International bankers/investors run the Western system of "capitalism". Central banks control the money supply through a usurious debt-based economy - debt generation equates to an increase in money supply. Short-term shareholder profits are the engine driving business and the key to continued investor interest. Businesses operate under immense pressure to generate profits even at the cost of productivity, quality, damage to the environment, and pollution. Lobbying government for decreased "interference" such as reduced taxes, industry regulations, preferential taxation, etc., often result in reduced investment in infrastructure and inadequate environmental controls.
The system favours large corporations which swallow smaller businesses and are able to lobby government. The bankers and large corporations gain control of government, leaving behind the rest of the population and basically running the country to the benefit of the rich - over time a significant wealth divide occurs as the middle class undergoes significant shrinkage, the poor become poorer and social pressures increase. As these corporations grow in power they inhibit new entries to the market, thus in effect destroying the free market system they preach about.
The political system falls to the management of politicians who can most easily be bought by special interests and whose competence is limited to artful deceit, lies and obfuscations in support of their donor class who control them.
The "profit motive" is the energy that fuels the capitalist sytem. In contast, the Chinese government prioritizes productivity and growth over profiteering.
you hit the nail on the head. profit motive and shareholder capitalism are the intertwined root causes of western economic woes. biggest profit accrues to monopolies which lead to a winner-take-all economic systems. monopolies have an understandable tendency to protect their own interests through political and regulatory capture. this is a perfect flywheel to create a rich vs poor polarized society, the polar opposite of the "common prosperity" China tries to achieve. deindustrialization and financialization all come from the same profit motive. that's why the western system is not reformable.
It doesn't matter what system a society uses as long as the laws of thermodynamics are observed. Society collapses because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics dynamic: the natural processes favor a state of greater disorder or randomness. It requires state control to maintain order. At the same time, the system must be flexible enough to handle unforeseen events. The West claims capitalism is the best yet it has not been applied to a society as big as China. We see in America, Europe and India, it can't handle very large population. The 2nd law of thermodynamics wins and society loses.
Nature requires something closer to China's system and not the USSR. The Chinese leaderships are engineers, and they understand systems and the laws of thermodynamics. We see how the local govts are given freedom to implement any policies they like as long as they fall within the guiding principles of the national government. They follow Field Marshal von Molkte's directive "no plan survive contact with the enemy". The Russian's system failed this principle.
We in the West refuse to admit it because of the racist Discovery Doctrine. It prevents us from facing the truth that capitalism must be put on a leash. Until we reject this doctrine, we will be stuck in the past.
Chinese leaders are chinese people living amongst chinese people in a chinese land that the chinese like. It's not Entropy, it's ((())) hating you that leads to decay.
Some people have no idea of what they are saying. A society is a mixed of different people and cultures. The Chinese people are not homogeneous. What we see now in China took hundreds of years to form. Even people from the same family break a part and go their separate ways. It's a matter of resources and socialization.
Lol. Some people are so blinded by the particular that they can't see the general. Give up all your cash and drop yourself somewhere in China. Good luck.
'narrow minded' It's like we're in the 80s! Am I a 'quad' too? Again, do you hang out with massive groups of 'coloured' people with no financial superiority while they speak in Arabic and you just sit there. Lol. Of course you don't. But I'm sure that dude from Senegal that teaches Anthropology at Berkely is super cool. I am too, but in a tighter discipline.
The typical mindset that is underestimating the world and driving the West into decline. The typical mindset that will drive the West into an island of facists. All the propaganda about equality and human rights by facists???
As I see it western governments have huge obstacles facing them. First, they are in corporate capture, secondly the political parties are very partisan and reaching consensus difficult, continuity of governance is lacking-- what one government will do the next will undo, Debt levels are high, too much is spent on militarism. Neoliberalism is deeply rooted in Western vassal states. Significant change for the better in the West is going to be generational with no quick changes. As long the blonde buffoon occupies the oval office the worse it gets.
I agree except I don't think changing the occupant of the white house alone will arrest the decline. it's wholesale societal change that is needed to address the issues you raised. fundamentally it comes down to what the government is for - to enrich the few (which means stick to the course) or to elevate all (revolution needed). I think this is a systemic issue predicted in the writings from Marx to Lennin on how capitalism will evolve. status quo will lead to inevitable atrophy and eventual implosion. China is also still experimenting and evolving its model - there is no end to history, only a forever pursuit for betterment.
Another thing is since they don't need money to run multiparty elections, Chinese politicians control over capitalists, not the other way round, like in those so-called "democratic" countries where its primary objective was dividing the plebs, distracting them in a game of team-sport competition while the capitalists rob everyone blind. This way, politicians actually serve the average citizen instead of wall street corporate interests. The so-called "democracy" was deliberately constructed in such a manner to lead to its eventual wholesale looting by capitalists, always to be followed by a fascist military police plutocratic state as clearly evident in America, for instance.
exactly. electoral democracies are most prone to such manipulations. Some Democrat bigwig, whose name I forgot, said decades ago you don't need to control voters, only the candidates. once the candidates are bought, it doesn't matter how voters vote. Even more blatant today when the government just negates the result of elections they don't like as what happens in Romania. Democracies are facades and elites do to benefit fellow elites. Check and balance can be delivered in more means than just a multi-party system. unfortunately most people are so indoctrinated and their default thinking is TINA (There is no alternative)
What about world famous economist Dr. Michael Hudson's explanation of China's success? "China’s industrial policy is remarkably similar to that of America’s nineteenth-century industrial takeoff. China’s government, as just mentioned, has financed basic infrastructure and kept it in the public domain, providing its services at low prices to keep the economy’s cost structure as low as possible. And China’s rising wages and living standards have indeed found their counterpart in rising labor productivity."
Hudson has written often and persuasively that unlike America, China did not allow the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) to become a private monopoly but is in the hands of the State thus preventing a rentier class from distorting their economy. His latest piece on the subject is available at: https://michael-hudson.com/2025/04/trumps-inverted-view-of-americas-tariff-history/
great reference. I have been a long time admirer of Prof Hudson and I think Chinese policy makers are heavily influenced by him as well (he taught at Peking University and Renmin University many years ago). He is absolutely right about the Chinese model being similar to US industrial policy in the late 19th century. Of course, China has kept many vestigate of socialist systems such as public banking and state ownership of key infrastructures (rail, port, telecom, health, education, etc.). China has made a conscious decision not to emulate the financial capitalism model of the anglo-sphere, particularly US/UK. the leadership repeatedly emphasize the importance of the "real economy" as opposed to the virtual financial economy. An imperfect analogy is China wants the German industrial model rather than the US/UK financial model - of course at a vastly bigger scale than Germany.
it just so happens that I referred to Prof Hudson in my reply to a reader Pandelis earlier today. here is what I wrote - "like prof Michael Hudson says, there is also central planning in the US and the west. the central planner is Wall Street and City of London. They plan the economy to work to their advantage and the system works great for them."
what the US is doing now to suppress China is called "kicking away the ladder" by a famous Korean economist Ha Joon Chang who wrote an interesting book called 23 things they don't tell you about capitalism.
Fantastic summary of *how* it works, and *why* it works so well, relative to the elite-self-interest basket-case political system and economies we have in the West!!
1949 – 1978, failed to deliver an adequate standard of living? Seriously?
Considering the national standard of living prior to 1949, Mao delivered a standard of living that was almost luxurious.
Starting with an illiterate, typhus-infected population living in rubble whose life expectancy was 38 years, and working entirely under massive Western sanctions and embargoes, Mao provided basic universal health care and doubled life expectancy 68. No country matches the pace of life expectancy increase under Mao, nor its increase in prosperity.
That's why half a million people visit his birthplace every month (and 800 visit Deng's).
written like a true Maoist revisionist. The achievements of the Mao era should of course be acknowledged. But they don't negate the terrible economic and political mistakes committed by Mao which led to wide spread suffering and economic stagnation.
"Red" extremists who never experienced any of the hardships during those years are not doing China any favor to romanticize the Mao era. Intellectual honesty is what China's success is built upon, not delusional whitewashing of history.
as for using visitors to Mao's hometown vs Deng's to compare their contribution, that is just childish and laughable. Hard to take you seriously.
Do you also think more people visit the Forbidden City because they love the corrupt and weak Ming and Qing emperors? Today's China is made by Deng, not Mao.
Today's China would not be possible without Mao. He built up the foundations on which Deng was able to take things further. Vast majority of Chinese see both as great leaders who always meant well for the country and the people and did not act out of malicious intent. And President Xi has inherited their legacies and is bringing about balance with his governance.
For example India which was actually richer and much more developed and industrialized then China post WW2 yet still remained and remains plagued by caste, cultural superstitions, religious strife, malnutrition, poor education and literacy and an economy controlled by a small cabal of family owned companies and upper caste landlord class. PM Nehru visited China in the 1950s to try and emulate its reforms in India and failed. Why? Because they didn't have a man like Mao who had a vision and did what was necessary. Without him China would have probably ended up like India.
I agree with the comment. I don't think recognizing mistakes negates the achievements of Mao, who was a great revolutionary leader without whom China wouldn't be the China it is now. That said, he made severe mistakes in the 50s and 60s that caused immense sufferings and damage to the country, the population, and even the historical heritage of the nation (many temples, historical sites, cultural antiques were destroyed in the frenzy). And many of his mistakes were because he became obsessed with intra-party power struggle and empowered terrible opportunists like the Gang of Four. Mao would have gone down as a towering figure in Chinese history if he retired after 1950 and handed the management of the economy and domestic affairs to his comrades. Instead, he will be remembered with mixed feelings as both a great revolutionary and father of the PRC and at the same time a deeply flawed person who subjected the country to a lost generation filled with human sufferings.
Deng and the leaders after him, especially Xi, have built on the achievements of their predecessors, continued to reform and adjust, and brought China to where it is today through bootstrap. They will be remembered as the leaders who put China on the track of rejuvenation of national greatness.
Your comparison with India is entirely correct. India was never a cohensive united country and didn't go through trial by blood and fire to build a strong resilient national character. It is also filled with internal contradictions that basically make the country a pre-modern primitive society. I don't think it will ever join the ranks of great powers.
Ha ha, ironical to read that competition in the US doesn’t play a decisive role as it does in China. Might one query whether the US economy is a “market economy” within the meaning of the WTO? How the mighty has fallen!
like prof Michael Hudson says, there is also central planning in the US and the west. the central planner is Wall Street and City of London. They plan the economy to work to their advantage and the system works great for them.
International bankers/investors run the Western system of "capitalism". Central banks control the money supply through a usurious debt-based economy - debt generation equates to an increase in money supply. Short-term shareholder profits are the engine driving business and the key to continued investor interest. Businesses operate under immense pressure to generate profits even at the cost of productivity, quality, damage to the environment, and pollution. Lobbying government for decreased "interference" such as reduced taxes, industry regulations, preferential taxation, etc., often result in reduced investment in infrastructure and inadequate environmental controls.
The system favours large corporations which swallow smaller businesses and are able to lobby government. The bankers and large corporations gain control of government, leaving behind the rest of the population and basically running the country to the benefit of the rich - over time a significant wealth divide occurs as the middle class undergoes significant shrinkage, the poor become poorer and social pressures increase. As these corporations grow in power they inhibit new entries to the market, thus in effect destroying the free market system they preach about.
The political system falls to the management of politicians who can most easily be bought by special interests and whose competence is limited to artful deceit, lies and obfuscations in support of their donor class who control them.
well said. this is the exact blue print followed by the financial interests. and they have succeeded pretty much everywhere except China
The "profit motive" is the energy that fuels the capitalist sytem. In contast, the Chinese government prioritizes productivity and growth over profiteering.
you hit the nail on the head. profit motive and shareholder capitalism are the intertwined root causes of western economic woes. biggest profit accrues to monopolies which lead to a winner-take-all economic systems. monopolies have an understandable tendency to protect their own interests through political and regulatory capture. this is a perfect flywheel to create a rich vs poor polarized society, the polar opposite of the "common prosperity" China tries to achieve. deindustrialization and financialization all come from the same profit motive. that's why the western system is not reformable.
It doesn't matter what system a society uses as long as the laws of thermodynamics are observed. Society collapses because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics dynamic: the natural processes favor a state of greater disorder or randomness. It requires state control to maintain order. At the same time, the system must be flexible enough to handle unforeseen events. The West claims capitalism is the best yet it has not been applied to a society as big as China. We see in America, Europe and India, it can't handle very large population. The 2nd law of thermodynamics wins and society loses.
Nature requires something closer to China's system and not the USSR. The Chinese leaderships are engineers, and they understand systems and the laws of thermodynamics. We see how the local govts are given freedom to implement any policies they like as long as they fall within the guiding principles of the national government. They follow Field Marshal von Molkte's directive "no plan survive contact with the enemy". The Russian's system failed this principle.
We in the West refuse to admit it because of the racist Discovery Doctrine. It prevents us from facing the truth that capitalism must be put on a leash. Until we reject this doctrine, we will be stuck in the past.
Chinese leaders are chinese people living amongst chinese people in a chinese land that the chinese like. It's not Entropy, it's ((())) hating you that leads to decay.
Some people have no idea of what they are saying. A society is a mixed of different people and cultures. The Chinese people are not homogeneous. What we see now in China took hundreds of years to form. Even people from the same family break a part and go their separate ways. It's a matter of resources and socialization.
Lol. Some people are so blinded by the particular that they can't see the general. Give up all your cash and drop yourself somewhere in China. Good luck.
The typical response from narrowed minded people. Some people can't see beyond the color of a person's skin.
'narrow minded' It's like we're in the 80s! Am I a 'quad' too? Again, do you hang out with massive groups of 'coloured' people with no financial superiority while they speak in Arabic and you just sit there. Lol. Of course you don't. But I'm sure that dude from Senegal that teaches Anthropology at Berkely is super cool. I am too, but in a tighter discipline.
The typical mindset that is underestimating the world and driving the West into decline. The typical mindset that will drive the West into an island of facists. All the propaganda about equality and human rights by facists???
As I see it western governments have huge obstacles facing them. First, they are in corporate capture, secondly the political parties are very partisan and reaching consensus difficult, continuity of governance is lacking-- what one government will do the next will undo, Debt levels are high, too much is spent on militarism. Neoliberalism is deeply rooted in Western vassal states. Significant change for the better in the West is going to be generational with no quick changes. As long the blonde buffoon occupies the oval office the worse it gets.
I agree except I don't think changing the occupant of the white house alone will arrest the decline. it's wholesale societal change that is needed to address the issues you raised. fundamentally it comes down to what the government is for - to enrich the few (which means stick to the course) or to elevate all (revolution needed). I think this is a systemic issue predicted in the writings from Marx to Lennin on how capitalism will evolve. status quo will lead to inevitable atrophy and eventual implosion. China is also still experimenting and evolving its model - there is no end to history, only a forever pursuit for betterment.
"it's wholesale societal change"--agreed. I'd like to drop by 50 or so years from now to see how it all comes out.
Another thing is since they don't need money to run multiparty elections, Chinese politicians control over capitalists, not the other way round, like in those so-called "democratic" countries where its primary objective was dividing the plebs, distracting them in a game of team-sport competition while the capitalists rob everyone blind. This way, politicians actually serve the average citizen instead of wall street corporate interests. The so-called "democracy" was deliberately constructed in such a manner to lead to its eventual wholesale looting by capitalists, always to be followed by a fascist military police plutocratic state as clearly evident in America, for instance.
exactly. electoral democracies are most prone to such manipulations. Some Democrat bigwig, whose name I forgot, said decades ago you don't need to control voters, only the candidates. once the candidates are bought, it doesn't matter how voters vote. Even more blatant today when the government just negates the result of elections they don't like as what happens in Romania. Democracies are facades and elites do to benefit fellow elites. Check and balance can be delivered in more means than just a multi-party system. unfortunately most people are so indoctrinated and their default thinking is TINA (There is no alternative)
What about world famous economist Dr. Michael Hudson's explanation of China's success? "China’s industrial policy is remarkably similar to that of America’s nineteenth-century industrial takeoff. China’s government, as just mentioned, has financed basic infrastructure and kept it in the public domain, providing its services at low prices to keep the economy’s cost structure as low as possible. And China’s rising wages and living standards have indeed found their counterpart in rising labor productivity."
Hudson has written often and persuasively that unlike America, China did not allow the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) to become a private monopoly but is in the hands of the State thus preventing a rentier class from distorting their economy. His latest piece on the subject is available at: https://michael-hudson.com/2025/04/trumps-inverted-view-of-americas-tariff-history/
great reference. I have been a long time admirer of Prof Hudson and I think Chinese policy makers are heavily influenced by him as well (he taught at Peking University and Renmin University many years ago). He is absolutely right about the Chinese model being similar to US industrial policy in the late 19th century. Of course, China has kept many vestigate of socialist systems such as public banking and state ownership of key infrastructures (rail, port, telecom, health, education, etc.). China has made a conscious decision not to emulate the financial capitalism model of the anglo-sphere, particularly US/UK. the leadership repeatedly emphasize the importance of the "real economy" as opposed to the virtual financial economy. An imperfect analogy is China wants the German industrial model rather than the US/UK financial model - of course at a vastly bigger scale than Germany.
it just so happens that I referred to Prof Hudson in my reply to a reader Pandelis earlier today. here is what I wrote - "like prof Michael Hudson says, there is also central planning in the US and the west. the central planner is Wall Street and City of London. They plan the economy to work to their advantage and the system works great for them."
what the US is doing now to suppress China is called "kicking away the ladder" by a famous Korean economist Ha Joon Chang who wrote an interesting book called 23 things they don't tell you about capitalism.
Fantastic summary of *how* it works, and *why* it works so well, relative to the elite-self-interest basket-case political system and economies we have in the West!!
For more details on China's way, read Prof. Keyu Jin's book “New China Playbook”.
1949 – 1978, failed to deliver an adequate standard of living? Seriously?
Considering the national standard of living prior to 1949, Mao delivered a standard of living that was almost luxurious.
Starting with an illiterate, typhus-infected population living in rubble whose life expectancy was 38 years, and working entirely under massive Western sanctions and embargoes, Mao provided basic universal health care and doubled life expectancy 68. No country matches the pace of life expectancy increase under Mao, nor its increase in prosperity.
That's why half a million people visit his birthplace every month (and 800 visit Deng's).
written like a true Maoist revisionist. The achievements of the Mao era should of course be acknowledged. But they don't negate the terrible economic and political mistakes committed by Mao which led to wide spread suffering and economic stagnation.
"Red" extremists who never experienced any of the hardships during those years are not doing China any favor to romanticize the Mao era. Intellectual honesty is what China's success is built upon, not delusional whitewashing of history.
as for using visitors to Mao's hometown vs Deng's to compare their contribution, that is just childish and laughable. Hard to take you seriously.
Do you also think more people visit the Forbidden City because they love the corrupt and weak Ming and Qing emperors? Today's China is made by Deng, not Mao.
Today's China would not be possible without Mao. He built up the foundations on which Deng was able to take things further. Vast majority of Chinese see both as great leaders who always meant well for the country and the people and did not act out of malicious intent. And President Xi has inherited their legacies and is bringing about balance with his governance.
For example India which was actually richer and much more developed and industrialized then China post WW2 yet still remained and remains plagued by caste, cultural superstitions, religious strife, malnutrition, poor education and literacy and an economy controlled by a small cabal of family owned companies and upper caste landlord class. PM Nehru visited China in the 1950s to try and emulate its reforms in India and failed. Why? Because they didn't have a man like Mao who had a vision and did what was necessary. Without him China would have probably ended up like India.
I agree with the comment. I don't think recognizing mistakes negates the achievements of Mao, who was a great revolutionary leader without whom China wouldn't be the China it is now. That said, he made severe mistakes in the 50s and 60s that caused immense sufferings and damage to the country, the population, and even the historical heritage of the nation (many temples, historical sites, cultural antiques were destroyed in the frenzy). And many of his mistakes were because he became obsessed with intra-party power struggle and empowered terrible opportunists like the Gang of Four. Mao would have gone down as a towering figure in Chinese history if he retired after 1950 and handed the management of the economy and domestic affairs to his comrades. Instead, he will be remembered with mixed feelings as both a great revolutionary and father of the PRC and at the same time a deeply flawed person who subjected the country to a lost generation filled with human sufferings.
Deng and the leaders after him, especially Xi, have built on the achievements of their predecessors, continued to reform and adjust, and brought China to where it is today through bootstrap. They will be remembered as the leaders who put China on the track of rejuvenation of national greatness.
Your comparison with India is entirely correct. India was never a cohensive united country and didn't go through trial by blood and fire to build a strong resilient national character. It is also filled with internal contradictions that basically make the country a pre-modern primitive society. I don't think it will ever join the ranks of great powers.
Ha ha, ironical to read that competition in the US doesn’t play a decisive role as it does in China. Might one query whether the US economy is a “market economy” within the meaning of the WTO? How the mighty has fallen!
Sound similar to what Hitler did in National Socialist Nazi Germany...
like prof Michael Hudson says, there is also central planning in the US and the west. the central planner is Wall Street and City of London. They plan the economy to work to their advantage and the system works great for them.