Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "Why did the Soviet Union collapse? - VisualPolitik EN" video.

@barbiquearea Right, the CPC won because not only of Soviet and rural support, but also because America abandoned defending the flagrantly corrupt KMT thinking the then-allied Communists would do a better job. It wasn't until the Korean War that Communism became a global threat and the US got serious about defending what was left of Blue China on Táiwān.
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Considering how often the US has been deemed on the "verge of collapse" since 1812, Americans use the coffin as a coffee table we put our beer and feet up on while watching everyone else freak out over the chaos and spectrum that we thrive on.
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The PRC is heading that way too, talk to any Chinese national as a foreigner (not a fellow citizen/potential Party informant) and you'd see they know a surprising amount of "unpatriotic" knowledge and embarrassing news. The turn towards uncritical nationalism and state control over the markets hints at the Party running out of options to continue its unchallenged rule. A lot of critics say the US is going that way too, but it's been on the "verge of collapse" since 1812. Part of the reason it's so durable is because it holds the potential for revolution every year or so through periodic voting. Plus America thrives on chaos and loosely-defined limits; arguably the disturbing pushback comes from when those societal red lines start getting found and established to the detriment of the privileged.
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Right, the PRC survives because it had to abandon the ideological purity of Communism. That's why critics are alarmed by Xi's push to return to its "roots", which hints that the Party is also losing its grip on an economic prosperity-driven legitimacy with little else but hateful nationalism to maintain unchallenged power.
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The US arguably still holds China's fate, just as it did since the end of the Opium Wars: empire-ending Western education, WWII materiel, abandonment of the KMT, switch of diplomatic recognition, support against the Soviets, introduction to global markets, allowing integration into the world economy post-1989, and constant infusion of knowledge and dollars. The Mainland also relies on the US for agriculture and open sea trade to import cheap food -- Americans can adapt to digital hacks and expensive gadgets, the PRC can only ignore polluted meals and empty stomachs for so long.
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Socialism refers more to distribution though, while capitalism and communism focus on production. Clearly capitalism is superior to "public" state control in getting resources where it's wanted, the main battle is how socialized do we want the profits to be versus how much wealth those who earned/stole get to keep with libertarianism. Then there's democracy/autocracy which governs the policy. So the real evolution might not be feudalism > capitalism > socialism > communism, but finding the mix of policy + production + distribution. It's arguably possible to be a capitalist socialist democracy.
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A PRC collapse would at least not be as painful to the Chinese people, who have always been great market merchants able to trade their way out of hardship. How violent the transition and how fractured China ends up becoming (the cities and provinces are quite independent in daily operations from each other) is anyone's guess.
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Right, South Korea and Táiwān were likewise horribly repressive regimes when they started out, but are now highly respected cultural powerhouses. The difference is that their dictatorships ultimately yielded to its people, unlike their NK and Mainland counterparts.
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Capitalism/communism focuses on production, libertarianism/socialism on distribution, and democracy/autocracy on policy. Arguably it's possible to be a capitalist socialist democracy.
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That's because hate is stronger than love, and those seeking power gain popularity by inventing someone to rally against. The Nazis were voted in by striking out against Jews, nowadays it's more anxiety over accelerating economic inequalities successfully deflected usually on foreigners instead of faceless corporations and robots.
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