then why has china got so many homeless people?
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
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It doesn't, I have no idea where you're getting that from. China eliminated urban poverty over a decade ago (~2013), and rural poverty is nearly eliminated. Source.
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. At China’s current national poverty line, the number of poor fell by 770 million over the same period.
Another anti-China western source because we know white supremacists wouldn't accept any Chinese source about their poverty alleviation campaigns.
If China is socialist then Lipton is tea.
Look into the country on the shallowest level. They have socialist programs but, honestly...
China is socialist. Socialist countries can have market economies and even capitalist economies, as long as the dictatorship of the proletariat ultimately controls all of the economy. Just a reminder China's killed multiple billionaires.
huh?
However, the people of China can afford to buy these extremely expensive properties. In fact, 90% of families in the country own their home, giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans.
Because China is capitalist, despite being formally led by a communist party. It has private property on means of production, and it is defining Chinese economy just like any other capitalist one. Socialism, by definition, requires social ownership of means of production, which is not the case in China; the term was appropriated and wrongfully used by US and several other countries to define economies with more state control and/or social policies, but this is simply not what socialism is.
Interestingly, China has entire ghost towns full of homes ready to accept people in - but, as in any capitalist economy, homes are seen as an investment, and state subsidies are low, pricing out the homeless. They have more than enough homes, they just chose to pursue a system that doesn't make homes and homeless meet.
They have more than enough homes, they just chose to pursue a system that doesn't make homes and homeless meet.
This is demonstratably false. China has one of the highest home ownership rates in the world, at ~90%. The US is at ~66% for comparison (and most of that isn't actually full ownership, but a debt to mortgage brokers).
Why do you white supremacists think its okay to spout any unsourced nonsense because it fits your racist biases?
This link does not disprove the point. Home ownership isn't the same thing, you can have families that rent, they aren't homeless either.
Using the same source there is twice as many homeless (relative to population) in china than in spain, for example.
I'm not trying to prove that the number is high in China, I don't know what's the average for all countries. However, claiming that there isn't a lot of homeless because 90% of the non homeless own their house is wrong.
The source for that appears to be this article from 2011 : https://web.archive.org/web/20160930015343/http://gbtimes.com/life/homelessness-china
Most of the poverty alleviation campaigns were well underway by 2012, so I'd be interested to see what those numbers are now.
But also, China is responsible for ~3/4ths of the reduction in world poverty via these campaigns.
Not to mention that if you've visited any Chinese city in the past few years, you won't see any of the slums or homeless that you see in the neoliberal countries.
I just used the same source out of simplicity, I didn't double check as that wasn't my point. It would indeed be better to have more recent numbers.
Not seeing homeless people doesn't mean they don't exist, seems like Japanese streets are mostly devoid of homeless people, but a lot of people seem to be living in cafes, to avoid ending up in jail as as far as I've understood, the government has a harsh policy towards that. Might be wrong on japan, but again, I'm not trying to point fingers to a country saying they are bad or good, it's the argument itself that I find "weak".
PS: just to be clear, I do feel that first of all, the OP should be the one trying to prove their saying. Nice of you to try and debunk it though
China is demonstrably not capitalist, and people who keep repeating that it is are utterly clueless. If China was capitalist then it would be developing exactly the same way actual capitalist countries are developing. You will not see any of the following happening in a capitalist country ever
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&%3Blocations=CN&%3Bstart=2008
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
Capitalism is not defined by how the poor are treated, but by the economic relationships and mode of ownership.
Nordic countries have low poverty and generally good social support. Like it or not, this is achieved with private property on means of production, hence they are capitalist.
China has private property on means of production, hence it too is capitalist.
Both of them feature strong state oversight, which allows them to direct more of the capitalist profits to help the poor - which is good! But this doesn't make them "socialist".
Love how you respond to a bunch of information from the World Bank, NYT, and the National Bureau of Economic Research with a definition from Wikipedia.
Consider that you could learn more here.
Do any of the sources define socialism?
All of this could be true - none of this makes China socialist.
You said:
China is capitalist... It has private property on means of production, and it is defining Chinese economy just like any other capitalist one.
The response was a well-souced refutation of the idea that the Chinese economy is developing like a capitalist economy. You replied with Wikipedia. All I'm saying is that you're not looking at this in a whole lot of detail and you might have some things to learn.
For instance, you say Nordic countries have low rates of poverty and good social supports despite private ownership of the means of production. But in reality a lot of that is due to sovereign wealth funds, like Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, which is owned by the government and managed by a state-owned bank.
This is all true - state intervention and state-owned businesses and funds bring about a positive change for the majority, and they should be there, but seriously calling those economies socialist would be missing the definitional mark, which is what I have highlighted.
I do believe that moving entire economy under public control would be beneficial, and that, actually, will be what can be called "socialism". Virtually no country, except for heavily sanctioned and blatantly tyrannical North Korea, is currently there.
What we have right now, with heavy state intervention, is certainly better than "free" market economy though, and it reflects in quality of life for the economically disadvantaged - this very intervention leads to these economies following a different path compared to traditional capitalist societies. I do not argue there is no difference between China and, say, US in that regard - the difference is big, it's just not what it takes to call the economy socialist.
The point about Norway wasn't that it's socialist (it's not). The point was that Norway's low rate of poverty and generous social supports come directly from parts of the economy that are publicly owned.
The notion that a country's entire economy must be under public control otherwise it's not Real Socialism is too idealistic. China in 1949 was a late-feudal/pre-industrial country that had just been through a century of colonial invasions and civil wars. It needed to attract capital and expertise in pretty much every field, and it needed to build an effective, modern administrative state. How was it supposed to do all of that at once, wholly through the government? The Soviets ran into the same problem and the result was the New Economic Policy, which, like China today, involved markets and some private ownership, but ultimately subjected both to real state control. You need a transitory period to go from pre-revolutionary society to whatever your vision of Real Socialism is.
For me, China is socialist because the state is ran to the benefit of the working class (see massive poverty alleviation), that state really does control the capitalist class, and China seems to be doing more of both as time goes on.
China is not capitalist, its a mixed economy with the state-owned-and-planned sector dominating the heights of the economy.
Is China state capitalist?
- The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2 The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.
- Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
- Is modern day china communist? Is it staying true to communist values?
- Didn't China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn't it liberalize its economy? Is China's drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
- Is the CPC committed to communism?
- The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
- The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
- Tsinghua University- Is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics real socialism, or is it state Capitalism?
- Isn't China revisionist for having a capitalist sector of the economy, and working with capitalists? Why isn't it fully planned like the USSR was?
- Castro on why both China and Vietnam are socialist countries.
- Roderic Day - China has billionaires.
- What is socialism with Chinese characteristics (SWCC)?
- How is SWCC not revisionist? How is it any different from Gorbachev's market reforms?, 2
- Domenico Losurdo - is China state capitalist?, 2
- Did Lenin say anything about Market Socialism, or productivism?
- Vijay Prashad - Is China capitalist?
- Why do Chinese billionaires keep ending up in prison? Why are many billionaires and CEOs going missing? China sentences Ex-Chairman of a major bank, guilty of embezzling ~$100M USD, to death in 2019.
- China cracks down on billionaires - Ben Norton interviews Ian Goodrum
- Do capitalists control the communist party? No, pic
- How the State runs business in China.
- 50% of the economy is in the socialist public sector and directly follows the plan (40% if you ignore the agricultural sector). 20 to 30% is inside the state capitalist sector, which is the sector partially or totally owned by domestic capitalists but run by the CPC or by local workers councils. The rest is made up of the small bourgeois ownership like in the NEP.
- China pushing forward Marxist training in colleges, attracts 1M students.
- China tells the US that it has no plans to weaken the role of its State-Owned-Enterprises, one of the US's main demands in the trade war. "Beijing plans to make the state economy stronger, bigger, and better."
- Unlike the US, China refuses to bail out over-leveraged property developers, and lets them go bankrupt.
- A China misinformation Megathread.
- A China misinformation Megathread.
🚫 Sorry, this post was removed by Reddit’s filters.
Capitalism is defined by which class holds power in society, and in China it's demonstrably the working class. The reason the economy works in the interest of the poor is a direct result of that.
All the core economy in China is state owned, and the role of private sector continues to decline https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-private-sector-has-lost-ground-state-sector-has-gained-share-among
You might want to learn a bit about the subject you're attempting to debate here.
What your data shows is that the share of state in the economy has partially recovered in 2020's from ~30 to ~50%, after falling from 80% to 30% in the previous decade. Impressive, indeed, and way ahead of most capitalist countries - but China is home to numerous giant private megacorporations, and allows many companies from abroad to build in the country.
"Who holds power" is very abstract and is not part of definition of socialism or capitalism. Even still, we just talked about homelessness - if workers held all the power, would there be homeless? Would there be any poor at all? Would there be overheated markets, including housing, which is one of the craziest in the world? Would there be Tencent, Alibaba, etc.? Would there be billionaires? Etc. etc. What defines "workers holding power" for you?
What is it about some leftists desperately trying to put socialist label on capitalist China - a desperate attempt to demonstrate a mighty socialist economy in the modern world? Socialist countries have lost the Cold War and are mostly not on the map anymore; there are objective reasons to that, including the fact most of the world never moved away from socialism and capitalist forces had greater capital to work with, and this does not mean socialism is bad, but currently, socialism is not represented by any large economy. That's just the fact.
“Who holds power” is very abstract and is not part of definition of socialism or capitalism.
Power isn’t abstract, and who holds it is definitional to socialism and capitalism, and to feudalism before them.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_bourgeoisie
- https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/bourgeois-democracy-what-do-marxists-mean-by-this-term
if workers held all the power, would there be homeless?
Not for the most part, no. In your imagined “capitalist” China, did you just assume that they have a homelessness crisis, without even checking? Because you’re unintentionally making our case for us.
Would there be any poor at all?
You can’t go from one of the poorest, least developed countries in the world to universal wealth overnight. But they have made unprecedented progress.
- Helping 800 Million People Escape Poverty Was Greatest Such Effort in History, Says [UN] Secretary-General, on Seventieth Anniversary of China’s Founding
- China’s Energy Use Per Person Surpasses Europe’s for First Time
- At 54, China’s average retirement age is too low
- China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
I did not say of a severe crisis, I just highlighted both homelessness and inflated housing prices are a thing. And under the rule of the workers, neither should be true.
Homelessness isn’t really a thing, though. As to the recent housing bubble, the Chinese state intentionally popped it and left the capitalists out to dry.
- Reuters: China Evergrande ordered to liquidate in landmark moment for crisis-hit sector
- Bloomberg: China Reiterates Stance That Homes Are Not for Speculation
- CNBC: China’s housing minister says real estate developers must go bankrupt if necessary
.
“We will scale up the building and supply of government-subsidized housing and improve the basic systems for commodity housing to meet people’s essential need for a home to live in and their different demands for better housing,” an English-language version of the report said.
Compare that to Obama, who bailed out the private banks at the expense of people with home mortgages, banks that knowingly wrote those bad mortgages. Michael Hudson, 2023: Why the Bank Crisis isn’t Over
The financial sector is the core of Democratic Party support, and the party leadership is loyal to its supporters. As President Obama told the bankers who worried that he might follow through on his campaign promises to write down mortgage debts to realistic market valuations in order to enable exploited junk-mortgage clients to remain in their homes, “I’m the only one between you [the bankers visiting the White House] and the mob with the pitchforks,” that is, his characterization of voters who believed his “hope and change” patter talk.
The Federal Reserve is just the cartel of the US private banks, whereas banking in China is predominantly state owned. The Chinese state both runs these banks and has fiat monetary sovereignty, so it’s not captured by the private finance capitalists like the US state is.
You have an infantile understanding of what capitalism is. I recommend reading this article to get a bit of a perspective https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
Not actually democratic, thus not socialist.
seems like people who actually live in China disagree with you champ
- https://www.newsweek.com/most-china-call-their-nation-democracy-most-us-say-america-isnt-1711176
- https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2021/0218/Vilified-abroad-popular-at-home-China-s-Communist-Party-at-100
- https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-26/which-nations-are-democracies-some-citizens-might-disagree
- https://web.archive.org/web/20230511041927/https://6389062.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6389062/Canva%20images/Democracy%20Perception%20Index%202023.pdf
- https://www.tbsnews.net/world/china-more-democratic-america-say-people-98686
- https://web.archive.org/web/20201229132410/https://en.news-front.info/2020/06/27/studies-have-shown-that-china-is-more-democratic-than-the-united-states-russia-is-nearby-and-ukraine-is-at-the-bottom/
Most Americans think that too
They don't as the links I provided clearly show. Maybe actually look at the sources before replying.
That's a gish gallop, and the core premise that people believing it's democratic makes it so is incorrect.
~Edit: added link~
The very first article yogthos showed you, had a poll that showed half of usonians don't think their country is a democracy (they're right)
The US congress, its highest governing body, hasn't gotten over a 20% approval rating for many years.
You're deliberately avoiding the core premise that people thinking it's democratic means it's democratic.
What makes you right and a bunch of people who actually live in China wrong?
well you see civilized white people are inherently smarter than asiatic savages
Okay then, here are some articles showing how china's people's democracy works, and why they intentionally avoid the capitalist dictatorship model common in western countries.
Is China a Democracy?
- Is China a democracy?
- Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
- What kind of democracy does China have, and how is it different from the west?
- In contrast to low US political approval ratings, 96% of Chinese are satisfied with the national government (Edelmans 2016). World Values Surveys says that 83% think the country is run for their benefit rather than for the benefit of special groups. A Harvard research center study of long-term public opinion survey finds that > 95% of Chinese citizens approved their government. How is this possible in a one-party state? (TED talk by Eric X Li)
- How does China’s political system work?
- How are Chinese leaders elected / chosen? How meristocratic is the system? How do elections differ from those in western bourgeois democracies?
- Who runs China? Makeup of the national people's congress.
- US policy-makers are misjudging popular support China's Government.
- The american dream is alive... in China.
Good talk
I'm hiding a homeless person in my home, which is risking eviction to keep someone off the streets. Here, most tenancies don't allow you to "sublet", the landlord legally gets the final say about who lives in their property.
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