“…The point I am raising is simple: The ruling elite of both sides are business partners and have been for at least 50+ years. Officially….” robinthehood@26
This is where you are wrong: except in the sense that all states are partners to a degree. And participation in international trade makes all involved ‘business partners’ this is not true.
What the poster is trying to do is to assert that China, ruled by the Communist Party, and the United States ruled by an oligarchical ruling class are indistinguishable from each other.
This is another version of that old and discredited theory equating Communist Party rule with that of a capitalist ruling class. And it does not work.
What it does do, and what has always added to the theory’s attraction for bourgeois intellectuals, is to discredit anti-imperialist politics.
We have seen this, very graphically displayed, in the attitudes of the imperialist left towards the insurrections in Syria and the long crisis in Ukraine which led to these licensed ‘socialists’ denouncing Russia’s SMO as imperialist aggression.
Similarly China has been accused of imperialist designs on Taiwan, and imperialist repression in Tibet and Zinjiang when countering actual imperialist inspired terrorist militias.
The situation in China, which actually dates back to the earliest days of the Peoples Republic, which celebrated the role of National Capitalists, and is indistinguishable from Lenin’s NEP, in its theory if not in its much more successful practice, involves the existence of a vibrant capitalist sector which does not enjoy the political power reserved for the mass membership of the Communist Party.
The economist Michael Roberts has an excellent analysis of yesterday’s meeting and its meaning here:
“… China’s net debt to GDP ratio (debt burden) is only 12% of the average in the G7 economies. The state holds huge financial assets; so it can easily manage this property slump.
“The government has just announced that its new Central Financial Commission will take over from the People’s Bank and the existing financial regulator, the control of China’s financial private sector. The ‘Western experts’ decry this move because they think the market can better allocate investment than the state. …
“The point is that the Xi leadership no longer trust the Western-educated economists in the People’s Bank to regulate the private sector – the bank is a fortress of neo-classical pro-market economics….
“…he Chinese economy is not diving into a recession. The IMF has just forecast that China’s real GDP will rise by 5.4% this year – and that’s an upgrade from its previous forecast. The housing market may be struggling, but productive industrial construction is booming. China has already built enough solar panel factories to meet all demand in the world. It has built enough auto factories to make every car sold in China, Europe and the US. By the end of next year, it will have built in just five years as many petrochemical factories that Europe and the rest of Asia have now.
“And take hi-speed rail and infrastructure projects. Back in the US, Biden makes much of his infrastructure program after decades of decline and neglect in US transportation facilities. But that’s nothing to the rapid expansion of hi-speed rail and other transport projects that now have linked up the vast expanse of China’s regions. Compare this to the state of infrastructure in the San Francisco area as Xi visits….
“…China’s workers… wages are still rising faster than anywhere else in Asia.
“And those wage rises are not being eaten away by inflation as has happened in the last few years in the rest of the G20 economies. China’s inflation rate is near zero while inflation, despite recent falls, in the US and Europe is several times higher – indeed US workers have seen prices rise by 17% since COVID…” https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2023/11/16/xi-meets-biden/#respond

Posted by: bevin | Nov 16 2023 16:05 utc | 103

China does have elections.
Everyone votes at the local level, with a choice of several candidates who offer alternative ideas in campaigns.
Thereafter, the people elected do “representative democracy” when they vote among themselves for higher levels. This is similar to Britain, where voters elected Members, but Members vote for Party leaders who then govern the country. The US too is a “republic” because it uses representative democracy.
The Chinese Communist Party is larger than the 9th and 10th largest countries in the world other than China (Mexico and Japan). Voting within it thus is on the scale of voting in most countries, and so not a terribly dictatorial version of representative democracy.
It is narrow partisanship to claim we are a democracy but they are not. It is not just a claim of virtue or merit. A broad base of support comes from voting, and the Chinese use voting to secure that broad base.
They do have that broad base of support within their population. Xi may well have more of it than Joe Biden.

Posted by: Mark Thomason | Nov 16 2023 16:07 utc | 105

This is why jews will end up having to directly assume the puppet positions of power in their occupied countries.
Their options are so limited, the lies and treachery so vast, the roster of willing shabbos goy are so thinned out and the stakes on the table are extreme that a worldwide pogrom would not surprise even the casual political observer.
Good luck worldwide jewery! Keep that neurosis under control and do your best to appear as if you are self aware and don’t have utter contempt for your chattle goyim slaves.
I’m sure history won’t repeat.

Posted by: ryanggg | Nov 16 2023 16:11 utc | 107

It is very difficult for me to believe that Biden is capable of holding a four hour meeting with anyone, let alone the Chinese president. He can barely make it through a medal bestowal event. He isn’t capable of negotiating anything, except maybe a bribery agreement, left over from old habits, dimly remembered in his moth-eaten brain. There is something very fishy about that story.
Democracy? Don’t make me laugh.

Posted by: wagelaborer | Nov 16 2023 16:14 utc | 109

Run “Xi is a dictator” up the flagpole and see who on this web-forum salutes.

Posted by: too scents | Nov 16 2023 16:16 utc | 111

Biden is a fool. The US claims to be the leader of the capitalist world, but he doesn’t even know, or understand, what that means.
Capitalist “democracy” is in fact a dictatorship of the capitalist class which owns most of the productive wealth and controls the political system of the state. Some (but not all) capitalist states practice some FORM of democracy, put the content, the class that is served by the political system is always the capitalist class: Therefore, the US political and economic system is a dictatorship of a minority.
China has a mixed economy but maintains a socialist / communist political system that controls and limits the power of the minority capitalist class in China as China develops economically. The socialist system in China serves the interest of the majority of Chinas people: Therefore, Chinas political system is a dictatorship of the majority.
All of this is elementary to anyone who has ever read a book by Marx and Engels. That is why they don’t allow Marxism in US public schools.

Posted by: Ed | Nov 16 2023 16:18 utc | 113

Was waiting for this article knowing it was coming, thanks b. Laughed out loud when I saw Genocide Joe pudding brain had indeed waited less than 24 hours before insulting the Chinese head of state…again. What a fucking gong show.

Posted by: Doctor Eleven | Nov 16 2023 16:18 utc | 115

81 mILLIOn vOTeS! When’s the next Biden rally?
ryanggg: “I’m sure history won’t repeat.”
Oh. My. That woukd be a shame. 😐

Posted by: Marielle Redclaw | Nov 16 2023 16:18 utc | 117

Peter AU1 | Nov 16 2023 16:00 utc | 48
You missing the point. China has no problem with buying some treasuries. The main problem is to let the biggest PRIVATE bank (FED) to financialize your country and indebt all your economy, like they did in USA and in much of the world.

Posted by: ldragon | Nov 16 2023 16:19 utc | 119

Joe Biden has senile dementia. The answer to the journalist question is not an intelligent one, even when someone is convinced of it’s content. He could say, something like «I don’t have to qualify China’s regime and it’s leaders; it’s only to the Chinese people to decide about that.» But the answer he gave is putting in serious risk the advances that has just been made in the conversations. So, whatever the feeling the Americans have about their political system, it’s clear it is very disfunctional, to say the least, because the system is not able to impeach Biden for being totally unfit.

Posted by: MANUEL BAPTISTA | Nov 16 2023 16:22 utc | 121

@ too scents | Nov 16 2023 16:16 utc | 56
Funny thing: some of the salutes buzzing in here are from our new friends, the Hasbaraflies.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Nov 16 2023 16:23 utc | 123

So, the CCP has a quasi Leninist model of leadership (without the revolutionary content) which is loosely based on Marx’s concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”.
This term always causes problems for people, who imagine Hitler or some such nut when they hear the word dictator. In fact it means nothing more than a governing body that systematically excludes the bourgeoisie and anyone advancing their class interests. This is a measure that springs from the exigencies of a class based civil war and is not meant to last for generations, but only until a socialist economic system has been safely established as the foundation of the country and then the world. No more capitalism, no more bourgeois interests.
China’s version is unique in that it has persisted for so long, the CCP includes a number of wealthy men who would be classified as bourgeois and it does not currently guide the country toward Socialism, but administers a sort of post WW2 welfare state to ensure a certain standard of living for most Chinese while still, very successfully, practicing Capitalism.
Nonetheless, it holds the most rapacious and anti social forms of Capitalism, like the dictatorship of the FIRE sector in the west, in abeyance and keeps it subordinate to the broader needs of the country as seen by the CCP.
It is not revolutionary socialism, but it is vastly superior to the whore house of US imperialism where we have not one, but multiple billionaire oligarchs that cruelly rule over hundreds of millions of increasingly ruined, desperate wage slaves.
Biden calls the head of the CCP a dictator because the western oligarchs are aware it’s model of reformist capitalism is superior, cannot be controlled and will naturally replace the demoralized criminal western imperialism. So, he must always signal his hostility to China for the benefit of his Oligarch masters in the wake of any apparent engagement.
I think the oligarchs collectively know US imperialism is doomed without Chinese manufacturing, but they still delude themselves that via threats and hostility they can somehow make China subordinate itself again, you know, like the good old days.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Nov 16 2023 16:26 utc | 125

« What’s wrong with calling someone a dictator? », as my better half once asked me.

Posted by: Leuk | Nov 16 2023 16:29 utc | 127

My read is that Biden failed miserably and Xi told him he was full of it on Israel, so is all Biden could do was smear Xi.

Posted by: Turk 152 | Nov 16 2023 16:30 utc | 129

The thing about China is that it has been an authoritarian culture for a few thousand years. Xi coming to power is nothing more than a regression to the mean. By comparison, since the fall of the Roman Empire, nobody has been able to consolidate power in Europe. Us Europeans are inherently more chaotic, less regimented.
The other thing is that we are coming to the end of colonialism. The ability of the Europeans to dominate other parts of the world is going away. China is not going to become more like us merely because we disapprove of how China is. Thus criticism becomes nothing more than an insult that serves no useful purpose.

Posted by: Jmaas | Nov 16 2023 16:32 utc | 131

There is no way the Chinese leadership takes words out of Biden’s mouth as anything but babblings of a senile old fuck. Biden doesn’t know what he is saying, and the US administration cant understand the meanings of other countries foreign policy statements. Lose lose if you ask me.

Posted by: comrade simba | Nov 16 2023 16:34 utc | 133

Posted by: Skiffer | Nov 16 2023 15:57 utc | 47
Table stakes, as far as I am concerned, for informative conversation regarding the strategic relationship between USA and CPC must include the acknowledgement of unprecedented transfer of IP, know how, expertise, and capital from Western elites to China. Communist China was rebooted after the deal and jumped at least a couple of generations of critical technology; both parties know this. Outside of the fall of USSR, this strategic partnership between West and China has profoundly shaped our modern, post Cold War world. The other was the equally deep strategic agreement between US and KSA regarding petrodollars which occurred at the same time in early 70s.
Right now the sticking point are technologies that basically everyone recognizes as key enablers for supremacy in the coming decades if not centuries. The agreement requires the CPC to adhere to its promise to not seek hegemony. This is what China again repeated it does not desire. The “trust” issue has seam expression in things like Chips and Taiwan — so we see it is a matter of “trust” :
“Are we still partners to the same deep agreements?”
And of course all these leaders have the problem of balancing chicken shit they feed the public and lesser allies and vassals, and what is the actual relationship. So they throw in these meaningless verbiage.
@bevin See above.

Posted by: robinthehood | Nov 16 2023 16:36 utc | 135

@bevin | Nov 16 2023 16:05 utc | 52
(Quoting Michael Roberts)

“The government has just announced that its new Central Financial Commission will take over from the People’s Bank and the existing financial regulator, the control of China’s financial private sector. The ‘Western experts’ decry this move because they think the market can better allocate investment than the state. …
“The point is that the Xi leadership no longer trust the Western-educated economists in the People’s Bank to regulate the private sector – the bank is a fortress of neo-classical pro-market economics….”

Thanks for the quotes and comments. In fact, one commenter elsewhere said that PBOC didn’t serve in the interests of Chinese people but amerikka’s, especially under the former governor Yi Gang. Yi Gang was well-amerikkkan educated- he got his PhD from UIUC. The former governor Zhou Xiaochuan was probably quite pro-us in his policies as well. That commentator has very low mark for Yi while saying his policies caused the loss more than a trillion usd for China in 2021-23. The current PBOC governor Pan has less connections to the anglo sphere. Unfortunately, Zhou still holds a high position at the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
The academia in the fields economics and finances in Chinese universities and think tanks are quite polluted by the western neo-liberal “theories”. Most just follow whatever the western neo-liberal ideology preaches and few really think from Chinese point of view with Chinese circumstances. And most professionals in those fields are also more like compradors.
It is good if CPC notices this and starts to reduce the influences of those polluted compradors and even clean them up.

Posted by: LuRenJia | Nov 16 2023 16:40 utc | 137

1 – Xi is a dictator within the CPC. This is not even disputed in China.
Posted by: robinthehood | Nov 16 2023 14:10 utc | 6
Biden is interpreting the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as a dictatorship as we imagine it – a strongman who has sole say and dictates what must happen. This is not how China’s government works in the slightest. Both the decentralized layers of government as well as the negotiation that happens all the way up and through the Politburo are simply dismissed with the “dictator” accusation he is implying. Xi does not have the power to simply decide something and tell everyone that is how it is. He must negotiate with the standing committee and reach unanimous or near unanimous consent. And the entire system is designed, as many others have pointed out, to be layers of representatives that are founded upon a bottom layer of publicly elected local representatives.
What is not disputed is that it is a dictatorship of the proletariat. That is, the proletariat are not interested in sharing power with anyone else, namely the bourgeoisie. In China, this is where that democratic authority rests; hence a country that serves minority interests is inherently undemocratic in their view. Notably, the Chinese don’t hound the US for being undemocratic, because they are not interested in ideological arguments to impose on the domestic affairs of another country. You can think of these as differing priorities.
The US is stuck in its messianic ways.

Posted by: Run | Nov 16 2023 16:41 utc | 139

unprecedented transfer of IP
Posted by: robinthehood | Nov 16 2023 16:36 utc | 68
—
Oh No! Think of the lost rents. Rent that could have been re-invested into increased prosperity.

Posted by: too scents | Nov 16 2023 16:42 utc | 141

Maybe it wasn’t a mistake and the Chinese hit the nail on the head: “cling to the zero-sum mentality, provoke rivalry and confrontation, and drive the world toward turmoil and division.”

Posted by: Sudsie76 | Nov 16 2023 17:04 utc | 143

The Americans pressed the Chinese very hard to agree to send Xi over to San Francisco in the first place. At one point, Blinken just announced unilaterally that Xi was coming. In deference to this persistence, the Chinese came and the meeting turned out a bit of a damp squib anyway. Military to military communication is re-established, which is positive, but the reason it was suspended is because a senior Chinese defence official had been personally sanctioned by the US government over Hong Kong or Xinjiang or some other manufactured pretext. The Americans are now hard at work trying to create new pretexts alongside the Philippines in South China Sea “Watch what I do, not what I say…”

Posted by: jayc | Nov 16 2023 17:05 utc | 145

A four hour meeting apparently, so somebody had a lost to discuss/negotiate with Xi. A change of strategy for US?

Transparent attempt to turn China on Russia. Probably offering up Taiwan. Xi and the Chinese are not fools. They will play along for benefits, but they know if Russia falls China is next. I anticipate a temporary denouement then a return to Maerican jingoism.
Silly Maericans and their dipshit camp followers. Can you actually teach humility to those who believe they rule the world?

Posted by: Doctor Eleven | Nov 16 2023 17:06 utc | 147

Xi is so obviously not a dictator but a leader trying to forge a path for his country between the communist party and those advisors who seek a return to China’s ancestral roots and natural religion.
Like Putin, he appears to be one of the only ones up for the job, at least treading water, where those in the west will get a rude awakening here shortly when they find out that they are dinosaurs in an unfamiliar new epoch.
Liberalism is being called into question, finally! What else must we investigate from our past that may reveal something we overlooked? A watershed moment where the victors of a war told us a lie, not knowing that not counting the cost of that post-war narrative, it would rear its ugly head as spirit seeking its eternal repose in freedom. Let the games begin!

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Nov 16 2023 17:07 utc | 149

Joe Biden and one of the most popular and revered men in all of today’s China have something in common. They are both Christians.
Sun Yat-sen, called the father of modern day China was a devout follower of Christ up to the day he died.
It’s too bad Biden couldn’t use this relationship as a starting point for something new.
http://prayforchina.com/bios/eng/bio-24

Posted by: Johnny Dollar | Nov 16 2023 17:08 utc | 151

Oh No! Think of the lost rents. Rent that could have been re-invested into increased prosperity.
Posted by: too scents | Nov 16 2023 16:42 utc | 71
This is a typical specimen of verbal theatrics to confuse matters.
Being behind a technology curve is a thing. For any given chosen pair of (nation, technology) an expert group can make a fairly reliable prediction if that nation can ever reach parity with the knowledge leaders in that technology. Sometimes its about know how, sometimes it is about tools, sometimes natural resources, monies, leadership, etc. But bottom line is that if you are behind the tech curve in the key sectors you will -never- -ever- catch up and the prognosis can be backed with fairly reasonable models.
That is the ‘gift’ of technology transfer which dwarfs “rent seeking” notions by the above poster.
For God’s sake, B is German! Germany alone has gifted more industrial knowhow, machinery, and capital to China than the rest of the Globalism Project (TM) “strategic partners”.
(So yeah, “partner” doesn’t just mean “trade partner”. No, partner in a new modern global order built on top of the international machinery of the “Satanist” West. )
China’s red line is any threat to the position of CPC.
US’s red line is any existential challenge to its hegemony.
“Trust” is the only issue right now between these long standing strategic partners.

Posted by: robinthehood | Nov 16 2023 17:08 utc | 153

The Chinese will not pay attention to this sorry excuse for a president.
I’m surprised if Xi has not had contact with Trump.

Posted by: g wiltek | Nov 16 2023 17:09 utc | 155

Posted by: Huckster | Nov 16 2023 13:57 utc | 1
Never underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck up.
Obama would have said the same thing, but more diplomatically. And W would have put China into his new Axis of Evil and labeled Mr. Xi with a dumb nickname, like he did to everybody else who made him feel inferior. We’ve had a long run of incompetent presidents.

Posted by: Clever Dog | Nov 16 2023 17:10 utc | 157

Posted by: too scents | Nov 16 2023 16:42 utc | 71
I can’t think IP without thinking Microsoft.

Posted by: Forest | Nov 16 2023 17:10 utc | 159

China is not going to become more like us merely because we disapprove of how China is. Thus criticism becomes nothing more than an insult that serves no useful purpose.
Posted by: Jmaas | Nov 16 2023 16:32 utc | 66
Obviously any western imperialist critique of China is worthless crap, but are you saying that any critique of the Chinese government is useless?

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Nov 16 2023 17:12 utc | 161

Sorry, I have to say this: Xi is beginning to look like Charlie Brown about to kick the football with Biden as Lucy:

This time! This time he won’t call me a dictator and we can have a civilized conversation …

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Nov 16 2023 17:13 utc | 163

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 16 2023 15:44 utc | 40
4 hours? I don’t know about that. I detect som “state media” confusion.
Yesterday, GT‘s timer printed a 2 hrs group session

The meeting began around 11 am on Wednesday and concluded at 1:35 pm local time, lasting for approximately two hours, according to media reports.

12 hours later, GT added an additional 2 hours of umm reflection, provided by Filoli Landscaping Services.

Following opening remarks, several sessions, and a working lunch, the two leaders closed out with a walk around the historic [16 acre] estate south of San Francisco, as reported by CNN.

I can easily imagine that state.gov requested this intimate “informal” interlude between Dictator and Decider for comparison to Macron’s stroll with Xi through the Pine Garden…

Xi warmly welcomed Macron’s visit to Guangzhou, expressing great pleasure to meet him again. The two leaders strolled through the Pine Garden close to Baiyun Mountain, chatting and stopping at times to enjoy the unique scenery of the southern Chinese garden. They had tea by the water, enjoying the view and discussing the past and present. Xi and Macron listened to the Guqin melody “High Mountain and Flowing Water” at Baiyun Hall. Xi then invited Macron to dinner.

… because I cannot imagine Biden and Xi communicating any “common understandings” of note that had not been officially itemized by Wang, Blinken, and Sssullivan before Xi’s arrival.
More interesting to me is Xi’s “informal” reception by industry titans. Money talks. Silicon Allies walked the CIIE. And several APEC members dismissed the redundancy of Biden’s maiden IPEF ministerial klatsch. While White House press cogs were hedging, Voice of Europe scooped the invite ahead of fmPRC’s RSVP to Biden’s sideline APEC “summit”. Here is one glowing review of the “working dinner.”

[…]
The dinner was very animated among the US company executives. A Bloomberg report said that executives were “scrambling” for seats or to be put on a waiting list for the dinner to meet with the Chinese president, citing people familiar with the situation. “Some on the waiting list even waiting outside of the dinner venue in hopes of securing a last-minute opportunity to dine with the Chinese president,” said the above-quoted person, who asked to remain anonymous.
[…]

Posted by: sln2002 | Nov 16 2023 17:14 utc | 165

Posted by: bevin | Nov 16 2023 16:05 utc | 52
Great points from Roberts, thanks for summarising them here.

Posted by: anon2020 | Nov 16 2023 17:18 utc | 167

CCP is the American acronym. The proper acronym is CPC, Communist Party of China.

Posted by: wagelaborer | Nov 16 2023 17:23 utc | 169

Germany alone has gifted more industrial knowhow, machinery, and capital to China than the rest of the Globalism Project (TM) “strategic partners”.
Posted by: robinthehood | Nov 16 2023 17:08 utc | 77
If that were true, the uhh eurozone would be already be rolling in volks PV, EVs, and CRITICAL MINERALS, not busting Chinese “value-priced” exports of same.

Posted by: sln2002 | Nov 16 2023 17:26 utc | 171

Shareholders don’t elect the CEO’s of our corporations and enlisted men don’t elect generals for our military. Try coming forward with such an idea at a corporate AGM and see what the response is.
So were smart enough to know that keeping leadership in place long term results in a more stable and efficient organization however when a country decides to implement such a strategy the leader is automatically considered a despot and the citizens of such countries are considered enslaved by those who prefer a revolving door of leaders. All $$$billions and campaign contribution graft that goes into an election every four years is nothing but wasted overhead as is the time wasted to run campaigns and rejig the bureaucracy.
I get that there have been a lot of despotic regimes in the past and I have enjoyed living in a democracy all my life however that doesn’t make democracy the perfect form of governance. Frankly I think we can do much better … perhaps a system where we hire professionals to manage some aspects of governance like defence, trade and foreign affairs and elect our mayors and dogcatchers.

Posted by: HB_Norica | Nov 16 2023 17:28 utc | 173

I can’t think IP without thinking Microsoft.
Posted by: Forest | Nov 16 2023 17:10 utc | 80
—
Their phone gives the game away.

Posted by: too scents | Nov 16 2023 17:30 utc | 175

Posted by: LuRenJia | Nov 16 2023 16:40 utc | 69
Thanks for the perspective.

Posted by: anon2020 | Nov 16 2023 17:31 utc | 177

US and China agree to reopen communication links between militaries. The stumbling block to this was the refusal of Li Shangfu, the former Chinese defense minister
Posted by: robinthehood | Nov 16 2023 15:32 utc | 33
These are decisions not taken by him, they come from the top level, the Xi level. What can happen is that someone in an important position has other ideas, and if they don’t match the Xi ideas that someone gets instantly replaced. You can ignore that event, no one can tell you what it was.
As an example of personal Xi decisions just read his piss plan for Donbass and Ukr, published last year I think. It’s completely idiotic, so dumb it must have been written by himself and no one dared to tell him it’s stupid. No one liked that plan, not Russia, not Ukr, not US. Not even Marty from America.

Posted by: rk | Nov 16 2023 17:36 utc | 179

sln2002 | Nov 16 2023 17:14 utc | 83
The business meeting/dinner is interesting.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 16 2023 17:37 utc | 181

g wiltek@78….Trump is Russia’s guy.
Cheers M

Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Nov 16 2023 17:37 utc | 183

“… So, the CCP has a quasi Leninist model of leadership (without the revolutionary content) which is loosely based on Marx’s concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”….
“…China’s version is unique in that it has persisted for so long, the CCP includes a number of wealthy men who would be classified as bourgeois and it does not currently guide the country toward Socialism, but administers a sort of post WW2 welfare state to ensure a certain standard of living for most Chinese while still, very successfully, practicing Capitalism…”
Ahenobarbus@63
I really can’t see the difference between NEP and China today: in both cases, Communists, in order to preserve the power that they used to root out and destroy capitalism and class exploitation, were forced by circumstance- military aggression the international division of labour, famine- to re-enter international markets.
The current Chinese billionaire is just our old friend nepman writ large, larger because much longer in the tooth. What revolutionary content do you feel is missing? I suspect that it is the struggle for power between factions that you miss.
As to the actual product of CP rule, given firstly the state in which China found itself in 1949 and the generation or so of military aggression (Korea) paramilitary subversion and civil war (Tibet etc) and the economic cordon sanitaire imposed by the US imperialists it is an achievement on a world historical scale to have built the “Welfare State” which you regard as so trivial.
But the truth is that China has done a lot more than that, including the pursuit of the path, outlined by Lenin and the Soviet Commissar for Nationalities, of anti-colonialism and anti-neo colonialism.
In one sense you and Robinthehood are correct: the wheel is still in spin, the struggle against China’s capitalist class (the National Capitalists of old) is constant. Its issue far from certain.
It is a struggle with but two sides- there are those on the Communist side, fighting to control and restrain the capitalists and there are those who, like those capitalists, oppose the communists.
Let us call them, as Tony Blair did, the Third Way.

Posted by: bevin | Nov 16 2023 17:40 utc | 185

$700 OFF your iPhone 15 – yeah! Tim Cook after meeting Xi.

Posted by: SailorsWife | Nov 16 2023 17:40 utc | 187

Posted by: Skiffer | Nov 16 2023 15:57 utc | 47
Excellent summary, balanced and very thoughtful.

Posted by: Echo Chamber | Nov 16 2023 17:43 utc | 189

Biden’s gaff is par for the course. What was actually discussed and the tone in which the words were relayed we’ll likely never know. While Xi was in California, “RT Interviews Lavrov”, who essentially said the Outlaw US Empire doesn’t want peace, which clearly seems to be China’s appraisal too. The “military communication” bit could mean any number of things such as China’s support for the Arc of Resistance and thus backstopping Iran along with Russia. And speaking of democracy, there was good news out of Taiwan I posted yesterday from an RT report:
“The Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) formed their new alliance on Wednesday, agreeing to settle on a single presidential candidate rather than splitting the vote. They also agreed to form a joint government if they win the election.”
It appears China is spinning the Summit as a success according to items published by Global Times such as “Xi, Biden conclude ‘strategic, historic and directional’ summit: Forming a forward-looking ‘San Francisco vision’, head-of-state diplomacy injects greater stability into world”:

Some experts hailed this highly anticipated summit as injecting greater certainty and new momentum into an uncertain world.
A slew of outcomes from the summit indicates that it has become apparent that both Beijing and Washington no longer harbor illusory hopes for a rapid breakthrough or significant improvement in relations, some experts said. However, both sides also recognize the benefits of keeping tensions at the current level and preventing further deterioration.
Whether this summit can be seen as an important milestone in the overall progress of bilateral relations, and whether the two countries can continue to move forward is the real test of the sincerity and determination of the US side, especially after the Chinese leader had articulated comprehensively China’s stance on stabilizing and improving bilateral ties, Chinese experts said. [My Emphasis]

Yes, so much is riding on that bolded portion above. As Lavrov put it in his interview:
‘So the Americans invent “rules” that they insist everyone should follow (as long as those “rules” are in American interests). As soon as other countries become more effective than the U.S. itself, the rules change.’
It won’t take long for the “new reality” to be seen.

Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 16 2023 17:47 utc | 191

In response to robinthehood@68,
I have no problem acknowledging the developments you’ve described, particularly when they’re framed as occurring in the past tense. At the same time, the issue of using transfers of supremacy-enabling technologies as the primary bargaining chip to restrain another superpower from seeking supremacy is, mildly speaking, a thorny issue if not a paradox.
If the US seeks to continue business as usual, it in essence seeks to raise an adversary powerful enough to dethrone it from its global hegemony. If it instead attempts to limit technological exchange and suppress growth, as stated by current US leadership, the Chinese have proportionally less to lose and more to gain from seeking regional and global dominance. I’m sure it’s possible to skillfully balance the issue on a knife-edge for an extended period of time, but it’s hardly a situation that tends towards equilibrium, nor one I would consider representative of measured strategic planning.
There’s also the matter of the long term value derived from elements of some specific technological supremacy as a trade good or strategic resource. The rate of technological advancement stagnates both due to objective and external factors, letting the world as a whole catch up. The importance of certain technologies is also apt to depreciate, sometimes quite suddenly, with the advent of alternate modes of operation or in the context of other developments, social, political etc. The notion that the Chinese would be placated by technological exchange with the US for an indefinite period of time is, in my opinion, short-sighted. Particularly if, as the rhetoric of their representatives would suggest, they are increasingly coming to see it not as a factor for facilitating their further development, but a restriction placed on it — if such a point is reached, accurately discerned or otherwise, it becomes a simple profit-cost calculation, if not a survival-decrepitude one. At that point, the carrot of cutting edge technology becomes about as desirable as a diploma in gender studies is to wilderness survival.

Posted by: Skiffer | Nov 16 2023 17:55 utc | 193

USA is not a democracy and has never been. It’s an oligarchic republic.
They free Assange then we may talk.
The fentanyl and similar cheap powerful narcotics is a good find. For me it’s the chinese answer to the 19th. c. british-european opium problem planted into China.
I don’t see why China would stop that, because USA them they are not stopping anti-chinese sanctions.

Posted by: Timur | Nov 16 2023 17:56 utc | 195

China is not going to become more like us merely because we disapprove of how China is. Thus criticism becomes nothing more than an insult that serves no useful purpose.
Posted by: Jmaas | Nov 16 2023 16:32 utc | 66
Obviously any western imperialist critique of China is worthless crap, but are you saying that any critique of the Chinese government is useless?
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Nov 16 2023 17:12 utc | 81
Think of it this way. You have a car for sale and George shows an interest in buying your car. In attempting to sell the car, would it be good to start the conversation by telling George everything you don’t like about George? No, it would not. Why? Because it could mess up the car sale. So, you are well advised to not get into your don’t like George rant. Not if you want to sell the car. The same thing applies to Biden. Biden should not be telling Xi what he doesn’t like about him immediately prior to a meeting with Xi.

Posted by: Jmaas | Nov 16 2023 18:00 utc | 197

In one sense you and Robinthehood are correct: the wheel is still in spin, the struggle against China’s capitalist class (the National Capitalists of old) is constant. Its issue far from certain.
It is a struggle with but two sides- there are those on the Communist side, fighting to control and restrain the capitalists and there are those who, like those capitalists, oppose the communists.
Let us call them, as Tony Blair did, the Third Way.
Posted by: bevin | Nov 16 2023 17:40 utc | 93
Well put. I’d add that Chinese culture naturally bends towards intellectuals and the elitism of the urbanites, which is readily apparent throughout the other Chinese communities such as Taiwan and in particular the Chinese diaspora scattered about SE Asia. Thus it is important that it is the CPC that is ruling and not your bog standard nationalist party, because ideologically the party insists on keeping the urbanites and capitalists in check.
There is no shortage of horrifying stories of struggling rural villages in Japan, the poverty of South Korea outside of Seoul, or those coffin homes in Hong Kong.

Posted by: Run | Nov 16 2023 18:03 utc | 199