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Comment by soulofmischief | Hacker News Reader

This could be our generation's cold war. Even back to prosecuting Communist sympathizers (even though China is not Communist)

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What exactly is it then?

Why should we not take the CCP's description of their own system of government at face value?

2019 China is not like anything else ever seen before. No one could have predicted it. It's just a unique place.

> Why should we not take the CCP's description of their own system of government at face value?

Because it's a government of lies.

So you believe that the label "Communist" is a deception? Akin to their inflation of economic indicators?

More of a tradition. China is clearly a free market economy in most important ways. Though with an amoral state calling all the important shots.

They have to keep calling the system "Communist" because that is tradition. That's all.

>China is clearly a free market economy in most important ways

>An amoral state calling all the important shots

Help me understand how these statements are not contradictory?

There is certainly tension/contradiction there, and the state does stomp in, has the final word, and do what they want from time to time.

a) Chinese citizens are more or less free to start a company that makes and sells widget X, and freely compete with anyone and everyone else making and selling X, for almost any X. That's the free-market economy part.

b) For some values of X, or for some strategic Chinese goals related to X, the Chinese government has opinions. They may ask the company to do (or refrain from doing) certain things. When this happens, the owner of the company needs to do as they're told, or bad things will happen to them. That's the amoral state calling shots part.

The lines are not the traditional all-of-society-must-fall-into-one-category-or-the-other capitalism vs. communism, but the boundaries are pretty clear.

Do you also believe that china is a democracy?

"Also"? I haven't stated any of my beliefs.

It is a grotesque hybrid of Marxism, Maoism and Fascism.

This description rings most true for me

They describe themselves as Marxist-Lenninist. Lmfao. OK sure.

Ok let’s say China isn’t communist.

what is communist?

Is anything communist?

A Kibbutz maybe?

How about on the nation-state scale?

Was China communist under Mao?

Was the Soviet Union communist?

Castro’s Cuba?

Edit: Any Platonic ideal undergoes distortion when manifested in the material world.

Communism is both the name of the ideology and of a form of society (well defined in theory), and you need to make a distinction between the two. These countries you mentioned above were (some still are) run by communists, but were never even near communism. Nor they ever claimed that they were, most of the Eastern block countries had socialism in the name in order to make the distinction clear. Socialism is considered a transition into the real communism - which is, from all that we know now, just unachievable utopia at any larger scale than a few hundreds people.

North Korea is a Democratic Republic. North Korea is a totalitarian nightmare. Democratic Republics are therefore bad.

I actually think the No True Scotsman Fallacy, is itself, not a very good argument to make.

We should just pay no attention to what any state calls itself. It's irrelevant.

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