Council on Foreign RelationsWashington, D.C. MR. SULLIVAN: At least I had the bravery to give that speech at Brookings rather than at CFR. So — (laughter) — Mike, I want to say thank you for having me back at CFR. And to Susan and Kurt and Charlene and Steve, thank you for having me back…
If you can’t figure out how to get the book for free on your own then I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe ask your friends to teach you what bittorrent is. There are however plenty of other free resources explaining how Chinese system works. It’s interesting that you decided to slander me here though. It suggests to me that you’re not interested in having an constructive discussion.
Nevertheless, I’ll address your misinformed claims for other people reading the thread. If China was following the same path as other capitalist countries than it would look like India or countries in Latin America today where standard of living isn’t improving for workers in any meaningful way. China is pretty much the only developing nation where the standard of living is rapidly improving for the majority. This does not happen in any capitalist country. Here are a few concrete examples of what I’m talking about.
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
By the end of 2020, extreme poverty, defined as living on under a threshold of around $2 per day, had been eliminated in China. According to the World Bank, the Chinese government had spent $700 billion on poverty alleviation since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/world/asia/china-poverty-xi-jinping.html
I’m not slandering you, just expressing skepticism at your own interest in constructive conversation and explaining why I don’t value your book recommendation very highly.
As to the rest of this, it is again much too long to read in its entirety but it seems to come down to the same economic growth metrics that are used to justify neoliberal economics in every country. Yes, a small fraction of the wealth falls down to the poor and by some metrics this leaves them better off. This is not socialism in Western countries and it is not socialism in China. In fact, these are the same reasons people supported far right politicians like Trump or Hitler. If we concentrate power in the hands of the people who know better, they will grow the whole economy and we will all get richer, right? It doesn’t matter if the ruling class seizes most of the wealth and power, now you can buy two toys for your kids instead of one!
The global definition of poverty is an especially misleading metric since it doesn’t actually measure people’s material conditions, just “dollars per day” which is often only tangentially related to actual well-being. See this paper for more information: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169
Notably:
The results of this method demonstrate there is often a significant divergence between the poverty rate as defined by the World Bank’s $1.90 method and the BNPL. Consider the case of China, for example. According to the $1.90 method, the poverty rate in China fell from 66% in 1990 to 19% in 2005, suggesting capitalist reforms delivered dramatic improvements (World Bank 2021). However, if we instead measure incomes against the BNPL, we find poverty increased during this period, from 0.2% in 1990 (one of the lowest figures in the world) to 24% in 2005, with a peak of 68% in 1995 (data from Moatsos, 2021).3 This reflects an increase in the relative price of food as China’s socialist provisioning systems were dismantled (Li, 2016). It is likely that something similar occurred across the global South during the 19th century, as colonial interventions undermined communal provisioning systems. As a result, the $1.90 PPP line likely reflects a changing standard of welfare during the period that the Ravallion/Pinker graph refers to.
But even if conditions did improve during some periods, none of this means there isn’t a better economic system, nor does it make any country where conditions improve socialist. There have been periods of economic improvement in many capitalist countries, partly because pure capitalism is extremely difficult to implement and maintain, so most capitalist countries do allow for some socialist practices to exist. Again, socialism means proletarian control of the means of production, something that no one in these conversations has even attempted to argue is happening in China. Workers in China, like workers in all capitalist countries, have very little say over their own working conditions and economic decision making. This is extremely obvious from the fact that corporate structures in China are very similar to elsewhere in the world; a structure that is incompatible with socialism.
TLDR you can’t be bothered to read things that contradict your narrative, and just cherry pick things that fit it. I’m not going to bother arguing with you further since it’s about as productive as banging ones head against a wall. You keep on believing whatever nonsense you want.
Funny because I was going to say the same thing. Keep on believing imperialist propaganda, I’m sure communism will arrive any day now. Just need to force capitalism on a few more generations.
If you can’t figure out how to get the book for free on your own then I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe ask your friends to teach you what bittorrent is. There are however plenty of other free resources explaining how Chinese system works. It’s interesting that you decided to slander me here though. It suggests to me that you’re not interested in having an constructive discussion.
Nevertheless, I’ll address your misinformed claims for other people reading the thread. If China was following the same path as other capitalist countries than it would look like India or countries in Latin America today where standard of living isn’t improving for workers in any meaningful way. China is pretty much the only developing nation where the standard of living is rapidly improving for the majority. This does not happen in any capitalist country. Here are a few concrete examples of what I’m talking about.
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China’s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019&locations=CN&start=2008
By the end of 2020, extreme poverty, defined as living on under a threshold of around $2 per day, had been eliminated in China. According to the World Bank, the Chinese government had spent $700 billion on poverty alleviation since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/world/asia/china-poverty-xi-jinping.html
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
I’m not slandering you, just expressing skepticism at your own interest in constructive conversation and explaining why I don’t value your book recommendation very highly.
As to the rest of this, it is again much too long to read in its entirety but it seems to come down to the same economic growth metrics that are used to justify neoliberal economics in every country. Yes, a small fraction of the wealth falls down to the poor and by some metrics this leaves them better off. This is not socialism in Western countries and it is not socialism in China. In fact, these are the same reasons people supported far right politicians like Trump or Hitler. If we concentrate power in the hands of the people who know better, they will grow the whole economy and we will all get richer, right? It doesn’t matter if the ruling class seizes most of the wealth and power, now you can buy two toys for your kids instead of one!
The global definition of poverty is an especially misleading metric since it doesn’t actually measure people’s material conditions, just “dollars per day” which is often only tangentially related to actual well-being. See this paper for more information: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169
Notably:
But even if conditions did improve during some periods, none of this means there isn’t a better economic system, nor does it make any country where conditions improve socialist. There have been periods of economic improvement in many capitalist countries, partly because pure capitalism is extremely difficult to implement and maintain, so most capitalist countries do allow for some socialist practices to exist. Again, socialism means proletarian control of the means of production, something that no one in these conversations has even attempted to argue is happening in China. Workers in China, like workers in all capitalist countries, have very little say over their own working conditions and economic decision making. This is extremely obvious from the fact that corporate structures in China are very similar to elsewhere in the world; a structure that is incompatible with socialism.
TLDR you can’t be bothered to read things that contradict your narrative, and just cherry pick things that fit it. I’m not going to bother arguing with you further since it’s about as productive as banging ones head against a wall. You keep on believing whatever nonsense you want.
Funny because I was going to say the same thing. Keep on believing imperialist propaganda, I’m sure communism will arrive any day now. Just need to force capitalism on a few more generations.