No, the U.S. Is Not Becoming China. I’ve Lived in Both.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
One of the most persistent refrains I’ve been hearing this year is that the U.S. is slowly becoming more like China.
Proponents of this idea point to what they see as alarming evidence. They cite the ideological “witch hunts” on college campuses, where one wrong word can end a career. They point to the government’s expanding role in the economy, seeing the shadow of state control in sectors ranging from natural resources to semiconductors and quantum computing.
Those concerns are real. But as someone who lived under the actual Chinese system , I can tell you what a state-controlled society truly is and why, knock on wood, the U.S. is not becoming China.
A prime example is the recent mayoral election here in New York City, my adopted hometown. A self-described democratic socialist won. Shortly after, a reader alerted me to Chinese social-media commentaries celebrating Zohran Mamdani’s win as “a socialist experiment within a capitalist society.”
But the “socialism” of an American politician who campaigns in open elections is not the “socialism” of the single-party state that runs China. The difference shows the vast chasm of power, control and freedom that separates the two nations.
When Mamdani talks about socialism, he means using New York City’s democratic government and tax revenue to build a robust social safety net. He wants to put more money into public housing and guarantee universal childcare. He’s proposing “public-option” grocery stores in food deserts and making city buses free.
We can agree or disagree with any of this. We can argue–and many have, loudly–that these plans are financially disastrous, that they’re naive, or that they’re a government overreach.
And that's the point.
Mamdani has to get these ideas through an elected City Council. His proposals will be relentlessly questioned and investigated by the media. Landlord groups may sue him in federal court to block his rent freezes. Businesses might threaten to leave the city over his tax hikes. And in four years, if the voters decide his “socialism” is a failure, they will simply vote him out of office.
The Socialism of the Party State
Now, let’s examine the socialism I grew up with.
In China, “socialism”--or “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” as the ruling Communist Party calls it–is not a set of policies to be debated. It is the justification for total, centralized, one-party control.
In Mamdani’s New York, he wants to build a city-run grocery store to compete with private companies. In China's system, the party can decide that a private company–say, Alibaba–has become too powerful, and it can make its billionaire founder, Jack Ma, “disappear” for months until he falls back in line.
In Mamdani’s New York, he will fight with real-estate developers over tax rates and zoning. In China, all urban land is, by definition, owned by the state. You don't buy a home; you buy a 70-year lease from the government, which it can revoke.
In Mamdani’s New York, you can protest his policies outside City Hall. In China, doing that will get you arrested.
The socialism of the Chinese Communist Party is not about a social safety net. It is a system of power. It means the party is the ultimate authority in all things: the economy, the courts, the media, the military and your personal life. It uses a “socialist market economy” as a tool to achieve its primary goal: ensuring the party’s absolute grip on power and building national strength.
Barry Naughton, a leading China expert in the U.S., has long argued that China, despite its socialist identification, falls short of meeting key socialist benchmarks such as universal social security and significant income redistribution. For example, China’s public social spending as a percentage of GDP remains far below the 20%-to-21% average seen in developed countries, contributing to its high and persistent income inequality.
So, when I hear people equate the two, I have to respectfully push back. To compare a democratically elected politician arguing for free buses to a state-dominated system that deploys mass surveillance against its citizens is to overlook the very freedom that makes such a debate possible in the first place.
What people have in the U.S. is a messy, loud, and often vicious debate about how to allocate resources. What people have in China is the absence of one.
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Time for y'all to get back to calling eachother a basket of borgeoise bobbleheads instead of regurgitating the wornout tropes of puffed-up populists.
I've lived most of my life in Canada, and now almost 2 decades in China and my opinion about what the author has to say is...