
China’s Leaders Confront an Unlikely Foe: Ardent Young Communists - fspeech
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-xi-protests.html
======
tzmudzin
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from
pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

...and someone forgot to adapt the rhethoric.

~~~
y2kenny
\- Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)

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hoseja
Delicious irony. Though I doubt China won't be able to deal with them with the
help of several to several thousand strategic disappearings.

~~~
singularity2001
yes they will have to go studying proper capitalistic values

~~~
anon49124
_One country, two systems,_ where two varies in value.

The politburo seems to play favorites with capitalism when there is rapid
economic and military expansion. It'd be interesting to see how that sentiment
changes/changed in a recession.

~~~
hnzix
Special economic zones like Shenzhen (Silicon Valleys) vs rural dirt farmers.
It's a command and control capitalist system, a weird inversion of the free
market economy.

A different lens to view this through is Deng Xiaoping used SEZ to subvert
Mao's communist model and steer it back towards capitalism. "It doesn't matter
whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." Deng endured
severe personal suffering to deliver his vision. Unfortunately Xi is rewinding
much of Deng's progress.

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lawrenceyan
An interesting dilemma, somewhat ironic I might say.

~~~
gaius
Exactly the same thing is happening in the UK, the Labour Party has no idea
how to deal with Momentum

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barking
Momentum aren't communists though, I don't think. They just want to reverse
the drift of the party to the right under the leaderships from Blair onwards

~~~
gaius
_Momentum aren 't communists though, I don't think_

I've heard them described as Nationalising Socialists.

~~~
barking
Where, on breitbart?

~~~
gaius
From people concerned about the increasingly common anti-Semitism in the
Labour Party

~~~
barking
A lot of people feel that is a confection by Zionists, supported by israel,
aimed at making criticism of Israeli policies equivalent to anti-semitism.

~~~
gaius
So what you’re saying is, allegations of anti-Semitism are in fact a Jewish
plot? Do you know how that sounds?

~~~
barking
Since you've edited your comment belatedly to ask if I know how that sounds,
I'll add this answer.

Yes I know exactly how the words you're trying to put in my mouth sound and I
know why you are doing it.

~~~
gaius
It was a good faith question to see if you were aware of it, and I see that
you in fact are. "Confection by Zionists" indeed. Dog-whistling at its finest.

~~~
barking
I needed to look up 'dog-whistling' and got this definition on wikipedia :

 _Dog-whistle politics is political messaging employing coded language that
appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional,
different, or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup._

Please explain how "Confection by Zionists" fits the bill?

~~~
gaius
Well, if I have misjudged you, I apologise for that!

The thing is that Israel is a red herring, the traditional anti-Semitism of
the left pre-dates its existence and is rooted in the stereotypical
association of Jews with finance and hence capitalism in general. Therefore
often Zionist is a code-word meaning simply Jew. Banker is often used in a
similar way too. Similarly, members of the far-right say Canadians when they
mean black people.

~~~
barking
Thank you. However Israel is not a red herring in this as far as I am
concerned.

I believe that what's going on in the Labour Party is an attempt to stifle
criticism of Israel and in particular its treatment of the Palestinians.

I don't know if it's directly related to Israeli Governemnt Minster Erdan's
"PR Commando Unit", announced last year. but it sounds very similar.

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noobermin
I once sat in on a talk from a Marxist academic who claimed "you think people
in China won't be swayed by the communist literature and iconography around
them and realize their own state is opposed to those ideals?" It had a similar
ringing to the protestant reformation and people in the us (to a lesser
extent) who see the contradictions between "America home of the free" and its
current state.

~~~
anon49124
It might be a dirty truism: utopian promises are for children and the slow,
reality requires messy, pragmatic nuances that often break and contradict
simplistic, academic "wouldn't it be nice if" or wishes for a perfect, simple
solution that is designed and pushed into policy.

One of the most pragmatic, matter-of-fact Marxist economists, R. Wolff,
acknowledges the foibles, workarounds and tendencies... how people behave in
reality, rather than how _some people should like to make them, or would like,
them to_ behave, or that libertarian, unregulated, utopian capitalist
economics is some meritocratic magic wand that solves all externalities and
inequalities in "the market," usually with "trickle down" economics that never
happens. Reality is most definitely none of those things, even though people
still try to pretend otherwise, likely for their own benefit.

~~~
stareatgoats
> "trickle down" economics that never happens

Never say never. The problem is that "trickle down" economics happens _to some
degree_. This is a problem because it convinces a large number of fence-
sitters that all is good, at least compared to the straw-man opposite extreme:
that no inequalities would be allowed at all under anything that has
'socialism' in it's name, be it democratic or not.

~~~
Nokinside
The most amazing thing about "trickle down economics" is that it was never a
real economic theory .

It started as a Will Rogers joke. Opponents of Reagan administration started
to use it [1]. Then amazing thing happened. Somehow people in the right
started to believe that it's actually a thing with solid facts behind it. Then
politicians followed. Some economists have even tried to find the effect. It
seems not to exist.

[1]: Reagan administration believed in supply-side economics and free markets
ad the cause of more economic growth.

~~~
sonnyblarney
I don't think it was ever a theory, just an idea.

If BigCorps, who employ a lot of people are healthy and stable, they will
invest and grow. Related to supply side economics.

It's not irrational.

BigCos along with banks are at the center of the economy - their leaders have
more direct and clear impact that others.

Demand side things like government subsidies are generally a little more
indirect, take time, and of course come a long with a bunch of side effects.

2008 was 'trickle down' economics, i.e. 'the banks must survive' and they got
some cherry deals.

~~~
Nokinside
Demand and supply must match. Too much supply creates just excess capacity and
reduces the return of investment.

That matching quantity is the size of the economy.

Supply side argued that improving supply will increase demand and grow
economy.

In practice the demand side is more often correct, supply side wrong. Demand
creates incentives to increase supply, not other way around. Supply side can
be correct in some special circumstances for a short time, but not so much
that it would be solid macroeconomic policy.

Economy is like a rope. Demand is like pulling the rope. Supply is like
pushing the rope.

~~~
sonnyblarney
"Demand and supply must match."

They never match match.

In an modern economy demand is created by innovation and marketing, i.e. by
creating things like the iPhone, which change all previous consumer
expectations, and other innovations change the dynamics of production for
other things.

" demand side is more often correct, supply side wrong. .Demand creates
incentives to increase supply, not other way around"

No. Printing money, or borrowing it to gin up demand is nothing but a
temporary distortion and a waste of everyone's time unless you're trying to
'hold things over' while an economy recovers from some kind of shock (or fix a
taxation situation that was whack), moreover, over any period this will just
cause inflation and nothing will change in real-dollar terms, other than the
temporary misreading of the economy by producers. To be clear: there can be no
fundamental and secular shift in demand (and therefore growth) from demand
side activities.

There was no 'demand' for electricity until someone figured out electricity
and the lightbulb, there was no 'demand' for toasters until someone figured it
out. There was no 'demand' for the XMen and Avengers films, until someone
created them.

The majority of per-capita growth is predicated on some kind of fundamental
innovation be it process, technology, organizational, geopolitical (i.e. trade
deals). This is supply side.

Now this doesn't mean we should just go ahead and wipe out corporate taxes
yada yada, and that's not to say that strategic investment can't yield longer
term action, but that strategic investment would have to be inherently value
creating, not just some pure economic shift.

~~~
Nokinside
We can't have discussion without common vocabulary and common economic
concepts that we both understand.

Your are using words like demand and supply general concepts not a specific
model of price determination and then arguing freely with them. This is why
you don't understand what supply and demand must match means.

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gnulinux
I'm a Marxist, not a Marxist-Leninist or of other ideological factions, but
I'm a Marxist in the sense that I read Marx' and Engels' and other people
influenced by their ideas and thought their methods of trying understand
social phenomenona are interesting and worthwhile. I don't wanna get into
flamewars, I hate ideologies and believe at its core Marxism is materialism
(which is the philosophical opposite of idealism).

Since China is a very hot topic in HN, and since I'm a software engineer, I
want to share my ideas on this issue in a few sentences with my community.
China's Communist Party was never about communism but rather about Big-C
Communism which is the ideology formed in late 19th century, supposedly
influenced by Marx' revolutionary ideas. What Big-C Communism captures is the
method in which capitalims is sought to be destroyed, and thus by nature is
not dynamic in and of itself. It cannot understand the real material
conditions of modern China as it was formed before those conditions were
realized. Since the natural process that creates capitalism is value
generation and thus commodity production, it's pretty clear who paid attention
to Marx that China is as capitalist as USA. I think our discussions would be
more rational if we frame "China" discussions in terms of "authoritarianism"
and not "communism".

~~~
woodandsteel
For over a century, real, existing Communism has been Marxism-Leninism. That
is because Marx's original prediction that capitalism would soon be replaced
by socialsm proved mistaken, and so the Marxist political movement split into
Social Democrats and Marxist-Leninists.

And then the Communists came to power, not in the advanced industrial
countries as Marx had predicted, but instead feudal or semi-feudal ones like
Russia and China. As a result the Communists put into effect not socialism,
but state capitalism, in order to develop industrially to the stage where they
would eventually be ready for socialism, a development that never happened.
And then state capitalism bogged down, so China and Russia switched over to
crony capitalism. And in China crony capitalism eventually slowed down, and
the country became too Western in its values, so Xi Jinping is cracking down
and puting things under more state control. I assume you are aware of this
whole story.

~~~
gnulinux
Few things I want to note.

> For over a century, real, existing Communism has been Marxism-Leninism

In what way? There has been dozens of ideological factions calling themselves
"Communists" like various types of anarchists, left-communists, Orthodox
Marxists etc. More importantly, there was academic Marxism which wasn't
revolutionary in its intention, which affected dozens of fields including
history and sociology, and had factions too (e.g. Frankfurt School)

> And then the Communists came to power

The rest of your comment makes sense to me but I still want to be cautious to
make such claims. In a Marxist sense ideological Communists weren't communists
as communists can only be members of the working class willing to rise up
against the bourgeoisie. The difference is the category: the Communists who
came to power had ideological intentions and not material intentions whereas
communism is a by-definition material concept. I believe it's true that maybe
parts of Russian revolution started out as a communist revolution but, as you
said, given the economic structure of the country (not highly developed)
communism was already dead by the time revolution was over. And we can talk
endlessly for hours whether Lenin was a good communist or an asshole; but this
is irrelevant because communism (just like capitalism) is never about single
persons but about classes. When the Russian Revolution started being more
about Lenin and less about the people, it was already not communist regardless
of the "ideology" of Lenin. Given the history, and how "Communist" is
liberally used to attack Marx, it's intellectual laziness or intellectual
dishonesty to mention USSR, China or other supposedly "Communist" countries to
make an argument about Marx. I read the entire corpus of Marx and he very
rarely talks about implementations, and oftentimes they're his very early work
(like the Manifesto) or when he's critiquing other ideas on implementation
(like the Critique of Gotha's Program). Given all these issues I have, I
almost never find a good rational discussion about Marxism on the internet,
not in HN, not on "socialist" sites like r/socialism, r/communism etc... It's
always entirely about the ideology which is something Marx tried to criticise
his whole life. It feels like when teenagers "discuss" Nietzsche and they
think he's a nihilist when Nietzsche spent his entire life attacking nihilism.

~~~
woodandsteel
>In what way? There has been dozens of ideological factions calling themselves
"Communists" like various types of anarchists, left-communists, Orthodox
Marxists etc. More importantly, there was academic Marxism which wasn't
revolutionary in its intention, which affected dozens of fields including
history and sociology, and had factions too (e.g. Frankfurt School)

I should have been more clear. I meant Marxism that achieved real political
power. My point is that Marx's original vision could never be carried out
successfully in the real world. Your further comments don't really present an
argument to the contrary.

~~~
gnulinux
I don't suppose you read my comment since its entirety was about how there is
no such thing as "Marx's original vision". If there is no political vision,
there cannot be "Marxism that achieved real political power" so your argument
is categorically wrong. I challenge you to give me examples of Marx's original
vision; from what I understand Marx made himself pretty clear that communism
is not an ideology and thus there cannot be a "vision" of it, the action of
communists would be different depending on material conditions they live in.
You can talk about personal vision of Communist revolutionaries (e.g. Lenin)
but I already wrote an excessively long paragraph about why this is not
relevant to Marxism.

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rqs
Funny. Why you guys think China is Communists?

As a Chinese myself, in my eyes, the whole Communism thing is nothing more
than a gimmick. A gimmick to keep public calm while the top heads fighting for
domination at the back side of the TV camera and newspapers.

Ever heard of State capitalism?

~~~
denzil_correa
I was checking out the Wiki for 21st century countries with "State Capitalism"
and the list was - China, Singapore, Taiwan and Norway.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism#Current_forms...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism#Current_forms_in_the_21st_century)

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sexydefinesher
Lovely, what a hole the party has dug itself into.

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guy98238710
These guys found a security hole in the system. They can combine communist
ideology with any other issue. The ideology gives them shielding, so that they
can push through the piggybacked issues more easily.

~~~
analog31
It occurs to me that his is a feature of any ideologically driven system. And
the leadership may be playing the same game.

~~~
datavirtue
Yeah. It is called a cult.

------
snaky
> A communist scarf with print ads from a local Wanda branch has gone viral on
> Chinese social media this weekend. “It’s all about the money,” some netizens
> write. A locally issued red scarf, worn by the ‘Young Pioneers of China’ to
> symbolize loyalty to communism, became the topic of great online controversy
> this weekend. The red scarfs worn by students in Heze (菏泽), Shandong, came
> with print advertising for Wanda, a Chinese multinational private real
> estate developer.

> Photos of the print ad red scarfs, promoting a local branch of the Wanda
> branch, went viral on September 29. The scarfs were worn by third-grade
> students of the Danyanglu primary school. The scarfs were reportedly handed
> out to the students in light of a road safety campaign on September 25. The
> school board allegedly did not notice the advertisement.

[https://www.whatsonweibo.com/communist-blasphemy-red-
scarf-w...](https://www.whatsonweibo.com/communist-blasphemy-red-scarf-with-
wanda-advertisement-goes-viral/)

------
monsterooo
There are too many of these things, There is no place for justice

------
tvanantwerp
The Chinese "Communist" Party has learned an important lesson since the
Cultural Revolution: idealistic young people create a bloody mess. China has a
very long history of violent revolutions leading to extreme death tolls. It's
why, I think, the CCP reacted so strongly at Tienanmen Square. Their thinking
was, "Oh no, not another one of these!" And I'm not surprised that they still
think that way.

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datavirtue
Really irks me when people talk about China in 1989 and only mention Tienamen
Square. There were bodies piled outside of every major city in China...burning
piles of bodies.

~~~
tim333
Source?

~~~
samspenc
Not OP, but wonder if they are talking about the ongoing persecution of
Christians [1], Uighurs (in Xinjiang) [2] and Falun Gong practitioners [3]

[1] Chinese officials burn bibles, destroy crosses and force Christians to
renounce their faith [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6149897/Group-
Offic...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6149897/Group-Officials-
destroying-crosses-burning-bibles-China.html)

[2] China working to 'exterminate' Uighur people, detention facility
eyewitness says [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-28/china-working-to-
elimi...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-28/china-working-to-eliminate-
uighur-people-detention-camp-witness/10308286)

[3] Defining a Genocide [https://www.theepochtimes.com/defining-a-
genocide_2624083.ht...](https://www.theepochtimes.com/defining-a-
genocide_2624083.html)

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franzwong
Communism is a tool to rule China, so it can only be used by President Xi.

------
farseer
How Ironic, that the current hybrid authoritarian China could be reset by
Communists. Time for a new long march I suppose?

~~~
Bayart
Someone should give Japan the memo.

