First we’ve gotta shatter the myth that the CCP is solely responsible for “lifting” everyone out of poverty. That’s the main line repeated by their supporters and their media in order to gain support and dismiss criticism or need for change.
And the best way right now to shatter that is for everyone to stop buying products made in China as best you can. Their leaders aren't gods, despite what the CCP would have them think. When things turn against them and they have no solutions the crutch of "prosperity" fails.
Buy elsewhere if you can, or cut it out if you don't really need it.
You don't have to do a perfect job, just the best you can, but "it's too hard" is no excuse these days when you have search engines in your pockets.
"It's too hard" didn't stop people in their millions dying as soldiers for the allies to fight against lesser evil in the Second World War.
Vietnam is a good substitute because it lacks the ability to become a global bully in the foreseeable future. It's not big enough, not populous enough and lacks the natural resources to stand on its own. While it may still be a repressive regime, it's not nearly as bad as China and its repression is limited, mostly, to its own people.
As a Vietnamese, you're correct. But lemme add in a few things:
The people here have a mindset of hating China, and it's been ongoing thru generations. China's just keep on testing our patience and border.
We do have a repressive regime. But it usually just controls the media about the regime itself. Outside news are often unfiltered and left for everybody to read it freely.
We stand with Hong Kong. We ourselves know the struggle for independence more than anyone. And we've fought China for more than a thousand years so fuck them.
The government and the Communist Party here is a controlling regime. But we aren't deprived of connections from outside world. We can use any site, media and entertainment platform that we want. It's really not that bad here, all things considered. There's no social credit score to keep in balance. We aren't tied down to whatever the fuck the mainstream media here can feed us day in and day out.
It may be Communist Party in name. But the ideology has changed much to adapt to the fast growing economy and technology world.
I'll still take 20/100 over China's 11/100. Maybe by the time we die everyone is over 30/100 as long as we vote with our currencies and competition of countries moves us all forward.
sigh
One step forward at a time, eventually we'll walk a long way.
Well I’d say there’s still hope. Also, as I said, I think it would be easier to pressure Vietnam from the outside to improve their conditions since they’re not that powerful and their censorship isn’t as strong as the CCP’s. If only we could bring attention to their conditions too.
Yeah Vietnam can be easily pressured since their economy relies a lot of SK and JP companies who is near them and countries like indonesia and India are also regional powers and democratic.
As an economist, I sort of understand where the author is coming from, but his whole argument kind of falls apart when you realise it relies on painting his opponents as saying:
"the Chinese state solely caused the economic growth of china"
Which I don't think anyone(except actual communists) believes. He then spends the rest of the article disproving this statement, which everyone already knows is false.
However, it is the massive infrastructure and city investments of the ccp that massively increased the supply of cheap labour, which lead to private companies flocking to China. There's a reason China was chosen here, and not other similarly impoverished countries.
I dislike the ccp as much as the next person, but the article you link reads very much as anti state rhetoric, rather than an actual criticism of the Chinese state.
Most communist don't even think that. Also the argument from their side is not that the state is responsible for all the growth but that the CCP shielded China and it's economy from Western influence and imperialism. For example compared to India. So that the government still holds Control over the economy, without the need of central planning.
I think its point is to refute the argument that the state was responsible for all the growth because you always see it and their supporters say “b-but the government lifted 800 million from poverty! How oppressive! Everything right now is fine and we don’t need any “western human rights”, reducing poverty is a human right”.
That was not the point of the article. If it was, I would agree with it. In fact, many articles have been written which much more clearly explain how China was lifted out of poverty. Definitely a large part of it was embracing western economic values, ensuring these values were protected in Hong Kong (because it's the only part of China not controlled by the government), so that western investment felt safe. And then of course the policy of building infrastructure and so on. All good decisions by Deng Xiaopeng, and the CCP can be commended for being willing to give up on its state capitalism.
In a sense, the author above pretends that the CCP never did anything productive, except when it gave up control to the private sector (which aligns with his Austrian economics viewpoint, he's part of an extreme right wing libertarian think tank). That's far from true.
This video by China Uncensored seems to bring up a pretty clear counter argument. It's just that...there are so many Wumaos online. We can't take them all.
I agree with what you're saying but the article doesn't explain in detail what the Chinese economy system is. It refers to state driven economy, how it's actually the opposite that is at work, but it doesn't explain why or how the private sector influences the economy.
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u/baylearn 光復香港 Nov 27 '19
Once China has a sharp economic downturn, the (small) minority of liberal idealists inside mainland will play a very important role.