The Economics and Political Science Room
There’s a great deal of nonsense written and general misinformation about China on forums, specifically from those in the US. The nonsense resembles the same type as that arising in North Korea, who receive their indoctrinated information from the same source of political and media hype. Having both lived and worked for several years in China in recent years andvisited the DPRK, here’s my short piece.
In a post-industrial era, we’ve now entered a period of beliefs because for many the reality is too painful, but it’s a historical fact that once a country or Empire loses its dominance it never regains it. There will never be another USSR, British Empire, or for that matter another post-war American ‘golden age’ and all empires have a shelf-life. In our belief era, politicians promise the impossible and the media now owned by six corporations and run by partisan editorial boards cater to those beliefs. Society itself becomes a place of believer’s v non-believers, producing the biggest divide since the civil war. Although this isn’t about comparisons, but rather why China is so successful, let’s dispel a few homegrown believer myths.
The main differences between the US and China are twofold. First it’s always easier to learn from the mistakes of others, in this case the west, before going it alone and second, China learned how to bring the left and right together combining nationalism with capitalism, whilst maintaining a centralized socialist system for the benefit of those at the bottom end ofsociety. Although China is officially communist it’s in name only and can’t be ideologically communist as it promotes private wealth ownership produced by a capitalist economic system. In any society economics is everything; any ideological system will work if the money is there to fund it. Mao’s nightmare socialist (Lenin’s perpetual revolution) ideology of ‘the great leap forward’ and his ‘Cultural Revolution’ couldn’t and didn’t work. Mao’s objective was to take China from the agricultural to the industrial without capitalism. The idea was there, but using ideology instead of what really mattered – the wealth creation supplied by capitalism.
On his death in 1976 the CCCP reversed just about every policy Mao ever made and realized private wealth enabled growth and not the State. Yet looking at the inequalities in the west, the Chinese also realized that laissez-faire (anything goes) capitalism produced an elite in a divided society, the politicians, bankers and corporations who plundered the economy for their own benefit. The answer was regulated capitalism in which private wealth creation occurred and was encouraged, but not at the expense of others within the society itself. Add to this nationalism in which the majority consensus cheered on the benefits of capitalism minus the drawbacks and China took off running. The irony of previously laughing at failed communist societies has now turned to political fear as they adopt capitalism and begin to beat the west at their own game. One and a half billion people embracing capitalism under nationalism in an industrial revolution is unstoppable. What China produced in its market based economy reforms in 1978 is currently a booming middle-class estimated to comprise 75% of urban dwellers by 2022 and legalized Christianity to the extent where if the trend continues, it’s estimated China will become the world’s most Christian nation by 2030. The results are social mobility and a consensus of hope. An unbeatable combination which helped produce America’s post-war boom.
Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing. The capitalist economy which enabled this is not going to collapse anytime soon.
Meanwhile, America and the majority west went down the road previously taken by China with its own Cultural Revolution (Obama’s identity politics) and the same ‘Great leap forward’ (Trumps America First). There were no mass graves, but it destroyed a generation just as surely as Mao did in China.
Industrial revolutions and dominant empires occur in cycles. One day in the future as China becomes middle-class and people demand a first-world lifestyle, it too will decline as people begin to spend more than they produce and the government will push up debt to keep up the pretense of dominance as some other developing country begins its own industrial revolution. The idea that one country can produce a continuous industrial revolution is simply a belief. Likewise that China is ‘dumping.’ A developing China now exports products that are cheaper than those produced in first-world societies and which people buy because they can no longer afford the costs involved in home produced products. For those that would say China regulates capitalism, what are tariffs if not regulating free trade capitalist markets?
The two predictions of the future view China as joining the existing world order, but conversely, realists see a disruption of US led hegemony as China begins to shape the rules to its own benefit and becomes a security threat producing increasing tensions. Human rights violations and a one party state does not distract from the achievements of having lifted an estimated 800 million people out of poverty and nearly doubled life expectancy in half a century (Investopedia). Westerners generally view the state as an intrusion, but for those in developing countries, security and an absence of poverty remains central. Democracy, opportunity and individuality count for little if the outcome is poverty for millions. China simply found the answer, at a decrease in individuality and personal freedom, but proved that the state does have both a responsibility to regulate society and an interest in how that society functions, the absence of which produces the dog-eat dog liberal fascism which plagues the west today.
All this isn’t an attack on America or the west. It’s a pragmatic and realist view of an era in which western society is changing and how those who learned from the mistakes of the west are now putting alternative ideas into practice.
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Originally Posted by texan
