Cries in HS2
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You don’t buy anything but baked goods from the French
Parenti quote
If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard.
By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative.
If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology.
If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom.
A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained.
What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
Since Lemmy.world friends can’t see the Lemmygrad and Hexbear comments, it’s really weird to see the pro-commie takes not get downvoted and debated to oblivion
It’s also kind of funny, Lemmy.world gets to pretend their takes have the majority of support when they shut out dissent.
If you really like to see clowns that think they are 100% you might like to see r/austrian_economics
I value sanity too much
Reasonable
A huge W for public transport. I assume the PRC already owning the land is significantly decreasing bureaucratic cost / time, allowing for such fast advances.
In sharp contrast the US (and some European countries) keep running after tech bro “innovations” like the hyperloop rather than sticking to actually working systems. Most of them will never see a real purpose because they were never realisable in the first place or will be slimmed down to a point where conventional public transport would have been the better option. And tbh, most of them are really just bait to keep those countries in a state of “looking for alternatives” whilst their current infrastructure is rotting away. And with especially the US being a nation centered around individual transport the vision for public transport is imo clearly lacking.
Europe in general isn’t hit by that as much, seeing the benefits of current public transport solutions (at least nowadays… the 90’ and 00’ were different thanks to neoliberalism and making short term profits instead of doing long term investments), but it is hindered by the clusterfuck of nations / different railway standards. The EU is trying to manage some of it (with ETCS / ERTMS) as well as the new coupling standard (DAC) and track gauges slowly but steadily going towards 1435mm but there are still a lot of things to do such as a transition towards a standard current or even more important: unified train registration (atm a train/carriage needs to be registered for each country separately which leads to unnecessary train switches at border crossings). For example Italy requires carriages to have a fire extinguishing system whilst some other EU countries don’t or some mountainous countries require specific braking tests. Having unified safety standards would make things a lot easier.
But at the upside at least some European railway companies do have a vision. For example, the ÖBB (Austrian federal railways) plans to have high speed rail connecting the main cities as well as European alpine corridors like the Brenner, Koralm and Semmering, regional trains for distances covering abt 200km and are reachable in abt 2 to 3 hours and (sub-) urban rail for metropolitan areas. In bigger cities, they want to provide bike sharing at the stations whilst they want to make car sharing available in rural areas to help cover the last few kilometres through the mountains/woods/fields, where busses only go on a daily basis if you are lucky and the bus driver doesn’t skip your stop and take a shortcut because they believe nobody will be waiting there anyways and they might reach said vision in the next upcoming years and likely less than a decade.
So TL;DR the PRC is profiting off of their property law, their ability to centralize standards and them going the (at the moment) optimum way instead of hoping for innovation from tech bros with fancy power point presentations and zero knowledge of physics, Europe is doing alright but is a bit of a decentralised mess and the US is getting a bit distracted by “innovations” and their mantra of individual transport.
(My experience in the area mainly comes from working at a state-owned railway company and being interested in the matter in general. If there is anything to add or if I have gotten something wrong, feel free to comment.) ^-^
The hyperloop really encapsulates how car brained and isolated Americans are - even public transit should be individuals in a car alone one at a time.
I got a bunch of the new Toyota ad during my podcast today and the entire thing was a guy going on about how much he fucking loves traffic and rush hour now so he can hang out in his Toyota even longer.
FML.
Spain and France especially seem to be doing a good job building high speed rail:
This is a cool chart, but I wonder how someone could normalize this data for the size of a country, or how many miles are between its major metropoles, or something. China’s a lot bigger than most of the other countries on this list, and the HSR is concentrated in the heavily populated eastern half of the country.
For context, the total length of high speed rail in the world is 59,000km. So China, which makes up 17% of the world’s population contains 2/3 of the world’s high speed rail.
The closest comparison would be Europe, which has about the same land mass and half the population of China has around 11,000km of big speed rail.
It’d be hard to quantify, but I’m sure some statistics person could compare transportation methods, that includes speed, distance, energy usage, population, capacity, and probably a few more, per capita.
You could isolate it to a country’s top X biggest cities, and how traveling between them compares in all those metrics.
They still are saddled with profit motives for some of their lines and the “if they build it they will come” strategy isn’t working out too great for them. Several lines are in dire staights due to overbuilding and lack of ridership. Better than others of course.
Has any of this actually been built? Everybody’s got “plans.”
Elon Musk “plans” to build colonies on Mars.
Yes, this is a map of what was completed in 2018. China isn’t the US, they don’t give billions of dollars of public funds to grifters like Elon Musk, they actually build things.
As an example, China used more concrete for building projects from the years 2011-2013, than the US used in the entire 20th century.
China has built entire ghost cities, bridges, subways and malls using Tofu Dreg construction. So yes, that is technically correct. China does indeed “build things.”
The point of critical infrastructure is that it’s supposed to endure, not have to be torn down again in a couple of years because it’s unsafe to occupy or use.
Actually planning for the future if something the US can’t even fathom doing. Remember this fearmongering article from the daily mail about a “ghost” subway station in Chongqing?
Here it is now:
Western countries look at China building a city where no people are, and project waste, when in reality its just the PRC properly planning and building cities, anticipating housing and infrastructure, before they need them.
Meanwhile the US doesn’t do anything beforehand and cities become a sprawling suburb, car-centered wasteland. They let private capital seeking short-term profits build their cities, and turn the country into a wal-mart parking lot.
My general opinion on China over the past few years have evolved to “OK they aren’t perfect, but at least they seem to be trying, instead of actively making everything worse.”
Yes, this is the built status.
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Do you know which country built its railways by actual Chinese slave labour? USA.
For some reason it is always projection, even in such a completely unlikely case as this one.
Then the states should have a huge high speed rail system, since we have the largest available slave population in the world.
Do you think the PRC has high speed rail because of “slave labor?” What on Earth are you talking about?
Fuck cars, but this is not the way. Overbuilt and underfunded it has a shaky future.
This is absolutely the way. Are you anti-rail, or anti-PRC?
Caring about the long-term viability of the train system is not anti-rail you need a break from the internet.
Ah, so you’re just anti-PRC, got it.
How so?
“Overbuilt and underfunded” is unsupported and meaningless, this is showing that high speed rail is good and possible, but without actually offering any counterpoints it’s just nonsense anti-PRC drivel.
high speed train in china is fuck planes, not fuck cars.
imagine what happens when a plane ticket is half or a third of the price, and you land down town at subway station…
now the subway… that’s fuck cars.
if you think that the high speed rail in china is a net negative, i have a ghost city to sell you.
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Ableism isn’t good, comrade.
70% of Chinese Millennials are homeowners
@Alsephina @Juice Isn’t their bigger problem having too many unfinished apartments? Many more than are needed.
(And are those rates including those who own apartments that will never be completed?)
It’s true there’s a lot of unfinished apartments, and imo it’s true that’s a big problem (or a symptom of a larger issue). But I don’t think it’s unfinished apartments are a bigger problem than lack of home ownership in the West
@OsrsNeedsF2P I meant a bigger problem in China
Let’s not pertend that this is because China has socialized housing. They used to do decades ago, but it has been abolished for a long time. Although they do have affordable housing program like most of the city in the U.S.
In fact, China has one of the highest home price to income ratio (ratio of median apartment prices to median familial disposable income, expressed as years of income) in the world: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp . Chinese people will need 30 years of disposible income to purchase an apartment; compare to 3 in the U.S., 7 in Netherland, 11 in France, and 9 in U.K.
Apartments in Beijing can easily cost double than a major U.S. city, while people in Beijing earn half as much. Here is a popular real estate website listing the previously-owned property (2bedroom between 90-120 m²) on the market in Beijing: https://m.ke.com/bj/ershoufang/l2a4 most of them are around 5000k RMB, which translates to 700k USD for 2b apartments. On the other hand, Beijing median monthly salary is 1548 USD (https://teamedupchina.com/average-salary-in-beijing/#Beijing_Salary_Data_Zhilian_Zhaopin), which translates to 10$ per hour assuming a 5 day work week and 4 week work month.
The high home ownership rate is likely due to a mix of false report and saving culture. In China, parents typically have a good amount of saving to provide their child (singleton because one-child policy) a home upon their marriage etc. This also explains why Beijing rent price is much lower than major cities in the U.S., despite its high housing price.
Chinese people will need 30 years of disposible income to purchase an apartment; compare to 3 in the U.S.
Who can afford a condo with 3 years disposable income in the US? My spouse and I make above average money in a below average cost city and we couldn’t afford a condo here.
I think the definition of “disposable income” likely means the wage that reaches your bank account, i.e. wage - 401k, insurance etc.
In major city, this ratio is likely higher, but certainly no where near 30, but this data includes all of U.S. including rural areas with crazy cheap housing.
In fact, it is quite easy to get more “realistic” or “specific” statistics just by looking up the median wage and housing price in Boston, New York, Seattle, LA etc. v.s. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen etc.
If you are so eager to defend an authoritarian government, I believe it is better to present statistics with source, instead of downvoting others for no reason, or resort to your experience.
likely means the wage that reaches your bank account, i.e. wage - 401k, insurance etc
Well ain’t that a shit definition then
Also a housing bubble and real estate being one of the few investment vehicles available to regular chinese.
Hot take: Japan invented the bullet train, but China perfected it.
If perfected means they put it even where probably there wasn’t a need for it, then yes. HSR is fantastic for connecting big cities, but it’s also very expensive and sometimes China has prioritized HSR rather than regular rail, even though there wasn’t a strict need for very fast expensive trains. Sometimes slower, more frequent and cheaper low speed rail can make more sense.
It’s not bad per se, but it’s money that could be used for better purposes.
Counterpoint: HSR is far more energy efficient than air travel, which would otherwise be the preferred option because regular trains are just not fast enough for country as big as China. Even when the electricity is generated from coal, the simple physics of not needing to literally defy gravity significantly reduces the carbon footprint of the trip.
@HiddenLayer555 @dessalines There isn’t much lacking in the Japanese network.
True. Japan lead the world in high speed rail until they pretty much ran out of places to put it.
Now they are tunneling below the Japanese Alps to build a maglev connecting Tokyo to Osaka, the Tokaido Shinkansen is at capacity running 17 trains an hour during rush hours.
Literally communism.
This thing they call “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” has as much in common with Marx and Engels’ idea of Communism as a Big Mac has with a plate of hummus.
Edit: western dengists, man.
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is Marxism-Leninism applied to the PRC’s present productive forces and material conditions. They have not reached Communism, but they are firmly on their way to full socialization of the economy. The only way you could think they have abandoned Communism as a goal is if you have never read Marx, Engels, or Lenin, and therefore have never studied Historical Materialism.
The reason it’s painfully obvious that you haven’t studied Historical Materialism is because you clearly believe Communism is something that develops through decree, not degree, that the goal of Communism is to immediately socialize all production. This is absurd, and Utopian. Marx believed Socialism to come after Capitalism because Capitalism turns itself into a status ripe for socialism as markets coalesce into few monopolist syndicates, ripe for central planning. If the productive forces aren’t ready, then Communism can’t be achieved without struggles.
In Question 17 of The Principles of Communism, Engels makes this clear:
Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?
No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society.
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity.
What happened in China, is that Mao tried to jump to Communism before the productive forces had naturally socialized themselves, which led to unstable growth and recessions. Deng stepped in and created a Socialist Market Economy by luring in foreign Capital, which both smoothed economic growth and eliminated recessions. This was not an abandonment of Communism, but a return to Marxism from Ultraleft Maoism.
Today, China has over 50% of the economy in the public sector. About a 10th of the economy is in the cooperative sector, and the rest is private. The majority of the economy is centrally planned and publicly owned! Do you call the US Socialist because of the Post Office? Absurd.
Moreover, the private sector is centrally planned in a birdcage model, Capital runs by the CPC’s rules. As the markets give way to said monopolist syndicates, the CPC increases control and ownership, folding them into the public sector. This is how Marx envisioned Communism to be established in the first place! Via a DotP, and by degree, not decree! The role of the DotP is to wrest Capital as it socializes and centrally plan it, not to establish Communism through fiat.
Read Socialism Developed China, Not Capitalism, and read Marx himself before you act like an authority without even understanding Historical Materialism.
Marx believed Socialism to come after Capitalism because Capitalism turns itself into a status ripe for socialism as markets coalesce into few monopolist syndicates, ripe for central planning.
I’m sure I’m way out of my depth here, and it’s been over a decade since I studied this stuff in school… But this seems incredibly naive? As we’re seeing now, that environment is far more ripe for fascism, or some type of neo-feudalism.
I’m dramatically simplifying things for the sake of a Lemmy comment.
First, fascism is just Capitalism in decline, it isn’t meaningfully separate from Capitalism itself.
When I say that Marx believed Socialism to come after Capitalism because of Capitalism’s mechanisms working towards monopolist syndicates ripe for planning, that doesn’t mean Marx wasn’t also revolutionary. Such central planning and socialism can’t take place without revolution, because the proletariat needs to gain supremacy over Capital, which is impossible electorally.
Does that clear it up?
While this is true it is not because China has deviated from socialist theory, including that of Marx and Enfels. China is a dictatorship of the proletariat as described by Marx and Engels as the necessary precursor to communism. It is also taking a very specific strategy towards imperialism that involves special economic zones, or capitalism zones, in order to build productive forces while also coupling the well-being of imperialist countries to China’s ability to produce.
Communism will never be achieved by a state and no state has ever expected to do so. The idea that any country ever could use a category error, it means a person doesn’t understand the term at all as used by Marx a d Engels. It is, by definition, stateless, and could only happen after all states are eventually abolished. But again, being practical people, they expected this to happen through a long process of struggle with dictatorships of the proletariat being what socialists first formed and could use to overturn the capitalist order
Wrong.
Is China State Capitalist?
- The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2 The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.
- Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
- Is modern day china communist? Is it staying true to communist values?
- Didn’t China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn’t it liberalize its economy? Is China’s drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
- Is the CPC committed to communism?
- The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
- The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
- Tsinghua University- Is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics real socialism, or is it state Capitalism?
- Isn’t China revisionist for having a capitalist sector of the economy, and working with capitalists? Why isn’t it fully planned like the USSR was?
- Castro on why both China and Vietnam are socialist countries.
- Roderic Day - China has billionaires.
- What is socialism with Chinese characteristics (SWCC)?
- How is SWCC not revisionist? How is it any different from Gorbachev’s market reforms?, 2
- Domenico Losurdo - is China state capitalist?, 2
The workers dont own the means of production. Its not communism
Nobody said they achieved Communism, just that they are authentically working towards it through Socialism.
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is Marxism-Leninism applied to the PRC’s present productive forces and material conditions. They have not reached Communism, but they are firmly on their way to full socialization of the economy. The only way you could think they have abandoned Communism as a goal is if you have never read Marx, Engels, or Lenin, and therefore have never studied Historical Materialism.
The reason it’s painfully obvious that you haven’t studied Historical Materialism is because you clearly believe Communism is something that develops through decree, not degree, that the goal of Communism is to immediately socialize all production. This is absurd, and Utopian. Marx believed Socialism to come after Capitalism because Capitalism turns itself into a status ripe for socialism as markets coalesce into few monopolist syndicates, ripe for central planning. If the productive forces aren’t ready, then Communism can’t be achieved without struggles.
In Question 17 of The Principles of Communism, Engels makes this clear:
Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?
No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society.
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity.
What happened in China, is that Mao tried to jump to Communism before the productive forces had naturally socialized themselves, which led to unstable growth and recessions. Deng stepped in and created a Socialist Market Economy by luring in foreign Capital, which both smoothed economic growth and eliminated recessions. This was not an abandonment of Communism, but a return to Marxism from Ultraleft Maoism.
Today, China has over 50% of the economy in the public sector. About a 10th of the economy is in the cooperative sector, and the rest is private. The majority of the economy is centrally planned and publicly owned! Do you call the US Socialist because of the Post Office? Absurd.
Moreover, the private sector is centrally planned in a birdcage model, Capital runs by the CPC’s rules. As the markets give way to said monopolist syndicates, the CPC increases control and ownership, folding them into the public sector. This is how Marx envisioned Communism to be established in the first place! Via a DotP, and by degree, not decree! The role of the DotP is to wrest Capital as it socializes and centrally plan it, not to establish Communism through fiat.
Read Socialism Developed China, Not Capitalism, and read Marx himself before you act like an authority without even understanding Historical Materialism.
I didnt say they werent working towards it tho. i said they arent communist and i listed obvious examples they are not distributing power and money equally nor horizontally
They are led by Communists that are working towards Communism along Marxist lines. What do you mean when you say they aren’t Communist? That they haven’t achieved upper-stage Communism?
Not communist obviously, since there’s still very much a state and class division. But socialist because the state primarily serves the workers, with the stated goal of striving towards communism.
Now whether it’ll stay that way or not, we’ll see. Deng’s reforms have given liberals too much power after all; there seems to be an active class war happening in the Chinese state.
Not communist obviously
I find it’s useful to select more descriptive terms than use the literal dozens of varying definitions of ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’. The terms by themselves can be so vague that I can truthfully state this - “communism is the goal of communism!” A communist society, for example, is different from a communist party or a communist state (aka. Marxist–Leninist state), which are only parts of the communist movement and the communist school of thought. Obviously no-one looks at the PRC and sees a stateless, classless society, but that’s an understandable (albeit condescending) interpretation of when people say “China is communist”.
(Pinging @xnx@slrpnk.net as I’m also replying to their comment)
Wrong, and it’s clear you read none of the links above. Especially this one: https://archive.ph/DwD1n
Workers own the means of production through the state, it’s on its way to communism in a step later described as socialism after Marx and Engels deaths.
Not even after their deaths, Marx already acknowledged dictatorship of the proletariat as the practical way after first proletarian revolution, Paris Commune experiences.
And when was a requirement for communism?
A stateless, classless, moneyless society. How can a class own something then?
Absolute nonsense.
Communism is from each according to their ability, to each according to their want.
And it’s a centuries long process.
Communism is from each according to their ability, to each according to their want.
I thought it was “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need”?
Wants and needs are often conflated but the outcomes of each phase would likely look incredibly different.
Neither are correct. Your phrase is correct, but that specifically refers to post-scarcity, Upper-Stage Communism, not Communism itself. Communism is essentially a global, fully socialized republic devoid of private property, after classes have been abolished and Capital finally fully wrested and incorporated into the public sector.
The “needs” of Upper-Stage Communism are also wants. It largely doesn’t matter, Marx wasn’t a Utopian, he didn’t advocate for Socialism out of any moral reason, but by analyzing where Capitalism was developing.
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The white mans burden lies heavy on the redditors.
Western ultra-leftists, man, an infantile disorder. They fear the scroll.
My favorite trope has to be western leftists confidently talking nonsense about China.
sure man, the world’s largest Marxist party, led by a man with a doctorate in Marxist studies, has abandoned Marxism. That’s SO true boss.
This is like saying that Iran is following the exact system envisioned by Mohammad because Khamenei is a scholar or whatever.
No you don’t get it, 99 million members of the Communist Party of China don’t actually understand Marxism. A guy who’s lived his whole life under the dictatorship of capital is the only true arbiter of what real Marxism looks like.
errrrmm, actually all 1.4 billion citizens of the PRC are brainwashed and can’t think for themselves. ever think about that, you dumb commie???
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They don’t need it though, China already had a very robust traditional passenger rail network which is the primary reason many of these high speed lines are hemorrhaging money: people aren’t willing to pay the increased cost for a high speed ticket
Hemorrhaging money 😂 These high speed lines are owned by the state, which has infinite money. It can charge as much or as little as it pleases.
Infinite money? Is that why the factory workers are all paid great salaries and have the best working conditions?
Do you think you’re being clever?
Do you think you’re proving they have infinite money or great working conditions?
Wbat’s saddest of all is that the US is a one-party state in all the worst ways and a democracy in many of the wrong ways.
This is 6 years ago. Is there a more recent map?
Yes
May we see it?
No
:(
For a more detailed view at all rail infrastructure the transport layer on osm is nice: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=7/29.845/113.676&layers=T
All the dark black lines should be train lines. This shows all types tho, not just the high speed ones. But honestly for general commercial and social prosperity, the regional lines are probably more important than the high speed long distance ones. If you go over to Europe while using this layer, it will get very dense.
Edit: this ones is a bit more nuanced http://cnrail.geogv.org/enus/about
As someone who loves trains I find this truly impressive and I wish my country cared half as much about trains as China does
China’s population density in its eastern half is an order of magnitude higher than pretty much every country, which really changes the transportation calculation. It’d be impossible for them to build enough roads to effectively transport their population around the country
You don’t even need that many people before cars become impractical.
You don’t need many to become impractical. But you need China levels for it to become geometrically impossible.
you could force everyone to drive. itd be terrible, but that hasnt stopped cities like LA (a more population dense city) from doing what theyre doing.
LA is the second biggest city in the US and it’d be like 15th biggest in China. Los Angeles is also the 308th most dense city in the continental US, and not even on the radar internationally for density