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Comment by syops | Hacker News Reader

The trade embargo has much to do with this. Is there a prosperous country that the U.S. has embargoed for an extensive period of time. I suppose at one point Iran might have qualified but that would be because of oil. Nations that are largely excluded from the world market won't be prosperous is the main takeaway.

Is (nominal) communism to blame for the rise of China?

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Cuba trades with Venezuela, China, Spain, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and the Netherlands.

The rise of China is due to the economic reforms [0] launched in the late 70s by Deng Xiaoping and continued by his successors:

The Communist Party authorities carried out the market reforms in two stages. The first stage, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, involved the de-collectivization of agriculture, the opening up of the country to foreign investment, and permission for entrepreneurs to start businesses. However, a large percentage of industries remained state-owned. The second stage of reform, in the late 1980s and 1990s, involved the privatization and contracting out of much state-owned industry. The 1985 lifting of price controls[11] was a major reform, and the lifting of protectionist policies and regulations soon followed, although state monopolies in sectors such as banking and petroleum remained. In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO). The private sector grew remarkably, accounting for as much as 70 percent of China's gross domestic product by 2005.[12] From 1978 until 2013, unprecedented growth occurred, with the economy increasing by 9.5% a year.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform

Yes, I know this. I was employing the same logic as the person I responded to. Namely, that since Cuba is a failure then it must be communism's fault. I just reversed things a bit. I was pointing out that simplistic reasoning is not sufficient to explain complex geopolitical situations.

That is certainly true, yet at the same time setting up free markets to get investment from capitalist nations is a Communist technique since 1922. Deng Xiaoping himself admitted that his reforms were inspired by Lenin setting up the same system in the USSR.

So in the end I think neither of you are really wrong.

You're referring to the New Economic Policy [0].

For both, the purpose was not only to get foreign investment, but to improve internal economic efficiency, since collectivization and central planning were lethally inefficient [1][2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

Certainly, internal economic efficiency was also an important factor. Lenin rapidly realized that central planning is an incredibly difficult task and that allowing markets allows for more efficiency. However, Stalin disagreed as he wanted faster heavy industry development than markets would allow.

Indeed. Stalin effectively ended the NEP in 1929, eliminating private ownership of farmland and collectivizing agriculture under state control. By 1931, he had reimposed state control over all industry and commerce [0][1]. And thus came the Soviet famines of 1932-1933 [2][3][4].

[0] https://www.britannica.com/event/New-Economic-Policy-Soviet-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh_famine_of_1931%E2%80%93...

Yes, this is made worse by the fact that Lenin previously tried to do what Stalin did and found that access to reliable data was a major issue, but Stalin still went through with it, partly because he expected war and partly because he thought he could do it better. This wasn't something we should give the benefit to Stalin for but in retrospect WW2 may have taken a turn for the worse in the opposite case.

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