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this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
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I can understand not trusting the US Empire, Israel, etc, but why not trust the PRC? I'd rather trust a socialist country with a functional democratic governance over capitalist countries.
I swear none of you guys have actually lived in China haha.
The Chinese political system is nepotism first, plutocracy second. Just like the US. The only difference is they're much more sane in public. The benefits of a shame based society.
If anyone can beat 7 years in Kunming, let me know how I'm wrong.
The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people's democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Moreover, the economy in the PRC is socialist, with public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China's success.
The US Empire, on the other hand, has private ownership as principle, with top-down "democracy." Candidates are pre-selected, and term limits ensure that even if a genuine socialist won, they would not be able to sufficiently change the system. It's designed for maintaining the dominance of capital.
I highly recommend Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we've learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.
Hey Cowbee, do you have a free/cheaper source for Boer's Socialism is Power book? The epub and physical copies are $110 minimum.
See my name for my motivations for asking.
I don't recommend purchasing it as an individual! I certainly haven't, it makes sense for a party to do so but not individuals. Comrade @cenarius@lemmygrad.ml found a working link for a free copy here!
Hell yeeaaah. Thank you.
This is the first time I've seen Anna's Library... It's amazing, they even have digital copies of new books! I know how I'm going to spend my weekend. Thanks for this
No problem!
https://www.sintelins.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Boer-2023-Socialism-in-Power.-Singapore-Springer.pdf
99/100 search the name and add pdf at the end then you can just covert to epub if you really need.
Love the username
With all due respect, and apologies for not reading the book first (I will get to it when I have time). Have you just read the theory, or have you lived the implementation?
Because unfortunately, they can be different in practice. In my experience of the discussions I've had with my Chinese friends, and the amount of gossip I've heard about local political dynasties and KTV prostitutes, I think the ideal and the reality is very different. Something you could also say about the US.
China isn't perfect, none of us pretend it is. I hear and partake in the gossip too, the stories about connections and KTV backrooms (and more you've probably yet to even hear of). But here's the thing I've seen firsthand, especially when I visit family in the countryside: the villages that had dirt roads and no running water when I was a kid now have high-speed rail stops, 5G, and clinics that actually stock medicine.
And yeah, people complain, gossip, spread rumours. Of course they do, we're human too. But the trust isn't blind. It's earned. When a pilot program for rural healthcare or poverty alleviation works in one county, they scale it to the province. When something fails, they tweak it or scrap it. You see it in the towns that went from abject poverty to being connected, electrified, and lifted up in a single generation.
Even the sources you'd expect to be critical can't ignore it. Harvard's Ash Center ran the longest independent survey of Chinese public opinion, interviewing over 32,000 people between 2003 and 2016. They found satisfaction with the central government at 95.5% in the final wave. Edelman's 2022 Trust Barometer put China at 91% trust in government, the US at 39%. These aren't state media. They're Western institutions. They see the same trend we feel on the ground.
That's possible because of how our democratic system actually works. Democracy isn't just about voting for different parties or the spectacle of elections. It's about whether people are heard and whether their lives get better. If you think Chinese people aren't being heard, or that the feedback doesn't translate into action, you're plainly wrong. The proof isn't in the theory. It's in the roads, the rails, and the fact that trust stays high even when the gossip is rampant (who doesn't love a bit of gossip).
Thank you for that. I really appreciate this post and it resonates with me. I wouldn't have stayed there for so long if I didn't love it too. But I can't deal with the rhetoric on .ml that acts like it's a utopia with no justified dissent.
There is absolutely a functioning democracy, but it isn't immune to nepotism or greed, just like everywhere else. It's also capable of manufacturing suffering.
The two people who remain in my thoughts the most from my time there were the 80 year old couple who worked as parking attendants in my building so they could stay in a single room partition in the garage with a kerosene heater. This was in 2011, in the center of Kunming. Not one of the rural villages in the mountains. They could have been provided for but they weren't. It's not a utopia, but it is a great country full of wonderful people.
That couple in Kunming. No amount of progress erases that. They deserved better.
But, so much has changed since then. Even just since 2021. Housing market cooling down, 996 ruled illegal by the Supreme People's Court, new protections for delivery riders rolling out in Zhejiang, Guangdong. And the corruption crackdowns, "Tigers and flies" clearly wasn't just propaganda.
On .ml people seem tired of the constant negative spin on China, so they swing hard the other way. Sometimes too hard (though I've yet to see it too many times). And, even folks here can still slip into old "China bad" habits (seen a lot of this recently). Like saying China does nothing for the Global South when you've got the Ethiopia-Djibouti railway, Gwadar Port, vaccine donations, debt relief and much more showing how patently false that is.
I'll just say it plain. I think China's model, the way we do democracy, foreign policy, the whole political economy, is the best working option we've got right now. Not because it's perfect, but because it actually moves the needle for hundreds of millions. It's not even playing the same game as the Euro-Amerikan hegemony that's been exporting crisis forever. Why throw out the good, or spend all day demonizing it, when so much worse is happening way closer to home for most people on here. Stick in their eye vs a speck in mine, yknow?
Edit: a graph just to show how much things have changed
Fair. Thanks mate I know it took thought to write that. I'll digest if for a while.
We have comrades within China who lived there most or all of their life, yes.
And I am unfortunately in contact with real Americans who won't shut up about the glorious Trump regime too....
You do realize you're using anecdotes to dismiss China, but don't tolerate anecdotes that counter that? It's almost like you already made up your mind.
Go and read sources, check how most Chinese people consider their government democratic according to western NGOs (so you can't blame the government for bias/meddling), same as with Vietnam, and how low western liberal democracies score in the same reports. Check statistics of the insane material harm that Japan and western regimes did to these countries, and how they still recovered, how China lifted 800 million out of poverty, how their lives keep getting better day after day while most people in our countries infrastructure is crumbling down. Or how most Chinese people own their homes, while most of us can only hope to own a house if we come from wealth or got enough support and luck to end with a very well paid job (and a mortgage that we'll pay for years to come).
I lived in China mate.
It felt like living anywhere else. I saw poverty daily but I lived a good life with other middle class people. People love their families, pray for more money and love a good drink. They praise the government when a new train station is built, but everyone in my district wasn't happy because we were below the river that the government had arbitrarily decided divided which buildings were given permits to be built with heating and which weren't, so we froze in winter.
I loved my electric scooter, I nearly died every day on the roads. The best meals I ever had were at the Buddhist temple where everything was vegetarian. You paid if you could so those who couldn't could have a free meal.
I've also never seen so many elderly people forced to work to avoid hunger and homelessness. From the bicycle parking attendants to the elderly couple who lived in a partition in my buildings garage.
Every country has lifted people out of poverty over the last 100 years. Do you really think Chinese people don't pay for their houses?
Don't confuse my criticism of China with an endorsement of America or capitalism. Just a counterbalance to the delusion I see in these threads.
I have never lived in China, no, but the textbook I provided is an overview of the real systems that exist, flaws and all, combined with the theoretical reasoning for the structures and the reasons they have changed over time, their history. That's why I added that socialist democracy is imperfect, but it stands in stark contrast to the utter failure that is capitalist democracy, and I listed the reasons why.
The Anna's archive link on that page is dead unfortunately, I'll try to find it but do you have one handy right?
Functionally you know it's all propaganda though right?
Even if you want to gloss it up as the "the revolution protecting itself" the PRC isn't going to go out and admit "there's flaws in our system", much less "our government is run by a bunch of horny greedy assholes just like everywhere else".
I don't have a link, unfortunately.
Either way, the PRC does admit to flaws and problems. The method of criticism and self-criticism is applied in China. Further, the government isn't run by a "bunch of horny greedy assholes." Corruption exists to a certain degree, but the CPC regularly cracks down on this, rather than allowing it to flourish. It seems, above all, that you're letting your distrust of government in general cause you to magnify problems in China beyond their real existence in order to equate it to capitalist states.
What benefit does trust bring?
Doesn't a democracy function better under scrutiny? Acting like China is a paradise because it's better than the US is like pretending the Greek economy in 2007 was rock solid because it was better than Zimbabwe's.
Nobody here thinks the US is anything other than a shithole (I hope). But glazing the Chinese government like this is just giving them room to be worse, not better.
When did I say China is a paradise? My point is that the socialist system in China is great, not perfect, not merely passable, but from my view as a Statesian it is moving forward and shows no signs of this slowing. As the country I reside in bombs other countries into submission, plunders the global south, and kills protestors and marginalized populations on stolen land, it's hard not to admire the working system in China.
China should be criticized, but this should be done on the basis of meaningful critique. When blanket half-truths and falsehoods are disguised as "critique," this just serves to legitimize the US Empire's antagonism. For example, if I say McDonalds would be better off if they stopped putting cyanide in 10% of their burgers, this doesn't actually add anything. It isn't critique, it's nonsense.
https://annas-archive.pk/md5/ea6c2ecd42016998e92dcd1b5e6e57f2
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml link is identical aside from new domain ๐
Thank you so much!
What's wrong with Marxism? Why not engage with Marxists? Further, I know many Lemmy.ml users are anarchists or even liberals, we aren't all communists.
Lol this has the vibe of "Just FYI, don't try to fight those trained kickboxers"