I love this
The richest 10% of the population now own nearly 70% of Chinaβs total private wealth, roughly equal with America and well above most advanced economies, according to the World Inequality Database. And the richest 10% are, like most of China, rapidly ageing. Their heirs are in line for windfalls.
...
Despite President Xi Jinpingβs talk of greater equality, official thinking is woefully behind the curve on inheritance. The Communist Party, bizarre as it might sound, is opposed to a significant redistribution of wealth. It has a Thatcherite moral objection to handouts, worrying that they will make people lazy. It would instead prefer strong economic growth, whereby gains are more evenly shared. But ignoring accumulated wealth will ensure that deep inequality becomes ingrained.
This is why we on The Left say China isn't Communist. The CCP is about as Communist as the NSDAP was Socialist.
Now I can't help but notice that even in the excerpt here, there is some sneaky Shit going on. And I'm not about to make an account for the fucking economist.
It's so fucking funny to write "ignoring accumulated wealth will ensure that deep inequality becomes ingrained" when writing about the CCP, as if that has not been the modus operandi for the western world and especially the United States for at least the last 40ish years. As if our current president is not literally a living embodiment of that M.O.
but what I'm focused on is the words "private wealth"
Private wealth is basically any and all assets not owned by the state, but you probably knew that. We get some decontextualized percentages here, but I'd like to know what the actual numbers are for private assets versus public assets and how those compare to the united states. Because methinks there is a bit of fuckery going on here to obscure the actual distribution and redistribution of wealth in China over the last century.
Maybe it's true that the CCP is dropping the ball on inheritance tax in some way, I just don't trust the fucking economist to give me an actually informative, unbiased summary of the situation. And when the notes on a post are full of people going "hah! see! they arent even really communist!" you should pause.
