How on earth can you possibly claim that when China was a peasant society that was dicked over for a hundred years by western powers addicting them to opium? Obviously their careful planning and industrialization strategy is working.
There is no careful planning. Just take a look at the waste, the debts and the rapid policy changes. It is more like industrial Darwinism at scale. The main fuel was mainly WTO , export and slavery labor. The industrialization in my opinion is a by product of that process.
- China had cheaper labor. They also have/had slave labor. Cheaper labor != slave labor. And China’s slave labor is a tiny proportion of their total labor and probably not comparable to American slave labor (ie prisoners).
But today, China’s is one of the more expensive labor forces in Asia and yet it continues to dominate manufacturing because of the incredible supply chain they’ve setup and the skill and expertise they have.
- “The debts” - That’s a bit rich considering the U.S. is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world. And debts are not inherently bad, so I’m not sure what your point is. In fact, it’s essential for a growing entity.
- “The Wastes” - Any marginally ambitious effort will have failures. One needs to look at the aggregate, and China, which has pulled a record number of people out of poverty in record time is by all measures had one of the most successful outcomes.
- “The fuel was WTO” - I’m not sure what the complaint is here. Free trade under the WTO has made nearly every nation in the world immensely more wealthy than they would have been otherwise. And yes, this includes China. But it also includes the U.S. which is the richest society in the history of this planet, and until a few months ago was increasing its lead over China. It’s likely the attacks on the WTO and free trade in general by the current U.S. administration will isolate it from world trade and help China close the gap in GDP instead.
- “export” - Yes, an export economy made China richer. On the flip side, it also made Americans immensely richer. Now, the fact that Americans chose to spend that wealth by concentrating it among the richest members of its nation is not a choice China is responsible for.
- “rapid policy changes” - Thisnis not a bad thing as long as the policy changes are thoughtful changes in response to actual changes in our knowledge, unlike whatever the F the U.S. is doing right now.
This is a highly propagandized view of China. Their industrial strategy was to get western capitalists to support industrializing the country by offering cheaper labor, but without surrendering control of the country to them, but now wages have risen quite substantially and their country is industrialized.
The western capitalists are now pissed that china didn't "liberalize" and let them take control of the country and are attempting to retaliate. This is why you have imbibed this propaganda that they created.
>The western capitalists are now pissed that china didn't "liberalize" and let them take control of the country and are attempting to retaliate. This is why you have imbibed this propaganda that they created.
And this is surely a well balanced opinion and not one shaped by highly ideological forces...
There is nothing particularly wrong with what OP is saying, with the deflationary price wars happening it's very clear they rely on open exports markets to stave off unemployment against their insufficient domestic demand. That itself is only a possibility in a world of free trade fostered in USA, not in a world of mercantalism pre 1945. The ironic thing is that they themselves are trying to suppress the development of India next up in the value-chain.
Anyways, Chinese economists themselves agree for the urgent need to shift to consumption today rather than double down on manufacturing, something that should have done decades ago like Western economists have been urging.
I imagine you'd point out that the Qing collaborated to some extent with the imperialists, and that's why the collaborationist monarchy needed to be overthrown, something the nationalists and the communists agreed on.
In America, the (false but popular) narrative is that the reason for the revolution was the British tried to tax us on tea, and that was enough to overthrow their regime lol There were plenty of loyalists in America too.
That's one factor, but really, the Qing themselves being considered foreign minority (Manchu) that enacted a highly authoritarian and regimented society that forced cultural customs to the majority, then didn't have the strength or success to justify such oppresive policies probably had more to do with it. And then you've got famine, increasing banditry, corruption and then you're ripe for the loosing the mandate of heaven. Most of this has to do with failures of domestic policy than foreign intervention.
In any case with Opium, Qing estimates themselves only measured around 1% of the population to engaged with the drug, and domestic production actually became more competive than imports at around the 1900s. Nor was the average peasant actually able to realistically afford opium at the time. A large moral panic yes, but USA probably consumes more drugs as a percentage of the population today.
Even with regards to trade, the problem is that Qing had basically no idea or control over any of their finances. Many historians today believe that opium was not really the most signficant factor in heavy trade deficit, but a wider issue of domestic artisans being unable to compete against cheap mass manufactured foreign goods, but we don't know because the Qing didn't even know themselves.
That is to say, it's more accurate to say that Chinese peasants were being dicked over by the Qing (and the Ming beforehand), and foreign imperialism was the symptom, rather than cause of their structural problems. They were authoritarian, corrupt, could not modernize, didn't have control of their finances, all of these factors would have led to their collapse regardless of foreign actions, only that foreign actions revealed the extent of the rot.
