China and Statism
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And he is also supporting the Great Man Theory of history.
I began studying modern China from the age of 12 when I worked on a school project. I had the advantage of books written before the state propagandas, on all sides, became available. I didn’t even come across any SPGB sources until well after my learning was well developed. As well as books by British sinologists I obtained sources from both Peking and Taipei. Sifting different sources of information I used DISCERNMENT, as one ought to, not blind following of any ideology, adolescent phases aside, which we all have but then grow out of.
My turn to quote from AI, but for the specific purpose of referring Grandpa to the assessment of Têng by Frank Dikötter the sinologist (NOT a member of our party!):
“Historian Frank Dikötter challenges the traditional narrative of Deng Xiaoping as the sole “architect” of China’s economic rise and political transition. His work—particularly in his book China After Mao (2022)—presents several core arguments regarding Deng:
• Grassroots Initiative vs. Top-Down Reform: While official Chinese Communist Party (CCP) history credits Deng’s “Reform and Opening” policies starting in 1978 with lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty, Dikötter argues that the true architects were ordinary Chinese citizens. He maintains that people in the countryside began breaking up communes, running underground factories, and operating black markets on their own initiative during the final years of the Cultural Revolution, forcing the hand of local authorities.
• Protecting the Party Legacy over Truth: Dikötter notes that after Mao Zedong’s death, Deng was central to the decision not to fully reckon with Mao’s crimes. Deng argued that criticizing Mao too harshly would mean criticizing the party itself and damaging its legitimacy, leading to the preservation of Mao’s image and the codification of the “Four Cardinal Principles” (including holding up Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought).
• No Political Liberalization: Dikötter emphasizes that political reform was never part of Deng’s agenda. Western hopes that economic opening would naturally lead to democracy proved misguided, as Deng maintained a rigid, authoritarian single-party state.
• A Cycle of Quick Fixes and Crises: Rather than a smooth “economic miracle,” Dikötter characterizes Deng’s economic era as a turbulent and winding road marked by unintended consequences, abrupt policy reversals, internal power struggles, and patches applied to a fundamentally dysfunctional planned economy.
Read more about his perspective and research through the academic review on Oxford Academic or an interview summary on The Diplomat.
Democracy Paradox
Frank Dikötter on the History of China After Mao
Frank Dikötter He is both the Lenin and the Stalin. So, there’s not a lot you can do about him. So, that’s the key point and Deng Xiaoping says this very clearl…
The Diplomat – Asia-Pacific Current Affairs Magazine
Frank Dikotter on How China Changed (and Didn’t) After Mao – The Diplomat
In his book *China After Mao*, Frank Dikotter, author of *The People’s Trilogy*, focuses on China’s economic reform era, which began in the late 1970s under Den…
Asia Society
Historian: China’s Economic Reforms Actually Started During the …
The great shift that catapulted China from economic stagnation to more than three decades of breakneck growth is generally attributed to the top-down “Reform an…
Sage Journals
Frank Dikötter, China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower
Abstract Path to China’s economic transformation is best described as alternating between periods of success and periods of constraint. To fully comprehend Chin…
Oxford Academic
China after Mao: the rise of a superpower | International Affairs
Extract Many western observers of China hoped that, following Deng Xiaoping’s opening up in 1978, economic liberalization would lead to political liberalization…
YouTube·Hoover Institution
3m
Empire of Illusion: Frank Dikötter on Why China Isn’t a Superpower”(Notice I put the AI material, as always when I refer to it, between quotation marks.)
Child labour in today’s China.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/aug/27/disney-factory-sweatshop-suicide-claims
Economic miracle? For whom?
(Wages drop to $100 a month).ttps://kb.osu.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/d34ee7b3-5089-53f6-970c-122277267d6b/content
Karl Marx: Asiatic Mode of Production. Is statism a new Chinese phenomenon?
Statism is traced back to the origins of some old dynasties; the only difference with actual China is that it is based on a capitalist mode of production.
The Late Marxs Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism
The Chavistas were saying that Marx and Engels did not know anything about colonialism; it was after the widespread publication of the letter of Marx against Simón Bolívar, or the Latin American Napoleon.
Marx and Engels wrote extensively on colonialism, and he was working on a mode of production different to the European mode of production, which Mao wrongly called feudalism. It was totally different to European feudalism
Some historians have argued that capitalism could have been born first in Chinarather than in England
https://sacu.org/the-needham-question-revisited/. The Needham question: if China had scientific advancement first, then why did capitalism not evolve in china ?
” which Mao wrongly called feudalism.’
The Chinese education system still promotes Mao’s fallacy, which misinterprets the whole of Chinese history from Chin Shih Huang to modern times.
It was Mao who imposed falsehood on China, just as he attempted to erase Chinese art, literature and history through the destruction of books, artefacts, temples, paintings, and smash the rights of anyone who wished to enjoy and learn from them. Just like Mao’s hero, the iconoclastic tyrant and fellow book-burner Chin himself!
” Some historians have argued that capitalism could have been born first in Chinarather than in England.”
Developments were taking place as early as the Sung dynasty.
The Cultural Revolution was like a fanatic religious movement. The book burning was similar to the book burning of the right wing christians and the Nazis in Germany.
Opera, which was apeople’ss creation like Italian opera, was also eliminated by the Cultural Revolution.
All beautiful Chinese paintings made on cloth and other media were eliminated. ted
It was not a cultural revolution; it was a political reactionary movement.t
There was a president in Latin America who was more advanced than Mao, who eliminated all the import duties on classical music, ballet and opera.
He wanted young people to appreciate classical music, and all import duties on classical literature and novels, poetry and humanities books were eliminated.
There was no book burning; on the contrary, young people fell in love with classical music and the humanities, now university and schools want to reverse everything
Mao banned Beethoven because the composer had criticised the tyrant Napoleon – another of Mao’s heroes and likewise a suppressor of free thought and the press, who brooked no opposition and sent death squads beyond the borders of his control.
There will always be criticism of anything and Mao quite rightly comes in for his share. No one is criticising what came after Mao.
If you cite content from ‘China Observer’ you should also mention who’s behind it and that it’s an anti-communist propaganda channel. The same goes for today’s Russia where everyone is said to be living on bread and water.
It’s not what you earn, it’s what you can buy with it. Ten years ago a cafe type lunch cost about 30 Yuan, today that’s about £3.36. If you’re going to pay nearly the same in London for a tea bag and some hot water you’re going to need high wages.
Before the 20th century, China was ruled by Emperors and Dynasties for thousands of years. No chance of anti-capitalism there. In fact the famous ‘Silk Road’ trading route was started around 130BC, when we were still in the Iron age. Today it’s called the ‘Belt and Road’ trading route and stretches as far as Africa and into Europe. Not sure why I added that except to make you wonder why they didn’t abandon capitalism, but introduced regulated capitalism instead and seem to be doing very well out of it.
There will always be criticism of anything, and Mao quite rightly comes in for his share. No one is criticising what came after Mao.
If you cite content from ‘ChinaObserver ’, you should also mention who’s behind it and that it’s an anti-communist propaganda channel. The same goes for today’s Russia, where everyone is said to be living on bread and water.
It’s not what you earn, it’s what you can buy with it. Ten years ago, a cafe-type lunch cost about 30 Yuan; today that’s about £3.36. If you’re going to pay nearly the same in London for a tea bag and some hot water, you’re going to need high wages.
Before the 20th century, China was ruled by Emperors and Dynasties for thousands of years. No chance of anti-capitalism there. In fact,t the famous ‘Silk Road’ trading route was started around 130BC, when we were still in the Iron Age. Today it’s called the ‘Belt and Road’ trading route and stretches as far as Africa and into Europe. Not sure why I added that, except to make you wonder why they didn’t abandon capitalism, but introduced regulated capitalism instead and seem to be doing very well out of it.
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Again, you are shooting like a sniper and skipping the main issue; the main issue is statism, and statism has existed in China since the time of the dynasties; it is not a new phenomenon.
We never mentioned the concept of anti-imperialism, and anti-imperialism is not anti-capitalism, and every capitalist country is imperialist; and China is an imperialist country. We were talking about the technological development of China compared with Europe and why capitalism did not evolve in China first, and we were talking about the Asiatic mode of production or the despotic Asiatic mode of production, and that feudalism never existed in China.
Regulated capitalism and non-regulated capitalism are capitalism; regulated capitalism is known as state capitalism. In a certain period of the history of capitalism, it was abandoned by the capitalists, and they adopted monetarism. Now they are coming back to state capitalism. China is a combination of state capitalism and market capitalism, and that is the reason why it is more efficient than the soviet union state capitalism
Nazism and fascism are regulated capitalism or state capitalism, and soviet is regulated state capitalism, and one reason for its collapse was state capitalism because it is a very inefficient form; it was only successful in Germany
“ No one is criticising what came after Mao”
Yeah, your dead right, no one is criticising anything other than perhaps:
The suppression that took place during the Tibetan unrest in the 1980s where hundreds were killed, the events surrounding the Tianamnan Square protests were up to 10,000 people were killed, the Yining incident, the suppression of democracy in Hong Kong and Macau,the Yarkand Massacre, the 8,000 people a year who are executed by the Chinese state, (China executes more people than all other countries combined), the on going suppression of any political dissent, the targeting of dissidents abroad, the lack of a free press, trades unions, political parties other than the Chinese Communist Party.
I mean, apart from that it’s been more or less a bed of roses.
The difference between old dynastic China and now is the high development of capitalism to compete with other capitalist classes in the world; it is the same old repression, killing, lack of freedom, lack of democracy, child labour, people working longer hours, and workers living in factories.
It is all a Maoist paradise according to the Maoists; they used to say the same thing about Stalin; even more, they were saying that without Mao and without Stalin, development would not come about; they were the ones who made the revolution, the China of Mao, and the soviet union of Stalin. At any international meeting, they were hanging more pictures than the saints of the Vatican.
That is the reason why Mao was called the helmsman; without Mao Tse-Tung, thought the earth would stand still; the same was said about Adolf Hitler. Donald Trump is a Boy Scout compared with them.
The Congress of the CPC is a congress of capitalists and capitalist development; some of those members of the CPC have more money than many Western capitalists. They are saying that New York AND London wealth was moved to Beijing; the Russian oligarchy is nothing compared to the Chinese oligarchs; they came late to the distribution of capital; the poorest one is the prime minister; nobody in Beverly Hills has the mansion that he has; Trump is living in a ghetto; the president of Uruguay was living in an old house and driving a 1965 Volkswagen.
The new Chinese emperors live in palaces like the old dynasty emperors; the only difference is that the new emperors are capitalists and control a large world market, extracting surplus value from the free labour of the working class
The main issue is not statism, the main issue is whether something works or not. When I say no one is criticising what came after Mao, I mean no one is criticising the wealth of China because of regulated capitalism, or that it has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. There is no more Maoism.
Mao’s ultimate aim was also a classless, stateless, and moneyless society, that’s always the bait that draws the gullible in and that it always turns into a dictatorship and never happens shouldn’t come as a surprise. Before anything can work the world needs to get rid of the Mao’s, Stalin’s and Pol Pot’s and there’s plenty of them. The people will stop them? That’s not worked very well, has it.
Your system wouldn’t work because it would quickly dissolve into anarchy. A leaderless mob of millions each grabbing what they want and the impossibility of distribution means it would fail. There’s also the main problem that no one would vote for it.
Mao’s ultimate aim was also a classless, stateless, and moneyless society, that’s always the bait that draws the gullible in and that it always turns into a dictatorship and never happens shouldn’t come as a surprise. Before anything can work the world needs to get rid of the Mao’s, Stalin’s and Pol Pot’s and there’s plenty of them. The people will stop them? That’s not worked very well, has it.
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I do not think you have read one page of the works of Mao Tse Tung. Mao never advocated for a socialist/communist society, it is just a lie that you are inventing, even more Lenin did not advocate for that type of society either, and I have read most of the works of Lenin, and reading all of them is a waste of time, and the five famous one are a complete distortion of socialism, and the socialist party has debunked all of them
Mao did not have a clue of what socialism really is,( like Trotsky did not have a clue either ) it was just a nationalist theory for under developed countries to establish state capitalism, most of the followers of Maoism were young students, and most the maoist parties were conducted by students, similar to the followers of Ernesto Che Guevara .
The five volumes of Mao Tse Tung which I have read and study ( including his military writing ) do not contain any marxist or socialist principles including his book on the contraction which is a philosophical mess up, and he was the creator of the Three world theory which is a reactionary and anti socialist conception was rejected by the Maoists too. The theory was published on Peking Review and distributed in a pamphlet form
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch4.htm. Mao conceptions were rejected by Leniists and stalinists
They ended up supporting all kind or reactionaries and right wings government around the world including the government of Augusto Pinochet based on the three world theory, they were so embarrassed that they tried to blame the theory on somebody else, there is nothing revolution on the so called Mao Tse Tung thought.
They lost more than one half of their international supporters, and when Teng Tsiao Ping came to power they lost even more, when Mao made alliance with Richard Nixon many maoist organization said that he was placing the Chinese revolution on a red carpet for Richard Nixon and the USA.
They created the concept of the soviet social imperialism because they wanted to take a chunk of the spheres of influences of the Soviet Union during the time of Khrushchev, but they were imperialist too like any other imperialist country, as rosa Luxembourg has said that any capitalist country ( small or large ) is imperialist
If Lenin philosophical book was it mess based on bourgeois materialism, Mao was even worse. even more, the dates and the order of the books and articles were compiled at their own convenience too. You better take your right wings nonsenses to same place else, probably you will fit better on a MAGA forum. You can fool somebody else, but not to us
https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1938/lenin/index.htm
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