you asked for the party line but imma give own anecdotes since ive been there muhaahahahaha
- there’s practically no homelessness. the lack of abject poverty also means there isn’t much petty crime.
- healthcare is dirt cheap and super efficient (i got kidney stones and pneumonia when i was there and i just walked into a hospital and got world class care pretty much immediately)
- the public transit is probably the best in the entire world
- the cities are really clean, well planned, and full of trees. residential blocks instead of urban sprawl ensure the cities don’t have to take up a lot space while still being able to house large populations. so, more space for nature. shenzhen has a reputation for being a cyperpunk city cuz of how it looks at night, but it actually sits in the middle of a big mangrove forest, and the city itself is covered in greenery.
- the social scene is very vibrant because capitalism didn’t get to destroy third places like it did in crackerland. muh private property isn’t taken very seriously so you can hang out pretty much anywhere, streets prioritize humans and bikes over cars (drivers have to go pretty slow in a lot of places 'cause of all the street markets and stuff).
- all the cities have bike lanes and there are probably more people on electric scooters than cars (which are also almost entirely electric)
there’s a lot more to talk about but this is already getting pretty long, so yeah china is pretty cool
Sure but at what cost?
so much stockholder value, flowing down the drain
Would you recommend going to China if you don’t know Chinese? Would you be able to communicate outside of the most touristy areas?
My experience is limited to just Xi’an, which I spent a few months in. Almost nobody spoke more than a few words of English as soon as you moved outside the vicinity of the Terracotta Army, the city wall, etc.
This was years ago before Covid, but the vibe was still that random Chinese people were asking to take pictures with me because it was a novelty to see a white person visiting temples and stuff further outside the city.
A lot of the time, we didn’t have guides or friends with us, so we got along by communicating with translation apps and asking strangers for help. At one point, we had a whole bus (like 12 people.were actually talking, it was wild) debating on which stop we should get off before someone said “Here!” and the driver ushered us off. Then a woman on the street pointed us in the direction of the place we wanted to go.
So, I would recommend it, but with the caveat that you have to be willing to put yourself out there a bit and talk to people, even if youre socially awkward like me. The language barrier helps dampen it somewhat, and we were usually laughing at each others inability to understand.
i was with someone who could speak chinese for most of my stay, so it was fairly easy for me despite my limited chinese.
but, you should probably be able to get by using wechat’s translation features since it can translate both image and audio. i used it a few times myself.
80% good 20% bad
The PRC is the most important anti-imperialist force on earth simply for the fact that it is so huge and advanced that it has restructured the world economy away from the US. It will not save the world from capitalism, but it will give the rest of the world far more opportunities to save itself from capitalism.
China is a fine, white, refined type of ceramic that has practical as well as decorative use.
I want to hear more about China from people who live and breather there. Especially the proletarian in China. I wanna see their perspective.
As for my personal opinion, it’s a mixed bag, they do some things very good like how they actually managed to lift people out of poverty and transform their cities in such a short span of time and other things make me worried, like the amount of liberalism and social conservatism that’s allowed to exist within the country. There seems to be no interest stopping that either, not anytime soon.
But tbh idk I also think I’m wasting my time over here sometimes. People seem to either want to praise China mostly or they’re harsh critiques. Presenting a more human picture seems to be unfavorable or maybe it’s just my imagination? Or maybe it’s the fact that this is just a place for shitposting and it was my mistake believing anyone here actually desires to make a positive impact on the world.
Critical Support.
By all means criticise individual policies of China, be disappointed in political directions, even say that they’ve backslid into capitalist-roadism,
Just research stuff properly, preferably using sources inside China (you’d be surprised at the diversity of thought even inside Party publications, Xi gets a lot of flak.)
But overall, assume the CPC, whatever its flaws, is mostly comprised of comrades arguing in good faith. If you do that the entire tone of a critique changes from “China Bad” to, “This is how China can do better, and more importantly, illustrate some dangers and tactics we ourselves might consider in our own political actions”
Empire doesn’t need you to love it, only to hate its enemies. Therefore one must not hate the enemies of the west
One of the world’s most successful social democracies. Weird foreign policy where they often back both sides of conflicts or just the imperialist. Takes the middle road on the issue of cars vs. trains and does both well. Weird techno dystopia where everything is hooked up to the internet of things.
The only actually existing social democracy, lol.
And of course, it only works with an at least nominally communist party at the helm. Socdems are useless even at creating social democracies.
China good. But they need to improve on queer rights.
I’d say they need to get rid of the entrenched social conservatism in general. I think they’re slowly getting there tho, I’d just like to see the government not encouraging it with policy tho.
Hexbear is not a party, there is no line. I personally support the PRC and view it as the presently most developed socialist country, though imperfect. Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, the state is run by the proletariat, and they are steadily focusing on building up higher levels of socialism. Their contributions to undermining imperialism and unequal exchange are among the most impactful in the world today. Others are more negative or positive, with some believing them to not be socialist at all (to which I disagree). To begin with, Hexbear is a left-unity instance, if you want something with a “line,” Lemmygrad.ml is ML and upholds the PRC as well as Xi Jinping Thought.
I agree with almost everything you’ve said here, but I’m interested to hear more about ‘the state is run by the proletariat’ because I just don’t see it personally
CGTN has a cool graphic on the makeup of the NPC. One thing that’s also important is looking at the makeup of the NPC:
And that’s just at the top level. All throughout, China’s system of New Democracy involves mass participation at multiple rungs, in a party of 100 million, and gets policy from the working classes outside the party as well. Consensus building is core to China’s model of democracy. Futher, capitalists are regularly executed, expropriated, or otherwise held in check by the state, which instead directs production towards infrastructure and social development.
Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy as well, meaning the worker-run state has power over the capitalists. The economy is often described as a birdcage model for capitalists. The PRC isn’t the soviet model, but it’s a model that seems to be working rather well, and more importantly has proven to consistently be able to adapt and change to cover its own shortcomings over time, meaning their problems are more likely to be resolved as time goes on.
Thanks for the effort reply (and merry Christmas!) I think I just find it hard to square the working conditions in China with what I think of when I hear the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ Imo it’s definitely fair to say that the capitalists are not calling the shots, but it seems more like rule of the middle/administrative class to me? And maybe that’s the optimal system at this point in history, who can say
Capitalists largely govern the medium firms, but systems like the CPC’s golden share prevent them from acting willy nilly. Smaller firms are either cooperatives or petty bourgeois. The bourgeoisie does not have political power, because they do not control the commanding heights of industry. The rubber factory has control over the rubber ball factory, as an example.
To a degree, you’re correct in hinting at the social safety nets being more comprehensive in the past in China, but at the same time real wages have dramatically increased year over year. China’s economy is one filled with contradictions, and is one that has changed dynamically over the years, yet in all that time the proletariat has had control over the state and the bourgeoisie been under its thumb.
ProleWiki has a great page on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, same with Qiao Collective.
And merry Christmas!
I know it’s not a party and we’re left-unity here. It’s just a bit I do in any kind of leftist space where I ask about the “party line” to hear the prevailing opinions of the group.
Gotcha. As you can see, there really isn’t a unified position other than that we shouldn’t villify China.
Yeah, I’m seeing that. A lot of disparate opinions that all fall roughly on one side of a pretty simple line, that’s a sign of good left unity and openness and also that the place is decidedly leftist, if not favoring one tendency. I like it.
China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.
Wow, such wisdom. Are you perchance the president of France?
big if true
There is no party line. Hexbear is an online platform for posting pictures of a pig with shit on its testicles.
The general consensus seems to be that China is cool and good. Some users are disappointed China is not doing more. Other users, like @xiaohongshu@hexbear.net, are worried about the economics of the country as well as the liberal cliques within it.
@jack@hexbear.net Made a post 4 years ago about china (easy to find if you sort by controversial, since we no longer have downvotes) and back then vibes were different.The biggest thing people agree on now is that there is no Uyghur genocide and Tiananmen was basically a US psyop
The general consensus seems to be that Hexbear is cool and good. Some users are disappointed Hexbear is not doing more. Other users, like the user reading this, are worried about the moderation of the site as well as the liberal cliques within it.
Hmmm.
It is fun how you can replace the name of an AES state in a lot of these types of discussions with the name of a leftist website and still get something interesting.
There is no party line. Hexbear is an online platform for posting pictures of a pig with shit on its testicles.
Rare PPB:
I regret googling this
I know we don’t actually have a “party line”. Asking for one is just a bit I do in the company of other leftists when what I actually want is a broad spread of the prevailing opinions of the space or group.
Oh, you like China? Name every Chinese. Checkmate tankie
A lot of people on this site using large amounts of hopium to imagine socialism is being built despite evidence pointing towards the capitalist roaders taking control of the country after Mao. Now we have people trying to pretend 5D chess is being played by the Politburo while they continue to abandon any proletarian internationalism, see for example their continued business with the Zionist Entity as one of its largest trading partners and that UN Security Council vote on the US “peace” plan that they abstained from rather than vetoing.
Also, we’re supposed to believe that they’ll transition to a more socialist economy in a few decades time because productive forces need to be built up. Somehow socialism was viable as a revolutionary force in the early 20th century, but now the largest economy on the planet, whose productive capacity easily outstrips the whole world pre-World War I and whose current population is 75% of the world population in 1914, somehow needs a few more decades of a mega-sized New Economic Policy before more expansive socialization of production. (I will remind people that capitalist states can also take control of the commanding heights of production in order to help keep their economy going, such as the nationalisations done in Britain after World War II.) Chances are China will have a lot of internal conflict if another sizeable part of the world has a revolution and is socialising production faster than them because it undermines the capitalist roaders’ excuses.
Ultimately, imo, people waste their time here too often putting hope into China to bring about socialism. Do try to get to know fellow proles in other parts of the world including China, but you should spend much more time focusing on trying to organize where you are. The best thing to advocate regarding China is a policy of non-antagonism: everything I’ve written does not mean America & allies should be confrontational with them.
China has the best chances as of right now of challenging western imperialism and winning, and isn’t imperialist itself.
They have some nice trains
