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If you can understand Mandarin Chinese, this 3 hour debate between Justin Lin Yifu (neoclassical) and Zhang Weiying (Austrian school) from 2016 - widely popularized as China’s Keynes vs Hayek Great Debate - is everything you need to know about China’s industrial policy for the past decade.
Many prominent economists also voice their views quite openly. You just have to read the economy/finance section of Chinese newspapers to keep up.
How is the Austrian school still a thing? They openly say that their view of economics isn't experimental, i.e. it doesn't apply to the real world and is anti-scientific by definition. How do these people not get mocked out of any institution or debate?!
A large segment of rich people love them and thereby fund endless thinktanks to propagandize for them.
Xiao, is your line of thinking right in line with Wang Hui or are there differences between the two of you as it stands in 2025?
I don’t know who that is.
That's surprising to me. He is a scholar of Chinese political philosophy at Tsinghua who has been critical of the turn toward neoliberal tendencies. I've read some of his translated works but they are incredibly dense (but fascinating!). In 2020 the Monthly Review did an entire issue about China, and most of the articles were written by "Wang Hui-ites".
I think you would find some value in his work. If you look into it (even at a surface/wikipedia/LLM level), I'd be curious to know your thoughts.
could you link some of his stuff please? thank you
The books I've read (some of, hurts my brain after a couple chapters) are "China: From Empire to Nation State" and "The End of the Revolution" which I believe is a collection of articles.
Here is the link to the MR edition I mentioned, with the articles available to read online.
An excerpt from the "Notes from the editors" article:
Recognition of the full scope of Wang Hui’s remarkable contributions to socialist thought is a concrete way in which to gain a sense of the startling development of critical Marxism in China since the 1990s. Wang received his PhD in 1988 and was present in Tiananmen Square in 1989—after which he was sent to Shanglou, Shaanxi, for reeducation (not reeducation through labor) for one year, during which he became more acutely aware of the conditions of the peasantry (Wang Hui, “After the Party: An Interview,” Open Democracy, January 13, 2014). He focused much of his original literary research on the Chinese revolutionary writer and poet Lu Xun (1881–1936) and the 1919 May Fourth Movement. During the 1990s, at a time when questions of class and capitalism were effectively excluded from intellectual discussion, along with social history, Wang focused on intellectual history, examining the role of modernity in Chinese history and its encounter with the West, eventually exploring intellectual development during the entire Qing Dynasty. His many works include his four-volume The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (not yet translated into English). The range of analysis in his works is enormous, encompassing literature, philosophy, politics, history, and economics. Central to Wang’s analysis has been a conception of the revolutionary party in the Chinese context, in which he has drawn on Antonio Gramsci’s The Modern Prince and the analysis of people’s war as a political phenomenon. From 1995 to 2007, he was coeditor of Dushu, a prominent Chinese intellectual journal.
In the late 1990s, Wang Hui emerged as a strong critic of liberals (and neoliberals) and of the ideological role of neoclassical economics, which was establishing itself as the dominant intellectual tradition in China at the time. In 1995, in response to one of the first articles on globalization in China, which had viewed it favorably, Wang wrote a short critical response in Dushu, relying on the ideas of Samir Amin, whom he had heard speak in Denmark the year before. At around the same time, the journal Strategy and Management brought out a critical article on globalization. These interventions set off the debate on globalization in China, with the critical Marxist view attaining greater prominence after the Great Financial Crisis emerging in the United States in 2007–09, which quickly expanded to the entire globe (Wang Hui, “Fire at the Castle Gate,” New Left Review 6 [November–December 2000]: 86, 95). Wang was to become close friends with Amin, introducing his talk at Tsinghua University in Beijing on May 7, 2018 (Samir Amin, “Marx and Living Marxism Are More Relevant Than Ever Today,” Tsinghua University, Beijing, May 7, 2018).
Much of Wang Hui’s work in the last decade has been directed at a critique of neoclassical/neoliberal economic ideology, accompanied by an exploration of China’s revolutionary history and its implications for the present. He has written extensively on V. I. Lenin and Mao Zedong and the Russian and Chinese revolutions. A central concern is to ascertain the “weak links” in the present world order that point to the possibility of new revolutionary breakthroughs. His work has also focused on issues of substantive equality, democracy in social organization (as opposed to formal politics), and ecological sustainability. Many of the younger Chinese scholars appearing in this and other issues of Monthly Review have been deeply influenced by his ideas, which are emblematic of critical Marxism today. (See Wang Hui, China’s Twentieth Century [London: Verso, 2016], 37, 136–40, 227–61, 286–95; Wang Hui, “The Economy of Rising China,” Reading the China Dream [blog] [written in 2010]; Wang Hui, “Revolutionary Personality,” Reading the China Dream [blog] [originally published in Chinese on April 21, 2020].)
thank you so much comrade!
If you're a fan of Red Sails I think MR is a nice complement (maybe you're already familiar)
Maybe from the excerpt I posted you can tell why I'm surprised comrade xhs isn't familiar with Wang's work! Hope we get to hear from them at some point
i read MR on occasion yeah, usually when i get reminded about it when someone posts it in the news mega lol
Subscribe! It's nice to get a hard copy of theory every month!
(Or don't idc, but I make a post encouraging people once a year or so)
i pay for as little stuff online as possible lol 
so probably will not sorry
It seems depressing but also probably about right for the debate to be between a neoclassical and Austrian economist. Well, hopefully neo-Keynesianism has some pull relative to its more reactionary relatives.
Thanks! Seems like a good motivator for me to learn Chinese 
. Are more Marxist voices less prominent in these debates?
There are no Marxist voices in the mainstream today. All the distinguished Marxist economists have long been banished to the humanities and social science departments long ago. They do write books, sometimes articles/blogs on the internet, and newspaper columns, but they have very little influence on policymaking. The mainstream is full on dominated by Western economists these days.
If you actually listen to the debate, both sides are openly making fun of the Mao era central planners for being inefficient lol.
Also FYI the correct term for Marxist economics in China is “political economy” (政治经济学). Nobody uses the word Marxist economics. Similarly, neoclassical economics is called “Western economics” (西方经济学). If you don’t know the correct terminology in Chinese, it can be very difficult to search for the relevant information you want.
There are no Marxist voices in the mainstream today. All the distinguished Marxist economists have long been banished to the humanities and social science departments long ago. They do write books, sometimes articles/blogs on the internet, and newspaper columns, but they have very little influence on policymaking
do you have any ideas of how/if/when this will change?
Serious question, asking in good faith here as a non-mandarin speaking westerner:
If mainstream, policy-guiding economics is so overwhelmingly western (neoclassical), why is China on such a wildly different economic trajectory compared to the contradictory hellscape of the west? Is it the applications of these horribly unmarxist economics? Is it the remnants of mao-era policies? I’m very ignorant on this, but i’d love to learn more
You’re comparing two different things.
Western neoliberal countries have been infested with finance capitalists that want to maximize rentier profit. These countries, especially America, have had enough dealing with trade unions in the 20th century so they chose to de-industrialize to crush the workers movements at home, while allowing the rentier class (finance, insurance, real estate) to flourish. Using their “high income” status and favorable exchange rate, they extract surplus from the Global South to maintain an elevated living standards for its population. In both America and Europe, some critical industries were still retained although they are increasingly hollowed out by private equities etc.
The developing world is different. In the 1980s and 1990s, they sent their best students to attend Western universities to learn their economics, who returned to hold important policymaking positions and introducing neoclassical economics to their countries. China’s policy since joining the WTO in 2001 has been, for the most part, a perfect adherence to the IMF export-led growth strategy. China’s budget deficit almost never went above 3%, except for one year during Covid and I think they are going to increase to 4% this year due to the deflation issue.
This has been possible because China has been able to leverage its huge labor pool to undercut all the other exporting countries and dominate the export sector, selling cheap goods for Western consumers to enjoy in exchange for foreign currencies. It is the huge surplus of these foreign currencies that allowed China to keep its budget deficit to 3% of its GDP. This is precisely what the IMF intended - developing countries should send cheap goods to the high income countries, and only then, can they use those revenues to invest in their own countries. It is designed to benefit Western imperialist countries. There is nothing that says you have to accumulate a trillion dollar trade surplus each year, since you are utilizing precious labor and resources to send goods to other “wealthier” countries. You should export to earn enough foreign currencies to import essential goods and commodities and services, but the accumulation of trade surplus is the prescription of the IMF.
I can't adequately answer the positive side of this question, but on the negative side it's worth noting that a lot of western economic policy, especially in the US, is notoriously bad and out of step with Keynesianism and its relatives, with the whole thing being steered by financiers who don't actually care about the generally economy running well.
On the positive side, I am way less qualified than our Mandarin-speaking friend, but I think a lot of what China gets right is either similar to what you also see the more rational capitalist states get right, or it is politically capable of doing things those other states can't because of the necessity of the state maintaining a degree of control over private power for national sovereignty reasons. I don't think it has much to do with Mao other than China being sovereign in the first place. It's really more of a nationalist thing than anything.
There are no Marxist voices in the mainstream today.
God damnit. For real? 
Oh, we have “Marxists”.
Meng Xiaosu (孟晓苏), the father of property market in China, was famous for saying that “the end goal for Marx‘s ideal is not the maximization of public ownership, but the maximization of personal ownership” and used the argument to support the creation of housing market that ultimately causes reckless speculation and further wealth inequality.
There are many “Marxists” throughout history who would dig into famous works to find quotations to “legitimize” their policies.
For example, back in 1980, when trying to circumvent the national law that forbids land sale to private owners, Luo Jinxing (骆锦星) who was the Deputy Chief o the Shenzhen Property Management Bureau at the time, dug into Chapter 4 of Lenin’s State and Revolution, in which Lenin quoted Engels’s The Housing Question (1872) to justify that land sale is actually permitted during a “transitional period”:
"... It must be pointed out that the 'actual seizure' of all the instruments of labor, the taking possession of industry as a whole by the working people, is the exact opposite of the Proudhonist 'redemption'. In the latter case the individual worker becomes the owner of the dwelling, the peasant farm, the instruments of labor; in the former case, the 'working people' remain the collective owners of the houses, factories and instruments of labor, and will hardly permit their use, at least during a transitional period, by individuals or associations without compensation for the cost. In the same way, the abolition of property in land is not the abolition of ground rent but its transfer, if in a modified form, to society. The actual seizure of all the instruments of labor by the working people, therefore, does not at all preclude the retention of rent relations."
When Luo reported this to the Municipal Council Secretary Zhang Xunfu (张勋甫), the latter added a quote from the Communist Manifesto to support their claims:
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
With the nodding approval of Marx, Engels and Lenin, it is now justifiable for the government to sell land to private owners lol.
We have this kind of “Marxists”. In fact, many such cases.
With the nodding approval of Marx, Engels and Lenin, it is now justifiable for the government to sell land to private owners lol.
We have this kind of “Marxists”. In fact, many such cases.
the kind Vladimir Ilyich would have shot everbody
is pretty dang marxist
If you look at Xi’s career history, he’s always been a moderate.
Back in 2007, when the Party Secretary of Shanghai, Chen Liangyu was opposing the central government’s order (Hu-Wen administration) to curb spending, there was a call to rebel with the Southeast Five Provinces. Xi (who was Party Secretary of Zhejiang at the time) chose the moderate stance of maintaining neutrality with both sides.
After Chen was toppled, Han Zheng became the acting party chief for a few months before the position of the Party Secretary of Shanghai went to Xi. That’s how Xi’s moderate stance got him the Shanghai position, a very important position before being promoted to the national leadership role.
By the way, Han Zheng was the one who attended Trump’s inauguration this year and led the negotiations with the US lol.
Also, Bo Xilai - who was initially groomed to be the party successor - was a lot more left than Xi, until the scandal that also toppled him and paved the way for Xi’s ascent to party leadership.
If you look at Xi’s career history, he’s always been a moderate.
Is that true relative to where the party was before he took over?
Also, are there any indications about Xi's successor? Obviously he's got time in the role still to go, but he's also quite old. Is that sort of thing obvious, opaque, too hard to determine in advance?
As always, appreciate your insight into the CPC's operations.
Well, Xi intended to curb private capital and I have given him the credit and defended him many times.
However, he is also responsible for some of the biggest misallocation of capital in the world’s history. The Monetization of Shantytown Redevelopment in 2015 (棚改货币化) will go down in history as the culprit for perhaps the most frenzied speculation in property market, where so much wealth were sucked into the real estate sector and would never be recovered. It is one of the reasons why the local governments are so heavily indebted at the moment, and why we have a potentially serious deflation problem that if not resolved, could easily spread to various other sectors.
The lack of central planning was palpable. They always wait until the last minute before taking action, and often times it is too little too late. It is very clear that the central government has lost the ability to curb the authority and recklessness of the local/provincial/municipal governments. Just look at how Shanghai openly defied Zero Covid and allowed three years of national effort to be wasted.
Which is why I always laugh when people say China has some super long-term plan to achieve this or that. The opposite is true! China has some truly incredible crisis management skills that have so far prevented a deep crisis from erupting, and this is truly impressive if you understand what they did. However, without resolving the fundamental issues, it is simply kicking the can down the road. A complete revamp of the system is required and no amount of macro/micromanagement policy adjustments can allow you to escape that.
By the way, the promise to curb private capital has been overturned recently. I am VERY neutral about Xi right now. All I can see are the libs in charge these days.
To me he sounds opportunist with his continual references to expanding the "socialist" market economy (which walks and talks like capitalist commodity production). If he is a Marxist, why is he not openly criticizing these bourgeois economists in China that @xiaohongshu@hexbear.net mentioned and emphasizing a return to broader study of Marxist political economy?
Reform and Opening up Is Always Ongoing and Will Never End
Reform and opening up is a long-term and arduous cause, and people need to work on it generation after generation. We should carry out reform to improve the socialist market economy of China, and adhere to the basic state policy of opening up to the outside world. We must further reform in key sectors with greater political courage and vision, and forge ahead steadily in the direction determined by the Party’s 18th National Congress.
On the Governance of China, p. 87 of the English Translation
The “Invisible Hand” and the “Visible Hand”
We should let the market play the decisive role in allocating resources, while allowing the government to better perform its functions. This is a theoretical and practical issue of great importance. A correct and precise understanding of this issue is very important to further the reform and promote the sound and orderly development of the socialist market economy. We should make good use of the roles of both the market, the “invisible” hand, and the government, the “visible” hand. The market and the government should complement and coordinate with each other to promote sustained and sound social and economic development.
Ibid., p. 134
Revolutionize Energy Production and Consumption
...
Fourth, we must revolutionize the energy market. We will proceed with reform, restore energy’s status as a commodity, build a system of workable competition, and put in place a mechanism in which energy prices are largely driven by the market. In addition, we will change the way that the government supervises the energy industry, and establish and improve the legal framework for energy development.
Ibid., p. 149
(I credit this essay with making me aware of these statements: Against Dengism by The Red Spectre.)
Against Dengism by The Red Spectre
This article's pretty garbo. It relies entirely on quotes from Lenin and Stalin rather than any actual materialist, data-driven analysis. The argumentation is pathetic across the board and simply dismisses any positions it doesn't like as "non-Marxist". Statements like this:
We already established that Capital exists, We also established Capital always takes control of any state or society it exists in given enough time, no exceptions. It follows that China cannot be a Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
This is pure idealism. Capital is not god, it does not exist above reality, it does not wield infinite power - it too is subject to the rules and dynamics of the society it exists within.
It is not a revelation that China uses capitalist systems. A tiny number of decontextualized quotes from Xi hardly proves anything. The Governance of China is filled with quotes advocating for the long struggle to communism, against revisionist and reformist tendencies within the party, and demands for ideological struggle within the party ala Combat Liberalism against bad party cadre derailing the project. You should actually give it a read and you'll see a a comrade with a deep, practical understanding of Marxism. Here's an example:
It should be fully admitted that most of our officials are firm in their ideals and convictions, and are politically reliable. Nevertheless, there are some Party officials who fail to meet these qualifications. Some are skeptical about communism, considering it a fantasy that will never come true; some do not believe in Marxism-Leninism but in ghosts and gods, and seek spiritual solace in feudal superstitions, showing intense interest in fortune-telling, worship of Buddha and “god’s advice” for solving their problems; some have little sense of principle, justice, and right and wrong, and perform their duties in a muddle-headed manner; some even yearn for Western social systems and values, losing their confidence in the future of socialism; and others adopt an equivocal attitude towards political provocations against the leadership of the CPC, the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics and other matters of principle, passively avoid relevant arguments without the courage to express their opinions, or even deliberately deliver ambiguous messages.
And here's Xi on Stalin and the USSR:
Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union fall to pieces? An important reason is that in the ideological domain, competition is fierce! To completely repudiate the historical experience of the Soviet Union, to repudiate the history of the CPSU, to repudiate Lenin, to repudiate Stalin was to wreck chaos in Soviet ideology and engage in historical nihilism. It caused Party organizations at all levels to have barely any function whatsoever. It robbed the Party of its leadership of the military. In the end the CPSU—as great a Party as it was—scattered like a flock of frightened beasts! The Soviet Union—as great a country as it was—shattered into a dozen pieces. This is a lesson from the past!
But again, those are just quotes from a guy. We are dialectical materialists, and therefore we must look at material conditions and systems in practice.
the "socialist" market economy (which walks and talks like capitalist commodity production)
It does neither of those things. The results of the Chinese economic system since reform and opening up are unlike the achievements of any capitalist country or economy in history. The CPC continues in their five year plans and other plans to lay out a slow, sensible path in building socialism and, with great consistency, meets and exceeds the goals of those plans in objective, measurable terms. While your article above argues that planning is impossible with the existence of private capital, China has successfully carried out almost every single effort of its plans through the domination of private capital by the CPC and state economy.
Your article simply says that the poverty reduction is irrelevant, that it doesn't matter, who cares. Again, idealism - the objective of socialism is the elimination of deprivation and exploitation through the construction of a commonly held, democratic economy. China has made obvious objective progress towards that outcome. The #1 desire of the Chinese people was the alleviation of their wretched poverty. This has been achieved in one sense, the absolute sense, but many Chinese still live in relative poverty - their basic needs are secured, but the opportunity to live comfortable, leisurely lives does not yet exist across the board. For a country of such gargantuan scale, that is a long, arduous process. The dismissal of its necessity is ultraleftist/anarchist impatience and idealism.
It is exactly when this enormous project of absolute poverty elimination was completed that we see the start of a decline in capitalist power within China. See this: https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-private-sector-has-lost-ground-state-sector-has-gained-share-among.
Capital is not god
well now i feel obligated to link Ian Wright's essay Marx on Capital as a Real God lol. regardless i dont think they are wrong here actually, i agree that given enough time that capital will eventually crush the CPC if they dont destroy it first sometime in the future, but they also put forth no argument about how long this proccess takes and from what i remember of that article nothing truly convincing was ever given aside from rent section
sounds like dooming to me
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Qiushi for the CPC bimonthly is one source
The name comes from the saying 'seek truth from facts' {实事求是|shishi qiushi}
Personally I'm more into 'time to ball' {是时|shishi}{球事|qiushi}
no one can say for sure which was intended, therefore we must assume that the CPC believes ball is life
Oh yeah we ballin 