I’m writing this not simply for the purposes of others reading it, but also, to record where I am at in my understanding on the matter of China and Socialism. I live in the US, as I have my entire my life, and while as a white woman, I have spent a good part of my life in the “middle-class” – that is a white supremacist construct and dogwhistle for mostly-white spaces, just as “urban” is generally used to imply mostly-Black and Brown spaces. Regardless of the economic or neighborhood, anybody who must perform some kind of labor in exchange for pay is oppressed by the same minority, or ruling class, at the top of this Capitalist Pyramid.
As I’ve made abundantly clear in my previous blog posts and podcast episodes, I am anti-capitalism. As a socioeconomic system, it exists as a class-divided system in which a minority of human beings extract and exploit not only the majority of their fellow humans, but from our shared ecosystem, in order that the ruling minority may amass the most resources and control every major decision within civilization, whether the majority agrees with that social contract or not. The ruling minority uses their private military, aka police, in order to enforce the social construct. That’s why so many cities have half or even more of their annual budgets allocated to police departments. The police protect the ruling class and their property. One only need look at the Class War battles being waged on American streets to see that the police do not serve and protect the public at large. They have been this way their entire history to those that the ruling class has regarded as undesirable. And as they collapse the climate on everyone’s heads, some of them already fled to their survival bunkers at the start of the pandemic, where they are supplied to live for years. They’ve known that continuing to abuse the ecosystem would bring some kind of disaster, and they’ve been preparing for years. I’ve covered this in so many past blog posts and podcast eps. I’m not doing the labor again to link all of these claims that I’ve already repeatedly backed up in past work. It’s all here on the same website, so go back and read those to get source links if you need them.
So, the bottom line, my comrades and I have recognized that this entire nation was built on white supremacy, land left, life theft, resource theft, genocide, enslavement of other humans, and while the structures that currently serve those purposes have changed in appearance and nature somewhat, the plantations became prisons and corporations. Everything is corrupted. We are discovering that just as in religious cults, the ruling class has been indoctrinating us with suppressed and whitewashed history and other propaganda in order to condition us into beliefs and behaviors about life that serve THEIR purposes instead of ours.
Knowing as I do that in order to reach these conclusions, one must first commit to using a critical lens to one’s own government and way of life, I use the same critical lens when considering other nations governments. I also know that much of the suppressed history is about how our country has been actively working to sabotage and overthrow any nation that begins the struggle toward Socialism, using the CIA and military resources. Google The Army School Of The Americas – oh EXCUSE ME, that’s right – Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, as it’s been known since 2001. They train dictators. That’s part of the US military budget and has been for decades before the name change.
Capitalism relies upon pseudoscience, corruption, and injustice to operate. So, as long as it exists, and especially with the US Military enforcing Capitalism around the globe, it’s going to be difficult for any nation, even a country as large as China, to fully implement Socialism, particularly with the adversarial presence of the McCarthyist US using its resources to cause it to fail. We’ve seen this documented throughout history. And if you haven’t yet, visit my Reading Recommendations page.
I say all of this leading up to the question of my view of China through that critical lens. Thankfully, I have learned to start using the Marxist-Leninist political lens in addition to that, because I recognize that as a US citizen – I have been indoctrinated and propagandized my entire life by a government that went so far as to set up a special anti-Socialist propaganda wing right in front of our eyes – The Ad Council. So I’ve had ideas inculcated in me my entire life, like all Americans, that are going to make me inherently suspicious of anything that seems to contradict what I’ve been told is “normal” or “the best way” my entire life. This is very similar to when I was deprogramming from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Sometimes I had things I didn’t have the answers for, but I knew that I couldn’t just take the Watchtower Society’s answers – the only ones I’d ever known – as the correct ones simply because they said so. It benefited them to have me unquestioningly obedient to their status quo. At the time, it was certainly the easiest route – to just bury my doubts and keep going to the Kingdom Hall – but once I had a taste of the world outside of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, many of the lies they told me began to collapse. Eventually I was able to develop INFORMED opinions on issues that I’d previously just accepted what the authority in my life at the time had told me was true.
I’ve been doing the same with my understanding of injustice in the world. And obviously, as I’ve stated before, I believe that Socialism is the right direction to get to justice. But it’s just part of that journey. And Socialism itself is a struggle – it’s not something you just get overnight. So when people question me about China and why their Socialism isn’t “perfect” – which, frankly, those doing the questioning rarely even understand what Socialism actually is in the first place – thanks to propaganda – but I digress.
China is still struggling toward Socialism. They have Capitalist elements to their economy, so there exists Dual Power – just as was the case after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Eventually, the Bolsheviks seized control, but even the Soviet Union never achieved full Communism, even though they are frequently pointed to as “failed Communism.” The Soviets took a pre-industrial nation and became a space-faring nation within a few short decades, all while under constant adversarial pressure from the US and all of the lucky Nazi war criminals that the US rewarded with life in the US with Operation: Paperclip.
China also has experienced dual-power circumstances in the past. Again, as a US citizen, I must always temper the understanding I have regarding history and politics with the knowledge that I live in the nation with the largest military on the Earth, and a track record of using it to protect corporate interests. Why would that be any different today? Look at all of the trade war news we’ve read in the last several years. You think that’s the only intimidation tactics that have been used? Those are just what we know about.
The Chinese government has been working to eradicate poverty, and doing a damned good job of it. Despite their population being quadruple that of the United States, their poverty rate is far lower than ours and they are on track to end poverty by the end of this year. Once again, as in the USSR, the party has transformed a pre-industrial nation in a few short decades. Are things going perfectly? By no means! But I don’t expect things to go smoothly for any Socialist nation so long as the US and Capitalism exist. Additionally, I find it interesting that bootlickers for Capitalism always demand that Socialism work perfectly, immediately, or that is a basis for rejecting it as a credible socioeconomic system, but they NEVER apply that same standard to Capitalism. Ever. They’re willing to suffer for a system that will never serve them, but if they think that someone is going to make them share a toothbrush (that’s more Capitalist propaganda) then they don’t want to hear another word!
People will often point to the Hong Kong protests as evidence that true freedom-loving people do not want to be ruled by China. For many of them, this appears to be the first time they’ve paid attention to Hong Kong, because they are unaware that it was a British Colony for 156 years before being returned to China by the UK in 1997. And while it is treated as a “Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China,” under the PRC rule, the British have still meddled in the 23 years since they left. And it’s not just the British – it’s also the US, because the CIA’s NED (National Endowment for Democracy) has been working in Hong Kong and have been funding the protesters there. Last year, I was reading interviews of the actual working class – restaurant workers, who were not striking, and who wanted mainland China to gain more control over Hong Kong, because it will mean that the underclass and destitute people will be lifted out of their poverty as is being done throughout mainland China. Everything I’ve learned has led me to believe that the majority of those who are striking – particularly the most well-coordinated, are actually pushing an Imperialist agenda. Marching to the US Embassy last September, holding up signs asking President Trump and the US GOP to help, and Pepe The Frog – a mascot appropriated from the original artist by Fascists – frequently showing up on their signs. Does that sound like freedom fighters to you? Or does it sound like maybe this is something the US is trying to encourage or even help coordinate in order to make US troops eventual arrival in Hong Kong to give the appearance of “liberators” away from China – who just happens to be not only the largest trading partner with the US – it also holds over $1 trillion in US debt. Oh, and our trade deficit runs about $500 billion a year with them.
OPE! And let’s not forget, about 11% of US real estate is owned by China too!
So, do you think, perhaps, given the competitive, adversarial nature of the US-Chinese government relationship in economics, combined with the knowledge that the US government has been used by Capitalists for more than a century to raid, plunder, and exploit other sovereign nations because that country has something that is desired by US interests, that just maybe, we as US citizens might be getting propagandized about Hong Kong? That’s my belief. And with that knowledge, along with realizing that my labor is best spent on worrying about fixing the abundance of troubles we have here in the US, I do not focus my attention on Hong Kong. Neither do I ignore it, but I do not allow myself to get misdirected away from my own community and its imminent needs, and what I can do to help meet those. I know that I live in an Imperialist Capitalist, White Supremacist, Patriarchal, Heteronormative, Ableist, Misogynist, Homomisic, Transmisic society. That’s what’s on my plate. It’d be hypocritical and ignorant to throw stones at China and the Chinese people when I live in a house of candy glass. I think that the Chinese people are further ahead in their solutions than we are, and in the areas where they’ve discovered problems or failures of methods, we should not look at that and say “Your way doesn’t work” when they have plenty of other successes that say otherwise. We can learn from their successes and failures.
So I refuse to participate in any anti-Chinese sentiment. I am certain that I have comrades I haven’t met yet in China. We are all struggling, the world around, and our common enemy is Capitalism and the Capitalists who hoard from it. I’m not going to let those bastards turn me against the Chinese people. They’ve done enough damage, and I aim to see that they pay for it. Everywhere. One day, I envision a freed world of peace, love and solidarity. It IS possible. And until then, I’m going to cultivate those qualities in myself and my communities.
