This indian was amazed by communist china.. look at his post: @praveenkumar-if8jw 1 day ago @Nikhilsharmxxxxx1928 Really just go to china and see, Shanghai is 50 years ahead of America my mate. 90% of the vehicles are run on electric, just see the desert in china it’s really breathtaking
Another of his posting @praveenkumar-if8jw 3 days ago India Can never become a super power like china.... The moment Modi government steps down india will face lots and lots of problems. China is and will be the super Power always Mark my words Just go to china and see what the government did and doing to their people. Its astonishing and breathtaking @mohanumarvaish1384 2 days ago Absolutely, I think India never become like china , Indian people bas bate karke apne aap ko superior manane lag jate hai aur kuch devlopment nahi karte
@vikramchand7205 3 days ago UP के पार्ट होना जरूरी है, क्योंकि कोई भी CM बने, अभी भी UP में बिजली, पानी, सड़क नही है, मेरे इलाके में अभी भी रोड, बिजली, पानी की समस्या है... बरेली उत्तर प्रदेश
I am almost certain I have seen this on the hoover site, your edits are excellent. Kotkin is wrong about some fairly important things, worse, he is less wrong than everyone else (例外我) You seem really cool.
Ask him to learn from people with Brains i.e Henry Kissinger, Samuel Huntington , Lee Kwan Yew, Graham Allison etc etc.... Kotkin is a slightly better Peter Zeihan thats all.
it's almost as if it's a party built around a conspiratorial elite vanguard bent on a revolution to overthrow the exploiting imperialists and replace them with a government of workers and peasants! Where the member literally swear to keep party secrets even at the cost of their own life, which, fyi if you are out to do some irl terterr that is the way to go. But leninism is a shitty way to actually govern. so then they must reform or die. and the USSR died and the PRC reformed. He thinks they are inevitably doomed. Yeah, these phudcers also thought liberblahism was "the end of history": they are filled with hubrs, armed, and dangerous.
Rather than obsessing with overthrowing China, what we need is an American Gorbachev who focuses on some actual reforms in the U.S.A. In reality, the U.S. is a corrupt plutocracy and the prospects are not good as wealth inequality grows worse year after year. Worth looking through the research of Peter Turchin if you want to know how plutocracies generally end.
i don't agree w/you BUT some ppl think Grabochev was a CIA agent and if so lol because Putler returned the flavor with Megamadman dementia donnie, as Rus Agent of Influence, really.
@@QuizmasterLaw You people with DTS are like a cult. Putin would be head of the Politburo if the USSR still existed. Weakness in the USA comes from within and a half century of Marxism in our universities. Communists are always going to be oppressive dictators no matter where they are. Xi is just Mao with better press. Ask a Venezuelan how that is working now.
Need to consider Chinese history first before talking about communism in China. The communism in China is Chinese characterized. The difference is set apart from Soviet Union's at the very beginning .
💯 Exactly, and we need to publish American system of government which is controlled by ultra rich or think tanks in the form of wallstreets where both Washington and congress is a mere elected representatives of the people.
@a.shikatoswu5400 you only half right. It's true America was created and managed by the very rich. That's exactly brought America, a relatively young republic of 200+ years, to the top of the world. Elites are better than common people (me included), not because how good they are, but their bottom line is much higher than ours. Also, please think, since the last 100 years, the world would have been a better or worse place for the most peoples without America?
China has the benefit of hindsight of its 2000 year history. Dynasties rise and fall and the CCP is but the latest iteration of the centralised, authoritarian, examination driven meritocratic mandarin system. The average life span of an empire or dynasty is around 250 years. Countries would be wise to look inward for rejuvenation or follow the tides of history.
Sorry, CCP is far from meritocracy. Connections and loyalty rule. Corruption and conformity rule. Central planners are sure they are wise enough to know best. Look at the Chinese real estate debacle, the savings of generations squandered in tofu dreg buildings, monumental uneconomic projects, one child policy? Sure.
@@oldernu1250 meritocracy does not preclude the existence of connections, loyalties, corruption, conformity. Xi Jinping, for example, is a so called Princeling who rose up the rank in Fujian and Zhejiang with a track record of effective management and economic growth. CCP does not get everything right of course-no government can. As you’d mentioned, one child policy and allowing runaway speculation in property sector were mistakes, but it also did many other things right, such as growing the economy 30 times in 4 decades and lifting 800 million people out of poverty. China is now the largest auto exporter in the world, the leader in green technologies, as well as the largest trading partner to the most number of countries. If China were indeed incompetent, the West would not be spending so much time worrying about it now.
@@davidlai399But that has to do with the US. Big Corporations like Apple, Nike etc used China as production site for their Products, China earned Money and learned from bis US Corporations.Also some smart Economic decision like Battery Technology Investments were made by CCP.
China is still ruled by fear. Why on earth would they choose to overthrow a constitution in order to give power to one man - Xi. It is a dead give-away. Together with the human preference for corporatism and agreement it is a danger to everyone.
@@davidlai399It's easy to grow 30 times based on a GDP of 200 $ p.c. PER YEAR! Japan did the same 50 years earlier, when the West as export destination was 4 times less rich. I don't see how China can ever reach the level of Japan, not to speak of the best in the West.
‘You can’t contain liberalisation within the one-party monopoly’ - but the USA seems to have contained democracy very well within a two-party monopoly, no?
On his last opinion, i.e. "self-created vulnerability of the system," we shall see how the world pans out in the next years, especially by zero in on the US vs China progress in all facets of socio-economic metrics. In other words, it will be interesting to know how their respective system's vulnerabilities influence their respective outcomes.
Current China's CCP is more of Singapore PAP than the Soviet' style of Communist party. China following Lee KY more than Karl Marx. China don't take communism as a Bible but rather as one of the means to run a country; changing courses & modifying it along the way whenever necessary. Like Lee KY, their aim of staying in power is to lead majority of their people to a higher prosperity. For Chinese it doesn't matter if the "cat is black or white" as long as it can provide majority of the people with a stable & comfortable life.
It's at the same tier as bringing prosperity to their people. You can't remove one and still have one. For the CPC, staying in power is synonymous with performance.
There is no difference between the governments of any two countries. It is too easy for these experts to criticize other countries' government, but they wouldn't dare to do the same to their own country--multi-party is no different than a single party. These experts would "disappear" if they dared to threaten the stability of their own country--that's why this video is not being censored.
That's complete nonsense. Look at the difference between North Korea and Sweden. DRC and Botswana. And any number of other comparisons. Did you get friends to up-vote you? Or is that just 4 people who like a slogan?
@@danguee1 There is a common country in all those pairs of countries. Think about it. Is it your country? Have you thought about what your country is doing to these? Stability and non-stability is not dependent on the number of political parties. Have you analyzed what keeps your country stable?
An Indian posted this: @praveenkumar-if8jw 3 days ago India Can never become a super power like china.... The moment Modi government steps down india will face lots and lots of problems. China is and will be the super Power always Mark my words Just go to china and see what the government did and doing to their people. Its astonishing and breathtaking
Has Mr. Kotkin studied Chinese history? The main point is that China is Chinese, not communist. What makes you think that a hundred-year-old ideology from the West can override three thousand years of history and culture? And communism did not deliver, either in China or in the Soviet Union. Communism is what the Soviet Union practiced, and what China practiced from 1949 to 1979. All means of production were owned by the government. Nobody owned anything. You worked for a unit (a factory, a government unit, a farm, an ice hockey team etc.) and the unit provided you with everything: housing, healthcare, school for your children etc. When you got out of school, you were assigned to whatever job, whatever unit the government decided. On the macro level, there was no market. The government planned everything and assigned production target to everything. And the communists believed that they were building a new world. So they dictated art as well. If you look at the official paintings and sculptures from the Soviet Union, or from China in the 1950s, they all look the same. The style was social realism. Without these features, you do not have communism. What about all the other things like secret police and no political rights? These are features of all kingdoms in the past. The tsar of Russia had them all and they sent political prisoners to Siberia. If you call monopoly of political power communist, then, by your logic, Tsar Nicholas II was a communist, King Henry VIII of England was a communist. Although China studied the collapse of the Soviet Union in detail, China moved away from communism in the 1980s. Collective farms (people's communes) were all abolished by the mid-1980s. That affected almost 90% of the people in China. Many markets were allowed. By the late 1980s, many traditional cultures were reviving. Classical novels, like Journey to the West and The Dream of The Red Chamber were made into TV series. Those things were unimaginable from 1949 to 1979. I hope Mr. Kotkin would take a sabbatical and go to study Chinese history in China.
There are 2 arms to Western Imperialism; one arm is Liberalism and the other is Fascism. Democracy always leads to an Oligarchy. Democracy like liberalism is just an ideology to keep the current Oligarchy in control. "Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance" H.L. Mencken (1912)
Communism and capitalism are political ideas. Only an ideolog would make a political idea his/her religion. The rest of us are perfectly capable to be half communist and half capitalist = social democrat.
"We wanted a Chinese Gorbachev, we didn't get it." It's interesting to see how ideology tends to disappear from perception, and yet it never quite succeeds. That "we" tells a different story. The US has always been an aggressive external actor in all socialist countries, often leveraging democratic structures to its ends. The lesson learnt by Xi Jinping is that in siege conditions (not all conditions) this is how you maintain a communist government form. It's also interesting to see how despite the US intervening in more than 53 countries as a major destabilizing factor, what is being blamed here is the self-destabilization of communist regimes. They did it to themselves...we were just watching history as the socialist contradictions unfolded...right
June 4, 1989 was the Wests attempt (CIA/MI6) to hijack a peaceful student demonstration about inflation (not democracy) to install the Chinese Gorbachev (via color revolution). This Western puppets name is Zhao Ziyang (CPC party official).
When you study the Chinese Communist Party, you should first study China, not the Communist Party. Studying the Communist Party of Romania or the Soviet Union has limited significance for studying the Chinese Communist Party. Although modern Chinese do not recognize the emperor inherited by blood, that does not mean that we do not recognize the bureaucratic tradition of 2,000 years. The Chinese understanding of politics comes from our own history, not the paranoid binary logic of "democracy vs. dictatorship" in the West.
I wouldn't say that this is particularly astute. I knew it was going to be bad at the outset when it starts with the Trotskyite definition of communism, rejecting the Stalin/Mao idea of socialism as a nationalist endeavor. Trotsky emphasizes the need for continuous, international proletarian revolutions to achieve global communism, which is why he is the darling poster child of communism and anti-communist rhetoric. Kotkin's focus on the incompatibility of the two systems is obvious, and it would have been better if he could view the two systems as being compatible in a heterogeneous market, rather than a winner-take-all system. The US free market depends on the unipolarity of Washington neoliberalism, the US is pushing a world war narrative precisely because of the failure of neoliberalism with the multilateral success of "communist" economies, which if you step back and study, are simply regulated economies. His example too of wealth accumulation is simply a half-truth. Sure if you're making a lot of money, you may not want to surrender it, or you may feel entitled to it, but having a government limit that wealth and remind you that your wealth is a result of those who came before you is simply good consciousness. Ir Kotkin is the voice of communist history and scholarship, then it just goes to show how terrible our economic and political history of the world really is.
The little I know about the Soviet Union I learned from Prof. Lapidus at Berkeley '76. Go Bears! I like Prof Kotkin's two books on Stalin. Love the detail. Grazie.
It seems to me that it is overly simplistic to reduce the politics and economics of communism as binary, it is far too complex to devolve this Communism/Democracy argument because the ideologies of both systems are failing.
Kotkin is right about China. But he is wrong to say it is Xi who is responsible for the thinking. For 3000 years, China has been ruled by a centralised power, aka emperor system. Today, it is replaced by the CPC. Deng did not believe in decentralised power, so this political system persisted from Mao to Xi. The difference between the emperor and CPC is, of course, in the way the ruler is selected. CPC replaced dynastic rule with a party member system selected from the population. About 8% are party members. Only the best rises to the top for which an election is put in place to select the leaders. Unlike the West, where democracy is a procedural system, the China CPC system is a direct democracy i.e. CPC can only remain in power if they can deliver the common good for the people. China is removing capitalism from the market economy and replacing it with Common Prosperity. Whether this will work to give a better life to the people is yet to be seen. CPC is not wedded to any economic ideology. Kotkin's view that economic growth can not happen if the CPC controls the successful rich is yet to be proven. China has been around for a very long time. They are reinventing themselves. No system is perfect. No ideology is perfect. Therefore, CPC is a pragmatic party, like in Singapore. We are not wedded to any ideology but what works to deliver the common good to the people. Americans shd not believe that others must be recasted in their image. It is folly because it is not perfect. It has not done a good job in Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither is America a paradise on earth with their social ills.
First off, I felt like I was listening to Secretary Blinken or Jake Sullivan rather than to a professor of history. I'm ashamed of him. Let me make a couple of points: (1) Basically, both China and the U.S. have a one-party system. "In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population." Noam Chomsky (2) The U.S. does not really care about democracy except when it comes to countries that it considers as adversaries like China, Russia, and other countries endowed with natural resources and pursue policies that the U.S. considers as contrary to U.S. interests. That is why the U.S. currently props up dictators in many countries around the world. But what is that the U.S. seeks to achieve through political liberalization in China or Russia? Professor Kotkin implicitly answers this question: "You pull a thread in the sweater...and the entire thread unravels." Stephen Kotkin (3) Generally speaking, the number one reason the U.S. seeks to see political liberation in countries it considers as adversaries is that political liberalization allows the U.S. to manipulate elections, foment violence, financially support the opposition, and handpick leaders (Zelenskyy is case in point). Here are some quotes from Kotkin that support this argument: "People who toy with political liberalization under communism ... those are our friends. We wanted a Chinese 'Gorbachev'. We didn't get it because the system selected...the person who would preserve the system." Stephen Kotkin Kotkin seems to be desperately salivating for a Chinese 'Gorbachev' who would dismember China and help maintain a unipolar world. This is not going to happen because, as Kotkin said, the Chinese have studied and learned from the Soviet Union. What Kotkin needs to understand is that China accounts for ~20% of the world's population and trades with more than 120 countries. It is, therefore, in the interest of humanity that China and other countries continue to prosper and help create a multi-polar world order. I would argue that 99% of the U.S. population would have the same (if not better) standard of living in a multi-polar world as in the current world order. Only the one percent (1%), who Kotkin serves, would probably lose some degree wealth in a multi-polar world, and that is a price worth paying. I suggest that Kotkin leave China to the experts and focus on Stalin. P.S. The quote Peter Robinson read (allegedly said by Xi Jinping) is pure propaganda and total fabrication. There is no way Xi Jinping could have said "Capitalism is bound to die out" when he, in reality, is leading a market economy. Because the interviewer could present no evidence, he had to say that Xi Jinping said this "behind closed doors". Smh
You are absolutely right! The US election has two rounds, during the primary the upper class of super rich elites will decide who are the final two candidates. Only those candidates that seems to benefit these upper class of super rich will be left to run for the final round. However, this kind of society of rich getting richer and poor getting poorer was the main reason for communist to come into power in Soviet & China.
I'd argue that we actually don't won't a multipolar world since that will create chaos (the opposite of order, and in most of human history, the world was "multipolar" and wars were commonplace). What we want is a managed bipolar world where the two superpowers can't really fight each other, mainly due to cost which includes suicide, and pull the rest of the world into two distinct blocks (ala the US vs USSR in cold war). This managed bipolar arrangement will give most of the world an optimal room to breathe compared to a unipolar world (where they technically would have none).
@@hitthedeck4115 yah, from 1990 to about 2018 was unipolar and west is broken due to that along countless other problems in world. political system is similar in microcosm of nation: at least 2 parties more or less forming "wings" and some fringes and central region parties, to essentially do same. Oldcshool hegelian form. We can easily see how fast "uniparty" authoritarian system drives itself to suicide. china has CCP internal factions to my understanding work as parties inside a party. 1990s for these reasons is still foggy and very interesting period.... russia started to get antagonistic in 2000s especially 2008 and after. US and UK party system is mocked "uniparty" as it is so balanced 2 party system even 3rd party cannot enter.
@@hitthedeck4115 What you said would be true if there were no wars between 1990 and 2018 when we lived in a unipolar world. Ask ChatGPT to find out how many nations the U.S. invaded or regimes it toppled during this period.
Marx is often criticised and villified because his writings are not appropriate to the modern world, but Marx was not writing for the modern world, he was trying to improve conditions for the oppressed and downtrodden working man of the mid 19th century, and so was his friend, benefactor and supporter Freidrich Engels. I'm sure Kotkin realises this, but most members of the public dont. Conditions for the working class have changed immensely since those times, so to apply Marx's ideas to the modern world is more likely to produce tyranny than benefit the workers. His friend Engels was an enlightened mill owner who deplored the working conditions he saw in the 19th century industrial scene and improved on them for his own employees.
I think it's a good attempt to dissect the present China using Soviet Union and Marxism facts. We know that China achieved Republic status from the Monarchy with such implosive struggles that all foreign popwers were waiting to grab a piece of China then. Marxism was vogue and convenient then for the population undergoing the huge poverty imposted by power struggles within and from outside. That said, as an war baby overseas chinese, communism was appealing when horror and glorified stories were told then. Without Marxism, the land reforms can't be enacted, people power can't be used through a single Party system and so on. The Soviet Union discontinued Land Reform and privatized land ownership. The oligraphs in Russia are much different from the Billioniares in China. China still remains locked in Land reforms with short tenure for ownership. Xi vision for China is rewriting the Ming Dynasty of power, militarily and economically for additional political influence. Hence, Belt and Road expansion. But, we have to live in China (which I have not) for sometime to know the ground. I have been to China and was awe by their successes.
Good analysis on communism for Hungary, Czech, or Soviet Union. But one needs to add Chinese civilization and political approaches to the current Chinese communism.
This indian was amazed by China in his recent trip... @praveenkumar-if8jw 1 day ago @Nikhilsharmxxxxx1928 Really just go to china and see, Shanghai is 50 years ahead of America my mate. 90% of the vehicles are run on electric, just see the desert in china it’s really breathtaking
@vikramchand7205 3 days ago UP के पार्ट होना जरूरी है, क्योंकि कोई भी CM बने, अभी भी UP में बिजली, पानी, सड़क नही है, मेरे इलाके में अभी भी रोड, बिजली, पानी की समस्या है... बरेली उत्तर प्रदेश
China and Egypt have a long history. It is unlike any nation in that it was able to remain one system for a long time. They never experimented with democracy in its history. They were able to develop quickly because of communism.
They did in 1911 under Dr Sun Yat Sun and failed miserably. China descended into utter chaos with the warlords until the communist conquered all of China except the last warlord outpost in Taiwan.
Like every true believer in the free market, without restraints, and in democracies as they exist here in the West, Stephen Kotkin observes well the contradictions and imbalances that led to the collapse of the Soviet system. But he fails to perceive the limitations, contradictions and imbalances that have been slowly (and now more rapidly) eroding and collapsing the political system here in the West. He truly believes that the system will readjust itself, preserving the essence of how it exists today. But it does not seem that it will be quite like that... Human social and political constructions are complex. Other variations have emerged
They did theorize about following Singapore's PAP as a potential model of governance but to their dismay PAP actually could lose seats in Parliment and lost their Foreign Minister in an electionin in 2011. It is unthinkable for china have an opposition party in NPC questioning the CCP on youth employment..should funds in defence be diverted to social welfare. They dropped that idea entirely
China has the benefit of hindsight of its 2000 year history. Dynasties rise and fall . The CCP is but the latest iteration and it runs on the same centralised, examination driven meritocratic system. The average life span of a dynasty or empire is around 250 years. USA would do well to look inward for rejuvenation or follow the pattern of history.
What happens by 2100 when the Chinese population has shrunk by 40%? The demographic reversals in so many nations is, for me, the most interesting variable that it seems no one is talking about. Too unpredictable?
the best choice is, to let people capitalistic with the real possibility to get wealthy. I think, the chinese model is the best nowadays, to slow down persons with several tens of billions to get even richer.
Level of knowledge is deep in some areas, but woefully narrow. He doesn’t compare with the brilliance and wisdom of Martin Jacques who first characterized China as a “civilization state”. Kotkin is unsure what that means as he hasn’t studied China’s civilization - and look how far that gotten him, sadly.
This is facile stuff. There have been huge experiments and tests of the equilibrium in China over the past 30 years. Kotkin needs to look more closely at that period, in itself and on merits, rather than in contradistinction to the Soviet Union. For example, liberalization of the TVEs unleashed massive amounts of production, capital and market incentives. Liberalizing the SEZs, the major cities like Shanghai, and investment in tech and innovation zones were transformational. Zhejiang has an economy that is only 30% state, Fujian and Guangdong likewise. The state and party can accommodate huge amounts of sector, provincial, and capital autonomy. And horizontal stratification. EXCEPT when the state gets scared, which is what happened in 2013-14 and the takedown of Bo Xilai. That may look like an elite political squabble, but it rose from economic autonomy, and the answer seemed to be to roll that back. Of course the elites and party members profess unswerving commitment to communism. But that to me looks more like interest alignment rather than a deep faith in the ideology of the day. I've been visiting China since 94 and had two lengthy periods living there. I think Kotkin should reconsider what he thinks he knows.
Scale is a parameter of production, political systems and humanity. Leadership is always lost at some point in growth to large scale systems. Look at the number of corporations that run the world's food production over the last 60 years. The UN's body on agriculture has been decimated by the concentration of agricultural decision makers resulting in unconscious misalignment of capacity and health. Humane production and political systems exist best in scales that match the limits of human capacity for relationships. When scale is obscured one is left with narcissism as the main trait of an individual in every group's character. Narcissism is now the driver of human population growth and the major threat to every specie's existence. Scale and narcissism are tightly coupled in affecting sustainability negatively. Choice of system is not as impactful as the scale of each system. We fool ourselves that the choice is consequential. Efficiency and humanity arise from the scale of all collectives and the absence of narcissism. Political systems only exist to obscure scale and advance narcissism. Flavouring of systems is like selling soda pop and subsequent damage to our bodies. A little is refreshing but more is rot. Scale is the most important parameter of every species' survival paths AND not the efficiency of any political or production system.
Ok,but does that party dominance necessitate the shrinking of the poliburo power to one man? Secondly, does it necessitate the surveillance state which has emerged? Or are they just circumstantial to Xi Jinping 's character?
But it wasn't. For a long time. In one aspect worse than Stalin: the Cultural Revolution. Sending intellectuals to farm work reminds of Pol Pot. Ji was also victim, although only as son of a disgraced party functionionary.
I can think of some very large Western countries which long longer believe in free markets and the private sector, and wonder why growth lags and children are less well-off than their parents. Just listen to their election candidates.
a smart fellow once said that you should look at where people are going. best americans, koreans and taiwanese are going to china and india. best chinese are returning to china every year. in contrast, more eastern europeans are moving to the west now that they got rid of communism. do people like communism more than capitalism or independence more than us hegemony? ideology is irrelevant as far as i can see. china cooperates with the world by having 800 times less military bases. military bases smell occupation and colonialism.
What Prof Kotkin gets right is the level of importance that the CPC (as distinct from a fictional CCP) applies a democratic centralist form of governance ie; communism. What Kotkin gets wrong is the notion that the CPC liberalised it's market economy. What the CPC did was to socialise it's market economy by subordinating capitalism to it.
Worst interview Kotkin ever gave imo Seemingly hes just trying to play nice with Russia and split them from China like Kissinger and Brzezinski recommended
I enjoy the fruits of Chinese labour. I by cheap but effective carbon bike wheels for my racing bikes. The industry has a bunch of small, entrepreneurial plAyers. Will Xi cut them down? They do earn money for the China.
It is a uniparty and no it's not a democracy -- as you rightly suspect. Voters have little to ZERO influence on major policy issues. Those are decided by donors, oligarchs, and corporations.
Interesting and intelligent indeed, but my caveat is this. I agree with Michael Ledeen, Willy Lam, and Jasper Becker that China is now a fascist, not a communist state. A one-party state that relies on capitalism (led by the party) and has imperial ambitions: that is practically the definition of fascism. And fascism, unlike communism was not a paper tiger. Communism died in Europe through implosion. Fascism had to be defeated by force of arms.
He has no clear grasp of Chinese civilization and how it influences current Chinese politics. He should study Asian history more and its values and he is not an expert on geopolitics.
kotkin is jewish, nothing wrong with that. but jews has a jewish perspective. knowing that jews where instrumental in establishing the CCCP and in its fall, I say, read with a critical mind.
God save us all from Communism and Socialism. Socialism has helped the world but if unchecked leads to economic stagnation, autocracy , corruption ,poverty and misery.
I’ve lived and worked in China for 15 years and I can only vouch that it’s a wonderful country with an awesome history and civilization. I have been blessed to witness the rise and blossoming of a modern China where there is now a huge educated middle class. Whilst I have been active on TH-cam during most of those years my Chinese friends and colleagues wouldn’t waste their time on a platform which has always been loaded against them. China has its own internal platforms where discussion is fulsome and intelligent.
You should interview an Asian Professor Kishore Mabuhbani who is far well versed in China than Prof Kotkin who specialised in Soviet Union but little knowledge most of which he read from some other sources which are equally ignorant. Take away USD as the world reserve currency and you will soon see a collapse of this nation so it is working overtime to prevent through its powerful military n media
Communism is a veneer of populism used to disguise totalitarianism. Case in point; in China the Gini coefficient which is a measure of economic inequality is among the worst in the world. It has a rigid class system as predatory as any in the world.
Enterviewer isn't skilled. Can't seem to complete an whole sentence, without backtracking, stammering....and essentially enterupting the guests flow of thought
Capitalism and socialism, economic philosophy, cannot survive under a communist, political philosophy But the two can survive and thrive together, under a liberal democracy.
That's why we see the rise of oligarchs in the west especially in the finance and military sector. So many committees against every adversaries creating a money laundering scheme.
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What do you think of Professor Kotkin's analysis? Do you agree or disagree? What does he get right? Wrong?
This indian was amazed by communist china.. look at his post:
@praveenkumar-if8jw
1 day ago
@Nikhilsharmxxxxx1928 Really just go to china and see, Shanghai is 50 years ahead of America my mate. 90% of the vehicles are run on electric, just see the desert in china it’s really breathtaking
Another of his posting
@praveenkumar-if8jw
3 days ago
India Can never become a super power like china.... The moment Modi government steps down india will face lots and lots of problems.
China is and will be the super Power always Mark my words
Just go to china and see what the government did and doing to their people. Its astonishing and breathtaking
@mohanumarvaish1384
2 days ago
Absolutely,
I think India never become like china ,
Indian people bas bate karke apne aap ko superior manane lag jate hai aur kuch devlopment nahi karte
@vikramchand7205
3 days ago
UP के पार्ट होना जरूरी है, क्योंकि कोई भी CM बने, अभी भी UP में बिजली, पानी, सड़क नही है, मेरे इलाके में अभी भी रोड, बिजली, पानी की समस्या है...
बरेली उत्तर प्रदेश
I am almost certain I have seen this on the hoover site, your edits are excellent. Kotkin is wrong about some fairly important things, worse, he is less wrong than everyone else (例外我)
You seem really cool.
Ask him to learn from people with Brains i.e Henry Kissinger, Samuel Huntington , Lee Kwan Yew, Graham Allison etc etc.... Kotkin is a slightly better Peter Zeihan thats all.
As coming from China, i must say, professor Kotkin sums up the best: you can't be half communist.
Correct you absolutely need to be a communist.
it's almost as if it's a party built around a conspiratorial elite vanguard bent on a revolution to overthrow the exploiting imperialists and replace them with a government of workers and peasants! Where the member literally swear to keep party secrets even at the cost of their own life, which, fyi if you are out to do some irl terterr that is the way to go. But leninism is a shitty way to actually govern. so then they must reform or die. and the USSR died and the PRC reformed. He thinks they are inevitably doomed. Yeah, these phudcers also thought liberblahism was "the end of history": they are filled with hubrs, armed, and dangerous.
@@williamhuang2976 there is no communist in china
It all depends on what being "communist" means.
@@pedrob3953 Communist in the Marxist sense is really a utopian concept that has never been enacted.
Rather than obsessing with overthrowing China, what we need is an American Gorbachev who focuses on some actual reforms in the U.S.A.
In reality, the U.S. is a corrupt plutocracy and the prospects are not good as wealth inequality grows worse year after year. Worth looking through the research of Peter Turchin if you want to know how plutocracies generally end.
i don't agree w/you BUT some ppl think Grabochev was a CIA agent and if so lol because Putler returned the flavor with Megamadman dementia donnie, as Rus Agent of Influence, really.
The USA will fly apart violently and won't agree to divide peacefully as USSR did.
@@QuizmasterLaw You people with DTS are like a cult. Putin would be head of the Politburo if the USSR still existed. Weakness in the USA comes from within and a half century of Marxism in our universities. Communists are always going to be oppressive dictators no matter where they are. Xi is just Mao with better press. Ask a Venezuelan how that is working now.
One can’t discuss Chinese policy of the last 30 years without considering the influence of Lee Kwan Yu
Exactly. Especially how to resist West interference and keep CIA out.
Very good point Dr Kotkin! Well said. Thank you!
Need to consider Chinese history first before talking about communism in China. The communism in China is Chinese characterized. The difference is set apart from Soviet Union's at the very beginning .
💯 Exactly, and we need to publish American system of government which is controlled by ultra rich or think tanks in the form of wallstreets where both Washington and congress is a mere elected representatives of the people.
The supporters of the culture revolution believe the destruction of Chinese culture helps the implementation of Marxist ideology.
@@pingdeedee Chinese system is closed. By definition, we can only speculate to a certain extent.
@a.shikatoswu5400 you only half right. It's true America was created and managed by the very rich. That's exactly brought America, a relatively young republic of 200+ years, to the top of the world. Elites are better than common people (me included), not because how good they are, but their bottom line is much higher than ours.
Also, please think, since the last 100 years, the world would have been a better or worse place for the most peoples without America?
Not necessary at all. Every single communist country had gone through the same: internal cleansing, famine, suppress people... why? Human nature!
If this guy represents the level of Princeton and Stanford, no need to send your kids there. No clue about China.
And actually not much about current Russia. Stanley can live in the 50s in his head but you can't bring the 50s to the 20s.
pretty certain both of these guys are controlled opposition.
Let's hear your expert analysis Mike, what are your qualifications?
China has the benefit of hindsight of its 2000 year history. Dynasties rise and fall and the CCP is but the latest iteration of the centralised, authoritarian, examination driven meritocratic mandarin system. The average life span of an empire or dynasty is around 250 years. Countries would be wise to look inward for rejuvenation or follow the tides of history.
Sorry, CCP is far from meritocracy. Connections and loyalty rule. Corruption and conformity rule. Central planners are sure they are wise enough to know best. Look at the Chinese real estate debacle, the savings of generations squandered in tofu dreg buildings, monumental uneconomic projects, one child policy? Sure.
@@oldernu1250 meritocracy does not preclude the existence of connections, loyalties, corruption, conformity. Xi Jinping, for example, is a so called Princeling who rose up the rank in Fujian and Zhejiang with a track record of effective management and economic growth. CCP does not get everything right of course-no government can. As you’d mentioned, one child policy and allowing runaway speculation in property sector were mistakes, but it also did many other things right, such as growing the economy 30 times in 4 decades and lifting 800 million people out of poverty. China is now the largest auto exporter in the world, the leader in green technologies, as well as the largest trading partner to the most number of countries. If China were indeed incompetent, the West would not be spending so much time worrying about it now.
@@davidlai399But that has to do with the US. Big Corporations like Apple, Nike etc used China as production site for their Products, China earned Money and learned from bis US Corporations.Also some smart Economic decision like Battery Technology Investments were made by CCP.
China is still ruled by fear. Why on earth would they choose to overthrow a constitution in order to give power to one man - Xi. It is a dead give-away. Together with the human preference for corporatism and agreement it is a danger to everyone.
@@davidlai399It's easy to grow 30 times based on a GDP of 200 $ p.c. PER YEAR! Japan did the same 50 years earlier, when the West as export destination was 4 times less rich. I don't see how China can ever reach the level of Japan, not to speak of the best in the West.
‘You can’t contain liberalisation within the one-party monopoly’ - but the USA seems to have contained democracy very well within a two-party monopoly, no?
No
"Two-party monopoly" LOL
In u.s., both parties are owned by Capital, it's not about the population, it's by the capital, of the capital and for the capital. 😁😁
No
It has. Oligarchy loves the first past the post rigged two party system. It's not democracy AT ALL.
Just read “the hundred year marathon” by Michael Pillsbury. Lived in China myself. Open your eyes and ears USA!
On his last opinion, i.e. "self-created vulnerability of the system," we shall see how the world pans out in the next years, especially by zero in on the US vs China progress in all facets of socio-economic metrics. In other words, it will be interesting to know how their respective system's vulnerabilities influence their respective outcomes.
Current China's CCP is more of Singapore PAP than the Soviet' style of Communist party. China following Lee KY more than Karl Marx. China don't take communism as a Bible but rather as one of the means to run a country; changing courses & modifying it along the way whenever necessary. Like Lee KY, their aim of staying in power is to lead majority of their people to a higher prosperity. For Chinese it doesn't matter if the "cat is black or white" as long as it can provide majority of the people with a stable & comfortable life.
That may be one of the priorities, but not the primary one. The primary goal is to keep CCP in power.
It's at the same tier as bringing prosperity to their people. You can't remove one and still have one. For the CPC, staying in power is synonymous with performance.
LKY said Chinese communism is different from Soviet communism. (From Third World To First)
They follow the money. To take over the world.
This is a joke, right? A sick one. FREE the Chinese people from white supremacy communism.
There is no difference between the governments of any two countries. It is too easy for these experts to criticize other countries' government, but they wouldn't dare to do the same to their own country--multi-party is no different than a single party. These experts would "disappear" if they dared to threaten the stability of their own country--that's why this video is not being censored.
That's complete nonsense. Look at the difference between North Korea and Sweden. DRC and Botswana. And any number of other comparisons. Did you get friends to up-vote you? Or is that just 4 people who like a slogan?
@@danguee1 There is a common country in all those pairs of countries. Think about it. Is it your country? Have you thought about what your country is doing to these? Stability and non-stability is not dependent on the number of political parties. Have you analyzed what keeps your country stable?
Does Xi Pooh know you are outside his great red fire wall where we can talk about 1989 Tiananmen Square?
@@dulio12385 I don't know who Xi Pooh is--never heard that term
are you a child?
The professor is not a Chinese scholar with superficial understanding of the Chinese mindset.
An Indian posted this:
@praveenkumar-if8jw
3 days ago
India Can never become a super power like china.... The moment Modi government steps down india will face lots and lots of problems.
China is and will be the super Power always Mark my words
Just go to china and see what the government did and doing to their people. Its astonishing and breathtaking
"Nations have always good reasons for being what they are, and the best of all is that they cannot be otherwise." Custine
Has Mr. Kotkin studied Chinese history?
The main point is that China is Chinese, not communist. What makes you think that a hundred-year-old ideology from the West can override three thousand years of history and culture? And communism did not deliver, either in China or in the Soviet Union.
Communism is what the Soviet Union practiced, and what China practiced from 1949 to 1979. All means of production were owned by the government. Nobody owned anything. You worked for a unit (a factory, a government unit, a farm, an ice hockey team etc.) and the unit provided you with everything: housing, healthcare, school for your children etc. When you got out of school, you were assigned to whatever job, whatever unit the government decided. On the macro level, there was no market. The government planned everything and assigned production target to everything. And the communists believed that they were building a new world. So they dictated art as well. If you look at the official paintings and sculptures from the Soviet Union, or from China in the 1950s, they all look the same. The style was social realism. Without these features, you do not have communism.
What about all the other things like secret police and no political rights? These are features of all kingdoms in the past. The tsar of Russia had them all and they sent political prisoners to Siberia. If you call monopoly of political power communist, then, by your logic, Tsar Nicholas II was a communist, King Henry VIII of England was a communist.
Although China studied the collapse of the Soviet Union in detail, China moved away from communism in the 1980s. Collective farms (people's communes) were all abolished by the mid-1980s. That affected almost 90% of the people in China. Many markets were allowed. By the late 1980s, many traditional cultures were reviving. Classical novels, like Journey to the West and The Dream of The Red Chamber were made into TV series. Those things were unimaginable from 1949 to 1979.
I hope Mr. Kotkin would take a sabbatical and go to study Chinese history in China.
There are 2 arms to Western Imperialism; one arm is Liberalism and the other is Fascism. Democracy always leads to an Oligarchy. Democracy like liberalism is just an ideology to keep the current Oligarchy in control. "Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance" H.L. Mencken (1912)
"you can't be half communist". Folks its real simple, when a Kotkin video pops up on your feed you watch it
@@yyy-875 he's written what I would consider the definitive biography of Stalin (2 of 3 volumes completed so far)
Communism and capitalism are political ideas. Only an ideolog would make a political idea his/her religion. The rest of us are perfectly capable to be half communist and half capitalist = social democrat.
"We wanted a Chinese Gorbachev, we didn't get it." It's interesting to see how ideology tends to disappear from perception, and yet it never quite succeeds. That "we" tells a different story. The US has always been an aggressive external actor in all socialist countries, often leveraging democratic structures to its ends. The lesson learnt by Xi Jinping is that in siege conditions (not all conditions) this is how you maintain a communist government form. It's also interesting to see how despite the US intervening in more than 53 countries as a major destabilizing factor, what is being blamed here is the self-destabilization of communist regimes. They did it to themselves...we were just watching history as the socialist contradictions unfolded...right
Exactly. Yet Jeffrey Sachs will tell you exactly what occurred there in the 80s and 90s.
June 4, 1989 was the Wests attempt (CIA/MI6) to hijack a peaceful student demonstration about inflation (not democracy) to install the Chinese Gorbachev (via color revolution). This Western puppets name is Zhao Ziyang (CPC party official).
When you study the Chinese Communist Party, you should first study China, not the Communist Party. Studying the Communist Party of Romania or the Soviet Union has limited significance for studying the Chinese Communist Party. Although modern Chinese do not recognize the emperor inherited by blood, that does not mean that we do not recognize the bureaucratic tradition of 2,000 years. The Chinese understanding of politics comes from our own history, not the paranoid binary logic of "democracy vs. dictatorship" in the West.
Deeply thoughtful and insightful discussion here. Thank you for posting.
I wouldn't say that this is particularly astute. I knew it was going to be bad at the outset when it starts with the Trotskyite definition of communism, rejecting the Stalin/Mao idea of socialism as a nationalist endeavor. Trotsky emphasizes the need for continuous, international proletarian revolutions to achieve global communism, which is why he is the darling poster child of communism and anti-communist rhetoric.
Kotkin's focus on the incompatibility of the two systems is obvious, and it would have been better if he could view the two systems as being compatible in a heterogeneous market, rather than a winner-take-all system. The US free market depends on the unipolarity of Washington neoliberalism, the US is pushing a world war narrative precisely because of the failure of neoliberalism with the multilateral success of "communist" economies, which if you step back and study, are simply regulated economies. His example too of wealth accumulation is simply a half-truth. Sure if you're making a lot of money, you may not want to surrender it, or you may feel entitled to it, but having a government limit that wealth and remind you that your wealth is a result of those who came before you is simply good consciousness.
Ir Kotkin is the voice of communist history and scholarship, then it just goes to show how terrible our economic and political history of the world really is.
You should give me all of your possessions since you buy into Marx's teaching that people under his teaching will own nothing and be happy.
Exactly.
@@deezynar lol clearly, you've never read Marx.
@@ohnies
I quoted Marx.
The little I know about the Soviet Union I learned from Prof. Lapidus at Berkeley '76. Go Bears! I like Prof Kotkin's two books on Stalin. Love the detail. Grazie.
Most are lies 😢
It seems to me that it is overly simplistic to reduce the politics and economics of communism as binary, it is far too complex to devolve this Communism/Democracy argument because the ideologies of both systems are failing.
Kotkin is right about China. But he is wrong to say it is Xi who is responsible for the thinking. For 3000 years, China has been ruled by a centralised power, aka emperor system. Today, it is replaced by the CPC. Deng did not believe in decentralised power, so this political system persisted from Mao to Xi.
The difference between the emperor and CPC is, of course, in the way the ruler is selected. CPC replaced dynastic rule with a party member system selected from the population. About 8% are party members. Only the best rises to the top for which an election is put in place to select the leaders.
Unlike the West, where democracy is a procedural system, the China CPC system is a direct democracy i.e. CPC can only remain in power if they can deliver the common good for the people.
China is removing capitalism from the market economy and replacing it with Common Prosperity. Whether this will work to give a better life to the people is yet to be seen.
CPC is not wedded to any economic ideology. Kotkin's view that economic growth can not happen if the CPC controls the successful rich is yet to be proven.
China has been around for a very long time. They are reinventing themselves. No system is perfect. No ideology is perfect. Therefore, CPC is a pragmatic party, like in Singapore. We are not wedded to any ideology but what works to deliver the common good to the people. Americans shd not believe that others must be recasted in their image. It is folly because it is not perfect. It has not done a good job in Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither is America a paradise on earth with their social ills.
Unfortunately... you've been fully and totally propagandized fam.
That was a very intelligent and accurate summary of the geopolitics. Thank you. Surprised TH-cam didn't delete it. 😂
@@JohnDorian-j7xor perhaps it was you who has been.
In u.s., both parties are owned by the capital, the motto is by the capital, of the capital and for the capital, it's never about the population.
Do people immigrate from US to China, or from China to US?
too much ideology, lacking economic thinking
First off, I felt like I was listening to Secretary Blinken or Jake Sullivan rather than to a professor of history. I'm ashamed of him.
Let me make a couple of points:
(1) Basically, both China and the U.S. have a one-party system.
"In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population." Noam Chomsky
(2) The U.S. does not really care about democracy except when it comes to countries that it considers as adversaries like China, Russia, and other countries endowed with natural resources and pursue policies that the U.S. considers as contrary to U.S. interests. That is why the U.S. currently props up dictators in many countries around the world. But what is that the U.S. seeks to achieve through political liberalization in China or Russia? Professor Kotkin implicitly answers this question:
"You pull a thread in the sweater...and the entire thread unravels." Stephen Kotkin
(3) Generally speaking, the number one reason the U.S. seeks to see political liberation in countries it considers as adversaries is that political liberalization allows the U.S. to manipulate elections, foment violence, financially support the opposition, and handpick leaders (Zelenskyy is case in point). Here are some quotes from Kotkin that support this argument:
"People who toy with political liberalization under communism ... those are our friends. We wanted a Chinese 'Gorbachev'. We didn't get it because the system selected...the person who would preserve the system." Stephen Kotkin
Kotkin seems to be desperately salivating for a Chinese 'Gorbachev' who would dismember China and help maintain a unipolar world. This is not going to happen because, as Kotkin said, the Chinese have studied and learned from the Soviet Union.
What Kotkin needs to understand is that China accounts for ~20% of the world's population and trades with more than 120 countries. It is, therefore, in the interest of humanity that China and other countries continue to prosper and help create a multi-polar world order. I would argue that 99% of the U.S. population would have the same (if not better) standard of living in a multi-polar world as in the current world order. Only the one percent (1%), who Kotkin serves, would probably lose some degree wealth in a multi-polar world, and that is a price worth paying.
I suggest that Kotkin leave China to the experts and focus on Stalin.
P.S. The quote Peter Robinson read (allegedly said by Xi Jinping) is pure propaganda and total fabrication. There is no way Xi Jinping could have said "Capitalism is bound to die out" when he, in reality, is leading a market economy. Because the interviewer could present no evidence, he had to say that Xi Jinping said this "behind closed doors". Smh
You are absolutely right! The US election has two rounds, during the primary the upper class of super rich elites will decide who are the final two candidates. Only those candidates that seems to benefit these upper class of super rich will be left to run for the final round. However, this kind of society of rich getting richer and poor getting poorer was the main reason for communist to come into power in Soviet & China.
I'd argue that we actually don't won't a multipolar world since that will create chaos (the opposite of order, and in most of human history, the world was "multipolar" and wars were commonplace). What we want is a managed bipolar world where the two superpowers can't really fight each other, mainly due to cost which includes suicide, and pull the rest of the world into two distinct blocks (ala the US vs USSR in cold war). This managed bipolar arrangement will give most of the world an optimal room to breathe compared to a unipolar world (where they technically would have none).
@@hitthedeck4115 yah, from 1990 to about 2018 was unipolar and west is broken due to that along countless other problems in world. political system is similar in microcosm of nation: at least 2 parties more or less forming "wings" and some fringes and central region parties, to essentially do same. Oldcshool hegelian form. We can easily see how fast "uniparty" authoritarian system drives itself to suicide. china has CCP internal factions to my understanding work as parties inside a party. 1990s for these reasons is still foggy and very interesting period.... russia started to get antagonistic in 2000s especially 2008 and after. US and UK party system is mocked "uniparty" as it is so balanced 2 party system even 3rd party cannot enter.
@@hitthedeck4115 What you said would be true if there were no wars between 1990 and 2018 when we lived in a unipolar world. Ask ChatGPT to find out how many nations the U.S. invaded or regimes it toppled during this period.
@@fremonamultimedia4264 I didn't say that I/"we" want a unipolar world. Maybe you want to reread my post.
Marx is often criticised and villified because his writings are not appropriate to the modern world, but Marx was not writing for the modern world, he was trying to improve conditions for the oppressed and downtrodden working man of the mid 19th century, and so was his friend, benefactor and supporter Freidrich Engels. I'm sure Kotkin realises this, but most members of the public dont. Conditions for the working class have changed immensely since those times, so to apply Marx's ideas to the modern world is more likely to produce tyranny than benefit the workers. His friend Engels was an enlightened mill owner who deplored the working conditions he saw in the 19th century industrial scene and improved on them for his own employees.
Yeah it was still a utopia Marx and Engels wanted which is not possible. It is a religion not a political system
I think it's a good attempt to dissect the present China using Soviet Union and Marxism facts. We know that China achieved Republic status from the Monarchy with such implosive struggles that all foreign popwers were waiting to grab a piece of China then. Marxism was vogue and convenient then for the population undergoing the huge poverty imposted by power struggles within and from outside. That said, as an war baby overseas chinese, communism was appealing when horror and glorified stories were told then. Without Marxism, the land reforms can't be enacted, people power can't be used through a single Party system and so on. The Soviet Union discontinued Land Reform and privatized land ownership. The oligraphs in Russia are much different from the Billioniares in China. China still remains locked in Land reforms with short tenure for ownership. Xi vision for China is rewriting the Ming Dynasty of power, militarily and economically for additional political influence. Hence, Belt and Road expansion. But, we have to live in China (which I have not) for sometime to know the ground. I have been to China and was awe by their successes.
Capitalists also say capitalism will work for all next time after every crash/recession/depression.
If history tell us something, that is you can't learn from the past ... listen to this guy proofs delusion have no limits.
still waiting for volume 3 of 'Stalin' for historical context although not for his analysis or opinion
Good analysis on communism for Hungary, Czech, or Soviet Union. But one needs to add Chinese civilization and political approaches to the current Chinese communism.
This indian was amazed by China in his recent trip...
@praveenkumar-if8jw
1 day ago
@Nikhilsharmxxxxx1928 Really just go to china and see, Shanghai is 50 years ahead of America my mate. 90% of the vehicles are run on electric, just see the desert in china it’s really breathtaking
@vikramchand7205
3 days ago
UP के पार्ट होना जरूरी है, क्योंकि कोई भी CM बने, अभी भी UP में बिजली, पानी, सड़क नही है, मेरे इलाके में अभी भी रोड, बिजली, पानी की समस्या है...
बरेली उत्तर प्रदेश
China and Egypt have a long history. It is unlike any nation in that it was able to remain one system for a long time. They never experimented with democracy in its history. They were able to develop quickly because of communism.
They did in 1911 under Dr Sun Yat Sun and failed miserably. China descended into utter chaos with the warlords until the communist conquered all of China except the last warlord outpost in Taiwan.
This comment is just factually and historically wrong.
It’s not communism. It’s a one party dictatorship that has a strategy to be the world’s hegemon.
Yes, there are half-communist regimes. You find them in France, in Japan, etc.
Like every true believer in the free market, without restraints, and in democracies as they exist here in the West, Stephen Kotkin observes well the contradictions and imbalances that led to the collapse of the Soviet system. But he fails to perceive the limitations, contradictions and imbalances that have been slowly (and now more rapidly) eroding and collapsing the political system here in the West. He truly believes that the system will readjust itself, preserving the essence of how it exists today. But it does not seem that it will be quite like that... Human social and political constructions are complex. Other variations have emerged
They did theorize about following Singapore's PAP as a potential model of governance but to their dismay PAP actually could lose seats in Parliment and lost their Foreign Minister in an electionin in 2011. It is unthinkable for china have an opposition party in NPC questioning the CCP on youth employment..should funds in defence be diverted to social welfare. They dropped that idea entirely
Thank you.
China has the benefit of hindsight of its 2000 year history. Dynasties rise and fall . The CCP is but the latest iteration and it runs on the same centralised, examination driven meritocratic system. The average life span of a dynasty or empire is around 250 years. USA would do well to look inward for rejuvenation or follow the pattern of history.
What happens by 2100 when the Chinese population has shrunk by 40%? The demographic reversals in so many nations is, for me, the most interesting variable that it seems no one is talking about. Too unpredictable?
Women will have to be made to have kids. All the people are going to the ciities. no one is on the farm. Xi you will have a big problem.
Highly unpredictable. When has any one ever got a population prediction ~80 years into the future correct?
The world doesnt need population when AI robots can be built
His analysis on China is not 10 percent as good as his two great books on the Soviet Union, in my opinion.
He basically thinks China is just another Soviet Union…. Little did he know
The comments provide the balance the interviewer cannot
What’s with all the cuts?
the best choice is, to let people capitalistic with the real possibility to get wealthy. I think, the chinese model is the best nowadays, to slow down persons with several tens of billions to get even richer.
Thanks. Wonderful insights that is you carry it forward, explains almost all of Xi's policies and decisions. Thanks Dr. Kotkin.
China has really nothing to do with the teachings of Marx. It’s a corrupt regime that controls its citizens in all aspects of their lives.
Very interesting … I wonder if this theory could be extrapolated to Vatican II and the demise of the Roman Catholic church
共产主义在中国只是一面旗帜，它的核心就是实用主义，面对问题它可以随时发生改变，而且这种改变永无止境。
A most insightful explication
Level of knowledge is deep in some areas, but woefully narrow. He doesn’t compare with the brilliance and wisdom of Martin Jacques who first characterized China as a “civilization state”. Kotkin is unsure what that means as he hasn’t studied China’s civilization - and look how far that gotten him, sadly.
Ha, China needs to put up a statue to Bill Clinton for economic contributions to the CCP 😂
And the two Bushes
a statue to Richard Nixon is much more likely.
Brilliant--makes sense!
Professor Kotkin doesn't fully grasp it as he should. Communism is not only a different economic system but also a distinct monetary system.
7:35
CPC would be better in the title, not CCP.
You can't be half feudal either!
This is facile stuff. There have been huge experiments and tests of the equilibrium in China over the past 30 years. Kotkin needs to look more closely at that period, in itself and on merits, rather than in contradistinction to the Soviet Union. For example, liberalization of the TVEs unleashed massive amounts of production, capital and market incentives. Liberalizing the SEZs, the major cities like Shanghai, and investment in tech and innovation zones were transformational. Zhejiang has an economy that is only 30% state, Fujian and Guangdong likewise. The state and party can accommodate huge amounts of sector, provincial, and capital autonomy. And horizontal stratification. EXCEPT when the state gets scared, which is what happened in 2013-14 and the takedown of Bo Xilai. That may look like an elite political squabble, but it rose from economic autonomy, and the answer seemed to be to roll that back. Of course the elites and party members profess unswerving commitment to communism. But that to me looks more like interest alignment rather than a deep faith in the ideology of the day.
I've been visiting China since 94 and had two lengthy periods living there. I think Kotkin should reconsider what he thinks he knows.
Communism with European characteristics had major imperial defects.
Love how the wu Mao crawl out of their cave here
You mean people commenting on China in a video about China? This might be the dummest comment on here.
@@happyreaper08 He is a troll who has lots of time with no brains. Always staring at the moon and getting moonstruck!
What is the meaning and ultimate goal of communism? A more equitable society!
To paraphrase Churchill, the equitable sharing of miseries.
Why release with misleading date.
What is the end for capitalism?
Scale is a parameter of production, political systems and humanity. Leadership is always lost at some point in growth to large scale systems. Look at the number of corporations that run the world's food production over the last 60 years. The UN's body on agriculture has been decimated by the concentration of agricultural decision makers resulting in unconscious misalignment of capacity and health.
Humane production and political systems exist best in scales that match the limits of human capacity for relationships. When scale is obscured one is left with narcissism as the main trait of an individual in every group's character. Narcissism is now the driver of human population growth and the major threat to every specie's existence.
Scale and narcissism are tightly coupled in affecting sustainability negatively. Choice of system is not as impactful as the scale of each system. We fool ourselves that the choice is consequential. Efficiency and humanity arise from the scale of all collectives and the absence of narcissism.
Political systems only exist to obscure scale and advance narcissism. Flavouring of systems is like selling soda pop and subsequent damage to our bodies. A little is refreshing but more is rot. Scale is the most important parameter of every species' survival paths AND not the efficiency of any political or production system.
Ok,but does that party dominance necessitate the shrinking of the poliburo power to one man? Secondly, does it necessitate the surveillance state which has emerged? Or are they just circumstantial to Xi Jinping 's character?
North Korea is much more similar to Stalin's USSR than China, which dissociated itself from Soviet Union right from the beginning.
But it wasn't. For a long time. In one aspect worse than Stalin: the Cultural Revolution. Sending intellectuals to farm work reminds of Pol Pot. Ji was also victim, although only as son of a disgraced party functionionary.
I can think of some very large Western countries which long longer believe in free markets and the private sector, and wonder why growth lags and children are less well-off than their parents. Just listen to their election candidates.
Go read
Why Chinese society is like the book or movie of “Starship Troopers”
By Metallic Man
Looks fun!
a smart fellow once said that you should look at where people are going. best americans, koreans and taiwanese are going to china and india. best chinese are returning to china every year. in contrast, more eastern europeans are moving to the west now that they got rid of communism. do people like communism more than capitalism or independence more than us hegemony? ideology is irrelevant as far as i can see. china cooperates with the world by having 800 times less military bases. military bases smell occupation and colonialism.
Chines cultural it's completely different from Russia .. in any aspect of life.
What Prof Kotkin gets right is the level of importance that the CPC (as distinct from a fictional CCP) applies a democratic centralist form of governance ie; communism. What Kotkin gets wrong is the notion that the CPC liberalised it's market economy. What the CPC did was to socialise it's market economy by subordinating capitalism to it.
What is the goal of a capitalist? All the money in the world
Capitalism is what drives wealth and progress.
The USSR, Communism, is just more SSDD...
Worst interview Kotkin ever gave imo
Seemingly hes just trying to play nice with Russia and split them from China like Kissinger and Brzezinski recommended
I enjoy the fruits of Chinese labour. I by cheap but effective carbon bike wheels for my racing bikes. The industry has a bunch of small, entrepreneurial plAyers. Will Xi cut them down? They do earn money for the China.
But his country can have two dominant parties and be a true democracy
US has a procedural democracy that is controlled by plutocracy.
It is a uniparty and no it's not a democracy -- as you rightly suspect. Voters have little to ZERO influence on major policy issues. Those are decided by donors, oligarchs, and corporations.
Interesting and intelligent indeed, but my caveat is this. I agree with Michael Ledeen, Willy Lam, and Jasper Becker that China is now a fascist, not a communist state. A one-party state that relies on capitalism (led by the party) and has imperial ambitions: that is practically the definition of fascism. And fascism, unlike communism was not a paper tiger. Communism died in Europe through implosion. Fascism had to be defeated by force of arms.
You look more fascist than any fascists ever known!!
Labels are superficial knowledge. China is China, it isn't "fascism" or "communism".
Stalin Volume Three coming!
You can have half com..
Say who?
That may be to your thinking but it a whole new world there.
Also the past don't always npoint the path forward
⭐️
[Communism is a vulnerability] Thank You
Brilliant over view. Perfectly sensible...
He has no clear grasp of Chinese civilization and how it influences current Chinese politics. He should study Asian history more and its values and he is not an expert on geopolitics.
So what is your theory?
@@mariomenezes1153 CCP troll
A little bit simple minded.
How did he read soviet archives when he doesn't even speak Russian? Did Stalin have an English translator during politburo meetings?
kotkin is jewish, nothing wrong with that. but jews has a jewish perspective. knowing that jews where instrumental in establishing the CCCP and in its fall, I say, read with a critical mind.
God save us all from Communism and Socialism. Socialism has helped the world but if unchecked leads to economic stagnation, autocracy , corruption ,poverty and misery.
But USA is not communist.
You mean democracy leads to corruption, misery, and poverty.
Socialism has not helped the world, it brings misery wherever it is implemented.
You have to be able to say "X" cost "Y". The Soviet Union did not have the cost to make bread and other commodities.
Obviously this guy doesn’t get China correct either. Did he ever leave his office and be on the ground in China ?
Where in China have you been? Thanks
Please reply to this comment if you are reading this on your own computer or phone in mainland China.
I’ve lived and worked in China for 15 years and I can only vouch that it’s a wonderful country with an awesome history and civilization. I have been blessed to witness the rise and blossoming of a modern China where there is now a huge educated middle class. Whilst I have been active on TH-cam during most of those years my Chinese friends and colleagues wouldn’t waste their time on a platform which has always been loaded against them. China has its own internal platforms where discussion is fulsome and intelligent.
To be fair: given the CCPs habit of pathological lying, it was unbeliavable that the CCP was not lying even when they said they where Comunists😂
Hoover Institute says everything about his intelligence or lack of
You should interview an Asian Professor Kishore Mabuhbani who is far well versed in China than Prof Kotkin who specialised in Soviet Union but little knowledge most of which he read from some other sources which are equally ignorant. Take away USD as the world reserve currency and you will soon see a collapse of this nation so it is working overtime to prevent through its powerful military n media
the thing he forgets to mention is that communism is superior to capitalism.
Delusional nonsense!
Communism is a veneer of populism used to disguise totalitarianism. Case in point; in China the Gini coefficient which is a measure of economic inequality is among the worst in the world. It has a rigid class system as predatory as any in the world.
You just exposed yourself to ridicule.
Enterviewer isn't skilled. Can't seem to complete an whole sentence, without backtracking, stammering....and essentially enterupting the guests flow of thought
Capitalism and socialism, economic philosophy, cannot survive under a communist, political philosophy
But the two can survive and thrive together, under a liberal democracy.
That's why we see the rise of oligarchs in the west especially in the finance and military sector. So many committees against every adversaries creating a money laundering scheme.
Joe Pesci is back