this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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Good article (if quite naive in how it assumes that the US could just emulate China's monetary policies, as if the US government wasn't under the control of a financial-corporate oligarchy), but it kind of reminds me of a thought i've been having on and off for a while, which is one of the few things that i think the Chinese government may be making a potentially big mistake with. Namely, i fear it is being too opaque toward its own people about the policies that have created the success that we see today.
Not in the liberal sense of "the CCP hiding the truth from the people", because these policies are not actually hidden as we can see. Even a person from outside of China can uncover and understand them with some research. But rather that the government is not doing enough to explain and advertise the kinds of policies it has implemented that have led to the massive and ongoing improvement in the standard of living of the Chinese people, and the polices that enable China to maintain such comforts as healthy and extremely affordable food (especially compared to countries like the US where food prices seem totally out of control).
For instance, if you were to ask the average Chinese person whether they have price controls on food items, would they be able to answer correctly? Would they know that it is because of communist policies like price controls that they are doing so well or do they think that it is thanks to "opening up" and the market mechanisms as the liberal camp (which i'm sure exists in China as well) would like people to believe. Or if you were to ask them if money printing is a good policy or not, what would they say? I genuinely don't know, i would be curious to know how well informed the average person is about these things in China.
The danger of people not knowing that it is precisely these communist policies have led to the good lives they enjoy is that they may fall prey to malicious actors telling them that it's actually the more liberal policies that did this and tricking them into believing that by abolishing things like price controls they could have it even better. For the time being i don't see this happening because the government in China enjoys a high level of trust, and it has a fairly good handle on keeping troublemakers and foreign propagandists out of the public media sphere, but in the long term, especially with the connections that Chinese academia has with western universities that are positively infested with liberal thought, this may create problems one day.
Should the Chinese government not start to "advertise" how well their policies are working, to explain and educate the people about the kinds of economic tools that they are using and why? Is China's government being too passive when it comes to propaganda work and socialist ideological education thereby creating an opening for the enemies of socialism? Shouldn't there be more Mao-style political public awareness campaigns? Or would this be counter-productive as it would be viewed as too heavy-handed government propaganda?
Or maybe my entire line of thinking on this is too western and i'm just projecting what i think westerners would do in the same situation, maybe i'm just missing the point about how Chinese society works...
I agree that China's government is being too passive about the "why" behind its wins. A lot of the people I've talked to on Xiaohongshu don't have a firm grasp on these how's and why's, nor do they generally have much of a connection to communism in general. The government is obviously doing a good job governing, but they're not doing a good job educating.
Yeah. I have the impression sometimes that maybe being a bit more heavy handed in propaganda may not be such a bad thing. For instance, one thing i see in many of the older Chinese people is that perhaps they may not have necessarily a very deep understanding of the theory, but what did stick are political slogans that they still know by heart, or political songs, operas, etc. from the Cultural Revolution that they still enjoy singing to this day.
I think art in particular is an excellent vehicle for this sort of thing because it sticks with people and i wish China would have more explicitly political art, not just from independent artists but actual government sponsored initiatives. And it doesn't always need to be subtle, it's ok to be a bit direct so that everyone gets the message. Sure the West would make fun of it and say shit like "look how the Chinese government is brainwashing the people", but so what? Fuck the West, who cares what they say?
And in some cases art can actually lead people to take an interest in communism. I don't know if i would be a communist today if i had not taken an interest when i was young in Soviet and Irish revolutionary music which led me to want to read and learn about their history.
Iirc, at least according to this, China is attempting to be a cultural power by 2035. I reckon that in undertaking this goal, some if the things you've mentioned might be getting addressed in the near future.
Of course these are just plans and statements for now, but I have trust in the PRC to fulfill its goals as they have steadily in the past decade.
I'm glad that China is already on track to becoming a cultural powerhouse, and as always, they can do more. I think/hope they can cement their status by 2035. Possibly even by 2030, at how China does things.
I keep a personal and mental list of hundreds of tv shows, books, movies and bands I want to watch, read or experience one day, and alot of Chinese donghua and tv series and movies are on my list.