cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11900959
cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11900079
When [Canadian] Prime Minister Mark Carney stood in Beijing in January and said Canada’s new “strategic partnership” with China set both countries up for a “new world order,” it marked a striking reversal. Less than a year earlier, on the election campaign trail, Carney had named China as Canada’s biggest security threat. And a year before the trip, the Hogue Commission’s report on foreign interference concluded that China is the most persistent and sophisticated foreign interference threat to Canada’s democratic institutions and elections.
The deal cut China’s tariff on Canadian canola seed to about 15 percent from 75.8 percent and eased duties on peas, and seafood. In return, Ottawa agreed to let in 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) a year at a 6.1 percent tariff, down from 100 percent. The partnership also covers clean energy, multilateral co-operation, people-to-people ties, and public security, including an agreement between the RCMP and China’s Ministry of Public Security, the police apparatus Beijing has used to monitor and intimidate its diaspora abroad.
The pivot comes as Carney rallies middle powers to band together against U.S. tariffs while moving closer to the world’s other superpower. Taiwan, which Beijing refuses to recognize as an independent country, and actively seeks to reunify Taiwan as part of China even by military force, shows how aggressive China can be. And as Chiense coast guard incursions into Taiwan-controlled waters have spiked in 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump has called a stalled $14-billion arms package for the island “a very good negotiating chip” with Beijing, recently adding he isn’t looking to fight a war thousands of miles away.
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Few Western journalists have watched China’s security apparatus as closely as Jürgen Kremb. A former Der Spiegel bureau chief in Beijing, Singapore, and Vienna who was expelled from China in 1998, he now teaches and conducts research at Soochow University in Taipei as a visiting scholar.
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The Hub spoke with Kremb about what Canada should learn from Taiwan as it grows its ties to China.
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Question: … Ottawa has now signed a strategic partnership with Beijing that includes a confidential RCMP agreement with China’s Ministry of Public Security. From where you sit in Taiwan, which has lived with this pressure far longer, does closer engagement with Beijing typically restrain its interference activities abroad, or does it give them more cover and access and embolden them?
Jürgen Kremb: It’s police and domestic security, and they work like the FBI. There are also members of their staff who work as agents, suppressing dissidents and different opinions. This ministry has about 2 million staff in China … and they open police stations in foreign countries, including Canada. The same in Europe and Australia [and other countries]. Of course that’s against the law of other countries, just as the U.S. or Canada cannot open a police station in Beijing.
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China now is the biggest threat to the security of a lot of countries, because they steal intellectual property, they intimidate their dissidents abroad, they intimidate people who are speaking out against China, they operate a lot of media. So we really have to take the threat seriously… And of course the primary target is Taiwan.
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Taiwan is the testing ground, [but it’s also being] executed against other democratic societies, the so-called West, but the so-called West also includes South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, etc.
Xi Jinping wants to rule the world–Western politicians simply cannot comprehend this. He wants to destroy the liberal concept of Western democracies because their very existence poses a threat to his dictatorship.
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Chinese cars are basically spies on four wheels. In Israel, in Sweden or Norway, and in Japan, Chinese cars are not allowed anymore into military installations because where there are cameras, they are actively spying on the surroundings and sending this data back to China.
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What happens if you work too closely with China? First, you seem to have access to a big, big market and make a lot of money. But one day it’s over, and your whole industry base collapses. So if Canada decides to go that way with closer relations to China, look twice and be very careful, and you could lose more than you gain.
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If you’re getting very close to China, in the end you might not be in the driver’s seat of your own country or of your key industry, because the Chinese sooner or later will overtake your products and influence your domestic policy.
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Except it is not really though is it? Only about 7% of the Chinese population belong to the CPC and of that minority only about 32% are workers or farmers with the rest being educated elites, professionals and the oligarch class.
Where has this happened in a meaningful way?
So China are currently on step 2 out of 5, when do they even get to step 4? Trust me bro, they’re going to do it? As the billionaire class grows and becomes more powerful I think one would have to be delusional to think China and China alone are somehow above the human nature we have seen all throughout history. The billionaire class in China will eventually take control of the CCP.
Economics is the softest science going, how can you have a scientific approach based on dialectical materialism, total contradiction in terms. As someone who has studied science in university, you haven’t got a notion of what you are talking about!
Worker incomes have indeed been rising for decades but just like everything else discussed there is a but. The Hukou system, I’m sure you know what this is, prevents the huge numbers of rural migrants getting access to social services. China the socialist paradise has a much weaker social safety net that somewhere like the EU. Rural pensions suck, hospital costs and education require large out of pocket costs, housing, especially in the big cities is still astronomically expensive for the average person.
Wages in China are set by employers, local minimum wages are set by provinces. Independent unions are not permitted so workers have no collective bargaining power.
The suppression of the value of the currency is another way of keeping wages down to boost exports. All of these things sound an awful lot like the theft of surplus value to me.
You claim to study Marxism but are blind to all of the contradictions present. China is just another flavour of authoritarian dictatorship, a country so unsure of itself it censors any mention of Tianemen Square as well as the media it allows it’s people to consume. Like all the other tankies on here, when it comes down to it, you don’t really know what you are talking about, but will blindly defend them because their name has “communist” in it. Marx would be sick. I would advise any teenager interested in socialism to start with Marx, it’s an easy read and a good introduction. Any adult that choses to end with Marx is a problem, the man has been dead for 150 years and economics as a discipline has progressed somewhat since then.
Professional workers are still proletarian, same with those that are educated. A tiny minority of the CPC are capitalists, or “oligarch class,” and these are prevented from the top levels of the CPC. Further, the entirety of the working class does not need to be members of the CPC for the CPC to be dominated by the working class. You aren’t responding to my actual point here, you’re inventing a new one based off of butchering Marxism.
As for how the commanding heights of the economy are meaningfully publicly owned, this is easily verified on Wikipedia. The CPC also has “Golden shares,” meaning that even private companies are under their control and direction to an influential degree.
As for the “timeline” of socialist construction, they are in the primary stage of socialism. The transition to the next stage of socialism is projected to occur in 2049, but as we get closer it may shift up or back a few years. The idea that capitalists will take control of the CPC “because of human nature” is a ridiculous pseudoscientific claim. Make an argument based on materialism, not vibes, please.
As for science and dialectical materialism, you cannot have a truly scientific approach without a materialist stance and a dialectical outlook. Metaphysics makes errors like rejecting biology, and idealism turns us to the realm of the supernatural, like your previous claims of “human nature” making it inevitable that the CPC will be overrun by capitalists. For someone that allegedly studied science in university, you seem to enjoy idealism and metaphysics.
The Hukou system is not the cause of rising wages, nor is the weaker social safety net than imperialist European countries. These are factors of underdevelopment, not a bad system. European, developed imperialist countries enjoy better safety nets because they are higher developed countries and pilfer the global south of their surplus value. This rejection of economics as a science on your part causes you to make all sorts of ridiculous comparisons, and really calls into question your supposed scientific background. Any scientist would know that comparing developed with developing countries must be contextualized.
As for the lack of independent unions, this does not mean workers have no bargaining power. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions is the largest federation of trade unions in the world. The reason they do not allow independence from this is because they do not want to give capitalists levers to manipulate against the socialist system and promote disunity. You seem to have this ridiculous idea that capitalists will inevitably overtake the CPC, yet you’re also disappointed that the CPC is taking active measures against this!
As for “keeping wages down,” again, this isn’t actually happening. Wages for workers are skyrocketing in China year over year, and have been for decades. You straight up invented a point. Further, they are pivoting from an export-driven model to increased domestic consumption , your information is either outdated or deliberately wrong.
I’m not blind to contradictions within China, I’m fully aware of them. There’s a contradiction between underdeveloped productive forces in the private sector and a need to socialize all production as it develops. This is a critically important contradiction that the CPC is navigating. Tian’anmen Square is a famous site and isn’t censored, what is censored is the western, debunked narrative about 10,000 people being murdered on the square, rather than the actual historical events where ~300 people died in clashes between rioters and the PLA as they advanced to the square.
I think you need to revisit your Marx. For someone that claims that starting with Marx is a good idea, you seem to have utterly butchered any understanding of Marx you could have, such as inventing brand new classes like “educated elites” and “professionals.” You also don’t explain just how economists have “advanced” since Marx, but since you didn’t mention anyone I’ll add Lenin, Walter Rodney, and Cheng Enfu as good examples of economists post-Marx that have carried his analysis to the modern day.
Marx wouldn’t be “sick” at me or China, he’d laugh at you pretending to know anything about his work.
The most infuriating part about talking to people like yourself is the cherry picking of points that you feel able to respond to and the proud finish like you have proven something. Your responses are surface level and don’t stand any degree of scrutiny.
You say that professionals are still workers, while technically true, a doctor in Beijing making $150,000 and a factory worker or farmer making 7,500 a year are not a homogeneous group and certainly have different motivations and views on how society should be made up. Those on the top in any system will always resist change. As I mentioned in my previous comment, the CPC is dominated by the more highly paid professional workers.
So while you guys claim China is a beacon of communism you fail to disclose how early China is in the “transition” to true communism. You fail to mention there are different classes based on wealth, with the Hukou system being one of the factors along with the wage setting that bakes that into the system. The wealthy in China live very well on their high wages while the majority do not. These wealthy elites as I mentioned make up 2/3 of the CPC membership and use their power to enshrine their position in society. All the while the poor working majority are fed some bullshit about the wonderful path to communism they are on with the promised land just around the corner just out of reach. It’s just as much bullshit as the American dream. The wealthy will end up in control of China just as they have done in America because it is human nature.
You claim I am basing this claim on vibes but my claim has evidence, unlike the transition to communism. My claim is based on what has happened in every civilization we know of since history began. Society will always stratify, there will always be those that seek power and wealth. Society organises this way right down to the small scale. When Marx was coming up with his ideas there was no such thing as modern psychology. The promised land of full communism will never work because if you have no financial incentive to work cleaning toilets no one would do it. Similarly why would a doctor brilliant enough to hit the top of his field stay in a country that gives him the same pay as the toilet cleaner when his talents would give him a much better life anywhere else in the world?
My own country of Ireland was not an imperialist country and did not pilfer any countries of their surplus value. We enjoy some of the strongest social safety nets in the world and have much lower inequality that China, Ireland’s gini coefficient is .27, China’s is somewhere between .36 to .47. You lads are always unaware or try to hide the obvious fact that China has also been an imperial power for its entire history, their most recent acquisitions of Tibet in 1951 and Xinjiang (literally translates to "new region/territory) in 1949.
I did not reject economics as a science, I correctly stated that economics is a social or “soft science” like sociology, in contrast to the “hard sciences” of physics, chemistry or biology. Economics does use some scientific methods like statistical data, models and observation but does not have repeatable experiments or universal laws. My degree is in the hard sciences, but I do respect economics as a discipline when they are not trying to mascerade as a hard science.
So? Doesn’t make it a good or real trade union
You do not seem to understand what trade unions do, trade unions advocate for workers rights and provide a way for workers to collectively bargain with their employer. I don’t know how you think this lever can be used by capitalists to upset socialism. If anything the current system suits the current Chinese capitalist class. We all know that trade unions are an alternative power base for socialism that the ruling class won’t stand for. There you go again manipulating reality to suit your opinion.
Wages for workers have been going up in China, this looks impressive but when you take into account the extremely low starting point it is easy to “skyrocket” and they have not kept pace with GDP growth. The wage increase has also been more pronounced for the capitalists and the elites in China. China’s domestic consumption is also pitifully low and has remained low for years, despite what the government claims.
Interesting choice of language there refering to the site. Discussion of Tianemen Square or June 4th is heavily censored on China’s heavily censored version of the internet. Public or private memorial services for the victims are illegal on the mainland. Relatives of those killed are banned from visiting cemeteries around the 4th June. Activists, artists or citizens who attempt to bring up the crackdown are frequently arrested and charged with subversion and the annual candlelight vigyl At Victoria park in Hong Kong has now been outlawed with local activists being prosecuted. What are you lying for?
There are better places than a Lemmy comment to learn how economics has advanced in the last 150 years and one comment is not enough to explain to you all of the changes in that time. Those “new classes” I have brought up have very different motivations to the common worker and sit above them in the stratified system in operation currently in China. These people also hold 2/3 of the CCP membership and unless you are stupid and blind you should see how they benefit from the status quo. The promise of “real communism…someday…” Is the new opiate of the masses in modern China. It allows the oligarch class to keeps workers working long hours in awful conditions. You defend “communist China” while wealth inequality and structural wage-wealth gaps have continued to rise sharply in recent years. The recent slow economy and depressed property market has only exacerbated this. The Gini wealth coefficient has “skyrocketed”, to borrow your phrase, from .45 in 1995 to .70 in 2023. The top 10% in China capture 41% of income and hold 67% of the wealth. The bottom 50% get about 15% of the income. Marx would not approve. Your own personal bias and myopia has made you delusional.
For starters, I want to point out the farce you’re putting on by both making a mockery of Marxism, and yet acting as though you’re an authority on what Marxists actually believe. As you’ve admitted, you think communism is ridiculous, and as you’ve admitted elsewhere, you yourself are a colonizer that fled Hong Kong once the communists began to further integrate it with the mainland. You’re trying to hide behind your individual role as a colonizer by drawing on Irish history as a colony, a country with a rich history of Marxist thinkers like James Connolly, while simultaneously arguing against China’s socialist system as not being adequately Marxist. It’s a farce.
Regardless of your personal background, however, it’s important to address your claims as they are.
First, class. Not once did I ever say that class is homogenous. Classes are aggregates, of course doctors enjoy greater material benefits than other kinds of workers. The critical importance of them being the same class is that they both share a collective interest as a class, that interest being collectivization of production and distribution. As laborers, both have as an interest rising collectivization and socialization, whereas capitalists, both big and small, oppose this trend. Classes are bimodal, in the modern era proletarian and bourgeois, with each broad class having manifold striations. This does not mean variance within a class is sufficient to be a class of themselves.
The class makeup of the CPC is overwhelmingly proletarian. This is a fact. The types of workers that most occupy the CPC do tend to be more educated, and therefore make more money, it’s true, but this is not a bad thing. Again, as workers, they share the same class interest.
The working poor are not “fed some bullshit,” they are seeing the most rapid climbs in life metrics in history, and the most rapid development of their material wealth. Who cares if some few capitalists get wealthier if the whole of society prospers? If the marketized sector in China became an impediment to progress, this would be a deeply concerning situation, but Marxists are not moralists and do not oppose private property as a sin, but instead as something that plays a specific historic role and phases out of that role. The role of markets is to socialize production, the role of a socialist state is to collectivize socialized production and oppress capitalists from forming a cohesive political bloc.
Your arguments about “human nature” are, frankly, childish and absurd. Again, you make a mockery of yourself, thinking Marx never accounted for incentives. The comical idea of equal pay for everyone is a farce invented by liberals to discredit communists, the actual fact is that socialists suggest that pay be according to the work done until the productive forces are so advanced that it doesn’t matter anymore. From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs, is a hypothesis of an era where production and distribution is so advanced that anyone, regardless of background, is sufficiently trained to perform any act of labor in society and thus all labor be interchangeable.
You then continue to embarrass yourself by claiming China has been an imperial power for its entire history, ignoring the century of humiliation when it was a colony, and ignoring colonial Hong Kong that you describe as “cool.” Further, you never actually establish that China is imperialist, you just say that Tibet and Xinjiang are part of China as though that’s enough to claim it imperialist. You have a great deal of work to prove imperialism, and annexing territory is not imperialism.
Regarding your discussion of “hard” and “soft” science, you evidently care for neither, considering how confidently you speak on subjects you do not care to learn about. If you want to actually critique Marxism, you should begin by learning what Marxists actually believe. You occupy a stance that despices Marxism and Marxists, while also trying to say Marxists aren’t true Marxists. It’s opportunist doublespeak.
Regarding trade unions, the All China Federation of Trade Unions is extremely effective at supporting worker rights. Time and time again, independent groups under the guise of supporting progressive causes have been CIA fronts designed to foment popular dissent. Independent trade unions therefore stand not against merely their own bosses, but the ACFTU and the unions a part of it.
The “interesting language” I use for Tian’anmen Square is spelling it correctly. Discussion of June 4th is not censored, repeating western atrocity mythos is. I’m not lying here, the ones that are persecuted are the ones that uplift the color revolution as a good thing, despite the fascist background of the CIA-planted leaders of the student movement.
You then drone on about inequality in China, but the central point is that marketization inevitably results in monopoly, and monopoly inevitably makes itself better as a part of planned economy than marketized. Markets prepare the basis of planned economy, so that’s how China is progressing. It isn’t a lengthy period of sacrifice for an eventual 180 pivot to communism, it’s a gradual process of constant improvement that results in higher degrees of socialization:
The absolute bare minimum you could do is read Socialism With Chinese Characteristics: a Concise Guide. It’s 50 pages long, and is the bare minimum you would need to begin to criticize China from a standpoint that understands their system from their perspective.