This is one work (link) that made me more critical about China. It contains a series of excepts of speeches made by Xi Jinping around 2012–2013.
Most of the initial speeches are just a constant repetition of something along the lines of “over the years, the reforms have been successful, this is why we need to deepen reform and opening up”. But what does “deepening reform” mean? You can’t tell from the first pages alone, since different speeches contain the same sentences over and over.
But more and more, it becomes clear what “reform and opening up” mean:
Making sure that the market plays the decisive role in allocating resources and that the government plays a better role is a major theoretical stance set forth in the resolution of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee. This is because economic structural reform is still the focus of comprehensively deepening reform, and the core issue we face in economic structural reform is still how to delineate the roles of the government and the market. […]
Economic growth requires more efficiently allocating resources, especially scarce resources, so that minimal resources can be used to maximize production and benefits. Both theory and praxis prove that the allocation of resources by the market is the most efficient means to this end. It is a general rule of market economies that the market determines the allocation of resources. In essence, a market economy is one in which the market allocates resources. To improve our socialist market economy, we must follow this general rule in our efforts to establish a robust market, control excessive government intervention, and address insufficient government oversight. The decision to let the market play the decisive role in allocating resources will help the entire Party and all of society to develop a correct understanding of the roles of the government and the market. It is also conducive to transforming the growth model and government functions, and to reining in corruption and other forms of misconduct.
Xi Jinping speaks very positively of the market economy as efficient, and that government intervention is negative. He echoes this view when talking about state-owned enterprises:
State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are an important force for modernizing China and protecting the common interests of the people. After many years of reform, SOEs have, on the whole, assimilated themselves into the market economy. However, these enterprises have also developed a number of problems and flaws in their systems, so they need to be further reformed.
By “further reformed”, again, becomes clear once you keep reading it:
The resolution of this session incorporates multilevel reform measures to encourage, support and guide the development of the non-public sector, and to stimulate its dynamism and creativity. […] With regard to property rights protection, it makes it clear that the property rights of the non-public sector are inviolable just as those of the public sector. With regard to policy treatment, it stresses ensuring equal rights, opportunities, and rules for businesses in both sectors, and implementing a unified market access system. It also encourages non-public enterprises to contribute to SOE reform, encourages the development of mixed-ownership enterprises in which private capital holds a majority stake, and encourages qualified private companies to establish modern corporate structures. All this will promote the healthy development of the non-public sector.
The book is TL;DR: No matter what is the situation, we must comprehensively deepen reform. Deepen reform, and reform depths, until reaching ultimate depths of capitalist hell.
P.S.: As an interesting note, I recently found out this quote by comrade Kim Jong-un, in his report to the 7th Congress of the WPK:
Our Party resolutely overpowered the imperialists and crushed their outrageous pressure and challenges by responding with the tougher countermeasure of wielding a sword when the enemy were drawing a knife and levelling a cannon when they were pointing a gun. With the spirit of the arms of Songun it raised a shield to the indecent wind of bourgeois liberalism and “reform” and “opening-up” blowing in from around us, allowing us to advance straight ahead along the road of socialism, as we chose.
China isn’t even close to phasing out markets and private property, their priorities are very much still centred on growing the economy and becoming a prosperous modern country. Leveraging markets and private capital has always been (since Deng anyway) part of their strategy on achieving this. And considering China’s track record over the past few decades, I’m inclined to believe that their strategy is sound.
Unfortunately, the belief that markets=capitalism is very common. The truth is markets are actually good for most of the reasons parroted by capitalists. This isn’t theory anymore, it’s been demonstrated over and over again throughout the past few centuries now. China’s rise being a recent and very relevant example. However, China having markets and using them to accelerate economic growth does not make China capitalist.
There’s this habit in leftist spaces to hyper-focus on who owns the means of production. To judge a state’s progress towards socialism only through the pace at which the ownership of the means of productions are transferred to the workers. To dismiss the USSR, China, Vietnam etc… as invalid communist projects because they didn’t manage to reach the step beyond “state capitalism”, because their attempts at building socialism are/were stained by the use of markets. I think this habit, this tendency, is bad and stupid.
China has not yet reached true socialism or communism, but it is still a communist country. It’s a communist country because the ruling authority in China is a communist organization that is representative of the people. The CPC is a dictatorship of the proletariat, or specifically in China’s case, a dictatorship of the people. Under a DotP, China’s progress and development can only lead to real socialism and eventually real communism. They will make mistakes, take wrong turns and detours, but as long as political power remains in the hands of the people socialism is inevitable. And that’s the part that bugs me the most about the analysis you posted. It seems like OP believes that the CPC is being false with their communist rhetoric, but to believe that means ignoring or dismissing all of the work and effort that the CPC is doing to actively resist capitalist influences and safeguard China’s DotP. And I’m not okay with that.
TLDR; China is communist. Using markets doesn’t make China Capitalist. If the CPC wants to go capitalist all they have to do is stop resisting capitalist influences and stop supressing their bourgeoisie.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZhou/comments/tq0bop/your_thoughts_on_this/i2eqotr/
