Are there any specific solutions being proposed? This just seems to repeat the need for state action. What do they expect the state to do? I agree it seems reasonable to get wages up, but if that’s not on the table then I’m not sure what they’re expecting.

Is this too much of a radical idea?

Whoa whoa whoa, but if China does that, how are they going to get called a Big Boy by the IMF and Kissinger’s acolytes? You’re forgetting what really matters here. Mammon demands his share.

I have an idea though: how about we raise the wages of the working people so they have the purchasing power to actually buy these products at a price that pay the workers well? Is this too much of a radical idea?

This is a puzzling comment, like this is an attempt to gaslight the socialists and marxist community into accepting mainstream neoliberal theory. What you want is the very western based idea that you just give money to people, they’ll buy stuff and economy grows.

This is not how the capitalist economy works according to Marxist theory to begin with and arguing just based on the authority of the consensus is futile, I don’t know what you’re expecting. Marxists will not applaud “red painted” neoliberal reforms by massaging it with saying its about “giving money to workers” because this is only a part of the broader discourse in China.

What is at stake is not just giving money to the “poor” so they can “consume”. That is dishonest. The current mainstream push if of complete reform of Chinese long term economic strategy in favor of western led, consumer based mainstream economics. I give many examples of this below.

This is probably the biggest real threat from the US at this point and where they’re actually winning the ideological war. The economic debate in Chinese mainstream involves a dangerous amount of realy bad neoliberal policies and reforms that are far more destructive in the long term.

You can read some of what their cheerleaders say.

Zhou Tianyong’s economic reform agenda - Former Central Party School economist says dismantling institutional constraints is China’s ONLY way toward medium-high growth and avoiding poverty.

Zhou Tianyong is Director of the National Economic Engineering Laboratory at Dongbei University of Finance & Economics and Director of the Economic Accounting and Innovative Development Committee, China Society of Economic Reform (CSER). He is also former Deputy Director of the Institute of International Strategic Studies, Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (National Academy of Governance).

According to Zhou’s projections, China could maintain an average annual growth rate of 5.5% between 2025 and 2035—yet provided only bold structural reforms are carried out. These include fully removing household registration barriers to population mobility, reforming land and housing markets by making (especially rural) land-use rights tradable and mortgageable, directing the majority of income from rural land transfers to farmers, introducing private capital as the dominant stakeholder in state-owned enterprises, and increasing in the share of wages and household disposable income in GDP.

V. There is No Other Way but Reform to Achieve Long-term Medium-High Growth

3- Implement land and housing reform to make land-use rights tradable and mortgageable Legal entities and individuals should be permitted to engage in transactions, pricing, equity participation, leasing, mortgaging, and inheritance involving land-use rights. Both primary and secondary markets for urban and rural land should be opened to facilitate such activity. At the same time, land-use regulations and construction planning should be adjusted to reflect evolving social needs and align closely with the market.

Full registration, rights confirmation, and certificate issuance shall be implemented for houses built on land with usage rights held by natural persons and legal entities in both urban and rural areas.

The current system restricting market transactions of urban and rural land, as well as rural residential properties, should be reformed to establish a competitive land and housing market. Market access should be broadened, pricing mechanisms aligned with market forces, and land and housing assets made tradable and eligible for mortgage.

4- Implement household registration and state sector reform The share of state-owned assets in total capital should be reduced from 40% in 2023 to below 20%. Alternatively, reforms could follow the Temasek model by using profit margins as the primary metric for SOE performance. Another approach would be to adopt asset profitability as the core evaluation criterion, with most SOEs required to meet or exceed the average return on total capital. For non-monopoly SOEs, mixed-ownership reform could also be expanded to introduce private capital, which is more efficient, as the dominant stakeholder.

6. Demand-side institutional reform The share of investment by the state sector—including state-owned non-financial enterprises and government spending on infrastructure and public facilities—should be reduced from 56% to 25%, while the share of investment from the non-state sector should be increased from 44% to 75%.

Bonus reading: Chinese economy hinges on market reform & rule of law, NOT monetary or fiscal policy, says Zhang Weiying

“It is the marketization and development of non-state sectors, rather than the strong power of government and the state sector, that have driven the Chinese economy to grow fast and to be increasingly innovative. If China wants to sustain its economic performance, it must stay on the way to continuing marketization. Otherwise, China will fall into stagnation,” Zhang wrote in the Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies in 2019.

Again I have to point out, you’re making this hill to die on what “China needs to do” but without realizing you’re only sharing this hill with neoliberal western ghouls, Chinese compradors and old time Dengist hardliners who pander to the lowest class(imo they deserve extremely critical support for only some of these policies) while advocating the absolute complete destruction of the current CPC direct influence over the economy. They have all combined abandoned(at best) the communist goal decades ago.

Other famous Chinese economists have shared the same pleas for “reform”, some more extreme than others, giving with the “left hand” i.e improving working some aspects of the lower class spending while taking with right hand i.e further diminishing the size of the public sector and the CPC’s control of the economy. They say so openly, its all in the name of the market. Do you not see this at all?

Now you go do that in the name of “consumption” nonsense and then come back 10-15 years later with a bankrupt state with no political power to actualy continue giving out this money to the poor because the capitalists will continue to push for further neoliberal reforms but now they actualy own everything, you have nothing else to cut or reform away except these same handouts. Congratulations. The CPC finaly conquered the doomers and achieved what the Chinese liberals want, to become Europe in 1975 lol. No lessons learned.

I have an idea though: how about we raise the wages of the working people so they have the purchasing power to actually buy these products at a price that pay the workers well? Is this too much of a radical idea?

i mean if we’re wishcasting here it would be also fixed even better by shifting back to a full command economy lol

Well there’s no RSS subscription for your posts and I’m not sorting from old to new on your profile, so to keep up I need you and the other 4 doomers who write minimally-sourced essays about China & anti-Zionist resistance to collect your thoughts into a Substack with references to your past misadventures + grudges TYSM

It is curious that the Chinese state is willing to pursue many forms of macroeconomic policy but seems to avoid some of the more basic socialist policies like working rights and wages.

Hell, the declaration of homes to be “for living, not for speculation” and curtailing the autonomy of the capitalist class seem to suggest that some forms of class politics are alive in Beijing.

Is this some neoliberal erosion of imagination and class struggle in the CPC or is there some justification from their part? Is that justification one that holds up to scrutiny?

Competition is a market mechanism. How is “excess competition” distorting the market mechanisms? It IS the market mechanisms. External controls to curb this would be the actual distortion of market forces. What they are missing is that is GOOD. Market forces are not sacred or pure or benevolent or pro-social, they should be externally controlled. Why is China so afraid of saying this outright, instead framing their external controls as inherent to market systems? They seem incapable of criticizing the market - it cannot fail only be failed. If the market causes some kind of problem, it actually didn’t do that - it was the distorted fake market! We need to restore the rightful market and all will be right in the heavens!

How is this different than “crony capitalism” shit? It isn’t.

I guess this is what happens when your ideology demands you worship the markets as sacred, but you also are mad the market is causing corporate rate of profit to fall. The contradiction between loving the market itself but hating what the market does. Have these people even read Marx? It doesn’t feel like it. They would be talking about the falling rate of profit and how to transition out of a market economy if they had, instead of ways to band-aid over contradictions to keep the zombie market running.

I don’t support consumption subsides. The Government could guarantee everyone a basic job which pays $600/m for 40 hour work weeks (for example) so that private sector is forced to pay this much. Ik you agree with this too.

I do not think the idea that people should have purchasing power to buy goods is anti Marxist at all. Feels like the Twitter discourse about New York wage increase being bad because it increases private profit. Yea no shit, capitalists earn what they spend and workers spend what they earn etc. If you don’t want private profit, promote Government spending on productive investments then.

Many Marxist economists support “consumption led” growth, they always point out the issue is always sound finance neoliberal mindset and class . And China isn’t invulnerable to such mindset either given diverse views among its leadership.

Western leftists will soyface over stimmy checks in their countries, their only complaint being how low it was. But no one dare want a third world country to augment purchasing power (as I said previously, I don’t support stimmies even in third world, esp one off stimmies). Give people jobs, give workers more leverage over capitalists by weakening the threatening mechanism of unemployment. And those who can’t work must be provided with basic income. All these should be rights.

When you have a mixed economy there has to be some profit. This kind of competition promotes long hours and low pay for workers. That’s the main problem I see.