First and foremost, there’s no such thing as a “communist country”. Communism is a very late stage of socialist development when all class contradictions have been abolished. We don’t know what that might look like, but the consensus is that we can’t really talk about a country being communist but rather an overall state of the world.
Secondly, China has a fairly good grip over its billionaire class. They don’t have the class power their class has in the US, Europe, or the rest of the western capitalist world. The capitalist class in China is subject to the wishes of the working class represented by the party with its over 100 million members.
100% they have a class based system it’s just not talked about.
They do have a bourgeoisie class and a peasent class.
They have doctors, lawyers, construction workers, government employees, billionaires and unprecedented wealth within families.
Then they have the peasant class the rice paddy farmers, the package sorters, the food delivery drivers, the minimum income workers living in cramped apartments and the unemployed.
100% they have a class based system it’s just not talked about.
It’s literally on their flag though. Those stars aren’t just decoration, they stand for the peasants, workers, petite bourgeois and national bourgeois, unified and led by the big star: the communist party, and its allies.
China is a people’s republic, which historically would mean that those various class strata would be represented in government, by various parties and mass organizations. Not just a single communist party (see, East Germany, Socialist Poland, or the early DPRK). As China has developed its productive forces, however, a decision was made to allow the Bourgeoisie to be an element within the communist party itself, so they couldn’t form their own separate base of political power. While that brings contradictions, they’re far more manageable than they would be otherwise.
They’re pretty open about all of this.
Yes, that’s why it’s not communist. But it is socialist, because the working class controls the government and holds the reins of the economy.
The 200 million rural farmers control the country!
No wait, the 400 million service workers control the country!
No wait, it is the 500 million middle class that control the country!
No wait, it is the 130,000 of the wealthy class that controls the country!
No wait, it is the 320 billionaires that control the country!
No wait, it is the 2,878 Congressional members that control the country!
No wait, it is seven leaders who control the country!
No wait, it is Xi who controls the country!
wacky shit, aint it.
Yes, exactly like the working class in the US controls the government and holds the reins of the economy.
Except not. Tell me more about how ignorant you are about political economy theory and how China actually functions.
ohhhhhhhhhhh it’s evolved. I’m going off of an old system:
Class structure and earnings
In the last half century, China’s class structure has undergone a major transformation, evolving from a simple system of three socialist strata (cadres, workers, and peasants) in the pre-reform era to a hybrid class system mixing capitalist features with aspects of the previous socialist class system. The Chinese market-oriented reforms and the expansion of the private sector changed property relations and generated a class structure with striking similarities to that of other capitalist societies (Bian Citation2002). Previous research has adopted multiple approaches to understand the class dynamics and earnings in transitional China. Some research on urban China applies Goldthorpe’s neo-Weberian class theory to the Chinese context (Zou Citation2015) while others have adapted Wright’s neo-Marxist class framework to explain class-based earnings inequality (Li, Qin, and Chen Citation2012; Lin and Wu Citation2009). Lin and Wu (Citation2009) compared different class schema and concluded that a modified neo-Marxian class approach (albeit one that incorporated hukou) best captured the evolving class structure in transitional China. They also demonstrated that class has become the major source of earnings disparities among Chinese workers.
Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21620555.2021.1878019#d1e358
Hukou: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou
Hukou is incorporated into almost every Chinese socioeconomic and political system
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The capitalist class in China is subject to the wishes of the working class represented by the party with its over 100 million members.
LMAO. Do you actually believe that garbage yourself?
The simple truth is that China is the most efficient capitalist country in the world right now - they combine a totalitarian regime with a huge economy and an actual self-serving but smart understanding of capitalism. They are simply better at playing that game that the rest of the world.
What we don’t see from the outside is to what degree becoming rich enables you to take influence on the political system. What we do see is that the Chinese “communist” (muhaha) party has an iron grip on the country, but also that they are strongly intertwined with what you call “the capitalist class” (i.e. rich parasites).
an actual self-serving but smart understanding of capitalism
Welcome to marxism-leninism. Socialist state building is about achieving progress for the people. That can mean building up production forces and engaging in capitalism, as long as the capitalist class is subject to the peoples wishes.
as long as the capitalist class is subject to the peoples wishes.
Yeah I think that’s the part where you missed the news flash about the Chinese state.
Wordy and condescending but does absolutely nothing to prove them wrong, great job!
Cope
In what way? There’s nothing to cope about
You know exactly what way.
You’re losing and you know it
I’ve never won harder
Embarassing if true
Imagine living in Lebanon and not being a millionaire…
Even normal people there live in houses worth billions of Lebanese Pounds.
China has maintained enough of a market system to avoid our usual direct efforts at overthrow or embargo, as long as our billionaire ruling class sees their markets as an opportunity outweighing the threat of their government they’ll block any push by our government to interfere with their access to those markets. Not only did that work perfectly but they actually managed to get their greatest global rival to voluntarily de-industrialize and hand the vast majority of our productive capacity over to them without a single shot fired. Every last bit of argument here and elsewhere about whether they’re communist or not is just cope from people whose civilizations have never pulled off anything half that slick in their entire worthless existences.
They do have famously good working conditions, high wages and quality of life. Their working class is in a meat grinder to an extent I haven’t seen anywhere else. Especially unskilled laborors.
Their working class is in a meat grinder to an extent I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Then you really haven’t looked. Chinese working people have paid vacation and sick leave, low-cost public housing in abundance with nearly 90% of the population owning a primary residence, and retirement in the 50s for women and 60s for men. Per-capita debt is about 10% of the American population. The adult literacy rate is 98%, 20-pts higher than their American peers. Life expectancy is eclipsing the US, as theirs rises and ours falls. Instances of suicide are much lower. Incarceration rates are lower. Yadda yadda yadda.
Now compare the Chinese working class to folks living in The Philippines or Pakistan or South Africa or Brazil. Nevermind Egypt or Russia or Qatar or - god forbid - Haiti or Palestine. It’s not even close.
Source?
Essential China Leave Policy Requirements
-
Annual Leave: 5-15 days based on years of service (5 days for 1-10 years, 10 days for 10-20 years, 15 days for 20+ years)
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Sick Leave: 3-24 months depending on service length and local regulations
-
Maternity Leave: Minimum 98 days nationally, extended to 128-190 days by provincial regulations
-
Public Holidays: 7 statutory holidays with additional adjusted days totaling 11-16 non-working days annually
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Critical Compliance: Provincial and municipal variations significantly impact leave entitlements
Edit:
Somethin ain’t addin up
Sounds like you don’t know how to use a calculator.
I don’t
That’s a great step you’re making towards the realization that you’ve been lied to for decades about how great the US (and a bench of other western countries) are really.
Idk life is pretty sweet for me and it started out pretty shitty.
-
Their working class is in a meat grinder to an extent I haven’t seen anywhere else
You’ve never been to a global south country I take it?
China has a lot further to go to reach parity with the first world, but its nowhere near as bad as it was 20 years ago when you could see videos of children working inside machine presses.
Meanwhile conditions remain similar to what they were 20 years ago in India, Bangladesh or El Salvador.
Rapid industrialization has a cost, which anyone in any western country could have told you 150 years ago. But China is continually improving, and I would expect them to be similar to US working conditions of 20 years ago within the next decade. And I say US conditions of 20 years ago, because our conditions have backtracked since then, and will likely continue to backtrack because capitalists own the government and good working conditions are a barrier to profit.
You ever see the packinging centers go what appears to be fast forward speed on YouTube but irl because of the 11.11 sales? Insane how quick they can get through sorting a dumpster full of products.
I’ve never seen it irl but I’ve seen how fast they can get though sorting in videos and it makes you wonder why people get so good at something if they’re gonna replace that with robots?
It’s gonna be such a spit in the face when the robots take over those jobs.
Cool story kiddo
Cope
Lol no u
If the United States is your favorite country say “your mother”.
Your mother
The net worth of the world’s billionaires is over $16 trillion in 2025¹. 1% being 160 billion. On average, around every 4000 USD send to the most effective charity saves someone’s life². So around 40 million children.
This doesn’t account, of course, for the difficulty of selling large amounts of stocks without them losing value and the fact that, as low-hanging dangers are depleting, each subsequent child would be more costly to save.
¹ Wikipedia contributors. (2026, August 3). The World’s Billionaires. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:47, August 11, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_World’s_Billionaires&oldid=1367525482
² GiveWell. (2026, February). How Much Does It Cost To Save a Life? https://www.givewell.org/how-much-does-it-cost-to-save-a-life
We don’t need donations, we just need to tax them at the same level we’re taxing regular workers. And since their fortunes are growing at double digit rates, a small annual wealth tax wouldn’t hurt them either.
We need to bring back the tax brackets from the 1950’s
The community allows for the accumulation of wealth by providing services, security and labor. Therefore the community is entitled to a portion of the accumulated wealth in form of taxation.
No man is an island, and nobody becomes a billionaire from their own labor. Community matters.
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I hate baseball.
They’re both bad. China is full of pollution issues (though admittedly making progress), global blackmail (well mostly Africa) and terrible (virtually non-existent?) privacy. And a totalitarian capitalist state.
USA is an Idiocracy also full of pollution issues, mind numbing idiocy, and a declining imperialist empire full of (and I really can’t emphasize how many) idiots that’s a cancer spreading fascism and oligarchy.
Finland is, well, here. The Prime Minister did some corruption with an ice hockey stadium, but that’s recent and we’re waiting to see if he’ll be jailed. If he isn’t, we’ll be joining the ranks of corrupt capitalistic oligarchies I suppose, but we’ve had an okayish track record so far. Never invaded other countries (USA and to a much lesser extent, China) or tried to annihilate others (Taiwan).
Not a chin defender typically but why is what China is doing in africa black mail? Especially in comparison to traditional banking loans used to leverage natural resources away from africa?
A better term is usury. Or simply exploitative loans. And the ideal is that NO ONE should be exploiting the resources of other countries. Not the US. Not China.
Lol, nope.
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Damn, you really bit the propaganda apple didn’t you?
Yes the US is worse, but not by much. Your hypothetical level would be closer to 12 or something. 13-14 because of Trump.
When 18-20 would be Nazi Germany
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In the last 50 years, US sanctions killed 38 million people.
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In a sufficiently capitalist society, it is impossible to distinguish the dumb from the propagandized.
How many illegal wars of aggression has China started in the last 50 years? What about the US? How many civilians has China killed in the last 50 years? The US?
Imo there should be a law that limits the sum of assets everyone is allowed to have, say 1M-10M
Again overvalued positions in society are an issue too. People fuckin hate when I say no one should be able to make over 500k$/annually and its like if you can do that you’re automatically going to be seeking to consistently enhance either your own riches, someone else’s riches or generational wealth w/estate properties paid off in full for 2 lifetimes in a trust that no one can touch and then because rich people involve themselves with politics, even at a local level (you’d be surprised how many people are, “generous donors,” to their mayors for favors), they’d get away with being able to probably make it so the property never leaves the city.
You wanna stop the rich make it so they can’t earn as much.
OH wait but that whole cost of living and capitalism thing… Money is just a flawed concept and another thing people hate on me for saying is that humans need incentives to get things done. Whether it’s an award with praise or a cash bonus; by now humans need something in return, we’re not a naturally do something for nothing in return species.
So you cannot inherit a 1.1M house or artwork? No one would be able to own property in New-York?
Also one needs to account for inflation. In 100 years 1000’000 would be equivalent of what is now 20’000.
Inheritance should be taxed if you really want equal chances lol but ig you dont want equal chances, one person can inherit millions the other inherits nothing, yeah thats fair /s
if they are aiming to be a communist country?
lol
that one study by jason hickel et al. in. 2022 has pretty much proveen that china does NOT ever aim to beccoming a communist country because those in power inchina are a-okay with screwing over chinese workers in unequal exchange trade deals.
Also deng xiaoping was a capitalistic rat : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GCf1obSZ334&pp=ygUMYnVyeWluZyBkZW5n
Don’t tell that to @amnesigenic@lemmy.ml
amnesigenic is spamming me cause theyre salty and they know Im correct.
Unless someone cames back at me with sources that prove Im wrong? Im correct. Done and done.
Lol stay mad loser
They suck big time and are completely ignorant of that verifiable fact. Super easy to fuck with though, which is pretty cool. Regardless of proof and information you provide, it will be inadequate. Literally the epitome of why .ml is so meme’d on and cringe. Bummer because they could be cool.
Im sorry what is an .ml?
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
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that one study by jason hickel
Lol not helping your credibility kiddo
What’s your beef with Hickel? Isn’t he the exact type of qualified academic you’d want to cite? What about the video ?
Hickel is fine, especially when he completely disagrees with you about China. Picking one study and ignoring the entire rest of his work to support your dumbass argument is embarassing enough, failing to link that study as well makes it extremely clear that you’re completely full of shit
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Try harder halfwit
China’s restrictions on free speech scare me… and I don’t like all their policies… at all…
but, in China’s defense…
Many countries that have tried to implement communism have been overthrown… and so if China is trying to position itself in a technologically dominant way to avoid being overthrown, embracing some limited capitalism to foster technological dominance may make sense. If you look at China, they make a lot of great tech and they are really excelling at robotics.
If someone is really good at making money, they sometimes use that capital to create more companies or push technological development further. So it may be a thought out policy choice to allow limited capitalism, even resulting in billionaires, so as to gain technological dominance, so as to not be overthrown?
China’s restrictions on free speech scare me…
I see people complain about free speech restrictions in China with this deep paranoid fervor. And then I see them dismiss free speech restrictions on Reddit or Facebook or YouTube or TikTok or Twitter as personal problems created by trolls and losers.
Three months after Tired_Thumb learned of the government investigation, a New York poll worker named Paigelynne Gonyea received a voicemail from a man identifying himself as an agent with Homeland Security.
“We were just calling you in reference to a post that we believe you made on Instagram where you doxxed an ICE agent back in January,” said the caller.
Shortly after, two agents from ICE OPR arrived at the voting site where she was working.
They held printed screenshots from her account, she said, including the post in question. The agents flipped by it quickly, she said, but she caught one thing: The post included a photo of Ross, the immigration officer who killed Good.
The file that agents were holding also contained Gonyea’s address, date of birth and what looked like a picture of her taken at airport security, she said. They told her to take down the post and asked her to sign a letter acknowledging she had been informed that she “may” have violated federal law with her social-media account.
Of cousre, I’m not living in China. So my fear of Chinese restrictions on free speech are minimal because the Chinese government isn’t the one I have to worry about.
It’s a great point and the anti-free speech climate in the USA is terrifying.
No political system can exist in its purest form. ALL successful governments are a mix of the best elements of multiple systems. America positions itself as the big democracy, but many of the best things about America are SOCIALIST.
Communist China ran into all sorts of problems when they tried to implement the purest form, but now that they’ve allowed capitalism into the mix, job quality and working conditions have increased greatly, and they have become the manufacturing capital of the world.
They will end up being the most influential country on the planet, without firing a shot.
Not only does it make sense from a global perspective, but it also makes sense economically. China would still be in the gutter if they didn’t have market engagement. The USSR, for example, failed dramatically at trying to have a strictly command-based economy.
Did it fail because of the command-economy? I seem to recall the worst days of the USSR following implementation of perestroika. And then the Shock Doctrine that followed Yeltsin’s tank-ride into parliament (literally) was even worse.
The amount of complaining under the command-economy was arguably much worse. But that stemmed more from the receptiveness of the government to complaints than under the modern system, where they just arrest you and shove you into a trench in Ukraine.
I believe so, yes. Other to a the well-documented issues that arose from the information problem, Vivek Chibber has done some recent work on the incentive problems that also plague Soviet-style command economies. https://confrontingcapitalism.substack.com/p/why-soviet-style-planning-fails
Vivek Chibber has done some recent work on the incentive problems that also plague Soviet-style command economies.
He comes at it empirically - “We ought to be skeptical, as any rational person ought to be, because when you see something failing over and over and over again” - and extends causality from there. And he goes running back to price signals as the proximate cause of the failure, because he conflates market signals with efficient consumption patterns.
Planning was consciously directing the flows of investment into the sectors that you deemed to be the priority sectors, discouraging investment from sectors that you deemed to be superfluous or unimportant. And then the key — the really hard part — was figuring out how to incentivize the managers of your factories, the managers of the agricultural cooperatives that you had to follow the dictates of the plan, because you cannot rely on price signals.
Which is all true, but not unique to communist economic planners. We have a bevy of capitalist planners that live all through the corporate world, fixated on directing the flow of investment. And once an industry becomes vertically integrated, it also can’t rely on market signals, because all the company is dealing with is raw material inputs and final product outputs.
What private industry in capitalist states have achieved that communists arguably lacked was the proverbial “Manufactured Consent” of the end consumer. You take a thing that’s incredibly cheap to produce and engineer at scale - plastic or particle board or ink/paper or data - and you upsell it through marketing. So you end up with a $600B/year budget in the United States that’s dedicated just to telling people that they need to buy stuff.
And that doesn’t include the budget for industry lobbying or legal wrangling. It doesn’t include the kind of bribery and kickbacks that avoid popular resistance to industry. Or the negative externalities of waste management that are displaced onto end consumers.
Normally in capitalism, what do managers do? They want to make profits. The way to make a profit is by trying to sell at the lowest price possible, the best quality good that you can.
That’s straight foward not true. You make a profit by selling at the highest price possible with the lowest quality of good that you can. You aim for higher margins per unit sold. And then you aim to maximize volume. McDonalds would not exist in its current state if it was in the business of undercutting people making sandwiches at home with superior products.
Everything he’s writing about is just the restatement of the old economic calculation problem posited by Ludwig von Mises in 1920. And it’s been pretty thoroughly debunked with the advent of modern computer technology. But even before the invention of the microprocessor, it was on shaking footing in countries like Allende’s Chile and Deng’s China.
In fact, the reactionary response to central planning as an institution wasn’t to outcompete it but to demolish the methods by which it was achieved. Most famously, when Pinochet’s troops stormed the Presidential offices and shot the computers.
Not only is central planning possible, but it is proven successful, as often within capitalism as within the socialist sphere.
The USSR, for example, failed dramatically at trying to have a strictly command-based economy.
So did East Germany.
embracing some limited capitalism
They were embracing some limited capitalism last century. They’re fully capitalist now, minting more brand new billionaires every year than any other country. Per capita the US still has more, but not for long. China’s working with some pretty bad inequality.
Because their wealth is tied up in speculation.
Im just gonna drop this here and I dont care who I upset https://sci-hub.st/10.1080/13563467.2021.1899153
Absolute clownery
China is communist. It is a government-controlled capitalist. But the government still has the majority of control
I think you missed an important “not” there.
Try harder
Because communism never was about equality. It was always about the iron boot in your face.
What better way to aquire power than siding with the masses against the powerful?
What better way to aquire power than siding with the masses against the powerful?
Siding with powerful against weak masses.
Thats my point; communists always side with the weak, the notion that communists simply want to obtain power is silly.
They side with the weak to obtain power, but as CGP Grey said, the keys for keeping power aren’t the same as the keys for obtaining power. You usually turn your back on whoever helped you win once you’re in power, particularly if you’re a dictator (and let’s be honest, “dictatorship of the proletariat” is still dictatorship of the vanguard over the proletariat)
communists always side with the weak
This is “Hitler did nothing wrong” level of stupid.
Blocked
This is projection followed by you running away from an argument you have absolutely no response to, fucking embarassing
i have it on good authority from about half of lemmy that china is a wonderful place where everyone feels safe and actually there never were any uyghurs, since that’s just western propaganda
itt: people confirming the premise. ni hao baybeeee
After living and working in the US and now living and working in China (no not a teacher), I can say my life is definitely better in China than it was in the US. And no I’m not a bot or paid CCP stooge. Just a normal person lucky enough to have worked and lived in many places around the world.
There are too many things to mention why China is better besides the obvious like healthcare, social security, infrastructure, green energy, technology, cost of living.
I still don’t understand why western media portray China as a communist hell hole, worse than North Korea. Clearly no one bothers to really understand how China works.
And in regards to safety, yes it’s one of the safest countries in the world. Actually when you ask Chinese what is good about China, safety is one the core answers. No school shootings, no need for metal detectors at schools. I can leave my electric scooter unlocked with my phone on it, come back an hour later and everything is still there. If I tried that in my birth country, it would be gone by the time I turned around.
Thailand for example is much stricter and run by a military government. When I worked there, one morning we had tanks rolling down the street when the military overthrown the government. And don’t say anything about the playboy king or his family.
Anyway, I’ll get downvoted but if you are from any of the 62 visa free countries that can visit China, obviously not the US, I recommend you visit and have your eyes and awareness opened. Or just stay in your ‘China bad’ bubble.
China is a decent place to live, but just as capitalist as anywhere else, and is authoritian (again, like many other places, the US included in that to a decent extent).
And no doubt I’d prefer living there over the US. You couldn’t pay me to visit the US.
What drives me crazy though, is MLs and the Chinese state, claiming that they’re socialist.
I hecking wish they were… :(
ctrl-f uyghur
it’s so easy!
Ctrl-f western propaganda.
Keep your brain washed!
Xinjiang is open for tourism, you can literally just visit and ask them yourself dumbass
Being banned from .lm is a badge of honor.
Here is your Lemmy ban medal;
Aw Fuck yah, a chucky cheese token
Also North Korea is what all countries should strive to emulate.
No, seriously, I’ve seen a tankie on here say that.
Also, any source that disagrees with you, biased sources like Wikipedia, are just Fake News!
Western media is verifiably corrupt, they’re right
Or so says the propaganda machine of China.
Lol no dumbass, verifiable facts. Our media has been untrustworthy for longer than either of us has been alive, the only people claiming otherwise are incurable morons or lying.
Which facts are verifiable and which are fake, how do you tell the difference?
In this case specifically, by living through Iraq+Afghanistan and not being completely braindead.
Wdym? Haven’t you seen the citizens of the democratic people’s republic of Korea cheer and cry when they see their beloved leader Kim Jong Un?
Also, did you know that countless people defect from South Korea to the democratic people’s republic of Korea???
/s
The second point is legitimately what someone told me on lemmygrad. No, they explicitly said “today”. They were not just talking about the 50s-60s.
I wonder how many of them think they ally live like a North Korean peasant?
I’ve heard that too
Why people like china? They are trying to solve global warming problem. They are bringing innovations at scale and low cost. Their state is battling some capitalism schemes, like price inflation of goods and housing. Their billionares are little bitches of the party. Not the other way around. People there generally feel safe, better salaries compared to its neighbours, better medicine etc.
If usa or europe or russia rules the world, humanity is fuked. If china rules then everything will be fine.
better salaries compared to its neighbours, better medicine etc.
[CITATION NEEDED.]
You know other, better countrys exist outside of these 2, right?
i guess uyghurs aren’t human.
that tracks with chinese policy.
out of curiousity, how much do you get paid to post on lemmy? is it a decent gig?
How paranoid do you need to be to think anyone is paying to propagandize to a small collection of grumpy middle aged autists, tech geeks, and trekkies?
Like maybe you think someone’s understanding of the world is downstream of that propaganda from elsewhere, but do you really think we have anyone actually getting paid by China or the CIA on this deserted island of the internet?
must be morning in china
I mean, we all know you’re making more at Langley, but at what cost?
Oh, right, your soul.
Same reason the US has the most prisons even though it’s aiming to be the freest country.
even though it’s aiming to be the freest country.
lol
Systemic racism to control the marginalized and ensure the poor stay with very few viable options?
It was always from the very start meant to maximized the freedom of the Landed classes, nobody else.
gotta ensure that reserve army of labor, otherwise how the capitalists gonna keep profit?
Of course, think of the poor capitalists!
/s obviously
Don’t make me tap the sign.
The sign: “Whatabout the USA”
