You think there wasn’t an ultra rich group controlling the masses during communism you are sadly mistaken.
You seem to forget the Ceausescus and their golden palaces.
All the vacation mansions all over the Eastern block. Some of these are now being used by companies as guest facilities for visiting businessmen.
They didn’t flaunt it like China does and there was no internet or smart phones so they were more able to keep it under raps.
Even communism evolves with the times.
What was the same is that you were still being watched all the time you were never free to say what you wanted. and the government controlled your every move.
What is still the same is that there are people in prison for voicing their opinion against the government.
The people in China are owned by the government with companies employing hundreds of thousands of people, they live in government owned buildings shop in government owned stores and they work in government owned companies none of this has changed I have visited many of these companies and trained their employees. They are smiling nodding prisoners of these companies.
Don't let the skyscrapers of Beijing and Shanghai cloud your judgement.
Russia is not called communist anymore, you think much has changed for the everyday person under Putin.
There are many millionaires in Moscow also but if you see the way people live in rural areas and their working conditions in some of these factories it would make you cry.
Some probably wish they had communism back over Putin.
I have never watched Fox News in my life.
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Your description of Ceaușescu’s golden palaces, Eastern Bloc’s vacation mansions, Putin’s oligarchs prove my point that Communists all end up as Fascists. Communism’s non-negotiable, essential characteristic is a classless society where everything is communally owned.
But power corrupts and as history has shown; Comrades Lenin, Mao & others that followed all became dictators alongside a new, more brutal elite. So Communism’s inevitable evolution is towards Fascism. They can call it whatever they want ... communist, socialist republic but at its core, it’s Fascist.
Nope, most assets in China have transitioned to private ownership since 1978. Not because China’s leaders r benevolent but because they needed to overcome the inefficiencies associated with excessive state ownership. China’s system is designed to harness the dynamism of capitalism but yet maintaining control of the essential parts of the country.
That’s the genius of China’s Fascist Capitalist system. It manages to encourage people & companies to freely & fiercely compete with each other for money, market share, prestige while at the same time, effectively restricting political activities.
And China’s workers are not smiling nodding prisoners of their companies. Again, this is by design. Prisoners, serfs, indentured labor tend to be uncreative, unmotivated, suited only towards low-value repetitive tasks. But China needed high growth from innovation because there was only so much that they could steal from the developed economies.
If stealing technologies could create a high tech innovative society, Russia would be on par with the US by now. So no way that unthinking drone workers managed to create companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Nio, ByteDance, Meituan, Xiaohongshu, etc. Even the geniuses at Facebook are still clueless about how China’s Tik Tok managed to grab so much US market share. Apart from sensitive areas like politics & religion, the average middle class Chinese has freedoms & opportunities comparable to most advanced economies.
Which is why China is so dangerous. It’s not some half-failed state like Russia sustained by petrodollars & arm sales or a repressive regime like North Korea w/ slave workers. China is a super productive, innovative, high tech society w/ a sizeable, thriving middle class ruled by a one-party government whose legitimacy is increasingly reliant on ultra-nationalism. As China grows ever stronger, that ultra-nationalism movement will demand that China asserts itself and that may not be compatible with the current world order.