First of all, I want to say that it’s wonderful to see all of you here, and your critical support of the nation I proudly call home. But more and more recently, especially reading through Chinese internet too, there has been a sense of overconfidence and overglorification of China. It is honestly a little worrying at times for me, because as much as I love my homeland and is proud of what we are doing, I know full and well that we are still a long way to go. I see this sentiment of China being the glorious land far away as a bastion and utopia against Western Imperialism and while there’s a lot of truth behind that sentiment, and I definitely understand why one not living in China would choose to believe this (I live in the US now and I understand your pain, fellow US comrades). I just want to remind everyone to exercise dialectal materialism on this subject and try to look at China in a less idealised way. We cannot grow to be better without recognising our mistakes. Anyways that is my little message to you all. Have a nice day!
why weren’t you more specific about the ways that china is imperfect? i agree, of course, but one can be a strong supporter of something without needing to glorify it.
One major existing problem is the labour rights of Mingong (migrant workers). I would like the explain but it has such a complicated history background as well as a changing development in recent years, it will probably take me a few hours to type a reasonably comprehensive review of it. (Let alone looking for the Eng translation for the tons of Chinese jargons involved.) The English wiki article on it is precise but way too short to gain a dialectical understanding of it.
The difficulties for foreigner to understand the downsides of Chinese development is that there are not many English articles written about them from a dialectical perspective. These issues are either unknown to the West or very often written by ill-intended liberal journalists who refuse to explain to the readers neither the historical causes of the problem nor the step-by-step reform that has been taking place.
As a Chinese myself I find it quite ironic that many foreigners in GZD have an even higher opinion of China than Chinese themselves. The average Chinese worker is likely to work more hours per week, receive a smaller wage and benefits, and have a standard of living lower than that of a similar worker in Denmark or Sweden. CPC has been very clear about improving the lives of common people but there still exists three major contradictions it has to struggle against: 1) the materially inevitable need to exploiting surplus value in order to achieve rapid capital accumulation; 2) the fact that China is situated in a capitalist world economy and it has to compete with other countries in a capitalist market; 3) the internal resistance from local vested interests, bureaucrats, the bourgeoisie, and sometimes the middle class, against properly implementing the reform directed by the central government. China is very far from a “totalitarian” monolith where everything Xi says goes. That’s why it always take time for improvement and the road is not always smooth.
Nonetheless most Chinese are hopeful about their country not because we’re already the best country in the world, but that they believe, justifiably, China will develop into a better country than any of the Western ones. In China, having a developmental, dialectical perspective makes you a leftist; believing in making static comparison with Western countries makes you a self-hating liberal. In general I just hope Westerners who over-romanticise China don’t just one day get “disillusioned” and turn their love into hate overnight like how many Western leftists did in the 60s with Soviet Union.
As a person from the Global South, I think your arguments, while entirely correct, as not as potent as they are when talking to, say, an American or European: countries like Denmark or Sweden have a standard of living so much higher than the average Brazilian’s that the comparison just doesn’t really matter, getting to China’s level would already be a huge achievement. Personally, I don’t want my country to follow the same path to socialism China is on (after all, the material conditions here are entirely different, it would be foolish to try to apply the Chinese experience 1:1), but seeing how much progress you guys have made in such a short time stupefies me. I also really admire China’s enforcement of its national sovereignty. Our government here is completely unable to stand up to meddling by foreign powers (mostly, but not only, the U.S.). Dilma’s impeachment, while not entirely an American initiative, came through their material support, and subsequent governments brought us back under the U.S. tutelage. China is in no way perfect and it still has a long way to go in to fully realise socialism with Chinese characteristics, but I do think there’s a lot Western socialists have to learn from the Chinese experience. It’s why I’m studying the Chinese language and hope to move there soon, to learn more about the Chinese material conditions and what the successes and failures of the CCP.
I think this is really the main reason western leftists like myself look at China as a source of inspiration. Of course, as it currently stands the average person may be better off in certain western countries in terms of wages/work culture/etc. However, when looking decades into the future it seems like China is going to continue to improve while western countries decline.
While watching Up and Out of Poverty, I was constantly struck by how something like that could never occur in my country (USA). Even if there was political support behind poverty elimination (which there really isn’t), the government is simply not built to prioritize the interests of the poor over those of capital. Similarly, China was able to build tens of thousands of kilometers of high speed rail over the past decade while the USA failed to pass an infrastructure bill without severely gutting it.
It is obviously foolish to pin all hope on China, that’s not their responsibility nor should it be. However, as capitalism’s contradictions continue to sharpen, having China as an example that decline is not an inevitability is a much-needed source of hope. 中国加油！
Thank you for the explanations. Truly there are a lot of issues within China that has such a complex background that it’s hard to explain to a western audience how it exactly got to this point. You did a great job, thank you.