Socialism, capitalism, or Chinism?

Abstract

Is China still building socialism or has it already built capitalism? Or maybe both? Or maybe none of those two systems? Or maybe with the market reforms that deviate from the traditional socialism, it has created something different from the classical types of political and socio-economic regimes known from the 20th century? Some authors have proclaimed that there has been capitalism in China for some time; others claim that socialism has developed there, of course one with Chinese characteristics. Shortages have been successfully eliminated, but the economic system is unbalanced, showing surpluses this time. So, is it socialism, as the official Chinese authorities claim, or capitalism, as asserted by numerous economists? Tertium non datur? By no means, as there are yet other possibilities of system interpretations and the most fascinating of them is being offered by the present-day China, where a unique internal convergence is taking place. Features of socialism intermingle with essentials of capitalism and vice versa, creating a new, different quality. Tertium datur.

The Mystery of Growth Mechanism in a Centrally Planned Economy: Planning Process and Economics of Shortages

“…Two most well-known features of the CPEshortage economy and soft budget constraints (SBC), both were described initially by Janos Kornai (Kornai, 1980;Lindbeck, 2007). "In our day and age,argues Grzegorz Kolodko (2018),there is basically a consensus that in the case of real socialism it was the state ownership of means of production that caused the soft budget constraints, and these, in turn, caused inflationmore or less repressed or more or less open, depending on time and place, so depending on the systemic and political context".…”

Kornai on the affinity of systems: Is China today an illiberal capitalist system or a communist dictatorship?

“…The Statistical Office classifies firms as follows: state-owned, collective, cooperative, joint and limited liability share companies, private firms, funded by Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, foreign companies, and self-employed units. No wonder the statistical distinction between China’s private and public sectors is blurred (Kolodko 2018 ; Nuti 2019 ).…”

“… 19 Along the same lines, Kolodko ( 2018 ) characterized China as a “hybrid system in the form of socialist capitalism or … capitalist socialism …, a sort of Chinism ”. …”

The Great Chinese Transformation: From the Third World to the First

“…To odrębny system polityczno-społeczno-gospodarczy, który określam jako chinizm [Kolodko, 2018;. Nie jest to żaden uległy etatyzacji i scentralizowanej biurokracji Beijing Consensus, który przez jakiś czas usiłowano lansować jako antytezę neoliberalnego Washington Consensus [Halper, 2010].…”