We discussed those green skyscrapers in university environment class, and as far as I know they didn’t work that well. It was hard to keep the plants alive and when they did grow, they became a breeding ground for pest insects that got into the units where people were living. It’s very much prioritizing looking green over being green.
IMO it’s better to just have efficient but visually boring skyscrapers, and then have dedicated green space around clusters of density (which is what China is mostly doing nowadays). Separating housing and green space make both more effective, easier to manage, and more resiliant.
Also, in case you’re wondering, most Western environment profs are very impressed by what China has done, at least in the university I went to.
Solarpunk is the fiction, the ideal. What China is doing in this regard is 1 version of an attempt to achieve it, and that’s great! Its not the only path forward and there is room for critique of every attempt.
As an anarchist, I would like less authoritarianism actually. But, as a solarpunk enthusiast and environmentalist, im in favor of this action by China. I believe that actions towards solarpunk and actions against government systems i dont like should be handled separately
How would China have to change their democratic processes, or methods of governance, to turn you around more on how they handle things? I often see people claim China should be less authoritarian, but I rarely see concrete steps they could take to be less-so structurally from those that see China that way.
Im not a scholar on china. I dont know a ton, and I dont know anything with a great degree of confidence. My understanding is that to some degree, they do human rights abuses much like the USA, Russia, UK, India etc. To my understanding, that’s just kind of a thing superpower countries do. I have enough on my hands dealing with the USA and all its problems. I value human dignity as the focal point of what a government should embody. If you can think of things they are doing thay go against that, that’s probably what id starr with. If you think that china is sufficiently defending human dignity without exception, id love to hear about that
I’m certainly not a scholar either, but I do think we can investigate certain statements further. Human rights abuses largely stem from class struggle and latent contradictions in society, opposing identities and possibilities, if that makes sense. Excess is a feature of all systems, and as such investigating what drives conflict and the manner of how it’s resolved requires a class analysis. In other words, it isn’t about size, or ideas of power, but largely resolution of contradictions.
In China, the working classes are in control of the state. However, contradictions exist, like the gap between urban and rural development, the class conflict between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, the contradiction between domestic and foreign capital, between liberalism and communism. These contradictions give rise to excess, which is avoidable suffering. However, unlike dictatorships of capital, China’s socialist system is built to address these contradictions.
Rural development is being prioritized to close the gap, including expanding rail, poverty alleviation programs, and making use of urban industrial production to build up rural areas. The proletariat are in control of the state, and use it to publicly own the commanding heights of industry, keeping the bourgeoisie subservient. Foreign capital is limited in what it can actually own, and technology share is mandatory. Corruption is regularly checked, and corrupt party members expelled from the party and punished.
China, compared to capitalist countries, has a great human rights track record, domestic and foreign. It is flawed, because it is real, and more than capitalist countries its structure allows it to improve over time. This extends to areas like LGBTQIA+ rights, which are increasingly important to younger generations while the more socially conservative older generations are replaced. China systemically has a people-first structure.
I think it’s hilarious when anti-fascists simp for China which has today’s largest fascistic governance.
today’s largest fascistic governance comes from the US and spans almost the entire globe.
leftists shouldn’t spread FUD
Because you definitely knows what fascism is
No? China is a socialist country. Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and the working classes control the state. Fascism is the diametric opposite, it’s private ownership as principle and capitalists in charge of the state, ie capitalism, when it needs to violently break up labor organizing and force austerity due to capitalist decay.
Why not just say you’re against solarpunk? Why try to twist solarpunk to be something it’s not?
Have you forgotten all about me:
My problem with Solarpunk is that it’s an aesthetics-first movement. I appreciate solar and believe it to be necessary, I just believe that theory and practice need to form the base of any movement.
Punk has always had an ethos
I’m aware, but Solarpunk specifically, from what I’ve read from the people pushing the movement, tends to lack theoretical and practical basis, closer to early utopianism than a scientific form of socialism.
That’s deliberate.
The lack of a theoretical and practical basis is deliberate, or the idea that Solarpunk lacks such a basis is deliberate? I’m referring to what people that consider themselves in the Solarpunk community and movement have described and recommended to me for reading.
For example, from the Solarpunk Manifesto:
Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?”
The aesthetics of solarpunk merge the practical with the beautiful, the well-designed with the green and lush, the bright and colorful with the earthy and solid.
Solarpunk can be utopian, just optimistic, or concerned with the struggles en route to a better world , but never dystopian. As our world roils with calamity, we need solutions, not only warnings.
It’s primarily based on aesthetics and finding potential plans for future society, not a practical means for getting there or implementing said plans, despite its insistence on doing so. This is why I say it isn’t really scientific socialism, but utopianism, which has historically resulted in one-off communes that last a good while without actually challenging the status quo or spreading.
Solarpunk in practice borrows from anarchism or Marxism, without fully committing to either, and as such is reduced to its aesthetics.
Eh… I’m not sold by this. For me the “punk” aspect is about people taking hopeful actions that go against the grain. Focusing on the authority of any government is a pretty weak sell. Let’s cultivate hope in people!
People don’t just need hope, they need education, safety nets, access to healthcare, job security. Going against the grain won’t magically change any of these things.
In China, the government is run by the people. The people of China collaboratively chart a course for the future, towards a hopeful course of development, based on scientific socialism. In being a socialist country, China is taking actions that go against the grain, focusing on mutual development, industrialization, and prosperity.
In China, they have direct elections for local representatives, which elect further “rungs,” laddering to the top. The top then has mass polling and opinion gathering. This combination of top-down and bottom-up democracy ensures effective results. For more on this, see Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. This system is remarkably effective, resulting in over 90% approval rates.
Is it not punk to radically “abolish the present state of things,” as Marx says, and which the PRC is steadfastly working towards? Hell, Rage Against the Machine has even quoted Mao.
Love how this has 15 downvotes but not a single reply 💀
Hexbear stays winning with the removed downvote, which forces you to reply if you disagree with the content
I just banned like 6 of them, dead or no-content accounts.
Liberals using bot accounts to try to manipulate public opinion (as they do on reddit and the rest of the western internet), is gonna be one of the bigger problems in the fediverse for the foreseeable future, so we have to stay ahead of it.
At this point they’re just targeting specific ppl like @[email protected], but they’ll eventually start doing it en masse.
Figured that may have been the case, considering it was a reasonable comment getting heavily downvoted in a thread where other pro-PRC comments weren’t as inorganically downvoted.
That’s pretty common, actually. People would rather silently downvote than try to actually engage with academic literature regarding the PRC’s democratic process.
Authoritarian solarpunk. But really it shows the issues of anarchism, works in small scale but is fragile when scaled. The probably most efficient government form would be a dictatorship of the wise.
The probably most efficient government form would be a dictatorship of the wise.
This is just aristocracy with no extra steps, just other name.
That’s an interesting topic btw - what is the way for any dictatorship to work well for everyone’s benefit in theory? If it’s dictatorship of the wise, would smartest people get put into place with absolute power? Is it an expectation that people currently in power pass power voluntarily to wiser people? Would there be a framework that determines wisest people and it would be decided upon by the popular consensus? Isn’t it technically still a democracy if people trust in the framework/system that governs how smartest people are decided upon?
That looks more like spider punk
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Zenz-maxxing
Gotta love guzzling CIA propaganda uncritically.
They aren’t? Not only is the idea of mass Uyghur slave labor atrocity propaganda akin to claiming that there’s “white genocide” in South Africa, Christian genocide in Nigeria, or that Hamas sexually assaulted babies in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, but the PRC is an incredibly industrialized country and as such doesn’t have a need for slavery. Slavery in general is a horribly inefficient system fir anything other than agrarian production, which is why the Statesian North liberated the slaves in the south, for more wage-laboring industrial workers.
In the case of Xinjiang, the area is crucial in the Belt and Road Initiative, so the west backed sepratist groups in order to destabilize the region. China responded with vocational programs and de-radicalization efforts, which the west then twisted into claims of “genocide.” Nevermind that the west responds to seperatism with mass violence, and thus re-education programs focused on rehabilitation are far more humane, the tool was used both for outright violence by the west into a useful narrative to feed its own citizens.
The best and most comprehensive resource I have seen so far is Qiao Collective’s Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation. Qiao Collective is explicitly pro-PRC, but this is an extremely comprehensive write-up of the entire background of the events, the timeline of reports, and real and fake claims.
I also recommend reading the UN report and China’s response to it. These are the most relevant accusations and responses without delving into straight up fantasy like Adrian Zenz, professional propagandist for the Victims of Communism Foundation, does.
Tourists do go to Xinjiang all the time as well. You can watch videos like this one on YouTube, though it obviously isn’t going to be a comprehensive view of a complex situation like this.
Not to mention you don’t really need slavery when your minimum wage is like 3 euros an hour and unpaid overtime is the norm anyway, at least in office work
China’s doing this capitalism thing way better than the west. We should really learn from them. For example if the US abolished auto unions and increased manufacturing subsidies, they could lower wages and deliver cars for more competitive prices instead of having to rely solely on tariffs on Chinese EVs.
Purchasing power in China goes much farther, real wages are much higher than 3 euro equivalent, and that’s for minimum wage, not median. High working hours in office work are a problem to work on, yes, but not one with no signs of improvement. The PRC is a socialist economy with heavy union presence. The large firms and key industries are publicly owned, ie public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy. The US Empire can’t compete with China because it hollowed out its own industry in favor of outsourcing it and imperializing the global south.
meanwhile in the real world
typical Chinese adult is now richer than the typical European adult https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-chinese-adult-now-richer-than-europeans-wealth-report-finds-2022-9
90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes
Chinese household savings hit another record high in 2024 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-bank-earnings-01-12-2024/card/chinese-household-savings-hit-another-record-high-xqyky00IsIe357rtJb4j
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China’s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8SvK0E5dI
Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million. With this, China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
None of these things would be happening in China if it was doing capitalism. It would look the way other capitalist shitholes look like today.
“Re-education”, that’s one way to describe what they do in these camps. And please stop deflecting with “the West did way worse” arguments. To me, China is just as bad as the West.
Clueless
Re-education is also the correct way to describe the vocational schools. I’m not deflecting in mentioning the west, the utility in pointing out how the west deals with extremism is to show that allegations of slave labor and genocide are projection. I understand that you think China is just as bad as the west, the problem is that your reasoning for believing that is based entirely on what the west lies to you about China.
stop deflecting with “the West did way worse” arguments.
It’s not deflection dipshit. Why is the US arming ETIM separatist terrorists? What is the PRC supposed to do when you have radicalized islamists running around killing people in your opinion? Bomb a random country like the US did amrite?
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In the most abstract sense: Is organisation without authority possible?
In a concrete sense, yes
What appeals to you about that text?
How authority is defined and how Engels actually logically provides an answer to the question whether organization without authority is possible
A short ‘logical’ essay can give any answer in an abstract sense, but that doesn’t discount empirical examples.
Always seemed to me like Engels begs the question, takes “anarchy = chaos” as a starting assumption.
Empirical examples… that you have not provided?
Solar punk or solar authoritarianism?
Solar punk is “real” as in, plenty people living off grid on solar, catchment, whatever. China does seem to be making whatever theyre doing become a thing. And its great. Cheap energy probably the most effective path to world peace. If we can get the price to “effectively 0” we can solve just about everything.
How would you produce solar panels when living “off grid”? You need a large, integrated economy to be able to produce such complicated hardware. This is why solar punk is fundamentally an elitist ideology. You look down your nose on “authoritarians”, and have a holier-than-thou attitude toward them, but the society you envision is impossible without them.
What distinguishes “punk” from “authoritarian?” Is it not punk to radically “abolish the present state of things,” as Marx says, and which the PRC is steadfastly working towards? What makes the PRC “authoritarian” in a way that makes it unacceptable?
I’m also unconvinced that energy prices at effectively 0 will solve everything either, class struggle remains, and we will all have to follow in the footsteps of countries like China in overthrowing the bourgeoisie, as they did in 1949.
Imagine being over the age of 10 and using the word authoritarianism like it means anything.
Ths is sad
How so?
