386-SX 25Mhz VGA posted:

Based on the links that were posted and some related reading, my understanding now is that the socialism thing coming from Chinese state people is sincere, they are trying to use markets as a speedrunning hack for advancing domestic material conditions, billionaires are tolerated but actively prevented from forming a class, and the fuzzy end goal is to get to the end of socialism after a hundred or so years. Is that way off?

386-SX 25Mhz VGA posted:

Thanks! I realized recently that I know essentially nothing that comes from a source that I would consider informed and genuine, except bits and pieces that I’ve picked up from the forums.

I had a vague expectation that the Chinese state was long ago captured by capitalists, with the whole socialism thing a facade, because of what I had read about huge companies, billionaires, real estate, etc. But I also had a sense, again from pieces picked up over the years, that the political people at some level had a technical systems competence more sophisticated than what I’d expect from the usual clown car of finance ghouls looting their own country. I couldn’t really reconcile, so the question.

Based on the links that were posted and some related reading, my understanding now is that the socialism thing coming from Chinese state people is sincere, they are trying to use markets as a speedrunning hack for advancing domestic material conditions, billionaires are tolerated but actively prevented from forming a class, and the fuzzy end goal is to get to the end of socialism after a hundred or so years. Is that way off?

gradenko_2000 posted:

snip

quote:

In 2021, these 97 central SOEs—along with thousands of other SOEs in the hands of provincial and local governments—together accounted for 66 percent of GDP and 31 percent of tax revenue in China.

https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2023/02...eign-investors/

BULBASAUR posted:

what's your perspective on who started the war vs the mainstream narrative?

gradenko_2000 posted:

The ROK invaded across the 38th parallel a year before the generally accepted beginning of the Korean conflict:




And even the hostilities in June of 1950 were also initiated by the ROK:

gradenko_2000 posted:

"This Monstrous War", by Wilfred Burchett

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/1951/korea.htm

quote:

It was not an international war but a civil war, with which the United Nations would not normally be concerned. The United States Government decided, however, to treat it as an international war and to secure the condemnation of the North Koreans before any evidence could be produced and before the Soviet delegate could resume his place on the Security Council. Ambassador Muccio’s report reached the State Department at 9.26pm on 24 June, eastern daylight time (11.26am, 25 June, Korean time), and at midnight EDT, namely, 2.00pm, 25 June, Korean time (see Appendix II (e)) the Secretary-General telegraphed to the United Nations Commission in Seoul asking for a report. Some hours later the Commission sent a telegram in reply (S/1496) stating that Syngman Rhee had not planned to appeal to the Security Council, but had no objection to their being informed of this ‘latest turn of events’. The telegram threw no light on the origin of the fighting but merely stated that each side accused the other. At the urgent request of the US Government the Security Council met at Lake Success at 2.00pm EDT the same day. The US delegate said that the facts were set out in the Commission’s telegram (S/1496) and that his government considered that ‘this wholly illegal and unprovoked attack by the North Korean forces constitutes a breach of the peace and an act of aggression’. The Yugoslav delegate protested that the evidence before them did not enable the Council to decide which was the guilty party, but he received no support. The American resolution was adopted and the North Koreans were condemned unheard.

quote:

John Gunther was in Tokyo in June 1950, gathering material for his book about MacArthur. On 25 June he was lunching with two important members of the occupation ‘when one was called to the phone and came back and whispered, “A big story has just broken. The South Koreans have attacked North Korea."’

quote:

New York Times, 31 July 1950: On 30 July an Intelligence Staff Officer on General MacArthur’s HQ at Tokyo said that ‘the North Korean army had not carried out its full mobilisation plan at the time the war began on 25 June... that only six full divisions had been ready for combat when the invasion started, although the North Korean War plan called for 13 to 15.’ (He offered no theory to explain why North Korea should launch an invasion before it was fully ready.)

Dr. Jerrold Coe posted:

tim shorrock wrote an excellent article on the sexual slavery system, which was a top-down program from the rok govt to keep american soldiers happy: https://newrepublic.com/article/155707/united-states-military-prostitution-south-korea-monkey-house

Dr. Jerrold Coe posted:

tim shorrock wrote an excellent article on the sexual slavery system, which was a top-down program from the rok govt to keep american soldiers happy: https://newrepublic.com/article/155707/united-states-military-prostitution-south-korea-monkey-house

Truga posted:

https://twitter.com/pcgamer/status/1742575068956229731

Grapplejack posted:

man that was one of the best things they've done, fuckin tencent vultures must have pulled strings

e: the article talks about netease being in talks with blizzard, which lol there's no loving way they'll ever work with blizzard again after the poo poo they pulled

Dr. Jerrold Coe posted:

the ideological lines are still tightly drawn for the korean war, from the stuff gradenko's posting to the reality of the biowarfare taken from unit 731. you post anything outside the american consensus and you'll get buried with reactionaries and liberals, especially for modern dprk. a funny thing is how so many of the evil totalitarian accusations against north korea are things south korea's done: killing homeless people to keep the streets clean, salt mine slave labor for the disabled, sex slaves (for american GIs instead of the kims), family punishment systems. maybe the most parodic example of this is when american soldiers filmed south korean forces slaughtering dissidents and dumping them into a mass grave during the bodo massacre - this was turned into a film about NORTH korean crimes narrated by humphrey bogart

quote:

The Commission received 11,174 cases based on petitions from individuals. The body confirmed 8,468 cases (76%), rejected 1,729, and sent another 957 cases to other instances or closed them because of insufficient information.
The Commission found that during the Korean War, several mass killings of civilians were committed not only by the North Korean military, but also by South Korean and U.S. Armed Forces.
The Commission attributed 82% of all petitions regarding wartime massacres to state agents (the police, the armed forces, or groups associated with the state) and only 18% to "enemies of the state".

quote:

Since the Commission’s establishment, the Commission has received 9,600 petitions for massacres from the Korean War period of 1950-53. Out of those 9,600 petitions, South Korean forces conducted 7,922 individual massacres and North Korean forces conducted 1,687 individual massacres.

ModernMajorGeneral posted:

the most ridiculous thing about the ideological framing of the Korean war as fighting the murderous communist hordes from the north is that the official South Korean truth commission found the South to blame for the vast majority of mass murdering.

https://www.usip.org/publications/2012/04/truth-commission-south-korea-2005

add it to the list of established historical facts you are accused of being a deranged tankie conspiracist for saying

stephenthinkpad posted:

I would say the first major turning point was China started reinforcing the reefs in SCS in 14. The island was built so fast in a 2 years window it didn't give the US any time to react. You can argue the US started it with the pivot to asia strategy.

Mandel Brotset posted:

man now I really want a close read of the history that led to obamas pivot to asia

mila kunis posted:

"we're bored of fighting goat herders now we want to kill some other people in a different part of the world"

NoModsNoMasters69 posted:

I'm sorry, but this is just untrue. It's still extremely common for there to be a dowry or bride price. Here's a china daily story about it, but there's tons of stuff if you Google "cai li"
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2015-11/23/content_22510352.htm

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Like lol that was probably literally it

386-SX 25Mhz VGA posted:

Thanks! I realized recently that I know essentially nothing that comes from a source that I would consider informed and genuine, except bits and pieces that I’ve picked up from the forums.

I had a vague expectation that the Chinese state was long ago captured by capitalists, with the whole socialism thing a facade, because of what I had read about huge companies, billionaires, real estate, etc. But I also had a sense, again from pieces picked up over the years, that the political people at some level had a technical systems competence more sophisticated than what I’d expect from the usual clown car of finance ghouls looting their own country. I couldn’t really reconcile, so the question.

Based on the links that were posted and some related reading, my understanding now is that the socialism thing coming from Chinese state people is sincere, they are trying to use markets as a speedrunning hack for advancing domestic material conditions, billionaires are tolerated but actively prevented from forming a class, and the fuzzy end goal is to get to the end of socialism after a hundred or so years. Is that way off?

Orange Devil posted:

I would say billionaires, or more precisely, capitalists and assorted liberals absolutely are a class in Chinese society. I mean, don't forget that the four smaller stars on the flag literally stand for the working class, the peasant class, the urban petite bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie.

What the CPC is preventing then is not the forming of a class, but the seizing of political power by that class.

And yes, the CPC is (openly, if you read their documentation about long term goals and plans) in the process of building socialism. Their intention is to keep building towards communism once socialism is achieved. Note that a common (western?) misconception is that the road to communism is that countries have a revolution to overthrow the bourgeoisie, proclaim a communist government and then tada suddenly they're communist! This is not true. Communism means fundamentally changing the social relations governing the means of production. In the case of underdeveloped countries, for example due to a century of humiliation caused by foreign imperialists taking turns tearing huge chunks out of your land and people and exploiting them for their own gain followed by decades of warfare, it also means having to carry out massive amounts of development works to raise standard of living. This poo poo takes a hell of a lot of work, as in you need to combine a lot of labour and capital to produce desirable outcomes. And that takes time. Especially if you're doing it for ~18% of humanity.

The current main goal is to establish China as a modern, socialist country in all respects under the rule of law by 2035. This ought then to be followed by turning China into a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful country by 2049. You can find that every single goal China sets for itself in its 5-year plans contributes to these overall goals, and the 5-year plans are made keeping in mind the target dates for these overall goals. From what I've seen, China also tends to overperform on whatever metrics it sets for itself in its 5-year plans. I've seen that described as due to intentionally setting the target a little lower than it could have been to prevent people from losing face and basically having a cultural expectation of overachieving, but then if you look at the goals and compare it to any kind of stated long term goals set by Western governments (if any lmao) they still read as wildly ambitious to me. But judge for yourself: https://digichina.stanford.edu/work/translation-14th-five-year-plan-for-national-informatization-dec-2021/

Mandel Brotset posted:

man now I really want a close read of the history that led to obamas pivot to asia

Orange Devil posted:

gradenko_2000 posted:

Wikipedia posted:

Serious border clashes between South and North continued on 4 August 1949, when thousands of North Korean troops attacked South Korean troops occupying territory north of the 38th parallel.

Gildiss posted:

The guy who stabbed Lee Jae-Myeong yesterday was a 67yr old real estate broker. Living in Asan, just south of Camp Humphreys. Probably blames him and Moon for the poo poo real estate market atm.

https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/area/yeongnam/1122721.html

quote:

The real estate agent surnamed Kim who attacked Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung on Tuesday in Busan has been found to have been a member of the People Power Party (PPP) for several years before joining the Democratic Party 10 months ago.

Kim’s acquaintances have testified that he frequently joined the far-right “Taegeukgi rallies” and enjoyed watching political content on YouTube.

...

According to officials from both the PPP and the Democratic Party, Kim was a member of the United Future Party, the predecessor of the PPP, and joined the Democratic Party in March 2023 and remained a member until recently.

...

Kim’s nephew, a 57-year-old identified by the surname Lee, told the Hankyoreh in a telephone interview on Wednesday that Kim had “attended Taegeukgi rallies at Gwanghwamun several times around four to five years ago.”

The proprietor of a convenience store near Kim’s real estate agency said, “Whenever he came to buy something, he would always have political YouTube videos playing loudly on his smartphone.”

...

Based on Kim’s statement that he “intended to kill” Lee and the fact that he modified the weapon — purchased through an online shopping mall last year — to make it easier to use, police believe that Kim’s attack on Lee was premeditated.

Police are investigating the possibility that Kim followed Lee for some time with the intent of harming him.

A video taken at the time Lee attended a Supreme Council meeting at the local Democratic Party chapter in Busan on Dec. 13 showed Kim wearing the same blue crown-shaped headband that he wore at the time of the stabbing, along with another man who was dressed similarly to Kim and wore the same style of headband.

Orange Devil posted:

I would say billionaires, or more precisely, capitalists and assorted liberals absolutely are a class in Chinese society. I mean, don't forget that the four smaller stars on the flag literally stand for the working class, the peasant class, the urban petite bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie.

What the CPC is preventing then is not the forming of a class, but the seizing of political power by that class.

And yes, the CPC is (openly, if you read their documentation about long term goals and plans) in the process of building socialism. Their intention is to keep building towards communism once socialism is achieved. Note that a common (western?) misconception is that the road to communism is that countries have a revolution to overthrow the bourgeoisie, proclaim a communist government and then tada suddenly they're communist! This is not true. Communism means fundamentally changing the social relations governing the means of production. In the case of underdeveloped countries, for example due to a century of humiliation caused by foreign imperialists taking turns tearing huge chunks out of your land and people and exploiting them for their own gain followed by decades of warfare, it also means having to carry out massive amounts of development works to raise standard of living. This poo poo takes a hell of a lot of work, as in you need to combine a lot of labour and capital to produce desirable outcomes. And that takes time. Especially if you're doing it for ~18% of humanity.

The current main goal is to establish China as a modern, socialist country in all respects under the rule of law by 2035. This ought then to be followed by turning China into a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful country by 2049. You can find that every single goal China sets for itself in its 5-year plans contributes to these overall goals, and the 5-year plans are made keeping in mind the target dates for these overall goals. From what I've seen, China also tends to overperform on whatever metrics it sets for itself in its 5-year plans. I've seen that described as due to intentionally setting the target a little lower than it could have been to prevent people from losing face and basically having a cultural expectation of overachieving, but then if you look at the goals and compare it to any kind of stated long term goals set by Western governments (if any lmao) they still read as wildly ambitious to me. But judge for yourself: https://digichina.stanford.edu/work/translation-14th-five-year-plan-for-national-informatization-dec-2021/

Gildiss posted:

“Whenever he came to buy something, he would always have political YouTube videos playing loudly on his smartphone.”

Dr. Jerrold Coe posted:

the ideological lines are still tightly drawn for the korean war, from the stuff gradenko's posting to the reality of the biowarfare taken from unit 731. you post anything outside the american consensus and you'll get buried with reactionaries and liberals, especially for modern dprk. a funny thing is how so many of the evil totalitarian accusations against north korea are things south korea's done: killing homeless people to keep the streets clean, salt mine slave labor for the disabled, sex slaves (for american GIs instead of the kims), family punishment systems. maybe the most parodic example of this is when american soldiers filmed south korean forces slaughtering dissidents and dumping them into a mass grave during the bodo massacre - this was turned into a film about NORTH korean crimes narrated by humphrey bogart

gradenko_2000 posted:

taken from

and

exmarx posted:

psychotic

quote:

“We have been through a coup in all but name. The flabby facade of civilian constitutional government remains but almost all signs point to a carefully planned takeover of the military power positions by a group of ‘young Turk’ officers.”
— US Ambassador to South Korea William H. Gleysteen in communication to the US State Department at 9:27 am on Dec. 13, 1979

The US intelligence community referred to Chun’s clique by various names that symbolize the US’ changing perspective on the coup.

A recently published three-volume series of materials related to the democratization movement in Gwangju and the resulting massacre in May 1980 includes a striking series of documents composed by the US intelligence community around the time of the coup on Dec. 12, 1979. The series brings together American documents that were donated to the city of Gwangju in 2017 by Tim Shorrock, an American reporter.

...

At 7:51 pm on Dec. 12, 1979, the US Department of State wrote, “General Chon has met with President Choi, and at one point tried to get Minister Ro [Roh Jae-hyeon, defense minister] and the other senior commanders to come to the presidency to ‘discuss replacement of the martial law commander.’”

“Minister Ro declined this invitation, fearing that he would become a hostage of the incipient coup forces,” the report states.

Here, Chun Doo-hwan’s forces were labeled as “coup forces.”

However, in a report written two days later, the same forces are referred to as “a new line-up” and “young Turk officers.”

A report made by the US Embassy in Seoul at 8:03 am on Dec. 13, 1979, states, “More than ever he [President Choi Kyu-hah] is cut off from support and dependent upon a new line-up within the ROK military establishment.”

At 9:27 am on the same day, the embassy sent a report referring to those taking power of the military as “a group of ‘young Turk’ officers.”

“Turk” is slang used to refer to insurgents or troublemakers.

A US intelligence report on Dec. 13 uses the phrases “new military group” and “new military hierarchy.” A different phrase, “new army leadership group,” appears in a report made on Jan. 26, 1980. The coup forces were thusly upgraded from the initial “troublemakers” to “new army leadership group.”

The reports also cover in detail how South Korea’s defense minister at the time tried to flee from the military mutiny on Dec. 12, 1979. An US Department of State document said that Defense Minister Roh Jae-hyeon, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Kim Jong-hwan and Combined Forces Commander Gen. Lew Byong-hion had been until a short time before sending, physically in the UN Command bunker at Yongsan along with UNC Commander Gen. Wickham and Ambassador Gleysteen. (Report sent by the US Department of State to the US ambassador in Seoul at 4:51 am on Dec. 13, 1979.)

Lee Jae-eui, a researcher of the Gwangju democratization movement who edited the volumes, commented, “Many documents detailing the actions of Chun Doo-hwan difficult to find in South Korean documents are included, which makes me excited about the fact that many researchers will be able to delve deeper in their research and unearth new truths.”