Is China Socialist?
Channel: Ray Ramses
Date: 2019-11-30

So is China socialist? Was it ever socialist? Is it building socialism? The answers might surprise you.

Probably won't though.

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Glossary:
Guomindang (GMD): Nationalist party established in 1919. Lost against the CPC in the Chinese civil war.

Communist Party of China (CPC): Chinese communist party established in 1921. Won the civil war.

Hukou: Residency registration system. A person can either hold rural hukou or urban hukou. Hukou is passed matrilineally. Rural hukou holders get access to collective land, while urban hukou holders get access to danwei.

Danwei: Translated to English as "work units". It's supposed to be the provider of welfare provisions to urban workers (e.g. housing, food, etc). These provisions are given to the urbanites from the state through the enterprises.

Great Leap Forward (GLF): An economic and social campaign to accelerate industrial development, spearheaded by Mao Zedong. As such, it was heavily focused on building industries and infrastructure. It didn't go well.

Commune and Brigade Enterprises (CBE): Collective enterprises (essentially co-operatives) established during the GLF. The enterprises encompassed individual communes (about the size of a town) or brigades (about the size of a village).

Exaptation: The co-opting of traits to serve other functions unrelated to the original function.

Workpoints: A way to track how much labor a person has done per amount of time. Exchangeable for grain, goods or cash.

Cultural Revolution: A social movement meant to uproot the remaining capitalist elements from Chinese society, but ended up also repressing other parts of the populace.

Henry Kissinger: A goddamn war criminal.

Household Responsibility System (HRS): An agricultural production method wherein groups or individual households were contracted to produce a certain amount of grain based on quotas set by the government. Whatever surplus the farmers produce could be sold on the market at an unregulated price. The quotas were set really low such that farmers could sell almost all of their grain to the market.

Township and Village Enterprise (TVE): Enterprises on the level of townships and villages. Essentially, a renamed CBE.

State Owned Enterprise (SOE): Enterprises run by the government. In this instance mostly in urban areas.

Special Economic Zones (SEZ): (Urban) Areas where (mostly foreign) capitalist enterprises were allowed to operate, mostly in coastal cities. Usually with better tax incentives and lax regulations.
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References:
[1] http://chuangcn.org/journal/two/red-dust/pacific-rim/
[2] http://chuangcn.org/journal/one/sorghum-and-steel/1-precedents/
[3] https://missoulian.com/news/opinion/columnists/mao-zedong-s-legacy-of-totalitarianism/article_54391da8-3322-11e2-8817-0019bb2963f4.html
[4] http://chuangcn.org/journal/one/sorghum-and-steel/2-development/
[5] https://medium.com/@Itmechr3/peasants-and-the-great-leap-forward-c7b4d1465d62
[6] https://www.livescience.com/39688-exaptation.html
[7] http://chuangcn.org/journal/one/sorghum-and-steel/3-ossification/
[8] http://chuangcn.org/journal/one/sorghum-and-steel/4-ruination/
[9] http://chuangcn.org/journal/two/red-dust/borders/
[10] http://chuangcn.org/journal/two/red-dust/sinosphere/
[11] http://chuangcn.org/journal/two/red-dust/iron-to-rust/
[12] https://www.statista.com/statistics/455793/urbanization-in-china/
[13] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.26.4.75
[14] https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/1/16718844/green-consumers-climate-change
[15] https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/china/annual-household-income-per-capita
[16] https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports
[17] http://chuangcn.org/2019/06/harsh-winter/
[18] https://snbchf.com/2017/07/hugh-smith-empire-finance/
[19] http://chuangcn.org/journal/one/gleaning-the-welfare-fields/
[20] http://chuangcn.org/journal/one/no-way-forward-no-way-back/
[21] http://chuangcn.org/2015/09/china-crash/
[22] https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-08-07/why-china-next-africa
[23] https://www.dailysabah.com/energy/2017/12/05/china-discovers-giant-1-billion-ton-oil-reserve-in-xinjiang
[24] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-markets-explainer/explainer-how-important-is-hong-kong-to-the-rest-of-china-idUSKCN1VP35H
[25] http://chuangcn.org/2019/06/winter-is-coming/
[26] http://chuangcn.org/journal/two/spirit-breaking/
[27] https://lausan.hk/2019/make-or-break-a-progressive-assessment-of-hong-kongs-movement/
[28] http://chuangcn.org/2019/10/baffled-beijingers/
[29] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/09/americas-role-hong-kong/597976/
[30] https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3039042/hong-kong-police-draft-200-special-officers-anti-government
the rest: https://pastebin.com/rRwbjqYT