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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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I love how they keep trying to frame it as a problem with the Chinese model and subsidies as opposed to asking what prevents other countries from doing the same. Seems to me that the real question is why western countries aren't able to compete with China on price and quality of products. It's as if the market model the west keeps peddling is being proven to be far less efficient than state driven central planning.
Be fair. The Chinese model is only strategically planned centrally. The tactical product decisions are still mostly market driven.
Edit: Apparently I need to be more clear. The ensuing bloodbath in the comments was funny to wake up to, though.
Yog's comment included a line about how the West can't compete on price nor quality. As far as I know, China's 5-year plans, its model for SOEs and its integration into private companies, and its strategic allocation of resources have little to do with the quality of goods being exported. I could be wrong, but I haven't seen quality control being part of the 5-years plans. I haven't seen the application of statistical process controls being driven by central planners. This seems to have been done by private enterprise under the Chinese model.
Yog's comment seemed to indicate that it was central planning that resulted in these outcomes.
My point is that central planning chose which aspects of production to leave up to private enterprise and market dynamics. As much as China is a living experiment in scientific revolutionary communism, it still has a stock market because, as we know, the transition through industrialization has never historically happened without some form of market economics (even the USSR had the NEP for this purpose).
SWCC is not capitalism, but it uses market forces to solve a large number of production puzzles, within the boundaries of the 5-year plans and, on a larger scale, within the boundaries of a scientific revolutionary state.
No one here freaks out when I say the communist state of China is still a state and it hasn't yet withered away, but everyone gets all hot and bothered when I say lots of China's production is solved by markets.
What else do I need to say?
The goal of my comment was to push us to be more nuanced in our positions. China's production quality no doubt benefits from central planning, but drawing a direct causal line between central planning and product quality in China is going to be difficult. Libs will push us into a research hole saying that the companies with good quality are not SOEs, that the company COOs are not party members, or whatever, and it's just not worth it.
I also think that we need to be careful about the concept of "subsidies" and the export price of things. My understanding of Chinese state investment is just that - it's investment. That investment likely doesn't have 20% returns on it, and THAT'S something to dig into when we argue against the Western model. Finance capital in the West is problematic, but when you look at the physical mechanisms, China is making financial investments, so libs will be confused as to what the difference is. And part of the answer is that state investments don't carry the same burden as market investments. Another part of the answer is that state investments are based on a central plan understanding of national development instead of finding market inefficiencies (like the Western model).
Anyway, keep it real.
what a hilariously unironic "um, akshually, sweaty," comment
"Um actually the Chinese Hive Mind in Beijing doesn't direct the actions of every facet of the economy like TRUE central planning would do" lollllll china keeps winning
Why so sneery ?
The "be fair" bit comes off as quite libbish and not making a real point, it smacks of "um china is actually capitalist" because they misunderstand that dengist market reforms haven't changed the subordination of the bourgeoisie in China to the CPC which they constantly demonstrate (most basedly when they execute a corrupt billionaire). Like who cares about some arbitrary strategic/ tactical dichotomy?? China stay winning
hexbear far too dunky sometimes
the honor pass to our lemmygrad posters
Yeah it didn't really come off as being a lib comment though, definitely a bit of an overreaction
Black_Mald_Futures also seems to be quite drunk today judging by their other comments 🗿
I'm going to be 5 percent more dunky tomorrow because of this
I interpreted it as a Soviet exceptionalist take as in "Real communism is when the entire economy is planned using Excel, anything else is just sparkling socialism."
I think the initial misunderstanding can be explained by how weird capitalism has gotten.
The initial point being made is that 'the market model the west keeps peddling' is less efficient than 'state driven central planning'. To counter that with 'to be fair, China doesn't just rely on central planning' is, I think, a fundamentally wrongheaded way to go about it. It assumes that the market model proposed in China has anything to do with the market model proposed in the west. They are completely different models. Precisely because the state planning (which is not just central, political power and action in China is, as it historically has been, also very decentralized) is done under a communist party.
The market model of the west is a form of romantic capitalism which can be deemed libertarian. It has no empirical basis in the history of capitalism or the industrial age. It is nothing more than an excuse to financialize and speculate away while production and transportation chains rot. There has been other forms of capitalism. The american school, the german school, developmentism, colonialism, and so on. All of them concerned themselves with more than just the interests of virtual capital speculation. That the japanese and the south koreans were once closer to China than the washington consensus simply places them in that historical spectrum.
Because that is not what I am describing. One thing is the logical conclusion of the economic system. Another entirely is the worldview which sustains said system.
Nor does my comment disagree with the people who perceived freagle's comment to be fundamentally wrong. Which was the point.
Concretely, what difference is this, though? That it's more democratic and thus the way it directs its comparable level of oversight is more pro-social?
Concretely the difference is that the economy isn't run for the benefit of landlords and oligarchs. Xi's common prosperity, anti-corruption and modernisation campaigns have been run smoothly and successfully because the CPC faces no significant internal coercion from the bourgeoise.
I do think the central planning does separate China from other countries that use market forces. It's not the only thing that separates them, but it is a line of demarcation. My point was more nuanced which was that things like product quality and prices couldn't be attributed to central planning directly because China is using markets to develop and coordinate those aspects of the economy. Without that direct attribution, we run the risk of saying "China product quality good and prices and low" and being met with libs saying "because market capitalism works".
Wait, China is run by COMMUNISTS?? I had no idea, thanks for clearing that up.
Idk maybe i'm the idiot
Everybody else took it the way you did, I have a tendency to interpret things online in the funniest way possible as a defense against getting mad about basically everything.
that's probably a good outlook tho