So then I guess just fuck those 16.6 million other people, huh? And no, $328.74 a year is extreme poverty, in pretty much every country. Something tells me it is not enough for a person to survive, even in China.

No? The living conditions in China are rapidly improving, and the number of impoverished is rapidly decreasing. This is intentional. It isn’t “fuck these people,” there are still underdeveloped rural areas that are still being uplifted, though the worst among them were fixed (see The Metamorphosis of Yuangudui).

Yeah but didn’t the Communists take over in like 1949 or something? So it took them 31 years to actually start caring about poor people, is what you’re saying? Also are you sure that this wasn’t due to the increase of wealth due to American corporations outsourcing all thier manufacturing to China? I mean it seems like a bit of a conicidence that poverty in China drastically decreases when the country becomes far less communist and far more corportized.

Again, no, China was extremely poor in 1949. It was coming out of World War II and a bloody civil war, and it also was a mostly agrarian country. And no, Reform and Opening Up was not soley responsible for that wealth, industrialization and social programs like free healthcare and education already existed under Mao.

As capitalism monopolizes, it is compelled to expand outward in order to fight falling rates of profit by raising absolute profits. The merging of bank and industrial capital into finance capital leads to export of capital, ie outsourcing. This process allows super-exploitation for super-profits, and is known as imperialism.

In the People’s Republic of China, under Mao and later the Gang of Four, growth was overall positive but was unstable. The centrally planned economy had brought great benefits in many areas, but because the productive forces themselves were underdeveloped, economic growth wasn’t steady. There began to be discussion and division in the party, until Deng Xiapoing’s faction pushing for Reform and Opening Up won out, and growth was stabilized:

Deng’s plan was to introduce market reforms, localized around Special Economic Zones, while maintaining full control over the principle aspects of the economy. Limited private capital would be introduced, especially by luring in foreign investors, such as the US, pivoting from more isolationist positions into one fully immersed in the global marketplace. As the small and medium firms grow into large firms, the state exerts more control and subsumes them more into the public sector. This was a gamble, but unlike what happened to the USSR, this was done in a controlled manner that ended up not undermining the socialist system overall.

China’s rapidly improving productive forces and cheap labor ended up being an irresistable match for US financial capital, even though the CPC maintained full sovereignty. This is in stark contrast to how the global north traditionally acts imperialistically, because it relies on financial and millitant dominance of the global south. This is why there is a “love/hate” relationship between the US Empire and PRC, the US wants more freedom for capital movement while the CPC is maintaining dominance.

Fast-forward to today, and the benefits of the CPC’s gamble are paying off. The US Empire is de-industrializing, while China is a productive super-power. The CPC has managed to maintain full control, and while there are neoliberals in China pushing for more liberalization now, the path to exerting more socialization is also open, and the economy is still socialist. It is the job of the CPC to continue building up the productive forces, while gradually winning back more of the benefits the working class enjoyed under the previous era, developing to higher and higher stages of socialism.

I just find that when you have to bend what those facts and statistics actuallly say in order to whitewash the reputation of a totalitarian government that doesn’t give two shits about poor people to be completely disengenuous, and it makes me think tankies are a bunch of pampered self-rightous know-it-alls who’ve never actually been in the real world and would be the first persons to freak out if they actually were living under the totalitarian governments they suck off.

I’m not bending any facts or statistics, the fact is that you have no idea what you’re talking about and it’s abundantly clear to anyone that has actually researched the topic. The casual homophobia at the end really seals the deal.

I mean, China sucks. The soviet union sucked. I don’t know why people defend those governments.

People defend them because they don’t and didn’t suck, simple as that.