[Zardoz84]

> 22-year-old motorbike courier Mr. Tang complains about the lack of medical insurance. “There’s nothing I can do about it if Meituan doesn’t pay for it,” he added. “The wealth gap between people in this society is too big”.

People should stop calling China a communist state, when isn't. If they we are truly communist, not will be medical insurances or a "entrepreneur" driving it. It would have a public medical system that cover everything, and the business would be driven by the workers of it.

However, that they hit hard on private education, it's a good step. Private education never should allowed to exists. Only a quality public education system can give access to good education to everybody.

[esailija]

A communist state is merely a state that wishes to achieve communism, a stateless (classless) society.

There is no such thing as communist state that has achieved communism because at that point in the world states no longer exist because classes no longer exist. Such a world actually existed for hundreds of thousands of years as technology didn't allow one set of people to produce so much surplus so that another set of people could live without directly producing, a requirement for a state.

There are no known steps to "achieve communism", so there is no laundry list of requirements that make a communist state. In practice however some kind of liberal market is required because the world is currently dominated by capitalist ideology which will destroy any obviously communist state and a destroyed state cannot achieve communism.

[dragonwriter]

> stateless (classless)

These, as each is usually understood, are not even approximately the same thing, and any theory which posits that they are identical has either adopted nonuseful definitions of at least one of them to make that true, or is simply logically wrong.

> Such a world actually existed for hundreds of thousands of years as technology didn't allow one set of people to produce so much surplus so that another set of people could live without directly producing

Sets of people that don't directly produce have existed throughout all of human existence.

> a requirement for a state.

It's a requirement for the continuation of the species; infants aren't direct producers. How many total (and total-equivalent composed of part-time slices of sometime-direct-producers) non-direct-producers a society supports is a product of productivity, sure.

But at almost any level of that where one can have continuity of the species one could also have (and, indeed, human societies have had) a state; agents and decisionmakers of the state can, after all, be direct producers as well, and historically largely have been.

[native_samples]

That's the point of the article, no? That outside of specific areas, since Deng Xiaoping China was somewhat capitalist, but that is now changing - Xi is "remembering" that China is meant to be a communist state. The article builds the case that whilst maybe in the past some nuance and complexity could be found in the "how communist is China really" debate, Xi is ending that and bringing it back to its Maoist roots, rendering that debate increasingly moot.

[bumbada]

China is a communistic state precisely for that. You would also say that Venezuela or Cuba is not communistic.

The only communistic country that had a moderately good public medical system was German Democratic Republic, and it was because the constant influx of help and resources from the West.

The more communist a State is, the more miserable it is. You had China with Mao making tens of millions of people die of Hunger. Was Mao not communistic?

At the start of the 20th century Russia population was bigger and richer than the US of A.

Lenin destroyed the economy and made millions of people die from hunger, way more than on WWI. Was he not communistic?

Let's not talk about Stalin or PolPot.

>Private education never should allowed to exists. Only a quality public education system can give access to good education to everybody.

You are confusing education with forced indoctrination and propaganda.

I can educate and think for myself. Just repeating a mantra or dogma ignoring History like you do is not education.

[wastedhours]

I don't think you're arguing the same thing - the "idealised" version of a communistic state is what the OP is referring to. The "actual" version of a communistic state is what you are.

They're correct that a state built on communist principles would have free healthcare for all, and would have proper free education for all. However, the reality is markedly different, and all the so-called communist countries are anything but.