Chinese Socialism
It is not to my understanding why Canadian socialists and other so called Western progressives cannot accept the huge successes of Communist China as being worthy of recognition and applause as a success of socialism. A foundational goal of socialism is to eliminate poverty. To this end Communist China, within 50 years, has taken 800 million out of extreme poverty and is moving them into middle class living conditions.
China sees housing as a human right and is providing quality affordable social and market housing for its people. China today has the highest percentage of home ownership in the world. China, through Premier Xi Jinping and the Chinese leadership, has always espoused peace, cooperation and mutual benefit in its foreign policy and Xi Jinping has set “common prosperity” as a domestic national goal seeking to provide all its people with a “comfortable life”. Xi Jinping has also outlined a goal of furthering democracy and socialism.
In one lifetime, 75 years, Chair Mao Zedong’s revolution has delivered China from one of the poorest countries in the world, with millions in abject poverty, to the world’s leading economy based on purchasing power parity (PPP). China’s life expectancy in 1949, the birth of Mao’s successful revolution, was 35–40 years. By 1980 it has risen to 65.5 years. Today it exceeds 77 years and is continually rising. This is the most rapid sustained life expectancy increase documented in global history.
Economic planning is a tenet of a socialist economy. The entire national economy in socialist society develops in a planned and proportionate way. This is the objective law governing socialist economic development and an important feature showing the superiority of the socialist economy over the capitalist economy. Over a 70-year revolutionary span China has had a succession of 14 five-year plans each adopted and fulfilled. Workers have seen their wages increase five times over in the last 30 years. Disposable income in China has tripled between 2010 and 2024.
I have to believe that Marx, Engels, and Lenin would have been ecstatic with this socialist success story. Lenin was flexible as witnessed with his New Economic Policy (NEP) which was scripted like China’s utilization of controlled capitalism as a force to drive Chinese modernization. With acceptance in the World Trade Organization (WTO), China, for some years now, has been the leading country in international trade.
Today, China has very much a mixed economy with state corporations being the dominant sector. It is a form of state socialism wherein investment and workers under economic planning have created state corporations that are the foundations of their economy. Public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy has always been an expression of developed socialism. China is the leading example.
State Corporations, Crown Corporations or just Public Corporations are different terms for business enterprises that are owned and operated by the State which is the people. They are not owned by millionaire or billionaire capitalist classes for private profit. The public sector has higher rates of unionization, better salaries and benefits vis-à-vis the private sector. These corporations are very profitable in generating revenue and or in supplying needed services. They generate the revenue for the Chinese state which we have to pay in taxes to sustain our capitalist welfare state.
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