Hi all, Something that I’m curious about with regards to China and the CPC are the different ideological factions that exist in the present day, particularly with regards to economic strategy, at home and abroad.

Going off of @xiaohongshu@hexbear.net’s many useful comments in the news mega regarding Chinese trade policy, its commitment to dollarization, and continuing the export-led growth model that it has benefited from, I am curious to know what kind of discussions are taking place within the CPC between what I assume to be various liberal and left factions related to these topics. I know the party is lock-step when it comes time to make decisions, but surely there are many CPC members within the national congress who have differing views about how they should navigate the evolving international situation with a belligerent US and a global south that desperately wants more sovereignty and an end to Western unilateralism.

Is there any way a Westerner can be privvy to these kind of conversations within the Chinese government? Thanks!

  • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    11·
    16 days ago

    Oh, we have “Marxists”.

    Meng Xiaosu (孟晓苏), the father of property market in China, was famous for saying that “the end goal for Marx‘s ideal is not the maximization of public ownership, but the maximization of personal ownership” and used the argument to support the creation of housing market that ultimately causes reckless speculation and further wealth inequality.

    There are many “Marxists” throughout history who would dig into famous works to find quotations to “legitimize” their policies.

    For example, back in 1980, when trying to circumvent the national law that forbids land sale to private owners, Luo Jinxing (骆锦星) who was the Deputy Chief o the Shenzhen Property Management Bureau at the time, dug into Chapter 4 of Lenin’s State and Revolution, in which Lenin quoted Engels’s The Housing Question (1872) to justify that land sale is actually permitted during a “transitional period”:

    “… It must be pointed out that the ‘actual seizure’ of all the instruments of labor, the taking possession of industry as a whole by the working people, is the exact opposite of the Proudhonist ‘redemption’. In the latter case the individual worker becomes the owner of the dwelling, the peasant farm, the instruments of labor; in the former case, the ‘working people’ remain the collective owners of the houses, factories and instruments of labor, and will hardly permit their use, at least during a transitional period, by individuals or associations without compensation for the cost. In the same way, the abolition of property in land is not the abolition of ground rent but its transfer, if in a modified form, to society. The actual seizure of all the instruments of labor by the working people, therefore, does not at all preclude the retention of rent relations.”

    When Luo reported this to the Municipal Council Secretary Zhang Xunfu (张勋甫), the latter added a quote from the Communist Manifesto to support their claims:

    Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

    With the nodding approval of Marx, Engels and Lenin, it is now justifiable for the government to sell land to private owners lol.

    We have this kind of “Marxists”. In fact, many such cases.

    • RedSailsFan [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      16 days ago

      With the nodding approval of Marx, Engels and Lenin, it is now justifiable for the government to sell land to private owners lol.

      We have this kind of “Marxists”. In fact, many such cases.

      the kind Vladimir Ilyich would have shot everbody