9skyguy0

I wonder how many pearls they have left to clutch.

I see. That was certainly a step in the right direction. I'll look into that further, thanks.

Hi, do you have any further reading/recommended sources on the nationalist revolution of the 90s?

I have met MLs (not on lemmy) who tout the DPRK as a utopia and shut down all of my criticism as western brainwashing.

Again, MLs don't hold the view that the Soviet Union, China, the DPRK, Cuba, Vietnam, or any socialist country is perfect. Here's an example of criticisms brought against Stalin (thanks Dessalines for compiling an excellent resource list). We absolutely do critique past and present failures and contradictions and try to do better.

If you look at China and go "this is perfect in every way and we should copy it," then you aren't actually learning anything at all

MLs do not hold this view. China isn't perfect, and copying their model completely wouldn't work at all. The Soviet Union, China, and the DPRK all use different models of socialism.

Are they canned templates tuned for individual threads?

Chances are this is what you're seeing. Essays and sources made and compiled, kept on hand. I do the same for the latter at minimum.

I refer to their transition from an agricultural society to an industrialized one. If you think that China is where it is today without the effects of globalization then we don't really have anything to speak about.

The industrial base formed by Mao remains completely intact. State-owned Enterprises have always had full or near-full control of all critical industries. Let's not forget the Soviets industrialized without any of those benefits. Moreover, while what happened under Deng Xiaoping sped up development, China was never capitalist nor state capitalist.

Jeff J. Brown, a China analyst, details this further in this excerpt from an interview about his book China Rising: Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations:

"The greatest misunderstanding about China is that when Deng Xiaoping came out with his reform, everybody thinks that China became a capitalist country. Only part of the economy was turned over to capitalist practices, the vast bulk of the Chinese economy is still very much Communist. Let me explain why, first off China has no private real estate, every square inch of this country is owned by the state, people are not buying land, they're buying long-term leases up to 70 years, this has a powerful impact on keeping people from amassing tremendous wealth. Secondly, the economy, all the big heavyweight industries are all state-owned. They only allow maximum 30% ownership by non-state owners, and they have very strict stock concentration laws that prevent anybody from amassing more than a tiny percentage. That's the bulk of the economy, the rest of it is the small business entrepreneurial sector that is almost all privately owned. What the Chinese do is they turn these consumer goods, these high volume, low margin industries over to the people and let them fight it out, helping keep prices and inflation down. With the government owning all the land and the huge industrial sectors, it is still very very Communist. The other thing that makes it Communist is they still have the Five-Year Plan, just like Lenin set out. The reason why China is kicking the butt off of Europe and North America is because the government has already planned to have X number of products. This is why the mixed model of a predominately government-owned economy mixed with a vibrant lower economy in the private hands is working wonders."

Your points on what happened in the US are fair, and I refined my specific critique. That being said,

Yeah I'm not gonna use ChatGPT to summarize essays to prove my point like your .ml heroes.

Wild take with no evidence. I question whether you're even arguing in good faith.

China as it is never could have existed without capitalism.

Elaborate. Do you refer to their policies or the inflow of capital to the country?

Do note that these three anecdotes, particularly without complete context, do not paint an accurate nor complete picture on their own.

That being said, you're replying to a very knowledgeable Chinese user who I'm sure can help clear things up if you're open for it.

Seems like China's version of socialism won't work without the capitialist hegemony in place.

E:Clarifying critique. My, a classic projection. Never mind their built up industry.

But communism only works until you run out of other people's money, right? right???? (/s)

Lol. Lmao, even. You've shared debunked propaganda that doesn't cite any proper sources. I'll refer you to Dessalines's thread about what actually happened in Tiananmen.

Though while we're here, let's address Tibet, shall we?

First, the people of Tibet lived as serfs doing forced labor for the Dalai Lama and other elites. https://www.historicly.net/p/tibet-china-and-the-violent-reaction https://redsails.org/friendly-feudalism/

In the second one, they also go further into the history and abuse serfs, peasants, and lower-class monks endured, and has the following:

Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.

Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler’s SS) wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese “were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived.” They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants — all of which Harrer treats as sure evidence of the dreadful nature of the Chinese occupation.

The PRC liberated Tibet, abolished slavery and serfdom, and built modern infrastructure. Tibetans are far better off now than they were then. Those who resisted this were nobles and reactionaries.

After he was overthrown, the Dalai Lama also received money from the CIA to train guerillas. https://web.archive.org/web/20251104164452/https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/02/world/world-news-briefs-dalai-lama-group-says-it-got-money-from-cia.html