Summary
China condemned JD Vance on Tuesday for calling Chinese people “peasants” in a Fox News interview, where he said, “To make it a little more crystal clear, we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry labeled the remarks “ignorant and disrespectful.”
The backlash exploded on Chinese social media, garnering 140 million Weibo views.
Critics mocked Vance’s own “hillbilly” background and pointed to China’s advanced tech and infrastructure, highlighting rising tensions amid Trump’s trade war.
Yes, you live in Russia, not in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately for you I’m afraid.
You surely don’t expect the material limitations of an industrializing, isolated and besieged economy to appear in propaganda? It was a feature in the sense that it was a known effect of “socialism in one country”, not in the sense that it’s the desired goal. You surely understand that, no matter how good the policy, there are limitations to material reality?
Corruption DID happen, unsurprisingly, it’s something that happens in all systems. It’s just that, when it happens under socialism, it’s a scandal, but when it happens in capitalism it’s normalized. In my country there’s a 6 month waiting list for going to a specialist doctor many times in public healthcare, and I could skip that by paying a sum of money to a private physician and getting examined in their private clinic legally. It’s essentially the same concept, except that for some reason it’s normalized and even praised under capitalism (which leads to it being much more prevalent than in socialism), whereas socialism fought against it. Speaking of corruption and propaganda:
Surely the state with active anti-corruption propaganda and regular purges of its party and social systems was less corrupt than the capitalist states that normalize corruption in economic activity under the guise of “free contracts between individuals”?
Wait, you’re telling me that an economically isolated country focusing on a self-reliant economy which is located in one of the northernmost regions of the planet, had difficulties with the availability of certain fruits? (bananas are tropical and can’t be grown in the USSR for the most part). This just proves how to you, the default-normal is the availability of produce with origin in exploited regions of the world. Please, go check where the bananas at your supermarket are coming from, and how the workers in the plantation are treated. That’s the problem with Russian libs: you guys don’t understand that NOW your country engages in exploitation of the global south, just like any other developed capitalist country. THAT’s why you have fucking bananas.
“People had universal, guaranteed access to free or affordable housing, so talking about housing is useless”. Truly a big-brain take. You probably are lucky enough that you don’t have to spend half of your salary in housing as most people are forced to do, otherwise you wouldn’t be making that point.
Yes, a few people after the 70s still were living in such communal apartments, but it was a minority. Most housing by the time the USSR was industrialized were Khruschyovki and Brezhnevki, famously non-communal. I’d love it if you brought me a source telling me how many people lived in communal housing by the 80s, I’ll respond to you with data of 2024 Spain (my homeland) of how many people have to share a flat with one kitchen and one bathroom (and pay 1/3rd of their income in the process instead of 3% of their income).
Poor Soviets, having the highest unionization rates in the world and being able to actually bargain through their union at work instead of having to bootlick their corporate overlord 8h a day 5 days a week. Wait, we don’t count that right? Being a wage-slave in a capitalist company isn’t bootlicking, we call it “networking” and “corporate culture” it’s actually cool. Fucking hell give me a break.
Are you really Russian? Don’t you understand the absolute fear of another invasion that the Great Patriotic War (after WW1 and after the civil war) installed in Soviet people and leadership? There’s a reason why even many opposition supporters in the modern Russian Federation go to parades in the Victory Day, it’s not because they support Russian Nationalism and the status-quo. It’s because they understand the immense sacrifice of 20+mn lives that the Soviet Union undertook to SAVE EUROPE FROM NAZISM AND FASCISM. If you don’t understand that the USSR was under constant attack by the USA in the cold war, you don’t understand Soviet history. It fucking sucks spending 10-15% of your GDP in military, but siege socialism is what it is, the USSR tried to de-escalate and was met with nuclear weapons in Turkey. You’ve listened to too much “Radio Svoboda” I think.
Uh… If you check the trade balances of the USSR with other countries, you’ll find out that that wasn’t the case. The USSR traded mostly with COMECON countries, and yes, it exported natural resources like fossil fuels or minerals at international prices to COMECON countries and bought manufactured products. Again, it’s a consequence of siege socialism and of not engaging in imperialism. The USSR could have profited massively from exporting manufactured goods and importing raw materials with the global south, engaging in unequal exchange. But it didn’t do so because it understood that that’s immoral, and the exploitation of the global south goes against the very nature of socialism. I’m sorry that your ancestors didn’t pillage and loot the rest of the world as mine did. For a detailed discussion on this, you may wanna check Robert C Allen’s book “Farm to Factory”, or “Is the Red Flag Flying” by Albert Szymanski. I would bet my ass though, that you haven’t read a single book on soviet economic history, otherwise you wouldn’t be saying the nonsense you’re claiming.
Wow, an economy oriented towards the necessities of the people and the state rather than the profit of a few capitalist overlords? Disgusting, isn’t it? There’s a fucking reason the entire rural Russia is being depopulated: the state stopped investing in rural areas and people are suffering the consequences. Enjoy your free market.
The Russian Federation, famous for building more public transit than the USSR? I really don’t get your point. If there’s a part of the world that excelled in building public transit, that’s the Eastern Bloc, out of socialist ideals, of intelligent central planning, and of economic necessity (public transit being more efficient than private combustion engine vehicles).
Ugh… really, you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. Hereditary wealth was incredibly less important in the USSR than in essentially any other country on Earth at the time, possibly with the exception of Sweden during some years. I’ll show you a Russian lib source you’ll love claiming as much, hopefully you won’t accuse them of being biased towards communism:
As you can see, wealth distribution has never been more equitative in Russia than it was during Soviet times. Please, PLEASE, read a book before repeating anticommunist mantra.
The Soviet Union lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty without engaging in economic imperialism or unequal exchange. Life expectancy was below 30 years-old in the 1910s, most people couldn’t read, and most people were essentially feudal serfs under the rule of Kulak and noble landowners. Education became free for everyone to the highest level, medicine was universal and free, men retired at 60 years old and women at 55 with guaranteed pensions, the 45h working week was standardized and people got holidays every year, economic standards rose massively, access to housing became universal, unemployment was eliminated legally and in practice, life expectancy rose above the 60 years of age and kept growing progressively, there were at some point more female engineers in the USSR than in the rest of the world combined… Really, that’s not “serfs can go fuck themselves”, that’s one of the most successful emancipatory experiences in the history of mankind. And the fact that you’re here on Lemmy, instead of breaking your back for your local exploitative English/French/German company that didn’t allow your country to industrialize and develop (or, worse, your bloodline exterminated by Nazis as they openly intended to do), is all thanks to the Bolsheviks.
I told you I was not exaggerating when describing things, you didn’t understand that apparently. About “corruption” - it wasn’t corruption, it was pretty formalized and normal what I describe.
Any stats about USSR and shares of income, inequality and such are bullshit from the start. I’ve described how it worked for individuals, it also worked the same for organizations, there was such a thing as “funds”, a permission to purchase from another organizations something in a certain quantity.
You don’t seem to get it worked like in some adult scout camp or whatever with some coupons - collecting coupons wouldn’t help you buy more or less soda, because you were permitted to buy soda only in a specific place at specific time and with specific frequency.
Or in the military, or in prison.
Soviet ruble wasn’t real money. That’s why they jokingly called coupons for “special distributors” (a kind of stores, something available only to the elites) the “real rubles”.
The elites didn’t formally own anything - well, neither they do in Russia today, but they do control that property and use it freely.
My bloodline on the Volga German side did undergo an attempt, it’s rather chilling to look at digitized documents of half a village’s male population executed for something like “hiding grain” or “being a Japanese spy”.
My bloodline’s male part on the Jewish side mostly vanished on the frontlines.
This word is a propaganda marker. Such a thing never existed. It was invented to justify mass repressions.
There were no noble landowners in 1914 anymore, it was approaching something like US south at the same time.
Anyway, no, it wasn’t feudal by 1914. It wasn’t feudal even by the turn of century. Again, similar to US south.
Have you met people who received that education? There are two kinds - those who were taught in universities basically by those nobles you seem to vilify, and those like my grandma on my paternal side and the majority of those “female engineers” you’ve read about. The latter is not all that impressive.
Soviet LikBez program was more or less about training technicians to work as bad engineers. Training as in “training dogs”. Because the industrialization required some kind of engineers.
Why didn’t this happen in Finland?
Essentially half of your rebuttal is unsourced “no bro, that’s not true”, when I’ve given you my sources for the information. You’re just showing cognitive dissonance. I was too considerate in my original comments assuming that you’d listen to actual evidence and data. Income inequality figures are bullshit, elites didn’t own and they dont own today either (false, oligarchs in modern Russia do own their companies), kulaks didn’t exist (Do you think peasants in 1917 majorly owned the lands they were working??), university studies weren’t real (I guess the first satellite and human in space and the pioneering research and military industry were just false too)… You’re just desperately denying and holding on to your propagandised version of the reality of the Soviet Union, with your greatest issue being that you couldn’t buy the soda you wanted, and discarding things like guaranteed housing, while ignoring most of my previous comment.
My utmost respect to your ancestors who gave their lives in the fight against Nazism. I hope you’ll show more respect to them and to the emancipatory project they defended with their lives.
Lmao, so essentially slavery, just without the racial component of the US. Please, tell me again: what percentage of the farmers owned in 1917 the lands that they were farming. Oh wait, I forgot you don’t care about data.
I already explained but here we go again: the USSR was a shining example of what socialism could achieve, right in Europe. If Finland had been colonised, they would have risked a socialist revolution there.
As I said, conversation over. You’re not willing to listen.
It’s both information and argumentation - the statements you can discard, maybe I’m lying, but the fact that it’s possible for a bureaucratic elite to not formally own anything yet factually own a country by itself should be something easy to agree with, no? And I’m bringing your attention to it.
Really hard to find sources for something as obvious.
Yes, because the stated value of Soviet ruble was irrelevant in a planned economy in a bureaucratic state. Should be easy to grasp the causation.
Yes, Putin doesn’t own his palaces, and any high-ranking official in Russia most likely has much more than they own. What they show is a drop in the sea of what they really control and use.
Oligarchs are a bit like publicity figures, they are one order of magnitude less significant that anybody in the actual ruling group. Sort of ambassadors.
Think of it like of mafia properties. It was similar in the USSR, the elites used and controlled a lot of state properties which nobody else used and controlled. Why would you need to formally own that if you own the state machine?
Peasants who owned the land they were working were called “kulaks” in propaganda and repressed, because they were a bit less of a herd of ignorant illiterate animals who’d just obey orders.
And Stolypin’s reforms were aimed exactly at changing the ratio. And they were succeeding, except WWI happened.
Military industry is the main thing all this was intended for until Stalin’s death.
You do realize USSR didn’t change that part, just rearranged it, right? At least until Khruschev.
Even in the 30s people were starting to doubt its shine. In 20s - oh yes, when you read things from that time, you feel amazed at how real it feels, people really believing into that steel monster.
I’m gonna stop engaging with your “I know better than empirical evidence approach based on my vibes of who controlled what”. Enjoy bootlicking the corporate overlords that plunge your country in imperialist war, at least now you have bananas and soda, even if people can’t afford housing.
They are not corporate, they are children of people who ran your beloved USSR. Putin’s grandpa was a cook in Kremlin and fed Lenin, did you know that? Yeltsin is somehow treated as if him being first president of Russia were his main role in history, but he’s been in CC CPSU for much longer. Ilham Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan, lectured in MGIMO in USSR’s late years, while his father was the head of Azerbaijani SSR almost since Stalin.
Do you not understand your words just don’t match anything real? They don’t produce a response because there’s nothing in the place they hit. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you, Russia is not oppressed by some imaginary evil businessmen who hoarded everything in the 90s and then took power. Russia is oppressed by children and grandchildren of the same people who formed CPSU’s core. They didn’t get that through some business projects. They were the state and they are the state. They were the CPSU and ruled the big country, then they wanted better conditions for themselves and feared democratic movements, so they coerced those movements to help them survive. Then in Russia they created a few fake parties in the 90s, which changed names and appearances a few times, till ending up the current set of controlled CPRF, LDPR, the ruling party and some other I forgot, that was their popular effort direction, and the so called “administration of the president of Russia”, which is a parallel government free from constitutional limitations and oversight even when oversight existed in Russia, as their hidden front. Well, that’s all in the past, they won, no fronts anymore. They are killing people in this war just to distract their and Ukraine’s population from themselves.
I’m not going to give you any sources, since what I’m saying is on the surface for someone who tries to learn something about Russia and the USSR. Western socialists do have quite a few myths contradicting that, but if you believe those, then you didn’t try.
Not to say there are no problems with the “corporate overlord” types, but they lost. Khodorkovsky or Berezovsky or Ukrainian oligarchs are of that kind. They lost even in Ukraine. And that’s really unfortunate, had they won there’d be no war.
You’re absolutely laughable, as I said I disengaged with you already.
I’m the only one who provided source information instead of “vibes-based” analysis.
I noticed already, hence me disengaging.