Here Comes China; There Goes Capitalism. Equism is the Harbinger!

Part I

Here is an article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal, on September 20, 2021, at 11:21 am ET. It gave me hope of Capitalism’s demise, something 7.9 billion people on this planet should want to have happen immediately, if not sooner. It also gave me confidence in the efficacy of Equism.

Xi Jinping’s campaign against private enterprise, it is increasingly clear, is far more ambitious than meets the eye.

The Chinese President is not just trying to rein in a few big tech and other companies and show who is boss in China. He is trying to roll back China’s decades long evolution toward Western-style capitalism and put the country on a different path entirely, a close examination of Mr. Xi’s writings and his discussions with party officials, and interviews with people involved in policy making, show.

Congratulations are in order! Thank you President Xi. We now have a Brother who knows the evils of “Western-style Capitalism” and is on the move away from ‘it’ and ‘them’.

In Mr. Xi’s opinion, private capital now has been allowed to run amok, menacing the party’s legitimacy, officials familiar with his priorities say. The Wall Street Journal examination shows he is trying forcefully to get China back to the vision of Mao Zedong, who saw capitalism as a transitory phase on the road to socialism.

Mao’s objective has been achieved and Capitalism can be jettisoned. But I must hasten to add that the Socialism of President Xi is not the same as that of Marx and Engels, nor Lenin or Mao Zedong. Their Socialism was based on politics; President Xi’s Socialism is based on economics, a new economic paradigm I call Equism. President Xi understands that currency (money), provides the energy that powers our world. The medium of exchange (money) facilitates the production, distribution, and consumption of the goods and services necessary for any organized people to survive, and thrive.

Mr. Xi isn’t planning to eradicate market forces; the Journal examination indicates. But he appears to want a state in which the party does more to steer flows of money, sets tighter parameters for entrepreneurs and investors and their ability to make profits, and exercises even more control over the economy than now. In essence, this suggests that he aims to rewrite the rules of business in what could someday be the world’s biggest economy.

What a wonderful thought! The rules of economics must be rewritten. Remember what Pope Francis, spiritual leader of over 1/6 of the world’s population said on December 8, 2020, as quoted by Haley Messinger in an article posted on nbcnews.com that day.

“An economic system that is fair, trustworthy and capable of addressing the most profound challenges facing humanity and our planet is urgently needed.” — Pope Francis

I agree with Pope Francis, and obviously General Secretary Xi does as well.

That opportunity can only be achieved by establishing a new economic paradigm [Equism] that maintains free enterprise (entrepreneurship) and collective cooperation (partnerships and corporations), while guaranteeing a societal protocol that provides each citizen their food, clothing, shelter, health care, education, transportation, and communication needs.

Please see my book, Capitalism Birthed Racism: When Racism Will End, and What Will Replace Capitalism; Equism is the Harbinger for specific detail.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Brother Julius Nyerere’s similar vision for Tanzania, over 60 years ago. The operational aspect and implementation of Equism was born in my mind the moment I read his speech.

“We have declared that we wish to build our economy on the basis of the equality of all citizens and have specifically rejected the concept of creating a class system where one group of people owns the means of production for the purpose of getting profit and another group works for them. We have not excluded private enterprise, and we want people to start their own productive and commercial undertakings. But we have said that the emphasis in our economy should be on ownership by the people, through the people’s own institutions. What we are thus trying to do is build a ‘mixed economy’ which includes both public and private enterprise — with the emphasis on the former — so as to get the most rapid and most beneficial economic development.”

Julius Nyerere, the 1st President of Tanzania, 1960

The WJS article continues,

“China has entered a new stage of development,” Mr. Xi declared in a speech in January. The goal, he said, is to build China into a “modern socialist power.”

…Mr. Xi has signaled plans to go much further. During a leadership meeting in August, he emphasized a goal of “common prosperity,” which calls for a more equal distribution of wealth. This would be achieved in part through more government intervention in the economy and more steps to get the rich to share the fruits of their success.

If you can’t categorize Chairman Xi’s objective of “common prosperity” as anything but brilliantly altruistic, you need to seriously examine your value system.

An Aug. 29 online commentary circulated by state media called it a “profound revolution” for the country. “Xi does think he’s moving to a new kind of system that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world,” said Barry Naughton, a China economy expert at the University of California, San Diego. “I call it a government-steered economy.”

I too think President Xi is moving to a new kind of system that doesn’t presently exist anywhere in the world until now. I call it Equism. Please see my book referenced above. The critical point in both President Xi’s goal, and Equism’s raison d’etre, is the “common prosperity” of the people, as evidenced by the Principles and Laws that guide and govern Equism.

A number of countries closely regulate industry, labor and markets, set monetary policy and provide subsidies to help boost their economies. In Mr. Xi’s version, the government would have a level of control that would allow it to steer the economy and industry along a path of its choosing, and channel private resources into strengthening state power.

As long as President Xi’s objective is righteous and just; and is motivated by his will to share the wealth of the nation with its citizens, what is wrong with him having the ability to achieve his goals and objectives? Is it better that private banking interests control China’s economy?

Fortunately, the European no longer has his hands directly on the throat of China anymore. For context, let me mention something that should not be forgotten. I can assure you President Xi has not forgotten.

“Originally, morphine was manufactured and sold as a way of stopping people from becoming opium addicts. And heroin, actually a trade name of the drug developed by the German Bayer chemical company [I.G. Farben], was first marketed at the turn of the century[(20th] for bronchitis, chronic coughing, asthma, and tuberculosis. It was sold as an ideal substitute for the addictive morphine and codeine. In its advertising of the time, Bayer marketed both heroin and aspirin. “Heroin,” proclaimed the blurb, “the sedative for coughs.” Unrestricted distribution caused an enormous drug-abuse problem, and by the mid-1920’s there were thought to be more than 200,000 addicts in the United States. In 1924, Congress banned the drug in this country, and soon after, the League of Nations through conventions curbed its production elsewhere.

Opium did not become a major problem for society until the nineteenth century. The modern trade began when Clive conquered Bengal. The British [East India Company] subsequently determined that the only way to raise money without driving the poor population into arms against them was to tax the sale of opium, then used as a relaxant and medicine. They [via the British East India Company] proceeded to establish a monopoly in opium in Bombay, and it was required that all opium be sold to them. The British [East India Company] then sold the opium to traders, who carried it abroad [to China]. In time, the revenue the British [East India Company] received from opium amounted to one-third of the total British Indian Treasury [which they controlled]. That treasury financed the British [East India Company, including its private soldiers who outnumbered and outfought the British forces.] conquest of India and its subsequent administration.

In China, the British became the biggest merchants of opium the world has ever known. In the 1920’s, the trade in opium amounted to 12,000 tons a year, most of it consumed in China.”

Who Owns the Earth, James Ridgeway, 1980

The People’s Republic of China’s global ambition and aspirations are shaped by the trauma from its years of occupation by the Japanese and the United Kingdom, when it was forced into accepting British Opium and ceding its Hong Kong territory for one hundred and fifty years. The US still controls Taiwan, a territory claimed by China. ‘Fireworks’ are about to ignite. And the detonation will be catastrophic.

“It ain’t no fun, when the rabbit’s got the gun.”

Amer African Proverb

For foreign businesses, the campaign likely means more turbulence ahead. Western companies have always had to toe the party line in China, but they are increasingly asked to do more, including sharing personal user data and accepting party members as employees. They could be pressed to sacrifice more profits to help Beijing achieve its goals.

How is it a sacrifice for a business to share more of its profits for the “common prosperity” of the citizens of the nation that they have exploited for the past several centuries. It is analogous to Europe’s exploitation of Africa.

“Historically, the extraction of raw materials was the business of large international corporations, some of them founded in the colonial period, which obtained rights to the minerals for relatively insignificant sums. Little processing of the raw material was carried out in the poor countries.

Many of the international corporations that operate in raw materials are vertically integrated — that is, they control each stage of the production-to-consumer process. Very little of raw or processed materials are traded on the open market through such exchanges as the London Metals Exchange.

In other words, as long as the poor countries are dependent on transnational corporations to reach markets abroad, there is little real meaning to their sovereignty over natural resources. It is a legal, not a commercial, distinction.

Much of the industry in raw materials today remains based on the mine, as it has been for centuries. And it is the mine which sums up the meaning of the business, or bitter relationships between first and third worlds, of the debasement of humankind. Since the fourteenth century when modern warfare was first invented, the output of the mine has been closely dependent on military industry, for it yields up the stuff with which we make cannon and shells and warships and planes.

Beyond that the mine is a symbol of slavery. In its deathly underworld the poor of the world labor for the rich. It remains, as Lewis Mumford called it in Politics and Technics, “an artificial distortion of nature.” He wrote, “In the underground passages and galleries of the mine there is nothing to distract the miner: no pretty wench is passing in the field with a basket on her head, whose proud breast and flanks remind him of his manhood: no rabbit scurries across his path to arouse the hunter in him: no play of light on a distant river awakens his reverie. Here is the environment of work: dogged, unremitting, concentrated work. It is a dark, a colorless, a tasteless, a perfumeless, as well as a shapeless world: the leaden landscape of perpetual winter.” — Who Owns the Earth, James Ridgeway, 1980

“Supervision over foreign capital will be strengthened,” said a person familiar with the thinking at China’s top markets regulator, “so it won’t be able to obtain ultra-high profits in China through monopoly and capital-market operations.”

Before this year, Mr. Xi was distrustful of capital, but he had other priorities. Now, having consolidated power, he is putting the whole government behind his plans to make private business serve the state.

At internal meetings Mr. Xi has talked about the need to differentiate China’s economic system. Western capitalism, in his view, focuses too heavily on the single-minded pursuit of profit and individual wealth, while letting big companies grow too powerful, leading to inequality, social injustice and other threats to social stability.

I love Brother Xi. His assessment of Western capitalism is absolutely correct, and his goal of a new economic paradigm is right on time. China is on the move.

Where do you think China is going?

Part II to follow.