this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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The PRC is leaps and bounds better than the US, and it isn't close. Further, socialism isn't when "no exports," lol.
Can we be honest and acknowledge the fact that if you're doing socialism or communism correctly, your exports are going to be severely lower than capitalist shitholes like China and the USA? A system that values the workers is not going to have as much force behind it economically as a system that just uses as many laborers as possible as wage slaves. So China having a large export implies that they are not actually doing communism in any real way. Any claims that china is actually communist and it supports it's peoples wellbeing is literally an American left wing conspiracy theory.
No, we can't, because that's an absurd premise.
Socialism is a mode of production. It isn't when you import more than you export, or vice-versa. In the PRC, the large firms and key industries are publicly owned, while medium and small firms have diverse forms of ownership like private, cooperative, and joint-stock. It's in the primary stage of socialism.
The idea that the PRC isn't socialist is a "left" wing fallacy among Statesians. In the PRC, socialist countries like Cuba and Vietnam, and among major communist orgs, the PRC's status as a developing socialist country is not in question.
You haven't made any arguments as to why China is capitalist, just that it exports, but in reality it is import driven economies that are the most capitalist, and that isn't even a rule, just a generalization.
Didn't Mao do the Cultural Revolution specifically to prevent (not that it was implemented well or that it worked) what he saw the USSR was becoming and wanted to prevent China from following in the same capitalistic footsteps?
As in do you believe the person who said
would approve of the belt and road debt trap or the actual 99 year lease China used to take over the port of Colombo in Sri Lanka ?
Or is it fine to exploit other countries if the people in your country benefit?
Even then you believe they're socialist when Deng Xiaoping says (and Xi repeats this "common prosperity" rhetoric) that
So you recognize the failure of neoliberal "trickle down" economics but refuse to accept that if the same capital accumulation happens in a "socialist" country its suddenly not a problem?
And you really think that Jack Ma and his family won't fight tooth and nail to keep their private jets and offshore million dollar houses instead of forgoing them voluntarily for the good of the socialist project? please..
Trade is not imperialism. The PRC is not imperialist just because of the Belt and Road Initiative involves multilateral exchange. It is not a debt trap.
The large firms and key industries in China are publicly owned. Capital accumulation is a contradiction, but it is not one that has led to capitalist takeover.
Ultimately, the Cultural Revolution failed, whether you believe it correct or incorrect in analysis. What's important is taking a scientific approach to analyzing the PRC, and not simply thinking that because they are in the primary stage of socialism that they will never advance beyond. The evidence is to the contrary.
Jack Ma and the other capitalists have no choice, they don't control the large firms and key industries, but the secondary industries and medium firms. They will fight as they can, class struggle exists until class no longer exists, but they exist with the consent of the state alone.
So you're saying that China didn't extend or take advantage of western debt traps for their own economic and geopolitical goals?
So
And look I'm not claiming that this crisis wasn't caused by western imperialism - but calling it a "trade" or "multilateral exchange" when China very obviously took advantage of a country in crisis for almost exclusively their own benefit is disingenuous.
Do you really see no issues with such predatory lending (irrespective of it being done by the IMF or BRI)?
There's a widespread campaign to try to paint the PRC as imperialist to drive countries back to the IMF, but fundamentally the PRC is not imperialist. It isn't controlled by private monopoly that needs to expand outward through the export of capital, which is why it often forgives debts partially or entirely. Further, the PRC does not require austerity politics or otherwise giving up sovereignty over the recipients economy, they pay for infrastructural development.
Because the PRC is heavily involved with the development of the global south, you can find exceptions where it doesn't seem like the PRC is much different from the west, but at a systemic level these are outliers. You don't even need to base this on "China good," they just fundamentally don't have the same mechanics that force imperialism in the west, like huge private monopoly and falling rates of profit.
The article you've linked says they've forgiven less than 5% of the total amount lended so not sure I'd classify that as "frequent"
I agree this is definitely a good thing but I want to acknowledge they do also directly profit from all this development - they're not doing it to help others for the socialist ideal but for strategic geopolitical goals
But they still operate in the same system which is why even their renegotiated loans never fall below the 2% inflation rate.
Idk I can understand critical support of China when it comes to challenging western imperialism I just don't agree with their approach of rejecting egalitarianism and enforcing material inequality as a means to supposedly reach communism
It's one article, Dessalines has a nice collection of a bunch you can read.
Fundamentally, though, you're erasing the actual underlying base of the PRC vs the west, and why their loans function in qualitatively different ways: the mode of production.
The west is driven by and driven to imperialism through its private monopolies and decaying rate of profit. They rely on export of capital in order to expropriate value, that is the drive of their economies. The west produces very little of actual value, and relies on the global south to make everything for them.
The PRC is socialist. It doesn't have private monopoly of the banks or industry, and it's a production-focused economy. Of course the PRC trades with the global south for its own self-interest, socialist countries aren't charities. However, China primarily seeks expansion of circulation, as well as access to rare earth, and new customers.
Because of these key differences, falling under western imperialism results in stagnation, slight growth, or even reverse development, while trading with the PRC and entering BRI results in rapid development while retaining sovereignty. No country involved is doing anything for ideals or selfless reasons, but because of the differences in mode of production, the outcome for the global south is prosperity when dealing with the PRC and imperialism and stagnation when dealing with the west. That's why the global south is rushing towards BRICS and the PRC especially.
If you want to get started with theory, I recently updated my introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list. Section 6 gets into imperialism, from its origins all the way up to 2021.