Apologies on advance for the length got very invested while typing this.

The 2021 ruling followed by 2025 reinforcement doesn’t mean the problem is “solved,” but that’s actually how good governance is supposed to work. You set a standard, you monitor where enforcement falls short, you gather feedback from workers and local courts, then you adjust the framework as necessary according to feedback. The Supreme Court explicitly ruled 996 illegal in 2021, and the 2025 Consumption Boost Plan reinforcing those protections after a period of monitoring and feedback is good governance. Chinese reporting shows this cycle in action: enforcement is still uneven, yes, but the trajectory is consistently toward stricter oversight. It’s not perfect, but the direction is clearly negative for illegal overtime practices, and that matters more than pretending one decree could fix decades of practice overnight.

On billionaires and inequality, I think the analysis China Has Billionaires helps clarify the confusion in English. As that piece explains, socialism isn’t defined by the absence of wealthy individuals or by hitting a specific Gini coefficient. It’s defined by who holds ultimate control over capital and whether the state can subordinate profit to social goals. In China, billionaires exist, but they operate within boundaries set by a socialist state. When tech platforms overreach, when property speculation threatens stability, when capital tries to dictate terms, the state steps in. The Jack Ma case is a good example here: when Ant Group pushed for high-risk microloan products that threatened people’s and the countries financial stability, regulators halted the IPO and restructured the company. That’s not capitalist logic. That’s capital being managed, not ruling. If we look at how capitalist states like the US or those in Europe have generally allowed high-risk consumer lending models like Klarna to expand with minimal restraint, the contrast with China’s intervention is fairly stark.

The same logic explains the 2021 crackdown on for-profit private tutoring. Excessive academic pressure was harming student wellbeing, but more fundamentally, the state moved to stop education from becoming a commodity where money buys advantage. China’s public schools remain the primary pathway to success, with the gaokao system designed to be merit-based. Contrast that with the US or Europe, where wealthy families can purchase extensive tutoring, legacy admissions, or even direct donations to secure college placement. The Didi case mentioned in the redsails article fits here too: when the company rushed a US listing while holding sensitive geographic and user data, regulators intervened, not to punish growth, but to assert that capital cannot override data sovereignty or social stability. That’s the socialist boundary in action.

Also the number of billionaires in China has plateaued and even begun to decline as redistribution mechanisms and regulatory pressure intensify. That’s consistent with a transitional socialist project: allowing market mechanisms to develop productive forces while retaining the political capacity to rein them in when they conflict with collective interests. And it’s worth remembering what the socialist state has delivered: over 800 million people lifted out of poverty, infrastructure built in less developed regions even when it’s not profitable because state-owned enterprises serve a redistributive role, and public systems that prioritize collective welfare over short-term returns.

The socialist principle for this stage isn’t “equal outcomes regardless of contribution.” High aggregate wealth inequality metrics can coexist with massive improvements in living standards, public infrastructure, and social mobility, which is precisely what China has delivered. The real test isn’t whether a few people get very rich, but whether the working majority sees their conditions improve and whether the state can redirect surplus toward collective needs. By that measure, China’s trajectory aligns with a socialist project navigating a complex, globalized transition. If you haven’t read it yet, the redsails piece walks through these tensions with historical context and avoids the checklist approach that often leads to premature judgments about what socialism must look like at every stage.

Edit: Also a fun graph I found the data is from the world inequality database

I see two main issues with your comment. First, it feels like you’re relying mostly on non-Chinese sources here(correct me if I’m wrong). I feel if you were in China or actually reading Chinese-language reporting, you’d see that while overtime pressure and stuff like 996 still exist, the trend is clearly negative. As in, it’s being actively cracked down on. The Supreme Court ruled 996 illegal in 2021, and recent policy pushes like the 2025 Consumption Boost Plan are specifically targeting illegal overtime and pushing for better enforcement of rest/vacation rights. It’s not perfect, obviously, but it’s hugely improved from where things were in the 2000s, and honestly it’s just not the omnipresent norm that English-language coverage sometimes makes it sound like.

Second, capitalism vs. socialism isn’t really defined by work hours, pay conditions, or how hard people are pushed, that’s a misunderstanding of what those terms actually mean. What matters is who owns the means of production. In China, it’s without a doubt the people, exercising that ownership through the state. The state being the apparatus through which people collectively wield power. Around 70% of the largest companies are state-owned, and all the strategic sectors (energy, transport, telecoms, finance) remain under public control. So yeah, China is socialist. The real question isn’t if, just how far along it is in the transitional period that socialism entails.

996 is way less common than you people seems to think. It was a fringe practice in ~40 companies during the tech boom. It has since been made illegal and is declining from it’s already fringe position.

The Wikipedia article you linked cites allegations and then that multiple official investigations found insufficient evidence to classify these offices as illegal policing operations or intimidation stations.

“They could be intimidating people in ways we can’t prove” isn’t an argument, it’s an unfalsifiable claim, and a hallmark of bad-faith debate.

The South China Sea is a separate territorial dispute. Conflating it with a supposed global campaign targeting individuals is either a deep misunderstanding or deliberate obfuscation.

I’ve addressed the sources, the evidence, and the logic. You’ve doubled down on vagueness and false equivalence. I’m done. If you ever find verifiable proof of coordinated illegal intimidation (not allegations from American funded NGOs, not speculation) feel free to present it. Until then, I’m personally done with this.

No that’s a border dispute. Pretty much every country has them. And it’s completely unrelated to the point at hand about a global intimidation ring targeting individuals. Nice try with the false equivalence tho 2 or 3 more debate bro tactics and you might catch me out on some asinine technicality so you can declare yourself winner despite being factually wrong.

You know that you can just accept negative facts about China although you are on an ml instance??

If you look through my profile you’ll see I do this often. But this bullshit about global intimidation is not a fact, it’s a fantasy.

You can intimidate people without doing it the obvious illegal way. And then, you cherry pick some countries…

I picked those countries because specifically they have laws making intimidation a crime and they found no evidence.

The initial allegations came from a Western-funded NGO report and were then amplified across U.S.-aligned media and political channels(Radio Free Asia). Official investigations did not substantiate claims of criminal law-enforcement activity. For example, authorities in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada stated they found no evidence of illegal policing operations, though concerns were raised about registration and transparency.

So not really a good reason to believe some nefarious global intimidation ring. You should probably read things before you link them.

You’re still not engaging the substance.

Feudalism is a defined mode of production. It refers to specific property relations and hierarchical organization of society. The church was historically important in Europe, but it is not what defines feudalism. The defining feature is the structure of land ownership and obligations. The same applies here.

Imperialism, is not a synonym for “large country acting assertively” or “foreign policy I dislike.” It refers to a specific configuration of global political economy: monopoly capital, dominance of finance capital, export of capital for superprofits, division of markets, and coercive enforcement of unequal exchange. If you strip those structural elements away and use the term to mean “big state behavior,” the concept becomes analytically useless. It stops explaining anything.

You object to the definition but refuse to provide a coherent alternative. If you think the term should mean something else, define it clearly and demonstrate how China fits that definition and how it has meaningful value as an analysis tool. “Different imperial strategy” is not an argument.

On social transformation, dismissing China’s development as “not special” is evasion. The PRC began from conditions that included mass illiteracy, extreme rural poverty, war devastation, landlordism, widespread arranged marriage practices, and remnants of practices like foot binding within living memory. It was one of the poorest large countries on earth. Within a few generations it eradicated extreme poverty, built nationwide high-speed rail, electrified rural areas, massively expanded higher education, massively expanded women’s and LGBT+ rights and raised life expectancy by decades. That scale and speed of transformation is historically unheard of especially when coupled with not pillaging the third world to finance it. Flattening that into “every country follows global trends” avoids engaging the material record.

On your anecdote about rich, well-connected Chinese kids: that proves nothing about the structure of the system. Every large society has contradictions. The existence of wealthy individuals does not determine mode of production. What matters is whether private capital structurally dominates the state and the commanding heights of the economy.

I am a minority Chinese citizen originally from a rural village. I have firsthand experience of the countryside you are theorizing about from a distance. I also hold a master’s degree in Marxist theory. Wealthy diaspora anecdotes do not outweigh structural analysis or lived reality. Before asserting conclusions about an entire political economy, it would be worth engaging with its institutional structure rather than relying on social impressions.

Land in China is publicly owned. The banks are state-owned. Core sectors (energy, telecoms, rail, defense, heavy industry )are state enterprises. Planning institutions shape capital allocation. When private firms grow politically destabilizing, the state has shown it will discipline them. That is materially different from systems where finance capital disciplines the state.

You’re correct that macro and micro interact. That is precisely the point. If the internal system subordinates capital to state planning and national development goals, external behavior will reflect that structure. China’s international conduct: trade integration, infrastructure financing, debt renegotiation, absence of regime-change wars, follows from its internal political economy. It prioritizes development partnerships over military enforcement.

None of this means the system is perfect. It means it does not structurally match the definition of imperialism as a stage of monopoly capitalism enforced through global military dominance.

If you want to argue that it does, demonstrate the mechanisms. Identify the finance capital dominance, the coercive capital-export regime, the military enforcement of unequal exchange. Without that, you are asserting a label without meeting its criteria.

Precision is not dogma. It is the difference between analysis and rhetoric. And you are firmly in the rhetoric category for now.

You are mixing together several different issues that need to be separated.

First, empires and imperialism are not the same thing. The Roman Empire and the Mongol Empire were empires. They expanded territorially through conquest. That tells us something about pre-capitalist state formation. It does not tell us much about how 19th–20th century industrial powers behaved once finance capital, monopoly capital, and global markets became dominant.

Using “imperialism” in the useful sense is not a dodge. It is an analytical category developed to explain a specific historical phenomenon: why advanced capitalist states began exporting capital, carving up colonies, enforcing unequal trade structures, and using military power to secure superprofits abroad. If a concept is meant to explain a modern phase of capitalism, applying it to Rome is a category error. We already have words for territorial conquest, war, annexation, and domination. Not every bad or aggressive action needs to be labeled “imperialism” to be condemnable. Just as not every atrocity is genocide, even though both can be severe crimes.

Second, on whether China’s development is rooted in socialist foundations: this is not a matter of faith but of historical sequence and institutional structure. The PRC began with massive land reform under Mao, eliminating landlordism and breaking the pre-1949 semi-feudal structure. That radically altered property relations in the countryside. It built universal basic healthcare, literacy campaigns, and heavy industry from an extremely impoverished base. When reform and opening began, it did so from a position where land remained collectively owned and the commanding heights of the economy were state controlled (the apparatus through which the people exert their power).

Today, state-owned enterprises dominate strategic sectors: energy, banking, telecommunications, transport, defense, and heavy industry. The largest and most systemically important firms remain under party-state control. Finance is not privately sovereign in the way it is in Western economies; it is subordinated to planning priorities. Poverty alleviation on the scale China achieved (lifting hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty within decades), large-scale infrastructure coordination, and sustained anti-corruption campaigns targeting high-ranking officials are not typical outcomes in liberal capitalist states where capital structurally dominates the state. You can criticize implementation or inequality levels, but the development trajectory is not reducible to “normal capitalism with a flag.”

On social questions, sweeping claims about uniform repression do not reflect reality. China is not socially homogeneous. Urban centers like Shanghai have gender-affirming clinics operating openly. Chengdu has a visible and active queer scene. Ethnic minority regions have received significant state investment in infrastructure, education, and poverty relief; minorities were exempted from the one-child policy for decades. That does not mean no problems exist. It means the picture is more complex than “reactionary uniformity.”

China also began from a far poorer, more backward and much more recent starting point in the modern age than most contemporary developed countries. The speed and scale of industrialization, poverty reduction and social progress in roughly four decades have few to no historical parallels. None of this implies perfection. A socialist transition in a large, unevenly developed country integrated into the global market will contain contradictions: inequality, bureaucratic distortion, market pressures, ideological struggle. Expecting a frictionless transition misunderstands the theory itself. Socialism is not a moral condition achieved overnight; it is a protracted restructuring of property relations, production, and global positioning under difficult constraints.

Finally, rejecting dogma cuts both ways. Treating “all rising powers inevitably replicate imperialism” as a fixed truth is also a form of ideological closure. The question should remain empirical: what are the property relations? Who controls finance? Is capital subordinated to political planning or vice versa? Is global expansion enforced militarily for superprofits, or is integration primarily commercial?

China can be criticized where warranted. But critique should rest on material analysis, not analogy or inherited narratives. Edit: fixed formatting

“What are we a bunch of Asians/Russians”

This is literally the most USAmerican thing to happen.

Bombing civilians in the middle east has been the Epstein Coalitions favourite pass time for literal decades.

Apologies in advance for the length of this.

To start, there is no modern Chinese “empire” in the way there is a U.S.-led Western empire.

The United States maintains hundreds of overseas military bases, a globe-spanning alliance architecture (NATO, bilateral defense treaties in East Asia, Five Eyes intelligence integration), permanent carrier strike group deployments, and an expansive sanctions regime. Since 1945 it has engaged in invasions, coups, proxy wars, destabilization campaigns, and support for armed non-state actors in dozens of countries, including in China during the civil war and later through toleration or political maneuvering around groups such as ETIM, which carried out violent attacks in Xinjiang and neighboring states. That is what empire looks like in material terms: global force projection combined with economic and financial enforcement mechanisms.

China does not possess that structure. It has one acknowledged overseas support base in Djibouti, no global military bloc, no equivalent to NATO, no record of regime-change wars abroad in the PRC era, and no network of foreign occupations. Those are not minor differences.

Framing China as “not as bad as the world police” implies rough comparability. That comparison does not hold up under scrutiny. The “world police” has:

– Invaded or bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Serbia and others.(Been at war for all but roughly 15 years of its existence)

– Sponsored coups and destabilization efforts across Latin America, Africa, and Asia.(Pinochet, Banana republic, assassination of Sankara and Lumumba)

– Imposed sanctions regimes that function as collective punishment.

– Used IMF and World Bank leverage to enforce structural adjustment: privatization, subsidy removal, austerity, capital liberalization.

By contrast, China’s external engagement since reform and opening has centered on trade, infrastructure financing, and industrial development partnerships. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, it has financed ports, rail, energy grids, and industrial corridors across the Global South. Loans have frequently been renegotiated, extended, or partially forgiven. There is no systematic Chinese analogue to IMF-style conditionality requiring privatization or austerity as a precondition for assistance.

On the claim that China is “harsher in its sphere of influence”: China has not fought a major war in nearly fifty years. The 1979 conflict with Vietnam lasted roughly one month and is widely regarded ( including within China ) as costly and strategically flawed. Since then, border disputes (including with India) have involved standoffs and limited clashes, not prolonged invasions or occupations. Border tensions are common globally; they are not equivalent to imperial expansion.

It is also necessary to define imperialism clearly. In the classical sense that has any actual use, imperialism is not simply “a powerful country acting assertively.” It is a specific stage of capitalism characterized by the dominance of finance capital, export of capital for superprofits, division of the world among monopolies, and enforcement of unequal exchange backed by military power.

The Chinese system is a socialist market economy: a mixed structure where strategic sectors (finance, energy, infrastructure, land, and slightly over 70% of the largest companies) remain publicly owned and capital is subordinated to long-term national development planning. One can debate how early into the socialist transition army period it is, but it is fundamentally not organized around the same model of private finance capital dominating the state and projecting power abroad to secure superprofits. There is no evidence of systematic coercive debt seizures, gunboat enforcement of contracts, or military intervention to secure overseas capital flows.

Every state pursues national development, energy security, technological advancement, and geopolitical stability favorable to its interests. The relevant question is how those interests are pursued. The empirical record shows that China’s rise has primarily taken the form of trade integration and infrastructure investment, not regime-change wars or structural adjustment regimes imposed at gunpoint.

At present, there is one consolidated imperial bloc with global military reach, integrated finance capital, and sanction power across continents: the U.S.-led Euro-American alliance system. Other powers may have regional ambitions or security concerns, but they do not currently possess the structural capacity to organize and police the world economy in that way.(Russia is a big one as a relatively new capitalist power).

The assumption that any rising power must replicate the existing hegemon is an assumption. It is not evidence. If someone wants to argue that China is imperialist in the classical sense, the burden is to demonstrate the mechanisms, enforced unequal exchange, capital export backed by military coercion, territorial division through force.

You seem nominally leftist, you would probably benefit from deconstructing your foundation of “common sense” when it comes to political economy especially if you live in the imperial core. Ask why you believe things and trace it all back. I’m sure some will still make sense but a lot will be from immersion and osmosis of imperial narratives from constant propaganda bombardment.

Edit: As I was typing this the US empire launched a preemptive strike on Iran hitting a girls elementary school killing over 40 students alongside strikes on downtown Tehran. Death to America.

That’s a Wikipedia article that cites Radio Free Asia, The US Government and western funded think tanks. I would call that about as trustworthy as you would call DPRK state media. Also I didn’t ask you.

Do I believe China is engaging in a campaign of global intimidation? Heck, I’d be more surprised if they weren’t.

Why do you believe this?

What evidence? It’s just a claim from a CEO with every incentive to lie.

You are continuing to just engage in bad faith. All the best.

Edit: nice edit over an hour later btw lmao. You really dug far into my profile lol.

Tankie is when you’re Chinese apparently.

It’s just not believable that they’d be using chatgpt in government over the Chinese alternatives. I very much believe their probably are people using/abusing chatbots for dumb stuff. But this specific story given the details and time it’s “come to light” is just so obviously fabrication for altman to show what a good boy he is and pushing his bot for American defence contracts.

Your original comment was a clear badfaith strawman.

Holy strawman.

This is a high level conspiracy between multiple parties to make one Chinese official look dumb,

No it’s a standard propoganda run, run through the most standard propaganda mouthpiece (RFA) to spread propaganda about China? Are you being dense on purpose?

I was born in the 90s. I lived through that period too. My family was rural, and because of minority status we experienced the system differently so while I understand what that era felt like on the ground, I can only sympathize with what you went through.

I don’t support the one-child policy. A lot of people on the mainland don’t. That doesn’t mean I don’t understand where it came from. It was created under extreme poverty, food insecurity, and rapid industrialization. The intention was to slow population pressure, but the execution was harsh and often cruel. What you experienced was real, terrible, and not something I would ever support or want repeated. I’m not denying or justifying those practices.

But what you’re doing now is turning personal trauma into a judgment on an entire country and decades of development and progress.

When I was a kid, my parents’ home village and surrounding villages still had no proper roads, no clinics, no stable electricity. That was normal. Look at what followed: hundreds of millions lifted out of extreme poverty, infrastructure reaching remote areas, near-universal schooling, massive housing programs, healthcare expanded nationwide. Corrupt officials actually getting investigated and punished, including high-level ones. The one-child policy ended over a decade ago but the positive policies remain, and so do their effects.

You can hate that policy. I think it was deeply flawed too. But saying “nothing changed” or that the whole project is meaningless is just ignoring reality.

You ask why the state had power over reproduction that’s a great question, why do states have that control, but you talk like this only happens in China. Western governments regulate reproduction too: abortion bans, forced sterilizations in prisons and detention centers, child removal through foster systems, welfare penalties for having kids. States everywhere control bodies in different ways. So don’t pretend this is some uniquely mainland evil.

And no I obviously don’t hate you I know nothing about you. I don’t think your existence is a crime. You’re turning my defense of China’s overall development into a personal attack on you.

Your experience deserves sympathy. I genuinely mean that. But a country isn’t built around any one person’s trauma. You judge a government by whether it feeds people, educates them, houses them, provides healthcare, and raises living standards, not only by individual suffering, even when that suffering is real and tragic.

You can resent the policy. That’s fair. But don’t erase the entire historical process because of it.

And since we’re talking about flawed policies, I also think the hukou system is deeply broken. It affected me personally too. Not to the extent the one-child policy affected you, obviously, but enough that I know what it feels like to be limited by bureaucracy and birthplace. I don’t pretend these systems were harmless or well-designed. But you also can’t let real mistakes erase the whole picture. Depending on how cynical I’m feeling, my assessment of the government ranges from 60/40 to 90/10 in its favor but even at my most critical, it’s still obvious they’ve done far more good than harm overall.

You’re focusing on one painful chapter and pretending the rest didn’t happen. That’s not honest, especially to the hundreds of millions who no longer live in desperation.

You sound extremely comfortable judging from overseas without bothering to do any investigation into the history, current happenings or theory that explains why things are how they are.

China didn’t start in 1949 as some middle-class country waiting to “finish” a revolution. It started destroyed by war, invasion, famine, and colonial humiliation. Then it immediately faced embargoes, military threats, and nonstop pressure from the US-led order. Try rebuilding a civilization under siege from a globe spanning empire and see how fast it goes.

While you’re asking “where’s the egalitarianism,” nearly 900 million people were lifted from abject poverty. Villages got roads, electricity, clinics, schools, normal and high-speed rail links and corrupt officials actually started to get punished, including high-ranking ones.

You treat history like a vibe. Revolution isn’t a personality phase, it’s decades or more of infrastructure, education, stability, and survival in a hostile world.

And yes, strong centralized leadership still exists because capitalism didn’t disappear and imperial powers didn’t suddenly become friendly. We already saw what happens when countries relax too early, look at the USSR or if you’re too weak to defend yourself(Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Peru, Palestine).

Leadership gender balance and patriarchal tendencies are still real issue. But pretending nothing has improved since your grandma’s childhood is insulting to hundreds of millions of women who now read, work, own property, and live longer fuller lives.

What’s actually “weird” is sitting safely in America, benefiting materially from the empire, then mocking a country that had to claw its way out of devastation for not becoming perfect in 75 years. You have a very interesting way of interpreting things.