China endorses private property. Is China still communist?

[Free Enterprise]

There are some issues with you evidence for the Soviet Union's proposed success.

Literarcy rates can be high in power countries. The China of 2004 has a quite high literarcy rate despite being much farther back than many countries with higher per capita GDP. A human development index might prove more useful. The figures are pretty far back which makes the third world look much worse off than it would be if you too into account the 70s or 80s.

The countries of sub-Saharan Africa for example have about equal (if not slightly higher) literarcy than the majority of Middle Eastern countries which have much better nutrient intake and per capita wealth.

I don't have time to post any more information tonight.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Originally posted by Free Enterprise
There are some issues with you evidence for the Soviet Union's proposed success.

Soviet Union had an amazing success in the 50's mainly because people working in jobs of low economical value had been hired in a growing industrial economy. However, it was artificial since they produced for the sake of production without any idea about what to do with it afterwards. That makes me think of Mao "Great Leap forward" which has unfortunately awful consequences on the people (I won't talk about it in details).

What is true is that Chinese growth is mainly the result of new people joining the labor market and not the result of a better use of inputs like in western countries. According to Friedman's studies, China lacks of a growth being the product of a most efficient way to use inputs. According to him, that will lead China to a stabilization of its growth sooner or later.

Literarcy rates can be high in power countries. The China of 2004 has a quite high literarcy rate despite being much farther back than many countries with higher per capita GDP. A human development index might prove more useful. The figures are pretty far back which makes the third world look much worse off than it would be if you too into account the 70s or 80s.

How do they define literacy rate in China ? People knowing 1,000 characters ? 5,000 ? 10,000 ? I think there are more than 15,000 characters in chinese and I doubt the majority of chinese know more than 5,000 characters.

The countries of sub-Saharan Africa for example have about equal (if not slightly higher) literarcy than the majority of Middle Eastern countries which have much better nutrient intake and per capita wealth.

Most of Middle East country has "artificial" GDP figures due to the exports of oil that hides the real poverty of people. That should be taken into account. Never trust blindly a statistical figure.

 

[lz14]

Originally posted by Marla_Singer

How do they define literacy rate in China ? People knowing 1,000 characters ? 5,000 ? 10,000 ? I think there are more than 15,000 characters in chinese and I doubt the majority of chinese know more than 5,000 characters.

C'mon. How many English words are there and how many do we know.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Originally posted by lz14
C'mon. How many English words are there and how many do we know.

No I'm serious Iz14. A large majority of chinese people know only very few characters. Well, education is growing fast but in the countryside, China is still not more developped than Africa. Besides of course, you have cities like Shanghai which is maybe even richer than LA, but still.

 

[Archer 007]

Originally posted by addiv

Too bad you can't accept something that doesn't quite fit your ideology. It's a simple fact that the Soviet Union & satellite countries were rich and had good living conditions, when compared to most countries in the world at the time. I never said they were as rich as the Western world, but it's unfair to put them in the same category with countries like India or other third world countries. Anyway, I'm not here to defend communism, since I'm a tempered capitalist myself, but here are a few maps I dug up that should indicate that the Soviet Union wasn't doing all that bad (unfortunately I couldn't find any maps referring directly to income or wealth online, but these should give you an idea.)

Source: Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century (interesting site btw)

Just know that I agree with your point and the site you referenced has some awesome material (used it for an IS in Literature last year).

 

[Dann]

Don't you consider it's sad you don't have independant news ?

Nope. Like I said, the peasants toiling in the fields don't care. They don't even watch the news, only soap operas.

What do you think about the People's Daily by the way ?

I don't get to read it that much. Get my news through TV more. But I do have Internet access so usually I get 2 to 3 different viewpoints of the same event, read between the lines and THEN make my own conclusion.

China's development right now is very lopsided in favor of the eastern side. The main cities like Beijing or Shanghai are very developed and cosmopolitan but some interior provinces are very undeveloped. Of course, literacy is generally proportional in the same way, too. They are doing something about it though (or so I'm told).

 

[lz14]

Originally posted by Marla_Singer
No I'm serious Iz14. A large majority of chinese people know only very few characters. Well, education is growing fast but in the countryside, China is still not more developped than Africa. Besides of course, you have cities like Shanghai which is maybe even richer than LA, but still.

C'mon. You were saying "how to define literacy in China" I think you imply it's very hard to define it. Then you gave an argument that there are 10000 Chinese characters and most people only know 5000. Therefore I said it's probably the same as English. So it is not that difficult to define literacy in China, just the same as any other country.

Nowhere did you or me said anything related to "rural China are worse than Africa" etc. So...

To the original topic. China aren't communism ages ago. Also this change of document has nothing to do with "a step towards democracy", it was merely an action to attract more foreign investers. Untill China reduces corruption to a managable level, there aren't going to be any democracy there. When you see a document about how to reduce corruption you hail that as a great step forward.

 

[Dann]

For everyday conversation and reading the number of characters needed is indeed around 4000 to 6000. Maximum number including older ones no longer being used would run into several 10s of thousands. 'Tis said it's impossible for anyone to know them all.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

The version I've heard - you need only to know 2000 or 3000 to be able to read the newspaper.

I only know a few hundreds at most, and I can get by reading Chinese-translated manga.

 

[allhailIndia]

China's success os more because of cheap labour and the FDI it attracts because of cheap labour and relative stability.

It dished communism a long, long time back

 

[addiv]

Originally posted by newfangle
@Addiv: Ok, so the soviet bloc, run by despots, faired slightly better than third world nations, also run by despots.

I thought we were talking about socialism/capitalism, not about despotism/democracy. And the Soviet bloc fared more than slightly better than most of the Third World.

 

[newfangle]

If you wanted to compare socialism/capitalism, why didn't you just bring up East/West Berlin?

 

[addiv]

Because this is the comparison that was brought up by FE in the first place.