this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026
79 points (88.3% liked)

Memes

55889 readers
892 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml
cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
79
It's all a matter of perspective (lemmy.ml)
submitted 5 hours ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml
33 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 13 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Socialism is, put simply, a society where the working classes have control of the state, and public ownership is the principal, ie rising and dominant, form of ownership. China has therefore been socialist since the victory of the CPC in 1949 and the establishment of the People's Republic of China.

Imperialism is, put simply, a form of international economic extraction of surplus value from one country to the other. It isn't the same as trade between more developed and less developed countries, but in the modern era is a late stage in monopoly capitalism. It's defined by the following characteristics:

-The presence of monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.

-The merging of bank capital with industrial capital into finance capital controlled by a financial oligarchy.

-The export of capital as distinguished from the simple export of commodities.

-The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations (cartels) and multinational corporations.

-The domination and exploitation of other countries by militaristic imperialist powers, now through neocolonialism.

-The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers.

As the PRC is a socialist country, it's pretty easy to see that they are not controlled by monopoly finance capital, and that export of capital is not how their economy is driven. We can see the difference and validity of the above explanation in how African countries a part of BRICS and BRI have seen development and growth rather than stagnation and a loss of sovereignty, like they do when under the thumb of imperialist and neocolonial countries like the west.

[–] imperious_melange@lemmy.zip -5 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Does the working class in China have control of the state currently? Or is it the wealthy and powerful in China who control the state? Aren't most high ranking CCP members wealthy and not working class? I think someone has lied to you and you believed it without questions.

Also what business does china have controlling 80% of the mines in Congo while they commit human atrocities? Can you tell them to please stop buying off our politicians and torturing our people.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 14 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (2 children)

The working classes do control the state in China. The class breakdown of the NPC is largely proletarian, and anti-corruption campaigns happen regularly under the current Xi Jinping administration. The Hu Jintao era was worse about letting capitalists into the party, but this is a relic of the late 90s and 2000s period.

As for China and extraction operations in the Congo, this is not itself imperialism. For example, the share of "artisanal mining" (a real misnomer, it doesn't refer to mining by sole proprietors but instead to mining by hand in brutal conditions, with little regard for safety) in the DRC has been falling steadily since 2008, going from 40-53% to 9-11% in 2020. This is evidence of development, not super exploitation for superprofits. Here's an excerpt from a good article:

Minnon shows that China has been part of the solution, not of the problem. “China has responded to the DRC’s need to have partners who invest in industrialization,” she writes. Western colonists had bled Congo dry through onerous debt, leaving it “weighed down by a burden that prevented it from developing economically. In 2001 industrial production was at a standstill, mining sites deserted.”

When the DRC turned to the World Bank and IMF for help, they insisted on privatizing the mining sector, laying off thousands of mine workers. Hundreds of mines were sold with “dormant mining titles” to foreign companies – “not to produce but to resell them at the right time” for big profits.

The measures didn’t wipe out the mining industry, but they pushed thousands of laid-off mine workers and their families to fend for themselves as artisanal miners, and then sell the minerals to processing companies. That was the situation described in Cobalt Red.

China’s role has been to bring new, large-scale investment on a new basis: combined financing for industrial mining and public infrastructure – roads, railroads, dams, health and education facilities. The result was “After decades of almost non-existent industrial production, the country became and remains the world’s leading producer of cobalt and, by 2023, became the world’s third largest producer of copper.” The new deal “puts an end to the monopoly of certain Western countries and their large companies whose history shows that this exclusivity has not brought development to the country.”

The arrangement has dramatically reduced the role of artisanal mining. “Since the enormous increase in production in the mining sector in Congo, 80% of mining production is done industrially. Sicomines [China-Congolese Mining Co.] has built the most modern factory in the DRC for processing raw copper.” The same is true for cobalt, replacing artisanal mining with organized, industrial production. Industrial mining is a reversal of artisanal mining.

“Resource-for-Infrastructure (RFI) deals like this all over Africa have helped China foster strong relations with several countries,” writes Halim Nazar of India’s Institute for Chinese Studies .

Western competitors are not happy. “The IMF publicly criticized the DRC for taking on too much debt,” Nazar writes. But it has been a “debt-investment” based on real growth.

I'd like to know what you mean by China committing atrocities and buying off politicians.

[–] dreamkeeper@literature.cafe -5 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (2 children)

When will Chinese people start receiving shares from their employers then? Oh that's right, never, because the tankie Dengists are a bunch of lying capitalist authoritarians.

[–] QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Dengism isn't real.

This is petty bourgeois fantasy.

You are an idiot.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 hour ago

Lol, we basically said the same thing but you did so far more succinctly.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Since when was socialism "receiving shares from employers?" Socialism is a mode of production and distribution centering public ownership of the means of production, the dominant aspect of China's economy is the public sector with a working class state. This is socialism.

As for your word salad, tankie is just a pejorative for socialists that support existing socialist states, "Dengism" isn't a thing, and all states are "authoritarian," so the important aspect is which class controls the state, not if the state exists or not.

"True socialism" isn't a thing, socialism is not a religious vow. It's a material system where public ownership is the principal aspect and the working classes control the state. Receiving shares from employers is a weird, petty bourgeois notion of socialism utterly disconnected from the scientific socialism of Marx and Engels. Rather than making everyone a worker-owner of the individual firm they work at, socialism leads towards everyone owning all of production and distribution.