Your points are all arguable. The definition of the term: "socialist" needs to be clarified before intelligent discussion can proceed further. The current EU type of "social democrat" socialism had been tried in China in the early days of the Nationalist Party, before it turned fascist. It did not work for very complex reasons. But the fact remained it did not work. Social democratic systems, when they fail, naturally invite fascism, as history has shown. The correct meaning of the term "socialist" is under constant debate even within China.
The latest, but by no means universally consensual, is that "socialist" is an adjective that describe a trend toward an ultimate socialist order after communism, the orthodox Marxist definition.The time frame towards the final state can be very long (shifting from revolution to evolution). Some in China attack this definition as a revisionist cop out. The official doctrine in China now is that capitalism cannot be by-passed on history's path toward socialism, but it can be tolerated if the trend is moving towards socialism. In other word, capitalism is acceptable if it is a transitional stage but not a destination. As for freedom and democracy, I have the following observations. There is generally more freedom for the average citizen in China than is acknowledged in the West. As I tried to point out in my earlier posts, the restriction on freedom in China is more cultural than political. Political restrictions rise and fall depending the degrees of paranoia which is a function of its perceived external threat.
Democracy in China is a mechanical problem. What is needed is a design exercise that would yield a suffrage system that would appease Western insistence and satisfy Chinese need. There is real hope that this could be accomplished within a decade. You may have heard about China's new election system at the village and county level. My view is the CCP is tired of defending itself against all the mud-slinging accusations, and within a framework of security and doctrinal respectability, they will go a long way just to get the liberal world off its back. Yesterday, a poll in Hong Kong asking young people what would they choose if given a choice between freedom and democracy. 75% chose freedom. Ideology aside, which increasingly is of interest only to intellectuals and diehard revolutionaries, the CCP's major raison d'etre rests in its being the only political entity that can protect China from separatist threats. That is why so much of its energy is spent on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner and Outer Mongolia, and disputes territories in the South Pacific, not to mention the huge part of Siberia that Tsarist Russia took from China.
Henry C.K. Liu
Dennis R Redmond wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Nov 1998, Henry C.K. Liu wrote:
>
> > But we should acknowledge that China
> > is still the most socialist system in the world as measured by any reasonable
> > standard, and as compared to any other government in power.
>
> Socialist in what way? Just because the state owns lots of stuff? Do
> ordinary workers really have any say in the government or how things are
> run? Are there free open elections, a reasonably free press, and the
> freedom to organize independent trade unions? No more so than in
> corporate-dominated USA, I'm afraid.
>
> > And its not as if China did not give radical left solutions a running chance. It
> > took 4 decades of faithful adherence to
> > Marxist Leninist economic doctrines, at great costs, before some pragmatist would
> > suggest perhaps enough is enough.
>
> There's nothing terribly radical or Leftist about expropriating the
> peasantry to fund state-autarkic industrial accumulation, which was what
> Maoism was all about. Historically, China was so wracked by civil war,
> the most vicious foreign exploitation and a truly genocidal Japanese
> imperialism that the hegemony of the CP was the *only* viable
> progressive political option for the mainland. Maoism was the peasant
> politics of a peasant revolution, which was its greatest strength and
> also the source of its degeneration into the madness of the Cultural
> Revolution; but Marxism isn't about stamping this or that government as
> "socialist" but about grappling with social contradictions (how
> history changes, how what can be progressive in one era can turn
> reactionary in another era, etc.) and thinking through the problem of
> human emancipation regardless of what authority is in charge.
>
> > Happy Thanksgiving that at least there is still one major socialist
> > power alive even if not all well.
>
> Yes, I give thanks for the EU every day, too.
>
> -- Dennis