China's graduate glut grows | Hacker News Reader

China's graduate glut grows

atimes.com

30 pointswallflower16 comments

"...the lack of trained and skilled workers as opposed to the surging numbers of graduates has led to the emergence of an abnormal trend where graduates are paid the same or even less than migrant laborers."

Everybody wants to talk and earn, nobody wants to actually work.

Do you see a problem here?

yes

"...the communist state's..." - FTA

Why is China still referred to as a communist state? In fact, why is "communist state" even in our vernacular? It's an oxymoron. In a communist system, there is no state as everything is owned by everyone. There is no central authority; the authority is left up to the proles. The fact that people need to find employment and actually buy things, and the fact that there is still difference in comfort of living, shows that China is, in fact, not at all communist. The fact they aren't even working towards a classless system, shows that they aren't communist, even taking a loose definition of the term.

Edited for clarity. Instead of just down-modding me, I'd appreciate some (hopefully constructive) criticism as to why I'm being down-modded. My email is in my profile if you'd rather not clog up the comments.

"The fact that people need to find employment and actually buy things, and the fact that there is still difference in comfort of living, shows that China is, in fact, not at all communist."

the fact that the "rapture" hasn't happened yet shows that Christianity doesn't exist?

I'm not an expert, but I think that that is an oversimplification. Communism, as a theory predicted a transitionary period before the ultimate stateless utopia. A communist state could also be defined as 'any state with the long term objective of bringing about communist utopia'.

You're confusing a economic system for a political system. China is indeed communist because there is only one political party. China is also capitalist because it uses most capitalist tenets (things sort of mingle where politics and economics meet).

On the other hand the old Soviet Union was a communist political system with a command-economy. The state decided what was built, where you worked, and how much you earned.

China hasn't been a true marxist-communist since the late 70s. When Deng Xiaoping turned the economy (only the economy) towards capitalism.

Except that communism is a socioeconomic and political structure, at least as envisioned by Marx. A single-party state has more in line with fascism than communism (despite them being on opposite sides of the political spectrum).

China is the only major state left who is claiming to be communist; therefore, China now defines "communist".

If I was the only person left claiming to be [insert group of people here], would that mean that being a [said group] would be defined by me? Just because there is only one thing claiming to be something doesn't mean you can leave behind actual ancestry.

I (or anyone else) can claim to be a lot of things. That doesn't make it so.

I'd say that, in the world of politics, yes.

I'd agree with you if we were referring to political parties such as democrats or republicans. Those do (and have) changed over time, likely no longer standing in the same region of the political spectrum as they once did. I'd also agree with you on ambiguous terms like liberal and conservative, which are relative terms. Communism isn't that ambiguous or relative. It represents a fixed set of ideologies like laissez faire[1]. It may not work or it may be completely unattainable, but that isn't the point. If you call something a duck, it should walk like a duck and quack like a duck. If it doesn't, well, it probably isn't a duck.

1. Communism and laissez faire are obviously different ideologically, but they are still somewhat fixed ideologies.

It would be more accurate to call them a one party state.

In contrast, America is a two party state.

And, as my high school Government teacher drilled into me:

America is not a democracy, it is a Republic.

The one ruling party of China since 1949 is, of course, the Communist Party of China, so it seems fair enough to call China a "communist state," after the name of the ruling party.

You have a good point. Would "totalitarian state" be better?

No because China isn't totalitarian either. Authoritarian state with a ruling party of Marxist-Leninist political origins just doesn't have the same ring, does it?

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