Reddit reviews "Socialism Is Great!": A Worker's Memoir of the New China

In China Xi is actually returning to less socially liberal, while trying to stay economically liberal. Brookings has a piece on him here. It is from September of last year, and even during that time Xi and Li has moved more in consolidation of power than previous leaders (sans Mao) and has been cracking down on dissenters, online commenters and limiting freedoms inside China^2.

Many dissidents are locked up and their speech is very limited, they are taken away for weeks at a time in order for them to become 'compliant'

He has also reduced corruption inside China, which still in the days of the communist market, and now mainly operates on a form of social capitol called guanxi. Parties used to be thrown for local leaders with banquets and gifts, which are now very frowned upon and publishable.

Now most companies to try and gain guanxi will have tea in the office of the local minister. So their have been many changes provided by the new administration that are good, but the personal freedoms and expression have been taken away in a more 'hardliner' fashion. Which could be seen as 'right'. Labor disputes are arising in China because the economy is slowing down.

Under communism everyone had a job even if they stood around all day in the factory doing nothing.

China is now trying to move to a new digital age with it's workers, but is having a hard time growing innovation inside China since for many years independent thought was [not taught inside China.] (https://hbr.org/2014/03/why-china-cant-innovate)

The Coming War on China

>LI: In China there are a lot of problems,

Zheng Lijia, Socialism is Great!. US Commission on China, Hukou System: Sustained Reform Needed to Protect China's Rural Migrants [BWAH!]

>but at the moment, the Chinese, the state party, has proven an extra-ordinary ability to change. I make the joke how in America you can change political parties, but you can't change the policies. In China you cannot change the party, but you can change policies. So in sixty-five or sixty-six years China's been run by one single party, yet the political changes that have taken place in China these past sixty-six years have been wider and broader and greater than probably any major country in modern memory. China is a market economy and it's a vibrant market economy, but it is not a capitalist country. Here's why. There's no way a group of billionaires can control the politburo as it does American policy-making. So in China you have a vibrant market economy, but capital does not rise above political authority. Capital does not have enshrined rights. In America capital, the interest of capital and capital itself, has risen above the American nation. The political authority cannot check the power of capital. And that's why America is a capitalist country, but China is not.

“Well, I thank you for your question but I have to say we’re capitalist and that’s just the way it is.”

RE for homicidal maniacs

I'm reading "Socialism Is Great" by Lijia Zhang. I like it a lot so far.