They’ll absolutely disappear an oligarch without hesitating, fyi.
Is this a bad thing?
They usually come back, though, suddenly enlightened by the right path.
Yeah, Jack Ma is back, and is already up to his old ways
Why do they still have billionaires tho? I can’t imagine a reason to not tax them for 99% of their wealth, unless they’re the ones controlling the legislation.
According to the Chinese news south South China Morning News there are 81 billionaires across China’s congress, and it’s advisory board. According to Hurun Report there are 209 people across these bodies that have more than 100 million dollars. According to a variety of Chinese sources the majority of the people making up these government bodies have more than 1 million dollars. It is widely agreed China’s legislature, if not the richest, would be in second place.
To make a comparison the 50 richest people of the US congress are worth a combined 1.6 billion, and China’s top 50 are worth 95 billion. China also has a per capita amount of congress members that exceeds the US significantly in millionaires.
The richest person in US congress is Darrell Issa with 355 million The richest person in China’s congress is Zong Qinghou with 19 billion
“But what about US” is not an answer to my question. Try again.
So you didn’t fucking read what I wrote then. Great.
I suspect I read more of it than you did, if your response is doubling down.
The US is a notoriously wealthy legislature, so I used it to show that China’s is worse in that regards. I did this after giving information about the wealth of the Chinese legislature from Chinese sources.
I suspect you are barely literate if you took showing how much wealthier China’s congress is, than the US’s, as “but what about the US”, rather than a demonstration of why they have a strong billionaire class.
Good job saving it, at least you figured out your first reply was a bunch of bullshit and managed to retcon it into something resembling a coherent sentence.
The fact that you still have to add insults to it also tells me you might be projecting a tad about literacy. That’s okay though, it’s never late to educate yourself.
How are the Uyghurs doing?
Of course. Praising some of the good things China did does not mean overlooking what they’re doing to Uyghurs.
Good because forced abortions and forced sterilization is seriously messed up.
You do know they don’t give a shit about aggravating their people? Like, they do not support free speech…
Yes they do a lot, but it’s toward a dictatorship, where they DO NOT have to care about buy-in before making decisions. Most of these decisions are GOOD FOR A DICTATORSHIP, because it’s about staying in power. Billionaires are being taxed by a dictator…
I don’t know if you’re aware, but the Chinese have a leadership philosophy similar to the social contract called “mandate of heaven”. It’s been the cornerstone of Chinese leaders since the imperial dynastic days. A leader’s authority is supreme but only if they could sustain the well being of the population. The subjects are willing to look over some of the personal liberty being infringed, if the overall well being of the population is well looked after. China’s leading role in green energy did create jobs for many people. And not only that, it has a strategic purpose of weaning off of oil consumption for the country. The only reason that the global oil price did not shoot up to $200 as predicted this year is because China, the biggest oil importer, immediately stopped imports and their green energy kicked in to gear. Meanwhile, many countries are experiencing inflation and social unrest because they are too short sighted to have invested in renewable energy long ago.
Also weirdly enough, they are more capitalist than capitalist countries themselves. China do not bail out failed companies. Free market advocates will say if a company fails, it’s their fault. And yet, the same free market advocates will demand government bail out. I’m pretty sure not bailing out companies is a popular sentiment for the public.
Lastly, they have extensive capital flight controls and rein their billionaires. Meanwhile, many countries are beholden and afraid to tax the wealthy for fear that “they will leave with their wealth and businesses” (it’s not like the wealthy already did that when they offshored industries to poorer countries with very low worker rights and regulatory standards). Actually, I am more impressed with Vietnam because the government threatened to execute a billionaire who made money from defrauding clients, if that billionaire did not return half of the money. In the West, most only get a slap on the wrist with very lenient sentencing or no prosecution at all in the aftermath of the 2009 financial crisis.
I have studied China and am aware of all of this.
It has good results in some areas and has bad results in others.
Appreciate the extensive write up though!
This is not a China-praise thread, but an America-hate thread. It is being done by pointing out that an objectively shitty empire is somehow managing to do the obviously correct thing where the entire western world seems to have chosen social suicide.
Sure, doesn’t hurt to point out the “how/why”.
China has higher per capita CO2 emissions than Europe, despite a lower per capita economic output. While there has been significant investment in renewable energy recently, there is still a large amount of coal power and China has been slow to phase out fossil fuels.
In terms of income inequality by Gini coefficient, China is estimated to be in the higher 30s, substantially worse than Canada, Australia, Japan and almost every European country. China has a minimum income guarantee (unlike the USA for example), but it is very low by European standards. In terms of the number of US$ billionaires, China ranks second globally behind the US, though in terms of billionaires as share of the population does not rank as high.
The inequality has led to crazy situations. For instance, people from cities are banned from buying property in rural areas because they would price locals out of the market. However this ban also extends to institutions, which means that effectively banks (being urban) are banned from offering mortgages on rural properties which creates real problems for the locals who then can’t afford the properties anyway.
Here is the Ginni link, it isn’t updated often but China isn’t exactly topping the list
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gini-coefficient-by-country
There are a lot of things China does badly but not the ones you mentioned.
There are a lot of things China does badly but not the ones you mentioned.
Okay, but the stat you linked confirms China’s per capita emissions are pretty bad, more than double France’s for example.
As for income inequality, I was looking at the World Bank data listed here. There might be a discrepancy due to difficulty in obtaining reliable data for China.
It feels a bit like cherry picking. Europe is much closer to China than the bigger polluters like NA and Australia. And a lot of China’s pollution is because of rampant consumerism in NA and Europe amongst others.
The wealth inequality is lower than two European states and very close to others below it. China is 78 on your list, Lithuania 79 and Italy is 91.
I feel like your comment didn’t give the full picture. China isn’t exactly the worst on those fronts, especially when you take into account the manufacturing they do for foreign markets (offsetting Europe’s and NAs own emmissions), while they are also one of the few actually making an effort to go green. State repression and the rest tho, ouf. And it’s true that the numbers can’t necessarily be trusted.
Yeah that’s true and I am not excusing the emissions, but they kinda do a dual purpose of manufacturing renewable energy hardware with fossil fuels, but then using those hardware for green energy transition. That strategy paid off this year, when Trump’s war in Iran caused global oil supply restrictions. With China being the biggest importer of oil, they stopped importing and drew from their own fossil fuel stockpiles they have been building up and used the green energy to fill the rest of the requirements. The country has been preparing for such scenario (which is why China is the pioneer in renewable energy) and it proved prescient.
China also at least tax their billionaires without fear of “leaving with their business”. The state also don’t bail out failed companies that completely messed up through the company’s own fault.
This is called ‘critical support’.
And making it illegal to replace workers with ai…
Western countries, American in particular, are very short term minded. China knows not to aggravate the very same people that give them consent and social contract to be in power in the first place.
The CCP knows that if the public ever became interested in politics, they would be kicked out of power. So they do everything they can to make sure that they have no need to become interested.
Absolutely. $ today, fuck tomorrow. I was around for the outsourcing crazy 20 years ago. Cheap code but unmaintainable. When the time came to fix or upgrade the code and mahogony row was told it would be cheaper to completely rewrite the shit code than fix it, they all wondered why. Sure ai can write code, but it’s shit. Jr level on a good day. Wait till it has to be maintained or upgraded. Of course they will probably just get ai to write new shit code. The “less for you is more for me” mentality of this country (US) just pisses me off no end. When the 2% has all the money and the rest of us are dead then they find out that money is worthless… maybe they’ll wake the fuck up…. But i doubt it.
The meme in the cave where they’re like, “Sure the world was destroyed but for a while we made great returns for shareholders.”
