Hello! I would like to start off by apologizing because I know a thread like this gets posted every other day and it can border on (or actually be) concern-trolling, but I wanted to get a rough survey of opinions here on a topic.
Specifically, do you have any criticisms of China's contemporary culture? Its government? What are they?
I'm of the opinion that there are a lot of low-hanging fruit in this regard, like the patriarchal social order that [whatever one might say about its status in other nations] is certainly an ongoing problem for the matter of women's liberation. I also think it's both socially backwards and bad for national security to not have gay marriage, because we're all familiar with how the US loves infiltrating student movements.
I also rather regret how the CPC seems to be trending towards expanding the role of the profit motive rather than shrinking it. See these statements:
http://en.qstheory.cn/2023-05/04/c_882761.htm
http://en.qstheory.cn/2023-05/05/c_882998.htm
Do you agree with these points? Do you have your own criticisms? Am I totally off-base? Let me know!
(btw I'm also familiar with the idea of sharing criticism with comrades but finding public criticism to be counter-productive, but I don't want to spend all day listing caveats)
Ok, so my thing is that I would say I'm a "soft" anti-Dengist, meaning that I think it has demonstrably worked and I think China is clearly still a DoP controlled by dedicated ML's, but I'm not 100% convinced it couldn't have developed along the lines of the USSR and gotten to this same point without the risk of redeveloping the bourgeois as a class. I'm sure someone who has studied China far more than me will swing by and call me a liberal or something though (and I'll deserve it lol)
I also don't quite understand why they're not more quickly moving back towards a fully planned economy, the forces of production seem plenty developed to me, and the United States has shown that they're going to move into full blown cold war (or god forbid even hot war) within the next few years, so I'm not sure how much foreign capital is even left to take in. Maybe they're waiting to have a completely self sufficient semiconductor industry or something like that?
Is that considered an "anti-Deng" stance now? I thought that was the general consensus about his reforms. They have worked, but also weren't without their own set of issues that did cause a lot of...I don't know if "backsliding" is the right word, but more tolerance of capitalist behaviour. We could always wonder about "what if" but we could also wonder what if Mao invented the anti-capitalist laser that strategically targets every capitalist in the world instantly and frees everyone. It feels like pointless circlejerking to be honest. The China in the world today is the China we have, for better and worse. Thankfully, things do seem to just be getting better and better there, though obviously not at an ideal pace, but we aren't idealists, we are materialists.
And in turn, I agree with your second paragraph. They do seem to be moving very slowly towards a planned economy. I'm not sure if this is due to them being concerned about western aggression, or just believing that their economy has too much inertia to shift quickly. Of course, this could also be because the Maoists are right and they're all just evil capitalists pretending to be socialists for some reason.
I am not Chinese nor do I live in China. So my opinions are just my opinions and not based on any concrete understanding of these things.
idk, I'm not super into all the terminology surrounding everything, I thought the general consensus was that China wouldn't have reached this height without his reforms. I agree it's not worth talking about too much, although we should always analyze the past of course. I might make a post asking about their shift to a planned economy, I'd be curious for people who understand China better to explain it to me
I think some of it is liberal propaganda and Deng's reform was mainly useful for survival in capitalist encirclement, as it produced a massive degree of impoverishment for the common people early on.