1mo ago

Challenging the purists: the Marxist debate over China’s path

socialistchina.org Challenging the purists: the Marxist debate over China’s path - Friends of Socialist China

The article below was submitted by Dan Farhat, an author and researcher based in Beirut, Lebanon. Dan responds to the critique made of China by some of the (particularly Western) left, that the introduction of market mechanisms from 1978 onwards was a betrayal of socialism and that China has become ...

10 comments

Lets say I agree on the anti purist part, even the economics, introduction of market and so on for this case. But what makes you think that power itself, I mean state is in hands of chinese proletariat. What signal of real working class power institutions do you see in China?
- We can easily answer this question by looking at how the standard of living has been improving for the workers in China. This can be contrasted against capitalist path of development seen in countries like India.
  By the end of 2020, extreme poverty, defined as living on under a threshold of around $2 per day, had been eliminated in China. According to the World Bank, the Chinese government had spent $700 billion on poverty alleviation since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/world/asia/china-poverty-xi-jinping.html
  Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million. With this, China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
  The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
  From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China%E2%80%99s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
  From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019&amp%3Blocations=CN&amp%3Bstart=2008
  Chinese households had stashed away in savings by the end of 2023, hitting yet another record high, data from the People’s Bank of China shows https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-bank-earnings-01-12-2024/card/chinese-household-savings-hit-another-record-high-xqyky00IsIe357rtJb4j
  Full year results of household survey for 2024 in China just posted. Real household income and consumption rose faster than overall GDP growth. Gains to rural households are higher than urban ones.
  
  Ok, I also agree conditions of life for proletariat are getting better, but this is not enough proof of proletariat really having the power in their hands. My suspicion ia that state is no longer in control of the proletariat.
- Worker congresses

10 comments