this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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Why are those the only options in everyone's head. China is a mercantilist nation. Why is it capitalism vs communism and no one talking about how Chinese classic mercantilism seems to be doing pretty OK right now.
Jesus fucking Christ.
No, China is very much a capitalist country.
No, capitalism doesn't have state control.
Jesus fucking Christ.
That's what mercantilism is. A promotion of trade with state control. Which is different than the free hand of capitalism.
That's just spicy capitalism
Is it? I mean it's clearly working well enough that the other capitalist nations are saying their capitalism is unfair. But really it's a totally different system, and we're not going to understand it if we just call it capitalism with Chinese characteristics.
I honestly don't know enough about the Chinese economy to have much of an opinion of it. I was just trying to make a joke because what you described is still authoritarian capitalism to some level, even if it's working.
It's not capitalism though. Economists have even given it it's own name. It's called mercantilism. It doesn't help when we just make everything binary.
Fair. You've piqued my interest, and I think I need to educate myself here.
Also, honestly I don't know if it's better. I just know it's different and at least we should try to understand.
Do you know what mercantilism is and why it's working well for China? Nothing you said has anything to do with mercantilism.
I'm talking about mercantilism. China just happens to be the biggest country that does it. Just like the US is the biggest one doing capitalism. Communism isn't really even on the board so not sure why people like you keep bringing it up.
A hugely ironic comment from the person who injected talk about communism into a discussion of capitalism.
Because in the modern world it's really a competition between capitalism and mercantilism, and self congratulating the capitalist nations on beating communism seems like masturbation to me.
Right learning, something you should do about mercantilism.