Capitalism is not defined by how the poor are treated, but by the economic relationships and mode of ownership.
Nordic countries have low poverty and generally good social support. Like it or not, this is achieved with private property on means of production, hence they are capitalist.
China has private property on means of production, hence it too is capitalist.
Both of them feature strong state oversight, which allows them to direct more of the capitalist profits to help the poor - which is good! But this doesn’t make them “socialist”.
Capitalism is defined by which class holds power in society, and in China it’s demonstrably the working class. The reason the economy works in the interest of the poor is a direct result of that.
All the core economy in China is state owned, and the role of private sector continues to decline https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-private-sector-has-lost-ground-state-sector-has-gained-share-among
You might want to learn a bit about the subject you’re attempting to debate here.
What your data shows is that the share of state in the economy has partially recovered in 2020’s from ~30 to ~50%, after falling from 80% to 30% in the previous decade. Impressive, indeed, and way ahead of most capitalist countries - but China is home to numerous giant private megacorporations, and allows many companies from abroad to build in the country.
“Who holds power” is very abstract and is not part of definition of socialism or capitalism. Even still, we just talked about homelessness - if workers held all the power, would there be homeless? Would there be any poor at all? Would there be overheated markets, including housing, which is one of the craziest in the world? Would there be Tencent, Alibaba, etc.? Would there be billionaires? Etc. etc. What defines “workers holding power” for you?
What is it about some leftists desperately trying to put socialist label on capitalist China - a desperate attempt to demonstrate a mighty socialist economy in the modern world? Socialist countries have lost the Cold War and are mostly not on the map anymore; there are objective reasons to that, including the fact most of the world never moved away from socialism and capitalist forces had greater capital to work with, and this does not mean socialism is bad, but currently, socialism is not represented by any large economy. That’s just the fact.
You have an infantile understanding of what capitalism is. I recommend reading this article to get a bit of a perspective https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
“Who holds power” is very abstract and is not part of definition of socialism or capitalism.
Power isn’t abstract, and who holds it is definitional to socialism and capitalism, and to feudalism before them.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_bourgeoisie
- https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/bourgeois-democracy-what-do-marxists-mean-by-this-term
if workers held all the power, would there be homeless?
Not for the most part, no. In your imagined “capitalist” China, did you just assume that they have a homelessness crisis, without even checking? Because you’re unintentionally making our case for us.
Would there be any poor at all?
You can’t go from one of the poorest, least developed countries in the world to universal wealth overnight. But they have made unprecedented progress.
- Helping 800 Million People Escape Poverty Was Greatest Such Effort in History, Says [UN] Secretary-General, on Seventieth Anniversary of China’s Founding
- China’s Energy Use Per Person Surpasses Europe’s for First Time
- At 54, China’s average retirement age is too low
- China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
China is not capitalist, its a mixed economy with the state-owned-and-planned sector dominating the heights of the economy.
Is China state capitalist?
- The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2 The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.
- Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
- Is modern day china communist? Is it staying true to communist values?
- Didn’t China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn’t it liberalize its economy? Is China’s drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
- Is the CPC committed to communism?
- The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
- The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
- Tsinghua University- Is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics real socialism, or is it state Capitalism?
- Isn’t China revisionist for having a capitalist sector of the economy, and working with capitalists? Why isn’t it fully planned like the USSR was?
- Castro on why both China and Vietnam are socialist countries.
- Roderic Day - China has billionaires.
- What is socialism with Chinese characteristics (SWCC)?
- How is SWCC not revisionist? How is it any different from Gorbachev’s market reforms?, 2
- Domenico Losurdo - is China state capitalist?, 2
- Did Lenin say anything about Market Socialism, or productivism?
- Vijay Prashad - Is China capitalist?
- Why do Chinese billionaires keep ending up in prison? Why are many billionaires and CEOs going missing? China sentences Ex-Chairman of a major bank, guilty of embezzling ~$100M USD, to death in 2019.
- China cracks down on billionaires - Ben Norton interviews Ian Goodrum
- Do capitalists control the communist party? No, pic
- How the State runs business in China.
- 50% of the economy is in the socialist public sector and directly follows the plan (40% if you ignore the agricultural sector). 20 to 30% is inside the state capitalist sector, which is the sector partially or totally owned by domestic capitalists but run by the CPC or by local workers councils. The rest is made up of the small bourgeois ownership like in the NEP.
- China pushing forward Marxist training in colleges, attracts 1M students.
- China tells the US that it has no plans to weaken the role of its State-Owned-Enterprises, one of the US’s main demands in the trade war. “Beijing plans to make the state economy stronger, bigger, and better.”
- Unlike the US, China refuses to bail out over-leveraged property developers, and lets them go bankrupt.
- A China misinformation Megathread.
- A China misinformation Megathread.
🚫 Sorry, this post was removed by Reddit’s filters.
Love how you respond to a bunch of information from the World Bank, NYT, and the National Bureau of Economic Research with a definition from Wikipedia.
Consider that you could learn more here.
Do any of the sources define socialism?
All of this could be true - none of this makes China socialist.
You said:
China is capitalist… It has private property on means of production, and it is defining Chinese economy just like any other capitalist one.
The response was a well-souced refutation of the idea that the Chinese economy is developing like a capitalist economy. You replied with Wikipedia. All I’m saying is that you’re not looking at this in a whole lot of detail and you might have some things to learn.
For instance, you say Nordic countries have low rates of poverty and good social supports despite private ownership of the means of production. But in reality a lot of that is due to sovereign wealth funds, like Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, which is owned by the government and managed by a state-owned bank.
