I’m sure plenty of other posters here are regular readers of Cracked.com. So probably many of you read this week’s article about how this Chinese multi-millionaire named Huang Qiaoling built a life-sized replica of the White House in his back yard, along with a scaled down replica of Mount Rushmore and the Washington Monument. Because why not?
I can think of a reason why not. Isn’t China still technically a communist country? Doesn’t Huang worry that some local official from the Ministry of Smashing the Capitalist Oppressors will decide to make an example of him? It’s not like the Chinese government is widely recognized for its commitment to individual freedom of expression.
China has changed, and is still changing. It is a very odd form of communism being practiced there now. But then again, they were all rather odd forms of the basic concept. I think the only vestige of communism that the leadership cares about now is their exclusive control of the government. Rich capitalists erecting monuments in their backyard is no threat to that.
But doesn’t the ongoing legitimacy of their regime based on the belief that communism is the best way? Capitalism has all kinds of obvious benefits going for it. If people are allowed to show off the rewards of capitalism, won’t the masses start wondering is maybe communism isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? And if communism isn’t desirable, then what justification is there for all the power the government holds?
It’s tradition in China. They’ve never had democracy. Things are working out now, so there’s less threat to the regime. Even the people working in horrendous conditions are in many ways better off than they had been before. But the problems associated with capitalism that you mention may become a growing problem. But in China right now, I’m guessing that opulent success is an incentive for the working class. When the growth there slows down, it’s likely things will change. But in the mean time the government has found benefit from the relaxation of government control, and they believe to some extent they can rein it all in when things go sour.
I don’t remember the exact quote, but essentially the current Chinese PM when asked by the CEO of GM if they were now embracing capitalism responded something like, “If it works, we will do it, and call it communism”.
I’m far from an expert of Chinese culture or politics, but that seems unlikely to me. The Chinese government bases its legitimacy on the fact that it’s the government of China. It maintains its hold because enough of the people in the country (particularly the people who have the money and power) are sufficiently happy with their lives that they aren’t clamoring for the government’s overthrow. Whether that government functions along communist or capitalist lines is probably not terribly significant to most of the people in China, so long as it functions.
On the one hand, the Chinese government has been actively encouraging capitalism in the country for many years now, and their system is no longer Communist in anything but name. What they have, totalitarian government with capitalist economics, in fact amounts to fascism.
On the other hand, neither the Washington Monument, Mount Rushmore, nor the White House, are symbols of capitalism. If Huang Qiaoling thinks that they are, he is a fool. But perhaps he just admires the USA and/or its Constitution, which is quite another matter. Those things are symbols of the USA and its governmental system. The USA also happens to operate with a capitalist economic system, and some Americans take pride in that (despite the fact that Americans neither invented nor deliberately chose capitalism), but there is no necessary connection between capitalism and the American form of government. Nothing in the US Constitution rules out the possibility that the USA might develop a communist (or some other) economic system at some time, yet retain both its democracy and its pride in those symbols of its nationhood. By the same token, the recent history of China suggests that there is no direct incompatibility between capitalism and an undemocratic, totalitarian system of government. (Although I do wonder if China is going to be able to remain politically stable for very much longer. Not only does it have a huge mass of poor people whose situation is getting worse, but, even more significantly, it now has quite a large rich, educated elité with virtually no access to political power. That looks like a recipe for revolution to me.)