Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

May Fourth, the Day That Changed China A liberal view

"In China today, what is now referred to as 'socialism with Chinese characteristics' looks a lot like plain old capitalism, in which the vast majority of people in the society work, and their labor is exploited by a tiny minority who own. Xi Jinping earned a PhD in Marxist ideology, and can therefore  speak loquaciously  commemorating Marx’s two hundredth birthday, but still say nothing of substance in regards to how China is actually run. The Western media still treats the country like the old bogeyman of Communist dictatorships, but the opposite is true: the country is a capitalist dictatorship. China reports lifting 750 million people out of poverty, and there is no denying that living standards have increased significantly since 1949. Despite this, inequality is massive..." Indeed. How odd the word socialism is in "socialism with Chinese characteristics"! The Chinese Revolution at Seventy

Stephen Rosen: “[W]hat is nationalism? And what nationalism is actually Western invention. Imperial China had no nationalism. Where do they get their ideas of nationalism? Well, they got their ideas of nationalism from the Japanese, which emerged as a national state in the 19 [century].  Well, where did the Japanese get their ideas about nationalism, which were then translated into Chinese? They got it from the Germans. So what they imported was a 19th-century version of social Darwinism in which race  is of the fundamental basis of nationality and there are very – when you hear Xi Jinping [a communist/Marxist?] and other Chinese leaders talking about cultural pollution, when you talk about the natural affinity of all Chinese people wherever they are, you begin to worry that there is this submerged, and sometimes not even so, some racialist component.” — The historian Lord Acton put  the case against "nationalism as insanity" in 1862. Bertrand Russell  criticizes n...

An interesting report by Reuters How China is replacing America as Asia's military titan

A nation that has transformed in a single lifetime

"Under Xi, it seems that the majority of the party elite will continue with an economic model that is dominated by state corporations directed at all levels by the Communist cadres. That is because even the elite realise that if the capitalist road is adopted and the law of value becomes dominant, it will expose the Chinese people to chronic economic instability (booms and slumps), insecurity of employment and income and greater inequalities. On the other hand, Xi and the party elite are united in opposing socialist democracy as any Marxist would understand it.  They wish to preserve their autocratic rule and the privileges that flow from it.  The people have yet to play a role.  They have fought local battles over the environment, their villages and their jobs and wages.  But they have not fought for more democracy or economic power." Xi's taking full control of China's future and an article by the author of The Party: The Secret World of the Chinese Commu...