China

China is one of the already existing socialist countries in the world, and as such, it is the target of vast amounts of capitalist propaganda. Socialism is an existential threat to capitalists, and they will take whatever steps they can to prolong their stay in power. This includes media manipulation of state and capitalist owned media to spread anti-chinese sentiment constantly.

The US has prisons. China has prison camps. The US has undercover cops. China has secret police. Ordinary peaceful protests are used as examples of anti-government sentiment, when the truth is that most Chinese citizens support the CPC. The propaganda runs deep, so here are a collection of resources debunking the most common myths.

There is also a fantastic collection of resources on GitHub, but many links no longer work. We will endeavour to ensure the working, valuable links are included below.

Is China Really Socialist?

• Is China State Capitalist?

  The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned^[1][2]. The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.

  • Aerospace, airlines, aluminum, architecture & design, automotive, aviation, banking, chemicals, coal, cotton, electronics, engineering, forestry, heavy equipment, gold, grain, heavy machinery, intelligence services, iron, materials, metallurgy, mining, non-ferrous metals, nuclear energy, ocean shipping, oil, pharmaceuticals, postal services, rail, salt, science and technology research, ship building, silk, steel, telecoms, travel and utilities – are all sectors in which SOEs (state-owned enterprises) have monopoly or near-monopoly positions, and are required to follow the five-year plans.
  • Four out of five of the largest banks in the PRC are state-owned. They, in turn, use financial instruments to ensure the predominance of the state-sector, and offer lower interest-rates for SOEs, ensuring that they retain a constant advantage.
  • The largest twenty companies in mainland China are all state-owned.
  • All companies with >100 employees are required to have a CPC trade union cell which has final say over management decisions.
  • Many Chinese companies are listed as privately-owned when they are not privately-owned, leading to an underrepresentation of the role of the Chinese state in analyses of the PRC's economy. Publicly-owned companies which sell off even 1-2% ownership shares are listed as private, companies owned by cooperatives and local governments, and city/regional asset commissions are listed as private, and subsidiary companies owned by SOEs are often listed as private when the ownership structure is unclear or unavailable to analysts.

• Is modern day China staying true to communist values?

  The economic structures of Chinese socialism are based on the Soviet NEP of Lenin even if it’s pretty different from it. 50% of the economy is in the socialist public sector and follows directly the plan (40% if you ignore the agricultural sector). 20 to 30 % is inside the state capitalist sector, which is the sector partially or totally owned by domestic capitalists but run by the CPC or by local workers councils. The rest is made up of the small bourgeois ownership like in the NEP.^[3]

  The west views China as one big sweatshop, but the actual working hours aren't much more than anywhere else. The average for a migrant worker (most vulnerable to exploitation as they are traveling from the countryside) is 8.8 hours, little under an hour more than a typical working day. Labor strikes are rarely suppressed, there are many examples of workers on strike getting the support of the PRC. The Chinese state rules in favor of the workers.^[4][5][6][7]

  Wages themselves are also forced to rise in the private sector by the CPC (+16% every years, +400% since 1980)who force the capitalists to accept the presence of CPC chapters who represent the interest of the workers, increasing workers control even in the capitalist parts of the economy.^{[8] [9] [10]}

  Furthermore, the workplace safety standards of China, a developing country, are now better than in the capitalist countries of the West like in Australia who have an higher rate of work related deaths despite having a GDP per capita 3-5 times higher.^[10]

• Is China Socialist? Article

  This article presents a case for why China is socialist, and how it has benefitted from national planning. It concludes that China succeeded in its economic development because the socialist sector has so far controlled and led domestic capitalism and foreign investment within the framework of planned national economic goals.

• Not Some Other -ism Paper

  This study tackles four Western Marxist misrepresentations of socialism with Chinese characteristics, particularly as it has developed with the reform and opening-up. Each of these misrepresentations sets in opposition the economy and the state, with the former being seen as “capitalist” (in some form) and the latter as variously “authoritarian,” “bureaucratic” or simply as “interventionist.” In other words, “Chinese characteristics” designates the superstructural feature that determines— incorrectly in light of Marxist analysis—the economic base, which is mistakenly seen as capitalist. While each misrepresentation has its own distinct problems, they also have common problems: a voluntarist position on political decisions, which fails to provide any reason for a “capitalist turn”; the assumption that a “market economy,” wherever and whenever it appears, is by definition capitalist; the deployment of neocolonial and “Orientalist” assumptions coupled with a Western “betrayal narrative’; and a systemic neglect of Chinese language research. The conclusion provides a summarising assessment that focuses on the empirical flaws and methodological presuppositions of these misrepresentations. We emphasise that our focus is primarily on the internal problems and_ inconsistencies of these misrepresentations, although we also offer—where needed— some constructive alternatives.

Democracy In China

• How does China’s political system work? Video

  China's political system has a unique multiparty cooperation system. It is different from both the pluralist party system in the west and one party-system seen elsewhere. The CPC acts as the ruling party but co-operates and consults with the other 8 parties.

• How does whole-process people's democracy work? Video

  Whole-process people's democracy is democracy in its broadest, most genuine, and most effective form. How does democracy work in China? How do Chinese people run their country? Victor Gao, Chairman of Yale Law School Association of China, tells his experiences and insights.

• How does China elect it's leaders? Video

  China has developed a unique system of choosing its leaders, eschewing Western models for a process based on merit and broad support. Scholar Zhang Weiwei argues that while the system of "selection and election" is not perfect, it is a match for alternative models and has delivered for the Chinese people.

• Workplace democracy in action Twitter

  How do rank-and-file workers have input in the running of the firm, and how does that input links up with central decision-making? The answer is the workers' congress system. So what is this system? Simply put, it is a representative body of workers at each firm who deliberate and vote on managerial decisions. See more in the link.

• What kind of democracy does China have, and how is it different from the west? Quora

  How do rank-and-file workers have input in the running of the firm, and how does that input links up with central decision-making? The answer is the workers' congress system. So what is this system? Simply put, it is a representative body of workers at each firm who deliberate and vote on managerial decisions. See more in the link.

• Most in China Call Their Nation A Democracy, Most in U.S. Say America Isn't Article

  China has not had a class of professional politicians, military rulers, inherited wealth or oligarchs for two thousand years. This absence of a feudal past–more than its recent experiments with democracy–separates the Chinese governance expectations from ours.

• Who runs China? Makeup of the national people's congress. Article

  China's Two Sessions is one of the country's most important political events. Each year in March, thousands of representatives gather in Beijing to propose and announce policies that will shape the country's development. During the event, the National People's Congress (NPC) convened its deputies representing the interests of their communities throughout the country. As China's top legislature and highest organ of state power, the NPC gathers about 3,000 deputies to discuss national affairs. But who are they? What are their educational backgrounds? What ethnic groups do they belong to?

Misc. Curated Reading

• Xinjiang: A Report and Resource Compilation Article

  A collection of resources about Xinjiang and the false accusations of a genocide against the Uyghur population. The propaganda about a Uyghur genocide was perpertuated by western imperialist forces as part of their ongoing fight against China. Xinjiang is a resource rich area and the US knows this, and wants access to it.

• Tiananmen Protests Reading List List

  More than thirty years later, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 remain a touchstone of a Western mythology spun to challenge the fundamental legitimacy of the Communist Party of China. By collapsing the diverse and often contradictory demands of protesters into a simplistic call for Western-style capitalist democracy, the West’s selective memory of June 4 continues to inform liberal platitudes to “stand with the Chinese people” against their government, reifying the universality of Western capitalism and U.S. global hegemony in the process.
  
  

  This reading list compiles primary sources, Chinese state documents, and media fact-checking reports to challenge the hegemonic narrative of the Tiananmen protests. Far from the Western fairy-tale, these texts understand the June 4 tragedy in the context of the erosion of actually-existing socialism in the Soviet bloc, the contradictions of the reform and opening up period, antagonisms between student protesters, urban workers, and rural peasants, and the long challenge to China’s socialist past by “reformers” seeking to replicate the Western neoliberal model.

Curated Videos

• China's war on poverty

  China has brought over 700 million people out of poverty through economic development. But over 100 million people remained intractably poor, trapped in poverty due to isolation, low education, and infirmities. After gathering and organizing materials for half a year, the American-Chinese co-production team of "China's Poverty Alleviation at the Grassroots" immersed themselves into the local lives of China's rural poor in remote mountainous areas. With "targeted poverty alleviation" being the main topic, five simple but touching stories personalize the process and depict the measures of combating poverty.

• Debunking All Major Western Propaganda on Uyghurs and Xinjiang!

  This video breaks down each bit of major Western propaganda on the Uyghur and Xinjiang situation in order to debunk the lies and reveal the truth. For over an hour, BayArea415 takes on a series of propaganda ranging from Adrian Zenz to inconsistent witness testimony to debunking sterilization claims and all major propaganda promoted surrounding this incredibly manufactured issue.

• China in Africa: An African Perspective

  Gyude Moore speaks about China’s expanding presence in Africa at the Paulson Institute's Contemporary China Speakers Series on March 5, 2019.
  
  W. Gyude Moore is a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development. He previously served as Liberia’s Minister of Public Works with oversight over the construction and maintenance of public infrastructure from December 2014 to January 2018. Prior to that role, Moore served as Deputy Chief of Staff to President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Head of the President’s Delivery Unit (PDU). As Head of the PDU, his team monitored progress and drove delivery of the Public Sector Investment Program of Liberia—a program of over $1 billion in road, power, port infrastructure, and social programs in Liberia after the civil war. As one of the President’s trusted advisors, he also played a crucial role in supporting President Sirleaf as Liberia responded to the West Africa Ebola outbreak and shaped its post-Ebola outlook. His research tracks the channels of private sources of finance, the rise of China and its expanding role in Africa, and Africa’s response to these changes. He holds a BS in Political Science from Berea College and an MS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.