Looking at China.
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Criticism of Mao and others to be punishable.
https://www.dw.com/en/china-criminalizes-defamation-of-revolutionary-heroes/a-43563461
Useful article on the economic problems lying ahead for Chinese capitalism on Marxist Crisis Theory FB page
https://www.facebook.com/groups/457920714226660
Overproduction in China: A Crisis of Capitalist Imbalance After the Housing Bubble
Since the collapse of the real estate bubble in 2022, Chinese capitalism has witnessed a massive redirection of investment from property development—formerly a central engine of growth—toward high-tech industry. Electric vehicles, batteries, artificial intelligence, and computing power have become the new destinations for surplus capital, supported by political incentives, public lending, and the promise of technological prestige.
But instead of initiating a new phase of expansion, this shift has triggered a classical crisis of overproduction. Competition between firms—and between local governments—has led to a proliferation of productive capacity that has outpaced both domestic and global demand. As President Xi Jinping recently asked, “When it comes to new projects, it’s always the same few things: AI, computing power, and new energy vehicles. Do all provinces need to develop these sectors?” The rush to occupy these politically favored industries has resulted in massive duplication.
Production is rising, because that is what capital does: each firm invests to gain market share. But demand—although growing—has not grown enough to absorb the surge in supply. The result is a downward spiral in prices, structural deflation in industrial sectors, and collapsing profits. In June 2025, industrial profits fell 4.3% year-on-year, following a 9.1% decline in May. Since October 2022, producer price inflation has remained in negative territory. State-owned giants like Guangzhou Automobile Group and JAC expect record losses in the second quarter.
This is the phenomenon known in China as neijuan—“involution”—where each economic actor, in order to survive, is forced to invest, innovate, and cut prices, even as this leads to the degradation of the sector as a whole. Ports are filled with unsold electric cars, AI chips lie idle in data centers, and some firms are producing at a loss just to keep operations going.
In the past, Beijing managed to contain overcapacity in traditional sectors like steel, coal, and cement thanks to its control over large state-owned enterprises. But today the landscape is more fragmented: many of the overproducing firms are private or hybrid entities, less subject to top-down administrative control.
According to Morgan Stanley, more than 70% of China’s current industrial deflation is driven by non-commodity goods, compared to just 36% during the 2015–2016 downturn. This signals a shift in overcapacity from upstream sectors (raw materials) to downstream ones (consumer goods and tech). HSBC analysts add that excessive investment in the “new three” industries—solar, batteries, and EVs—is now a key destabilizing force.
From a Marxist standpoint, the crisis is a textbook manifestation of the contradiction between the development of productive forces and the limits of the capitalist market. The issue is not that demand hasn’t grown—it has—but it hasn’t grown enough relative to the scale of supply. Capital doesn’t produce for need, but for the realization of value. And when value can’t be realized due to market saturation, crisis erupts.
Beijing’s response—curbing “disorderly” competition, regulating capacity, and strengthening the domestic market—reveals both awareness and the limits of state intervention within a capitalist framework. As Capital Economics notes, “The state can build factories, but it cannot manufacture efficiency.” In Marxist terms, it cannot override the law of value or the compulsion to compete that governs capitalist production.
The root of the problem is that China’s current model still prioritizes supply growth over demand expansion. Local governments compete by offering subsidies and protections to attract capital and boost tax revenues, which fosters local protectionism, industrial duplication, and chronic overcapacity.
Solving this dilemma requires more than administrative reform: it calls for a fundamental rebalancing of the economy toward consumption, wages, and social security. But this would mean confronting class relations, fiscal priorities, and the very logic of accumulation that powered China’s economic “miracle.”
As Marx predicted, crises don’t arise from scarcity, but from excess: too many commodities, too much capital, and too little real purchasing power. Unless China changes course structurally, it risks being trapped in a deflationary spiral generated not by policy failures, but by the inner logic of capital itself.Progress:
1960s, a sparrow poops on Mao. The extermination of all sparrows becomes the party line.2020s, someone quips that Xi looks like Winnie the Pooh. Not appreciated!😀
And don’t forget the juicy mangoes. 🥭
Because I’ve been on it.
Taiwan’s DPP govt has failed in its motion to expel Kuomintang legislators for being pro-China.
Yes, who would have thought it? The KMT pro the PRC?!
It’s true. The Kuomintang is today the party of peace with mainland China, the DPP the party of bellicose nationalism. The latter, unfortunately, seems more to attract the young.
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