticism. The policy of 一国两制 (One China, Two Systems) is probably the most suitable example that can be viewed as “rightist”, letting Hong Kong and Macao continue to operate their capitalist system. Other less “egregious” examples are 经济特区 (Special Economic Zones) like Shenzhen and Hainan, there’s also the “infamous” 社会主义市场经济 (socialist market economy).
once a country has been made independent of imperialists, nationalism becomes an obstacle to socialist development
China’s policy of peaceful coexistence would be helped by promoting a more internationalist stance in culture.
From Mao era’s 世界人民大团结万岁 (Long live the great unity of the people of the world) to Xi era’s 人类命运共同体 (community of shared future for mankind), China has always been advocating for internationalism.
Nationalism’s call to unity is collectivism at the national-level, I agree that collectivism at different levels can be in conflict with each other, for example when family interests conflict with national interests. There is a Chinese saying “舍小家、为大家”, which means something like “for the greater good”, to describe putting the interests of the greater collective (nation) before the smaller collective (family/self).
Similarly, national interests and international interests can also be conflicting, but China doesn’t choose nationalism or internationalism exclusively, it depends on the situation. When assisting the development of Global South countries, is that not internationalism at work? When handling disputes in the South China Sea, China defends its legitimate claims to the islands for national interests.
Nationalism can be reactionary when used at the expense of other nations (invasion, chauvinism, xenophobia), internationalism can be reactionary when used in disregard of legitimate national interests (like contributing to underdevelopment of the current nation, sounds familiar? That’s what some people say when China provides cheap goods at the detriment of Chinese workers). Until world communism has been achieved, there’s no simple “choice” between nationalism or internationalism, even then there will be new problems in the new world order.
I saw this in a lecture by this Chinese professor. It was in a specific lecture (can’t find it right now, I need to sleep) where the lecturer was discussing 4 main Ideological trends in chins, ultra-left, left, right and ultra-right. I will make edits when I find it.
That sounds really interesting and I’d love to watch that. I’m still really trying to un/learn a lot about China and hearing about their own self-criticism regarding capitalist/Rightist mistakes that they are trying to correct would be very helpful. I’ll come back for the edit. Thanks!
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
One thing many people may not realize is that China is largely automating its factories and making its workers more skilled. People read “made in China” and assume it’s from sweatshops, but it’s more likely robots now. That’s why I don’t think people should feel bad buying from aliexpress or temu.
China, as the workhouse of the world, has done a lot of bag carrying for Western Capital. And there’s plenty of legit critiques of 996 work schedules and poor safety standards and environmental destruction.
I think it’s hard to see “Made on China” on everything at Walmart and not read that as "Betrayal of the Revolution "
Propaganda is helluva drug. I believe there’s so many layers of brainwash to clean off before most people see the cracks behind CIA lies of China. Though I think people can skip this process of unlearning if they visited China, watch videos of people having a good time in China (and what an absolutely beautiful, majestic country it is, looking like something from a science fiction/fantasy with so many wholesome and wonderful people), or read a non-Western book about China. When I began reading Socialist Reconstruction, my wife was skeptical of how China was being portrayed very positively, but I was slightly more willing to accept the book as being truthful and not “overly-biased” (not that I care about bias, as long as the message is honest). Only recently after, my wife and I began freeing our Western conditioned minds.
I believe people like Fellow Traveler and such should know better by now. Maybe they are being used as controlled opposition, idk.
I definitely agree it would help if these people would visit and see for themselves. However, I think the propaganda point is more complicated than you portray. Many people are convinced US enemies are bad, not because primarily because they are tricked, but because it makes them feel better. They can feel better about their own circumstances in the west if they can say “at least I’m not in (insert enemy country).” This works in a peculiar way on the western left where it may work for them to think “It’s not our fault that we aren’t anywhere near socialism. It’s all China/Deng’s fault for betraying the revolution and bringing new life to capitalism. Now all the real socialism is on it’s back foot.” Those that aren’t total doomers from that thinking may add “maybe we could have an international revolution liberating us and the Chinese people from their chains.” This all ties in with the martyr fetish thing.
Another dynamic is contrarianism. Communists don’t want to believe the CIA/news/etc. The news says China’s an authoritarian socialist hellscape. The western Communist is confused. Are they good but not socialist? Are they still authoritarian but not socialist? Then they think of the other things mentioned in this thread or remember Lenin’s approach to the international situation around WWI and conclude China’s a rival imperialist. “China’s obviously doing capitalism so well that they are beating the old imperialists. They claim it’s socialist and uphold Mao in words because people know socialism is good.” This totally makes sense if you don’t engage in Chinese theory. It also makes sense when some of China’s most ardent English language supporters are clear revisionists. I’m speaking of the “Patriotic Socialists” and those like Micheal Hudson.
It’s one thing to say that you are going to liberalize the economy to build up productive forces in theory. When you actually liberalize the economy in practice, I can understand why many MLs went batshit and started criticizing China. The wariness is completely understandable.
The criticism is definitely lessening now that the results are coming in from the great Chinese experiment. I am seeing even some Trotskyist publications praising CPC these days.
A big part is China tries to appear respectable to as many people as possible by not intervening and not appearing too anti-capitalist. Their socialism is not rushed and they work against imperialism protractedly and peacefully. This is very different from how the USSR was, and people expect all socialism to be the USSR copy-pasted.
