Is China a Communist Country? answer by Justin Ward

Source: https://www.quora.com/Is-China-a-communist-country/answer/Justin-Ward

this article is owned by the respective writer, I do not own, or write this article

maybe in a week or two I will translate this article in Indonesian

demi pengetahuan! for the sake of knowledge! propter scientiam!

I have to disagree with the assessments given by most people, which seem to stem from a superficial understanding of the Chinese system at best or a deep misunderstanding at worst.

I think the analysis that people have made is based on the understanding of China's economy purely in the terms they are familiar with, which is to say that in Western countries, or in the U.S. at least, there is this idea that state intervention in the economy is a necessary evil compromise to the ideal of laissez faire.  

But in China, the market is seen as the compromise, and state planning is still the backbone. Reform is and has always been mainly a means to increase trade and attract foreign capital to China. Now rather than going away, the state firms are going global.

Any good academic discussion begins by defining the terms used in the debate. It depends primarily on what you consider communism to mean, which is a page in and of itself.

First, I will look at the meanings of communism most relevant to the discussion of whether or not China is "communist." Then, I will look a how the Chinese system relates to each of these definitions.

Symbol of Chinese Communist Party (CCP)

Possible meanings of "communism"

• Communism as simple state control  of the means of production.
• Communism in the traditional Marxist sense, i.e. a classless society at  the highest state of socialism
• Communism in the Stalinist sense, i.e. a command economy
• Communism as the centralized political rule of a Communist party.
• Socialism/Communism as a welfare state.

1. State control

If we are categorizing China as Communist or non-Communist based on state control of the means of production, there is some basis for saying that China is communist. Though production is no longer collectivized, there are a great number of industries, most of the largest ones, that are wholly or partly state-owned. These industries include the banks, all major natural resources companies, the media, the steel industry, utilities, ground and air transportation, etc. Many of these are publicly traded corporations, but the government still holds the most shares. 

The Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 26,  2011:

According to a new report for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressional review group, state-owned entities of one kind or another, account for about 50% of China’s rapidly expanding gross domestic product.

The WTO refuses to recognize China's free market status, though China urgently wants this. China is currently vulnerable to a lot of punitive tariffs because there are lots of gray areas with regard to subsidies.

Add to this the fact that the state puts its finger into everything else here, and just through controlling the banks, it can exert pressure on nearly all elements of economic activity through the issuance (or denial) of credit. Then there are ways that the government can directly control industry through regulations, which are often much more iron-fisted than any of the like in the United States. For example, the central government forced a massive shutdown of outdated industries simply through regulation.

Then there is the issue of land. All land in the PRC belongs to the government and, at most, citizens have lease and use rights over their land. So if state control is the sole criterion by which you judge whether the PRC is communist or not, then I would say the answer is partially yes.

2. Egalitarianism 

If we are questioning whether China is the final realization of Marx's vision of a classless communist workers' utopia, then the answer is an obvious no, but I don't think even China's leaders would try to claim that China is really existing communism at its highest state. If they did, they would be called delusional.

If you look at what is being written about ideology by the Party's political leadership, most are of a consensus that China is in the "initial stages of socialism and will remain there for a long time." In fact, I'm almost certain that is a direct quote pulled from a translation of People's Daily that I read.

Whether or not China's current Communist Party leadership really views a classless society as their ultimate goal,  it is a core part of their ideology, at least in rhetoric, even if some of the leaders are more interested in retaining their own power rather than creating a better future in line with the vision Marx had.

I think most of China's leaders see China as eventually developing toward a fairer society, and, like leaders anywhere, they have differences on how to get there. Some are populists, while others support big business. 

Indices of inequality are steadily rising generally in China, but the dynamics of incomes in China are very complicated. I recently read an article that said that the rural-urban income gap narrowed significantly over the past year. Also migrant wages and farmers' wages are on the rise. At the same time, you have the creation of multibillionaires existing alongside this, so while all boats seem to be rising in China right now, some are definitely rising much faster than the others.

But this is all according to plan, sort of. China once embraced rigid egalitarianism under Mao, which was stifling to development. When the Reform and Opening-Up Policy started, the idea was to let a certain "vanguard" of people get rich, which would drive the development of the rest of China. As Deng Xiaoping said, "To get rich is glorious." This is something I see as a kind of Chinese trickle-down economics. And considering the increase in inequality, I think it is about as effective as trickle down economics was in the United States.

3. Command Economy

There is a good argument for China's status as a communist country based solely on the extent of planning in its economy. After reform and opening-up, China implemented a "bird cage economy." The metaphor was that the market was the bird being allowed to fly freely, but with a "cage" of economic planning surrounding it so that it doesn't fly away or get out of control or poop where it shouldn't. 

So while there is free market operation in China ( and boy is China ever a market!) it is not the same as capitalism anywhere in the world.

- The government owns all the banks as I previously mentioned, which enables it to directly control lending, a tool the United States doesn't have. The Fed can raise interest rates, which affects lending but that is something different altogether from issuing loans directly

- Aside from lending, the government directly affects the market through various means. For example, the government stores grains and all kinds of other food and it even has reserves of frozen pork, so should a shortage appear, it can release stock and prevent rapidly rising prices. Also the government might tax some things while subsidizing others to "guide" the market in certain directions (which is done in the U.S., but not to such an extent.) The government also sets prices for certain commodities, such as gasoline, which is kept artificially low, helping to control inflation.

- The economy is heavily managed by two main entities: the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), which is the primary economic planner, and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Advisory Commission (SASAC), which supervises all Central State-owned Enterprises. Though they may not have absolute control over all economic activity in China as the predecessors to these organizations, they still have the power to influence the economy in a way that no institution in Western capitalism can.

-Economic planning is guided by informed decisions based on detailed statistical analysis of a number of economic indicators, such as the Purchasing Managers' Index, Consumer Price Index, etc., compiled by specialized agencies like the National Bureau of Statistics and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

4. Rule of the Communist Party

Well this is a no-brainer, or so it would seem. China is indisputably ruled by a one-party Communist dictatorship. But how Communist is the party? Well, if you are looking at their Leninist-Stalinist bonafides, then you can see some connections between Chinese communists and their Russian forebears, though, as always, Chinese communists have interpreted the ideology through their own lens.

One thing that I think that is still at the core of Chinese communism, which is inherited from Stalin, is the idea of socialist voluntarism, i.e. that through the will (in this case the will of the "masses") objective conditions can be overcome. If you look at the development of high-speed rail and other projects like the Three Gorges Dam, you see this same spirit of voluntarism at work. Also, the Party will still mobilize the masses through mass campaigns as it once did under Mao.

Second, if the Party's principles may not be communist, i.e. egalitarian socialist, its organization is most definitely in line with the Leninist-Stalinist model of "democratic centralism." If you look at the organization of the party and the Party-state apparatus, you will see that there are remarkable similarities between it and the Communist Party of Russia.

Also, there are some points where Maoist theory diverges from Marxism, just as there are points where Stalinism diverges from Leninism and Leninism diverges from Marxism. The main point is that Marx saw socialism as originating from the contradictions stemming from fully developed capitalism in a country with a large working class. The assumption that the working class is supposed to be the force that carries out the revolution against capitalism is pretty core to communist ideology as originally formulated by Marx. It's doubtful Marx would call a peasant revolution in a backward feudal country a socialist revolution.

It's possible that some Party ideologues would argue that China is currently undergoing the necessary industrialization needed as the precondition for socialism and that because of a coincidence of history, the conditions were ripe for the Communist seizure of power before the objective conditions were ready for the establishment of socialism. 

So, this one is another one that is in a gray area.

5. Welfare State

China does have a welfare state, though it is not nearly as extensive as in most Western countries, on of the most obvious reasons being the problematic nature of constructing a social safety net for China's massive population. China does guarantee a basic standard of living for all its citizens, and for older citizens, it still provides the cradle-to-grave care of the "iron rice bowl" because of legacy entitlements under its former pension system.

In general the social services sector is underdeveloped, but China is making some progress in extending health care as well as retirement benefits to all its citizens. Might not be any "Communist Utopia," but it's about on par with any other developing country.

Anyways, to give a short summary of this answer is that you can't define China as communist or capitalist because those are words that have so many meanings, all of which become even more muddled once you attach the word "Chinese" to them. I think it's best just to define China's system using the words that the Chinese use themselves. It's "socialism with Chinese characteristics" or, for a more academic term, you can call it the socialist market economy. (Justin Ward)