Comments by "Xiphoid Process" (@xiphoid2011) on "Is China More Capitalist Than the United States?" video.

  1. China is both more capitalist and socialist, I'm speaking as a Chinese who grew up in china who then studied and immigrated to the west. You just never know when the political pendulum will swing the other way. For much of 2000-2010, china is indeed more capitalist. I remember going back to China for the first time after finishing high school and university in the US. I was shocked how my home town of Shanghai's public bathrooms didn't have toilet papers. It's so capitalist that you had to pay cash for toilet paper in public malls, which was, inconvenient, to for the credit card using and dollar carrying me. This was also the time why my chinese relatives convinced my father to invest in chinese real estate, and it grew faster than the US housing bubble. In 4 years my dad quadroupled his $300K investment to over a $1 million. When the US housing bubble popped, my father cashed out of China, but the chinese bubble kept growing, so my relatives were bragging how their housing "wealth" were just as good as my father's hard earned PhD in the US. Indeed, the laissez-faire capitalist chinese model was going crazy, Anything from the west were faked, from Rolex to McDonald were ripped off, anything for a dollar, morals be damed. Of course being china, eventually china happened. Xi came to power, he did a Mao 2.0. Undid the liberal reforms, undid constitution's limit on his terms, disrespected his predecessor Hu in an open display. He re-instituted the central control to himself. It's not saying that he is all wrong. He popped the Chinese housing bubble which is long overdue. But it also made my relatives stopped talking about their real estate, probably lost millions of their paper "wealth". The housing bubble is overdue to pop, so it was the right thing. But Xi also disappeared anyone who dared to oppose him, especially the high flying CEO of tech sectors. It's both sad and comical to watch the once praised leaders of China's advancement were disappeared and silenced. Others who dared to expose go to Wuhan at the beginning of COVID were just as quickly disappeared, and people taught a stern lesson that once increasing free and open China is no more, and it's time once again to sing together the praise of the glorious leader like when we were children. But that's China. It has tremendous potential. And due to the once source of power, can swing from being more capitalist and liberal under one man to completely another Maoist cultural revolution in another. The thing to remember is that the one thing the government will not allow to change is that the need to maintain power always under we Chinese (both in China and overseas) call 朝廷（basically imperial court). Leaders can change, politics can changes, but the power will always be with the emperor or the few officials who wield power. This is also the reason why we chinese have such a high savings rate. The thousands of years of history has trained us that the political wind is unpredictable, we the common people are 韭菜 （chives) to be harvests, so the only way to secure our lives and our family is to save enough money no matter what happens.
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