Posted on 08/18/2021 7:30:02 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Since ascending to the position of most powerful man in China back in 2012, President Xi Jinping has demanded that Communist Party members and non-members alike study the Communist Manifesto and other Marxist texts. Now, he's reintroducing some good ol' fashioned communism into his ruling policies. On Tuesday, Chinese media reported that President Xi had put the country's wealthiest citizens "on notice" that he was planning some redistributive policies to aid in the "common prosperity". These policies will include income "regulation and redistribution", according to Xinhua.
During a Tuesday meeting of the Communist Party's Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs, President Xi and others detailed new strategies to target the upper echelons of Chinese society. Officials vowed to "strengthen the regulation and adjustment of high income, protect legal income, reasonably adjust excessive income, and encourage high-income groups and enterprises to give back to society more," according to a summary of the meeting published by Xinhua, one of the biggest newswire services based in.
According to Reuters, a readout from the meeting suggests President Xi wants to "restrain 'unreasonable income', hike wages and expand the middle class."
At the same time, officials also pledged to expand the size of China's middle-income group, grow the earnings for low-income group and prohibit illicit income to promote social fairness and justice. Finally, they also reaffirmed Deng Xiaoping's famous words: to "let some people get rich first," because allowing this to happen will help foster conditions for others to grow wealthy as well.
Like in the US, the pandemic saw wealth inequality expand in China. And right now, the wealthiest 1% of Chinese people now hold 31% of the country’s wealth, up from 21% two decades ago, according to a report from Credit Suisse.
As Beijing struggles to stamp out the country's most broad-based COVID outbreak since the original outbreak in Wuhan, China's leadership pledged to create conditions for people to "enhance their education and move up the income ladder." They also called for promoting the equal access to public services by improving housing supply, care for the elderly and enhancing the medical system. The leadership also highlighted the need to curb financial risks.
Interestingly, the government singled out the eastern province of Zhejiang, home to Alibaba and known for its robust private sector, as a pilot zone for the new initiatives. The decision comes after the province released new targets for disposable income growth that would see the per capita rate raised by 45% within 5 years. It's just the latest sign that Alibaba's troubles may not be over.
As one Indian TV station noted in its coverage of Xi's remarks, income inequality in China remains wide - the richest 20% earn more than 10 times poorest 20% -- and hasn't budged since 2015.
The TV station also noted that Beijing has already started terrorizing many of the country's wealthiest men, including Alibaba founder Jack Ma, during its crackdown on China's largest tech companies. China's crackdown on tech companies has hammered shares of US-traded Chinese firms, and recently led the head of the SEC to issue a warning to American shareholders to approach investing in Chinese stocks with caution because of the shady structure underpinning the shares. Investors in Chinese firms own shares in a shell company based in the Caymans, not the firm itself.
After China's unique brand of state-directed Communism helped drive robust growth using, among other tools, an explosion of debt, President Xi has decided that it's time that the wealthy chip in more to the general trust. After all, with new resources to exploit in Afghanistan and a potential invasion of Taiwan on the horizon, the CCP is probably going to need the money.
Reuters also pointed out that recently, President Xi has mostly succeeded at making Chinese investors less rich, by wiping more than $1 trillion off the value of US-listed Chinese stocks since February (and China's domestic markets have also experienced some turbulence as of late).
And his latest words caused even more market turbulence, as European-traded luxury brands including LVHM, Burberry, Kering, Hermes, Richemont and others took a hit.
"This is a rather nervous market reaction to leadership statements in China about the 'third wealth redistribution,'" Bernstein analyst Luca Solca says in an email. "I am not sure there is necessarily a lot to fear from that," he adds. "Time will tell."
Whether he can actually succeed in driving up disposable incomes will be much trickier.
“ So then, does that mean that Freepers are Republicans and as such are in favor of slave labor.?”
And some people say there is no such thing as a stupid question.
Tell you what, read your tag line and then read the Constitution. You obviously haven’t.
“ Looting the rich in China will not in any way improve their lives. On the contrary, it’ll probably result in massive amounts of lost jobs.”
You get it.
Beat me to it.
It takes a free market to create a middle class.
History has consistently proven that the redistribution of wealth simply inflates away its value. The only way wealth is actually created is when the cost of labor is LESS than the value of that which is produced. The cost of labor is ALWAYS determined by supply and demand. Any other way, also inflates away its value. This is All in simply reality.
What about the lower class?
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That being the 600- 700 rural Chinese who live in poverty? They are going to be excluded like they are for everything else - money will go to the Party’s Princes and Princesses, with a drab going to the other City-born.
This is also a policy to stop the rise of wealthy executives since only the Party can have that sort of wealth ; it will also stem the further tide of innovation and invention - now at an all time low. When Xi says middle class he means Party members that are not so well connected as the wealthier upper class of party members. There is no real correspondence between the Western idea of ‘middle class’ and the Communist one under Xi.
This all follows the CCP dictum : no one can have more power, influence, wealth, inspiration than the CCP and is an insurance policy against further encroachments.
Poetic justice for the useful CCP idiots that carried out the cultural Revolution on their fellow chinese.
Did they really think their turn to be robbed for the common good wouldn’t come ?.
Poetic justice for the useful CCP idiots that carried out the cultural Revolution on their fellow chinese.
Did they really think their turn to be robbed for the common good wouldn’t come ?
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You misconstrued what I was saying - the CCP Revolutionaries are for the most part dead of old age, those that remain are at the top of the CCP power structure. They constitute the the leadership in the PLA, Central Committee, and Xi’s inner circle.
Wealth, power, inspiration, influence, etc flows TO them from the wealthy CEOs and others who, having accumulated those things, threaten the CCP - a fragile & paranoid bunch. They aren’t getting robbed, but enriched.
Ordinary people get nothing, or even less. Once again the CCP is creating a problem where none existed, making everything worse for everyone else.
I stand corrected.
Thank you sir.
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