this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2026
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How can a billionaire capitalist class not wield political power? That just seems like a tautology. And not anymore than the average citizen? Hard to believe.
Ask Jack Ma how that worked out for him when he tried it.
Many have tried. In the end, they all get the wall (not really, but sentenced to death with reprieve).
Sad you got downvoted for asking a completely fair question. Its naive to pretend that who wield a lot of capital do not have more influence than the average citizen. China isn't perfect and it does have an issue with liberals here and there - at least from my very limited knowledge.
I would also like to know how the Billionaires of China can be said to exert no more influence than the average citizen, beyond just a vague gesture to the fact that sometimes a Billionaire will be arrested - presumably if they go too far or get too bold. Thats what I would assume anyway, so I'd love to actually know.
Oh, I don't think anyone believes that people in positions of power have equivalent influence as the average voter. That's not going to be true in any society ever. Even in a perfectly flat world government the people who live somewhere should more say over what impacts them than their vote totals would allow.
Billionaires are billionaires because they have control over billions in assets. Simply by that alone they have more influence than a voter or even a dozen voters. However, billionaires do not have the political influence to use their power to entrench their power, only to use their power within boundaries set by the state on behalf of the people.
Mao put forth a very interesting theory centered on the question "how do we define the people?" His position was that while they were kicking the Japanese out of China, all Chinese were the people. But, once the Japanese are repelled, the people can only mean the peasant masses and the proletariat, and no longer includes the bourgeoisie, the petite bourgeoisie, and the supporters of them. In this way he mirrors Carl Schmitt in defining the political as the ability to define friend and enemy (interestingly so since we do not currently believe there was any way either thinker was able to be influenced by the other).
In contemporary China, while there is open and acknowledged collaboration with the bourgeoisie, it is also openly acknowledged that the bourgeoisie are not a part of "the people" and the party works for the people to bring about the conditions for universal liberation through the doctrine of the liberation of the working classes.
Because the state uses violence against them to suppress them when they try to wield undue influence. That's the answer. It's like why can't Russian billionaires just walk into the US and buy the FBI out of their way? They can't do that because the state uses violence against them to prevent them doing that. The US state does not use violence against its own bourgeoisie, against the trans-Atlantacist bourgeoisie who say get away with raping kids and get a slap on the wrist, who do Epstein stuff (separate case from aforementioned believe it or not), who engage in open corruption "lobbying" within the US. Who through their means exert influence directly on the government.
This isn't to say China is perfect. Xi Jinping purged a lot of corrupt officials who were letting billionaires buy their way to breaking the law, to being exceptional, etc. A lot of officials were arrested and even executed. The fact is they'll keep trying but China has antibodies. It has an ideologically communist military, an ideologically communist justice system, and ideologically communist state law enforcement and intelligence apparatus that serve the party. (Conversely the US also has countermeasures such as courts, laws written for bourgeoisie, intelligence and law enforcement, etc that ultimately restrain the proletariat)
It gets back to the nature of the dictatorship of the state. In the US you have the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The state exists to protect their interests and carry out their will and to oppress and control the proletariat. It doesn't perfectly carry out the will of the bourgeoisie, it can sometimes fail to oppress the proletariat or let them get in a win here and there. In China it's a dictatorship of the proletariat but it's also as in the case with the inverse not perfect, it broadly serves the interests of the communist party guiding the proletariat but there are times where it may not adequately restrain billionaires or adequately uphold the interests of the proletariat.
It is the nature of things. Spotting a less than perfect record doesn't mean much as no system is perfect. We must ask instead what it primarily does and how it is organized rather than nit-picking at a failure here and there. Otherwise we have confusion about the intent of the US DotB in it letting workers get a win here or there in this time or that.