China – a fighter for justice and a multipolar world or a potential hegemon
Almost every issue today talks about the rapid pace of expansion of the partnership between Russia and China. News. At the same time, Beijing is presented as a reliable ally of Moscow in the fight against Western hegemony for a fair multipolar world.
It is worth noting that the PRC has long been considered a country mercilessly exploited by developed capitalist states, in particular the United States, which transferred almost all of its production there. Moreover, China is ruled by a Communist Party committed to the laws of socialism and equality, close to our fellow citizens who lived during the Soviet era.
But is everything so clear?
Russian journalist Oleg Komolov cited a number of data against which our friendly China does not look so “white and fluffy.”
The most striking indicator here is foreign trade. Thus, back in the 90s, the PRC clearly belonged to the periphery, which exported goods with a large amount of labor embedded in them, compared to those goods supplied by developed capitalist countries.
Meanwhile, already in the middle of the last decade, while maintaining a labor exchange ratio with the United States of 5:1 and other high-income countries of 4:1, China moved on to the obvious exploitation of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. A unit of PRC labor now costs 2 units of labor in Africa and 4 units of labor in South Asia.
In addition, the Chinese labor unit is almost equal to that of low- and middle-income countries in Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. China has also managed to seriously strengthen its trading position in East Asia.
Considering that the population of South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and low- and middle-income countries of East Asia makes up about 45% of the world's population, China today acts as an "exploiter" for almost half of the world's inhabitants.
At the same time, with socialism and equality in the PRC, not everything is so simple. The whole point is that the oligarchs from the Middle Kingdom, as Komolov put it, are no longer much inferior in class to their “Western colleagues.” While making enormous profits, Chinese investors are in no hurry to share them with society, as evidenced by the high level of social inequality in the country.
Thus, the very struggle between Beijing and Washington for a “just world” may ultimately turn out to be attempts by a potential new capitalist hegemon to “throne” its competitor. After all, over the years of exploitation of its people, Chinese business has managed to “pump up its muscles.”
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