The Communist Party of China (CPC) turned 100 this July 1st, and with it came a flurry of coverage from US media companies and American socialst activist who celebrated and showed awe for the country that only thirty years ago was one of the world’s poorest countries. Even at just a journalistic coverage level, this celebratory aura seemed to be misplaced for a country that is still largely autocratic and is still under investigation for crimes against humanity targeted at the Uighurs of North-Western China. Combined with this were also the many posts of rancor and resentment that many American youth chose to show just a few days later on July 4th, a usually hollow but still patriotic holiday that stands as an almost last remnant of a unified American cultural identity. It was on that day of July 4th when I contemplated as a child of immigrants about what had brought us here in a reality where many youth chose to praise the anniversary of an authoritarian party rather than the Independence of the country that birthed the oldest still remaining democracy. My takeaway was straight forward: today's youth, who are more supportive of socialism than past generations, are terribly ill-informed of the realities of “communist” China. 

For the many socialist youth who have moved further to the left, hearing about the Communist Party’s supposed abolition of rural poverty and the freedom of some 100 million people in rural China, can sound very persuasive. Even if we accept China’s clever strategy of setting a lower poverty threshold of about $1.70 US dollars a day compared to the world bank’s global poverty threshold of $1.90, China’s current existence and their supposed socialist status still loom over the US. Is China’s own status and existence as the world's second largest superpower proof that a second way exists outside of neo-liberal capitalism? No, for in fact many of the same tendencies that brought the US to wealth and power are more than clear in the project of the People’s Republic of China. 

Thirty years ago, China was one of the world's poorest nations. Since the 1970s, China’s economy has doubled in size about every eight years as a result of the economy’s vast foreign investment, low wages, and high household savings due to a non-existent safety net for workers. 

For a self proclaimed socialist country, these kinds of markers seem far from what the founders of the Chinese Communist Party would deem Marxist or anything against the bourgeoisie and for the establishment of a classless society. This is because the Chinese Communist Party is not really communist at all but rather more nationalist and fascist than it has ever been. China, however, still wants to keep the mantle of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” because it safeguards the legitimacy of the insular communist party and state. Chinese economic growth has always been perpetually motivated by an opening up to capitalistic policies and self investment. China today produces more new billionaires faster than anywhere else in the world and has been the world’s biggest exporter of goods since 2009.

General Secretary Xi Jinping has long fought to protect China’s system of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” a phrase that originates from China’s prior paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. A groundbreaking leader who used this phrase as a euphemism for the introduction of free-market solutions to China’s failing planned economy during the 1980s and 1990s. In 2017, Xi Jingping enshrined his collected philosophy and thought into the Communist Party’s Constitution, largely adapting the idea of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” This addition made it so a collective 89 million Chinese party members were now required to read and study Xi’s ideas entitled “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” Of the policy principles laid out in his collected essays and philosophy, very little communist and socialist ideology can actually be found. Instead, we find principles like “ensuring party leadership over all work” and “upholding absolute party leadership over the people’s forces” with only begrudging mentions of socialist values and ensuring democratic rule, something which only a hasty view of the CPC’s 70 year rule over China dispoves. 

Xi’s Policy Principles

1. Ensuring Party leadership over all work

2. Committing to a people-centered approach

3. Continuing to comprehensively deepen reform

4. Adopting a new vision for development

5. Seeing that the people run the country

6. Ensuring every dimension of governance is law-based

7. Upholding core socialist values

8. Ensuring and improving living standards through development

9. Ensuring harmony between human and nature

10. Pursuing a holistic approach to national security

11. Upholding absolute Party leadership over the people’s forces

12. Upholding the principle of “one country, two systems” and promoting national reunification

13. Promoting the building of a community with a shared future for mankind

14. Exercising full and rigorous governance over the Party

(Source)

The result of this autocratic rule is a country that instead of implementing any real socialist policies supports only a small number of independent Chinese firms and foreign investors who in exchange for devaluing the Chinese yuan, permit the dubious sharing of information with the communist party. The outcomes of this are consequently similar to those of any capitalist country in the West, but even more dramatic due to China’s own reliance on a small number of firms who now rival the government itself. Just a year since the start of the pandemic, China's richest 2,000 people have accumulated $1.5 trillion US dollars, making the total number of billionaires increase from 521 to 878 — surpassing the number of billionaires in the US. Not only is inequality actually worse in China than in the US according to the Gini index, but China today is the largest surveillance state in the world. China tracks most of its citizens through apps on their phones and through public facial recognition cameras located in urban areas. It has created a point system for good citizens to manipulate their civilians into self-submission and obedience. The worst aspect of this surveillance state is not just how it forces Chinese citizens to live without a semblance of ideological privacy and freedom of speech but also that it marginalizes anyone who doesn’t outright support the party by denying them basic rights. The right to board a plane, take high speed rail, place your child in a rigorous school are all endangered if you don’t comply with China’s idea of what a “good citizen” is.

Despite all of this, there are still many who choose to support China not because of its actual ascendency over social issues but rather because of America's deficiencies. American Democracy may not be going through its best period but to compare its health to a one party state that terrorizes its citizens and that manipulates its economy to enrich a few elites is a travesty. In no quantifiable way however is China a more equal, prosperous, or liberated country than the US; to say so would be to ignore the suffering and incarnation of many Chinese citizens who have fallen prey to the Chinese regime and to pay little respect to the past and future generation of soldiers and activist who have fought to keep this country free and make this union ever more perfect.