There can be no communism with pauperism, or socialism with pauperism. So to get rich is no sin. However, what we mean by getting rich is different from what you mean. Wealth in a socialist society belongs to the people. To get rich in a socialist society means prosperity for the entire people. The principles of socialism are: first, development of production and second, common prosperity. We permit some people and some regions to become prosperous first, for the purpose of achieving common prosperity faster. That is why our policy will not lead to polarization, to a situation where the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. To be frank, we shall not permit the emergence of a new bourgeoisie.
Though it can be argued that in China there is no bourgeoisie because the bourgeois elements are not organized as a class, there is no doubt about the polarization and inequality. The rich have indeed gotten richer, while the poor have not gotten much poorer, but compared to the rich, they are still very poor. The consequences of this inequality can be seen in the increasing number of “mass incidents” from 2010s forward. Class struggle still exists in China, and it’s getting increasingly intense.
The latest Congress in China, establishing full employment as a goal, will definitely be an improvement in the direction of socialism. China will finally overcome the Deng Xiaoping era, and enter into a new era of socialism.
Wallace: So far, I have never seen a picture of you in a public place in China; why?
Deng: We do not encourage that. Any individual is a member of the collective. Nothing can be accomplished by an individual in isolation from others. Personally, I have all along rejected offers to write my biography. Over the years, I have done quite a few good things, but I have done some wrong things, too. Before the “cultural revolution”, we made such mistakes as the Great Leap Forward. Of course, I was not the principal advocate of that policy, but I did not oppose it either. That means I had a share in that mistake. If a biography is written, it should include both good and bad things, even the mistakes one has made.
unfathomably based
It always baffles me when Westerners complain about the transparency of the Chinese government. The CPC criticizes itself all the time and at least admits its mistakes.
Meanwhile US politicians are always blaming each other and moving goalposts. And while the CPC actually responded to a week of protests with a change in policy, the American government gave more money and weapons to police after months of BLM protests.
It’s becoming clearer and clearer every day that people in the US are just operating on racism because most of whatever they claim to know about China is inconsistent with actual reality. The arrogance.
It hurts me how logical he is lmao
Wallace: It seems that Chinese relations with capitalist America are better than Chinese relations with the Soviet communists. Why is that?
Deng: China does not regard social systems as a criterion in its approach to problems. The relations between China and the United States are determined in the context of their specific conditions, and so are the relations between China and the Soviet Union.
I love Deng’s writings and interviews. He was an extremely competent leader and had outstanding theoretical grounding behind his words.
Victory over extreme poverty and approximately 13 million people raised out of poverty every year = the poor getting poorer?
Are you referring to my comment, comrade? Read it again:
The rich have indeed gotten richer, while the poor have not gotten much poorer, but compared to the rich, they are still very poor.
It seems I have the reading comprehension of an American… I apologize
Why do you say overcome the Deng Xiaoping era as if it would have been something bad? Clearly China was’t in his best shape when he assumed and during his time in government, but he shifted China’s corrupted beaureucratic rule by the Gang of Four and gave a new direction to a market focused society.
Not bad, but of course it still has limitations. When I mentioned Deng Xiaoping era, I referred to the whole Reform and Opening Up which is still in practice up to this day. There’s still a huge degree of exploitation, inequality and other social problems like prostitution, all caused by the influence of capital.
Overcoming, in the dialectical sense, means preserving what’s useful and discarding what’s not. It has nothing to do with the period being “bad”, it had its moments, but obviously it’s not eternally sustainable, the Chinese leadership will have to break with Reform and Opening up sooner or later, and I believe the 20th Congress is precisely this rupture.
Yes, I thought you meant to say that he was a contrarevolutionary. In my understanding Deng’s policies are not something specificallt developed by him but a clear analysis of Marxist theory in accordance with the particular material reality in China. This process is necessary if you want to accumulate wealth and make capital grow, at least under current global conditions. Of course this can only be prolonged for only a period where a higher state of industrialization and socialism are achieved, but in my opinion China has not sinned of being too long in it. During this short decades China has advance from a country barely able to feed its citizen to a prosperous nation, there are issues, but the quality of life has been improving.
Polarization? Only in the first few years of reforms, but the decline in poverty accelerated afterwards.
