So I recently joined a socialist org (Eur*pe), been participating in some cool anti-imperialist protests and anti-fascist local struggle.
The topic of China’s socialism came up in conversation, and I naturally said that China is socialist. They looked at me as if I were nuts, and a discussion ensued about China not being socialist.
Their points are that it’s not expanding worldwide socialism, that it’s engaging in imperialism in Africa, that it’s only shifting to renewables because it’s profitable for them, and the classic “but they have rich capitalist owners and the Chinese workers are exploited”.
Doesn’t matter that their capitalists don’t control the media and state apparatus (which they somehow disagree with), that they’re the only country capable of fighting the fossil fuel lobby, that they’ve uplifted 800mn people from poverty in 30 years, that they deindustrialized NATO, that they support Iran and are creating the possibility of a multipolar world, that most investments in Africa are in electric infrastructure, that Chinese people overwhelmingly say that they live in a democracy and support their socialist government, that housing is not only not prohibitively expensive but actually prices are going down, that food is incredibly affordable, that they don’t engage in imperialist war… Nothing is good enough, they’re capitalists because they conform to capitalist mode of production (which isn’t even true because like half their economy is state-owned). And they have the guts to tell ME I’m being dogmatic and only seeing black and white, because I dare speak about a model of socialism that doesn’t conform to their narrow views.
I swear it’s impossible to find socialists in Eur*pe who aren’t patronizing, condescending, and honestly fucking racist to global south socialist movements. They literally told me that Cuba “should have industrialized”. Like, god fucking damn it, do you SERIOUSLY believe you know better about the possibilities of the economy of Cuba than the people devoting their entire lives to it in the country, supporting and maintaining the revolution throughout the 70 years of murderous embargo? Like, how do you believe you can thoroughly industrialize a 10mn inhabitant island entirely cut from trade with the rest of the world? The Eastern Block could only do this because it had like a fucking third the landmass of Earth and some 400mn inhabitants, and even then they suffered limitations such as lack of access to critical semiconductor technology due to embargo. But no, Cuba is not socialist because it has private hotels for tourists, as if they had any other way to get foreign currency to purchase high-tech medical diagnosis machines and critical energy resources. Fucking bunch of idealist, anti-materialist, condescending pieces of shit!
The question of “is X country socialist?” doesn’t mean a whole lot because the bar can be set somewhat arbitrarily even if a person is trying their best and not being a chauvinist or liberal. Is it socialist if there’s a dictatorship of the proletariat? How do we measure it? We all know that class contradictions will exist right up until class is abolished, i.e. a future realization of actual full communist society, yet people cite a lack of class abolition as a disqualifier for a country being socialist. One could argue that no countries have ever been socialist by setting bars like “they have a market economy in some sense” or “they have foreign direct investments”. Would that actually mean anything or are they setting meaningless bars? Aren’t we actually all just trying to call these states socialist projects? Socialist revolutionary states developing in a different direction because they are run by socialists, by socialist parties?
Nobody can correctly argue that China does not have a vastly different history and trajectory as a “developing” nation and that this is due to its socialist governance, even if (some say because!) its governance eventually moderated class struggle and attempts to use limited capitalist relations with guard rails to build itself up. This is the only contention regarding China and socialism that can be reasonably discussed and it’s just about whether a person can recognize capitalist relations and trappings can exist in a socialist state, even be common. But even then it is sidestepping the only thing that really matters, which is whether it’s a socialist project by socialists attempting to build socialism in their country, and the answer is clearly yes. One can understand a dismayed person in the 80s thinking capitalist roaders had taken over, but it’s not a serious position today.
Putting aside the pointlessness of the bar of “is X country socialist?”, their criticisms are full of liberal propaganda and what is surely a misunderstanding of Marxist thought and imperialism.
Not expansing worldwide socialism? They mean not taking naked steps to export revolution, which yes China does not do. It still provides actual material support to other socialist states and it’s building a multipolar world order where your socialist project won’t get choked by blockade and sanctions by imperialists. But more importantly who said that socialism is when you export revolution? This is a question of strategy among socialists, not an existential question of whether a project is socialist. And the primary socialist project that did export revolution collapsed from its contradictions (and of course immense external pressure that has never stopped being applied to every socialist-run state).
Imperialism in Africa? I beg them to define imperialism. One wonders if they’ve even read Lenin. The most I’ve seen from such accusations is people who think imperialism is when there’s foreign ownership. They neglect to remember that the reason Lenin was describing imperialism we to note that it is the catalyst for war between capitalist powers, of carving out parts of the world because profits are too low for domestic monopolies compared to the much larger profits to be made by expanding monopolies overseas. None of these things describe Chinese companies’ investments in Africa, which often result in debts that are forgiven and are not negotiated at gunpoint, either through actual military flexing or via control of global finance and markets (which are themselves controlled at gunpoint). Oh, and the investments themselves are highly productive and actually benefit the common people in African countries, though of course this is on the balance and not prefecture uniform. Finally, China remains net exploited. No serious Marxist can use these false accusations of imperialism in good faith.
Regarding China developing renewables for profit:
Regarding the retention of capitalist dynamics within China: yeah duh everyone knows this and understands it, it is probably the only point worth considering but only because it’s a good evercise in thinking about the diversity of approaches taken to socialist development. China runs an expanded version of how much capitalist relations and allowed to exist, but zero socialist states have ever abolished those relations, all have “backtracked” from positions initially forwarded by communists to push class struggle as far as they could as fast as they could. Ultimately this is a question of tactics and whether they will succeed, but socialists and fake friends of socialists love to categorically label anything outside of their own tactics as revisionist, ultra, capitalist, imperialist… and only sometimes are they correct.
Anyways sorry you had to deal with those chauvinists. Tell them to focus on their own countries’ imperialism and stop worrying about China sharing productive industry and infrastructure with African countries.