askchapo

I apologize for my recent anger, I spent a while writing up those and I got very passionate. I do believe you are a devoted Marxist Leninist, and have given serious time to formulate responses to my points which I thank you for. Although I disagree with much of your points so far, I am glad to have actual counter critique and arguments. Although its not that all the time, neither am I also lacking in areas.

This is not China's approach. They are not trying to develop every country to the same level as the imperial core. They are trying to develop their country, the current leading socialist country, beyond the development levels of the imperial core. That's a huge difference. Why would you judge China by the standard of "should every country do exactly what you're doing?"

I cannot argue with this. My position wasn't established very well. I am still developing my analysis. My concern is just taking more than can be regenerated, or trying to reach western style 'developed' status. Everyone with a car, a suburb house, countless commodities for personal use, and the like. I do not think such is sustainable nor necessary. Who really needs their own car? Not many, with a well developed public transport system (like china has, in fact they have the best one in the world). It is a mindset that had the USSR biting off more than it could chew, without realizing that the standards of the west were sustained by Imperial profits. China took a piece of the pie in such profits and many sections of its government want to do something similar. Although from my view its not the ones in charge currently. I hope they are unable to take a leadership role.

And what is the path to this degrowth? While you figure that out, China is worrying about the actual material conditions of a billion people, which includes far better stewardship of the environment than any country in the North Atlantic.

I do not blame China for providing for its citizens, I of course think its a necessity and one that the PRC under Xi has handled very well. Especially with the green campaigns and future economic development massively investing in green energy and environmental friendly development. But you don't need capitalism for this. Cuba has some of the highest living standards in the world even while blockaded due to their socialist economy. They were able to develop a large medical sector, many productive forces, and such while on an 8 hour work day and without removing their socialist protections.

Most of what I mean is that a lot of capitalist development around the world doesn't serve any purpose and we could do with doing a massive cutting down on it. The crisis of overproduction is building and is already at levels that are devastating. I don't blame china of course, or its economy, as the main force behind this is western capital. I just see it as necessary to solve overproduction, something capitalism is unable to do. Something Capitalism always tends towards.

Just because the red social democracy has some successes, doesn't mean that capitalism somehow doesn't exist when you succeed.

industrial centers

the confusion over this is solved simply: there must be a balance. I do not blame china for this, but even if the west dies such a view of constant growth and development cannot continue.

China's solution to socialism is not going to be understood for many decades. We only understood what Deng was doing decades after he did it. We only understood China joining the WTO as a gambit 15 years after it joined. Not even the West understood what was going on and they had all the power to figure it out. China is playing Weiqi (Go). They are not trying to dominate the world and then impose their ideology on it. They are trying to build something truly sustainable. The current biggest threat to any sustainable society is the US war machine. China's solution to that is Seki (Mutual Life). If war is the process by which a capitalist bloc destroys the productive capacity of a competitor, than every single society that tries to develop itself into self-sufficient will be bombed by the USA. China's solution? Make it so that bombing China is equivalent to bombing the imperial core. How did they do that? They did everything necessary to attract American capital to develop their productive capacity. Now it's American and European capital that will be destroyed if the USA bombs China. But that's not enough. The West needed to become dependent on China for commodity production to ensure they would never bomb China. So China not only needed to attract imperial capital, it needed to make investment in China so much better than anything else that the West would voluntarily deindustrialize itself.

The only people who had no idea what china was doing or why are people who have no idea whats going on, namely the west. The west thought that capitalism = becoming western democracy and capitulation to them.

Yes, that is what i'm saying. China integrated into global capitalism in order to avoid capitalist encirclement. It has made global capital interest its own interest. It will not destory something that is so deeply tied to it, even against its own interest. They are massively increasing exports in order to have a trade surplus, to the massive detriment of their internal consumption. @xiaohongshu@hexbear.net has many good posts on the subject. China will not change capitalism being the dominant economic system.

I never said that china would become the next US, they are a different type of hegemon, but one that engages in capitalist exploitation all the same. Far more sensible, far more humanistic, far more diplomatic, far better deal, but only in relation to the US.

And you know what, China could just stop there. Join the imperialist camp, collaborate with the international billionaires, sit on top of the world. But that's not what they're doing. They do not allow foreigners to run anything in their borders, they maintain an iron grip on their land reform strategy, they execute corrupt billionaires, they do not ever let private companies get big without deep integration with the state for control. They continue to educate the entire population on Marxism.

They do not want to be subsumed into western capitalism, they are an emerging economy that wants to establish their own influence. They are taking a state capitalist approach to growing their economy with western capital investment and growing their national capitalists.

I dont know what you mean by foreigners run anything in borders?

Land has been privatized, large rent speculation companies exist and contribute to rising prices.

Again, state capitalism, just because the state exists within the economy, doesn't mean it doesn't serve capitalist interests. Again, Deng thought that private ownership of any more than 10 percent of the economy would definitely signal that reforms had failed and capitalism had been restored.

their education on marxism is lacking, as many people who enter the party learn about marxism leninism just to move up in the party while still being just liberals. The Shanghai Clique is an example of this. Many people don't have a very complex definition of socialism when asked. Some is better than none, but don't say some is all.

And they could stop there, and just be a rich nation that is self-sufficient and doing well for itself. But that's not what they're doing. They are building coalitions with anti-imperialist nations, they are building coalitions with historically colonized nations, they are providing an alternative to the North Atlantic financial hegemony (WTO, World Bank), they are engaging in diplomacy between long-standing enemies and brokering peace, they are contributing to the development of critical infrastructure in historically colonized nations and they are building momentum on developing national capabilities and capacity that are owned and operated by historically colonized nations.

this proves very little, there is a tenious alliance between emerging capitalist economies to fight thehegemon

We are never going to understand what the cutting edge of socialist revolutionary experimentation is doing. We didn't understand everything the USSR was doing the year it did - it took decades to understand what they were doing, why, and how it was working. You don't get to judge these experiments in real-time. You have to use analytical methods that require you to posit multiple hypotheses (e.g. they are doing it right. they are doing it wrong. they are disoriented and scrambling. they are fighting internal counter-revolutionary movement. etc) and then develop a historical analysis over the past N years to support your hypothesis. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of fashioning an ideal standard in a vacuum and then cherry-picking from history to show violations of our purity test or using current events to show violations of our purity test. We have to accept that we have no idea what's going on and that the "fog of war" for socialist experimentation spans at least 5 years and, if history is any guide, likely closer to 20 years.

This is irrelevant. Of course things become clearer over time, but that does not mean critiquing china is wrong because we haven't had the big surprise yet! I am not holding them to a pure standard, I am critiquing them for the existence of a state capitalist economy and their revision of the definition of 'building socialism', among other things. I am holding them to the standards of their own leaders and thinkers, not a vaccuum at all. This is just nonsensical dismissal. Critical support has no meaning to yall anymore does it? I am not a china hater, but that doesn't mean I am just falling in line waiting for 2050 to suddenly have them turn around and say 'this is socialism now'. Market Socialism is not the savior ya'll think it is, or do i have to show yugoslavia as an example.