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!
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！