Ask Lemmy

More billionaires made in China than the US this year is pretty much incompatible with a belief they practice communism.

The entire Chinese revolution shows us it was a violent revolution not a peaceful evolution.

There is no such thing as a "peaceful revolution." The act of taking hold of the capitalist state, smashing it, and replacing it with a socialist one necessitates violence.

Capitalists govern the secondary and small/medium firms in China, as market forces help socialize production (a key observation for why Marx said capitalism creates the basis of communism). As these firms grow, more billionaires are created, but they are also folded more into the public sector as they grow.

China is socialist. Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy in the PRC, and the working classes control the state. For example, when looking at publicly owned industries, we can see the following:

Even checking Wikipedia, data from 2022 shows that the overwhelming majority of the top companies are publicly owned SOEs. This is China's strategy, they've been honest about it from the beginning. The private sector is about half cooperatives like Huawei or farming cooperarives and sole proprietorships, with the other half being small and medium firms. As these grow, they are folded into the public sector gradually. This is China's Socialist Market Economy.

As for the state being run by the working classes, this is also pretty straightforward. Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and the CPC, a working class party, dominates the state. At a democratic level, local elections are direct, while higher levels are elected by lower rungs. At the top, constant opinion gathering and polling occurs, gathering public opinion, driving gradual change. This system is better elaborated on in Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance, and we can see the class breakdown of the top of the government itself:

Overall, this system has resulted in over 90% of the population approving the government, which is shown to be consistent and accurate. If you want to learn more, while not nearly as in-depth due to time limits as Roland Boer's work (and mostly focused on the Xi Jinping era), Red Pen's A Summary of Xi Jinping's Governance of China can be a good primer! There's also This is how China's economic model works: Explaining Socialism with Chinese Characteristics by Geopolitical Economy Report.

Socialism is not the absence of private property, but the transition between capitalism and communism, indicated by public ownership as principle. Collectivization of production and distribution is a gradual process, and to dogmatically apply this to secondary and small industry before markets naturally centralize them and prepare them for public ownership isn't necessary.