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Question about China’s economic plan

Hey comrades, can someone please enlighten me on the holes that I have on my knowledge of China. I know that China currently has a restricted bourgeoisie class to be able to get enough capital to modernize the entire country. And that makes me wonder, if China has plans to eventually get rid of their bourgeoisie once it achieves it target goal. Does it have ever set a date or a specific plan on this?

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  • Here is Cheng Enfu's outline for the different stages of socialism. He is the president of the Academy of Marxism at CASS.

    I've been trying to find a PDF of the book it is from, China's Economic Dialectic, but haven't been able to. I'll buy it one day. Here is a paper I didn't realized he published which has a similar chart: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=0051EA1A0EAA00EF7B1B1D61428EE3A2 "On the Three Stages in the Development of Socialism"

    • So what does he say about current status, timeline, etc?

      Communism button when, basically.

      • Well first off, the paper mentions how there are disagreements with regard to defining stages of socialism.

        excerpt, p 176

        In contemporary China, there exists a variety of ideas with regard to the criteria for distinguishing stages of socialism. To sum up, these criteria include “the level of productivity development,” “the realization of modernization and its corresponding living standard,” “the relations of production and the ownership of means of production,” and “the operational mechanism of social economy.”

        And towards the end he mentions the different definitions by Lenin, Stalin, and Deng.

        But he believes there are five conditions necessary to transition to communism. It's not very ground-breaking though.

        excerpt, p 177-178

        To that end, five basic conditions must be met: first, the material condition — highly advanced productive forces; second, the economic condition — single ownership of the means of production by all the people, a planned economy and distribution according to need; third, the social condition — full development of education, science, technology, culture and health care, and the elimination of the major difference between mental labor and manual labor; fourth, the spiritual condition — the great improvement of ideological awareness and moral character; fifth, the political condition — abolition of class and the withering away of the state.

        Probably the most reassuring thing is this:

        excerpt, p 178

        The primary stage is not only about laying foundations; it is also the transition to the intermediate and advanced stages of socialism. This is a historical process in which the public-owned economy grows stronger and distribution according to labor becomes dominant. The key is to grasp the present and future economy from the perspectives of the three economic systems — property rights, distribution, and regulation — at different stages of development. Some may argue that there is no risk to China’s superstructure, i.e., the long-term rule of the working-class political party, even if privatization becomes the main element of the reform. This is a misconception, which deviates from historical materialism. The rule of the political party of the working class, public ownership, and the guidance of Marxism are all indispensable factors that together constitute the essential content of socialism.

        So, communism eventually. Not market socialism forever though.

        • And towards the end he mentions the different definitions by Lenin, Stalin, and Deng.

          I'd like to read this section, if it isn't too much hassle.

          • It's just at the end of the linked PDF. On my phone and in a hurry so this won't be formatted well.

            big quote

            Beginning from Thomas Moore’s book Utopia in 1516, world social- ism has had a history of a little more than 500 years. The fact that the vast majority of European critical utopian socialists regard private ownership, commodity, money, and market as the root of evil is of great reflexive value. Marx, Engels, and Lenin all believed that dur- ing transition from the old society to a communist society (including socialism as the first or lower stage), private ownership, commodity and monetary relations could continue to exist in very small amounts. Only when private ownership, cooperative economy and commodity– money relations are completely eliminated can there formally be a communist society. This is the first concept of a socialist economic system, established by Marx, Engels and Lenin; it is a socialist social concept in a strict sense. Vietnam has so far adhered to this criterion for socialist society, declaring that it is still in the transition phase to socialism and not yet having achieved socialism. Of course, Lenin sometimes referred to the New Economic Pol- icy period, which contained a certain amount of private ownership, 180 SCIENCE & SOCIETY cooperative economy, and commodity economy, as socialism, but only in the special sense of the working class and its party being in power. Stalin, similarly, declared, in 1936, that socialism was achieved in the Soviet Union (Stalin, 1978), at a time when there still existed cooperative economy, commodity and monetary relations, and the issuance of money wages instead of labor vouchers. Mao Zedong agreed with the Soviet standard, and in 1956 declared the end of the transition period (the period of New Democracy) from the old society to socialist society. After China began its reform and opening up, the constitution in the 1990s stipulated the implementation of a property rights system that had public ownership as the center and non-public economy as an important part, and implementation of the socialist market economy. These steps further lowered the standard for socialist society. This is the third concept of a socialist economic system, established by Deng Xiaoping. As to whether non-public economy has surpassed public economy and become the main central form in reality, this is a ques- tion about the actual operation of the economy, about whether or not the country is strictly following the constitution, and about system adjustment. There is no right or wrong in the three views of the socialist economic system. They just represent different values and criteria for economic systems. I have tried to enrich the theory by, in a broad sense, defining the first concept of a socialist economic system as the advanced stage of socialism, the second as the intermediate stage, and the third as the primary stage. The idea of three stages of social- ism is based on previous research, based on the Marxist classics and on practical experience (for details see Cheng and Hu, 2018). This new theory answers, in a logically consistent manner, the difficult questions of what socialism is and how its practice and operation should proceed; it is intended to serve as the basis for further aca- demic research and practical undertaking. It obviously differs from views of “socialism without working-class rule,” “socialism–capitalism convergence,” “high welfare is socialism,” and “permanent primary stage of socialism.”

        • Disagreements? That can't be. BBC assured me Xi disappears critics.

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