Bulletins and News Discussion from August 12th to August 18th, 2024 - Marshall Plan: Now As Farce - COTW: Ireland

Highly recommend imperialism and the development myth as a necessary book based in Lenin's theory of imperialism, value added manufacture, and more, to dispel any myths about the opening up and reform within china having a "good" end.

and for those still defending that china will be pressing the big red socialism button any time soon, or even promoting more SOE's as compared to further marketization, there recent plenary has plenty of details that should pour some water on that. http://english.www.gov.cn/policies/latestreleases/202407/21/content_WS669d0255c6d0868f4e8e94f8.html “While promoting independent operation of natural monopoly businesses in sectors such as energy, railway, telecommunications, water conservancy, and public utilities, we will advance market-oriented reforms in the competitive areas of these sectors and improve regulatory institutions and mechanisms.”

if one cant accurately delineate between khrushchev or deng, between what the NEP was and what "opening up" was, how losing control the states monopoly on trade will affect your countries relationship to the law of value, how modern monopoly works there's little sense in trying to speculate further. all of these are questions I am still attempting to unravel, but my travels so far have lead me to be more neutral on china's long term prospects.

of course, all of us are here to defend china from imperialist aggression, but you can take your pick of other more optimistic analysts, michael hudson has clout around here, but his "finance" thesis I have always found to be a bit more vibes based than I like.

From the outside it seems how Xi operates is once something starts to show it's excess, he takes action relatively quickly as the housing market or BTFOing the IMF or forming BRICS.

Many things that we are seeing coming to fruition was planned in the 2010's and I would imagine continue to see in the coming decades. Doing a GND in actual and seeing the results built out and major market moves in the course of a decade is heck of impressive for a country with over 2 billion people.

Understand somethings come sooner than others and you can't exactly pull the rug, but the west is basically doing that for China and China has done a marvelous job producing domestic and weaning off western dependencies.

I don"t agree with everything China has done (nuke plants) but it's rapid investment in research coupled with backing their currency with hard assets is a cool thing to see. Now I wish they would do a space mining to destroy scarcity of rare earths but maybe that's to come who knows? The way we have been absolutely shitting on our space program for the last 20 years I think China has a good chance to be the leader now.

They are best positioned to advance humanity as a whole and bring us closer to a Type 1 civilization.

The west can flail and sanction and sabre rattle, but when China can utilize energy at a much cheaper and efficent rate, they will have won. It would be glaring to our crapitallist class that their stubbornness put us decades if not centuries behind while the rest of the world uses China tech and simoly says we don't need Europe or the US any more. If anyone can kill oil it would be China. Once that tech is out there the motive and demand for it will collapse.

I largely agree with you. I just finished reading Socialism Betrayed (great book, highly recommend it). That book’s thesis is that the major contributor to the collapse of the Soviet Union was the development and growth of a “second economy” - economic activity outside of official channels that could either be legal, illegal, or something in between. The growth of this second economy led to the development within the USSR of an entire social base of individuals with a material interest in seeing the overthrow of socialism. A base about which not only did the CPSU do nothing about, but actually many party members were deeply entrenched in this “second economy”. The book cites a quote from someone who stated that there was NO illicit enterprise in the USSR that would have lasted a month without support from someone in the party.

China is not the topic of this book, but the authors do spend a page or two commenting on what is an obvious question: if this is what helped undo the Soviet Union, what does that mean for China, who has a more legal but vastly larger second economy? The authors express concern and maybe even a bit of skepticism, but not outright criticism (and keep in mind, they were writing in 2004 and in the last 20 years quite a few western Marxist have changed their views on China, like David Harvey).

Reading between the lines, I think they are saying it could work, but what we’ll call Dengism is a very risky move. You have a massive social base in China of people who may very much like the CPC, but also very much like their ability to own a business and get rich. People who will revolt against any strong measures to curtail these markets. In the USSR, this social base saw socialism as a hindrance to their potential. In China this same social base faces no real limitations on their material advancement, so they have no reason to rock the boat.

Long way of saying, I think “boiling the frog” is the only move the CPC can make. And actually, if that’s the move the CPC wants to make I think they will be successful. The bigger question to me is, is that actually what the CPC wants to do? Even talking about the CPC as if there is one voice is a mistake. I’m sure this is the direction Xi would like to go in, but there are also plenty of liberals in the party (IIRC the #2 in the party is a huge, unabashed lib). The party itself is very opaque when it comes to things like this, but I do think it is NOT a foregone conclusion that the dedicated Marxists in the party will win in the end. Boiling the frog I think will work but the party itself needs to be committed to that line, which I am not sure they are there yet.

i agree with your position on deng and the current ‘frog boiling’. i think a major factor that will determine how that happens is china’s entanglement with the USamerican economy. while china is reducing its ownership of us debt, it still owns a lot. this means they are deeply invested in the US’ ability to make interest payments. the US can never stop servicing that debt, or else everyone in the world would panic and drop everything connected to the dollar. aadditionally, my understanding of china’s central banking policy is that they cannot force a financial economy to develop, so until that happens organically they are reliant on the west. the financial options the west offers are everything from bonds and other securities designed to absorb excess cash and return a profit to unique corporate structures that allow companies to headquarter different branches in different countries for maximum benefit. that’s the one hand.

on the other, it’s been more than ten years since the tpp and obama’s pivot to asia. in the eye of some warhawks, just as soon as the US can get out of SWANA, they’re going to be right at war in the indo-pacific. if the US continues its hot and cold attitude, then i’d guess china will maintain its current pace of reforms. if the US is humiliated in some major way, then Xi might be able to pull out the big red button at will. i don’t see a path to real aggression against china, but i think major surface fleets are defunct and that china has an overwhelming material edge in a conflict with the US that lasts longer than four days. those in charge of the boats and planes are cut from a different cloth, so they might try and do it. i think the two types of “war” against china that are on the table are either jumping from a broader middle eastern conflict to cut off oil shipments through the persian gulf and the strait of malacca, or boosting the phillipines into a south china sea provocation that calls in the whole regional gang. in the event that we are not all burned away in nuclear fire or its consequences, this ‘proxy’ war could allow china to nationalize industry for the war effort.

no matter what, i think the current pace of reforms is irreversible. there are changes in the world that could cause an acceleration of the reforms, but i can’t imagine how they’d be reversed. the material conditions of people in the urban areas of china that i know are getting to the be the best capitalism can give to a society. if capitalist development is no longer benefiting the people in china, then the communist party will phase them out. the fact the USamerican empire is sprawling outwards in a deathspasm at the same time is either happy coincidence or further proof of the immortal science.

vibes based discussion

xi jinping is the second coming of han wudi and drives the american barbarians back across the atlantic into their ancestral homelands

destroys western civilization once and for all and ushers in era of unprecedented peace and prosperity with world governmental institutions that are just the UN/WB/IMF without anglos in charge

after like 50 years it all goes to shit because lmao bourgeois counterrevolution/eunuch takeover/bitcoin

russia annexes china after warlords fail to unite the country after another 50 odd years of fighting (we get cool literature though)

russia becomes chinese, the prophesied han-byzantine empire comes to pass, no one gives a shit

except for the twitter marble statue pfp dudes they mald hard, ukronazis get to claim they were right all along about the asiatic russian hordes