Reddit reviews China's Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization (Cornell Studies in Political Economy)

Hello. I have been living in China for a couple of years now, and I would definitely say it is socialist. Very often though, people educated in radical politics in the developed capitalist countries have an idea in their head like "Socialism means everything is a perfect Utopia." Sometimes they even imagine a world where you just push buttons on a device like a Star Trek replicator and whatever you want is instantly created. If that is what you imagine socialism to be, then no, China isn't socialist, nor has socialism ever existed except in people's imaginations.

But if you were to compare Lenin's NEP to China today, then I would say China is much, much more socialist than Russia was in the 1920s. Very few people ever dispute Russia at this time was a revolutionary socialist country worth supporting, but in fact, it was even less socialist than China is today.

Academically speaking, if you would like to read something deconstructing the "China is capitalist" narrative, I'd recommend the book China's Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization by Roselyn Hsueh. There is some other literature I could also recommend, but this is one of the better books. Basically, what those in the West think of as a transition to capitalism in China never really happened. What happened was the form of the economic control was changed.

I often tell people, all you have to do to realize the Communist Party is in charge of the economy here is to look at all the buildings. There was even an article recently about it in a Western news source (can't recall the name of it, I apologize), talking about how China is building more skyscrapers than any country in the world. They even basically hint in the article that it isn't the market doing this. All this construction is happening at the direction of the government, and it is definitely not market driven activity. The government is expecting large amounts of people to move from the countryside into the cities, and they want to be able to handle this large movement of people. It actually costs them money, and in some places, these buildings are sitting empty, because the anticipated movement of people didn't happen (they are super cheap apartments though).

So in short, if your idea of "socialism" necessarily includes utopia, then no, China isn't socialist (no country ever has been either). If your idea of socialism is that that a communist/socialist party is in charge of running the economy, then yes, China is socialist. More socialist than Lenin's NEP ever was.

By your standard, the closest realization of socialism was China in the 1970's when it had one of, if not the lowest, rate of income equality in the world (according to the Gini Co-efficient). If equality is our only standard, it was virtually achieved in China, but there were still hundreds of millions living in 'extreme poverty.' Even in its revisionist periods, the Soviet Union had lower than global average growth rates while having the highest living standards (compared to countries at similar income levels) because an absolute majority of state profit was put back in society. This greater than average equality (and substantial prosperity with it) was clearly not enough, nor would 'total equality' (or zero surplus profit) have been better. To be clear, socialism is a synthesis of many factors (working class rule, central planning, intensive productivity growth, wage scaling, non-fractional full employment, comprehensive social welfare) of institutions, not a single value standard.

If you want an introductory, but dynamic analysis of 'Chinese market socialism,' I recommend reading China's Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization (2011) by Roselyn Hseuh.