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An Occasional Reader asked me about my first Red Pill moment.
I answered it was when I arrived in China in the 1976, a graduate of the Australian National University where I was the typical Chardonnay Socialist student. We were all Left, innit!
China of 1976 made it clear to me. Socialism sucks.
I was a student at the Peking Language Institute, on local conditions: that is, the same as all the local Chinese, and not like the foreign diplomats and business people.
Almost the only food we had was cabbage. All other Food was rationed. Clothing too. Consumer goods didn't exist.
We needed "rice coupons" to get our rice ration. "Cotton coupons" to buy our clothes. Piles of Bai Cai (Pak Choi) smelled up every street corner, untouched, because there was so much -- too much... socialist central planning....
China was then, by its own description "a socialist state on the path to glorious Marxist-Leninist communism”.
Instead they were lucky to have a Deng Xiaoping and his "socialism with Chinese characteristics". AKA the free market. I watched as the free market made Chinese people rich over the next forty years.
You try to make everyone the same, you all end up at the bottom. All same. All bottom.
As did the students in the above tweet story.
It's true!
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ADDED: China still wrestles with Socialism vs Capitalism. Xi Jinping took China further Left (Socialist) for a while. They’re trying a course correction now, but without much conviction, I think.
My summary of China over the last half century: It has become rich to the exact degree to which it has allowed market forces to prevail. As soon as it swings back to socialist central control, growth falters and the wealth of Chinese falls. That’s the fulcrum China is balanced on right now.
