this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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I know there's a lot of people who say "look, I know, capitalism sucks, absolutely, but it's the only thing that works right now!"
This absolutely shouldn't stop you from dreaming big, my friend.
Europe is great because of a huge number of fully public or heavily tax subsidised services.
It’s a stupid argument because China is socialist and is rapidly overtaking the US and Europe on every economic measure while maintaining a 90+% satisfaction rating from their citizens, and while adopting green technology faster than anyone else. Their welfare system is lagging a bit, but I would expect that to change within the next 10-15 years. Socialism obviously works.
Please explain so my European Cro-Magnon derived stupid brain can understand:
If China socialist, why so many quadri-spillion dollar multinational capitalist businesses there? If China socialist, why social welfare "lagging a bit" as you say? We in Europe think: social service priority good. Really good. We don't lag.
Socialism is not synonymous with social welfare, it is a mode of production where capital (the means of production) is controlled by the working class, not the bourgeois.
Chinese socialism allows limited capitalist activity because capitalism is really good at developing productive capacity and China was basically a non-industrialized country before the revolution, so they had lots of catching up to do. I say limited capitalist activity because 1) China tends to nationalize control over corporations once they get to a certain size, and 2) the CPC is fundamentally a working class party and does not allow bourgeois political activity. Capitalists can make money in China, but they don’t get to decide policy, and even their ability to make money gets curtailed if they get to big so that they don’t become too powerful. In this way, China has harnessed capitalism to achieve rapid industrialization while preventing capitalists from gaining control over the working class.
Chinese social welfare is also better than I believed when I made my previous comment. Prior to 2014, urban citizens had access to government progress providing healthcare, employment, retirement pensions, housing, and education, but rural citizens were expected to provide for themselves. Since then, reforms aimed at rural welfare have lifted 100 million people out of poverty and integrated rural welfare with the national system (in the last 50 years they have lifted 800 million people out of extreme poverty). Just this year, China has announced the elimination of absolute poverty entirely, and are continuing to improve the social safety net. I recommend reading the Wikipedia page on Welfare in China, they are doing much better than even I thought.
The reason China has lagged behind European welfare systems is that they were really poor and had a huge population that was living in extreme poverty. They didn’t have funds for welfare. However, they are rapidly catching up and the systems they are creating will most likely let them surpass European welfare soon.
Meanwhile, capitalist welfare systems face constant threat from “austerity” policies, and are designed to keep a portion of the population unemployed and/or unhoused so that capitalists have better negotiating power over labor.