Reassessing Poverty: Lessons from China

The world that we all grew up in is no longer a reality—although, in many ways, those in power are grasping onto it with the desperation of drowning men flailing, lashing out—furious, terrified, and in denial of what is staring them in their faces: imminent death. The rest of us are watching this process unfold before our very eyes—also terrified, but seemingly powerless. It’s a weird time to be alive. But when has it ever not been?

As we watch, experience, and feel the collapse of the state that we live within—or for those of us not currently living in the belly of the beast, the imperial world that this state rules over—it feels like an important time to explore this collapse. Specifically, it’s an important time to understand what’s happening in the imperial world order, and in order to do that, we must understand China. 

In this conversation, we’ve brought on a regular guest—a guest who you all know and love—Jason Hickel, to talk about China.  

Jason Hickel is a professor at the The Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the author of the books The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions and Less is More: How Degrowth will Save the World.

In this conversion we first take a brief dive into modern Chinese history, looking at the  pre-revolution period, the 1949 communist revolution itself, the Mao period, the Deng period, and the Xi period. We analyze what the rise of China means in terms of the current world order and the implications for the United States. We tackle some common questions and dispel some common myths about China—like, is China capitalist? Is it imperialist? We analyze some current events like trade wars and Tiktok bans, and finally, we explain why it’s crucial not to fall into the trap of U.S. propaganda when it comes to how we on the Western left analyze China. 

Artwork: Berwyn Mure

Further resources:

• The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions, Jason Hickel
• Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save The World, Jason  Hickel
• "Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy," (Nature Communications) Hickel, Lamos, Barbour 
• "Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015," (Global Environmental Change) Hickel, Dorninger, Wieland, Suwandi
• "Plunder in the Post-Colonial Era: Quantifying Drain from the Global South Through Unequal Exchange, 1960–2018," (New Political Economy) Hickel, Sullivan, Zoomkawala
• "Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown: an equality-based attribution approach for carbon dioxide emissions in excess of the planetary boundary," Jason Hickel (The Lancet)
• Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik
• Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis Paperback, John Smith
• "Capitalist reforms and extreme poverty in China: unprecedented progress or income deflation?" Dylan Sullivan, Michail Moatsos & Jason Hickel

Related episodes:

• (Chinese) Socialism vs (U.S.) Capitalism
• Better Lives for All w/ Jason Hickel 
• How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel
• The Divide – Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets with Jason Hickel
• International Development and Post-capitalism with Jason Hickel
• How Degrowth Will Save the World with Jason Hickel
• The Green Transition Pt.1 – The Problem with Green Capitalism
• Listen to our ongoing series on China

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