They're trying to save us, but they need our help.
Two things the 20th and 21st Centuries taught us. Socialist planned economies don't work, and corporate capitalism doesn't work either. Societies without the motivation and guidance provided by markets have difficulty meeting their needs, while societies run by corporations actively destroy nature, oppress billions of people and drag humanity into war after devastating war. Harnessing market forces within a system based on stability and balance can offer a way to make modern societies work. That is what China is trying to do, and that is why corporate capitalism wants to destroy them. We need to take their side in the strongest way we can.
Why corporate capitalism doesn't work
I will give brief explanations of why capitalism and communism have failed, based on the work of economists Michael Hudson, Radhika Desai, and Herman Daly. I will use the definition given by Adam Smith in 1776 of capitalism as a system in which private citizens employ workers and compete with each other in free markets to create profitable businesses.
Capitalism turned out a wealth-producing machine like no other in history. It has led to-growing human populations, many of them living at higher material standards than ever before. The system motivates people to work by threat of poverty and motivates those with money to invest it, with the prospect of greater riches. Competition drives companies to innovate and reduce prices, bring natural resources and find new markets around the world. Market results give instant feedback on what works and what doesn't, allowing more profitable use of resources.
As it turns out, though, people competing for wealth without limits leads to massive destruction. Nature, the working class, and the victims of war have suffered ever-increasing costs, until the world stands at the brink of total ecological collapse on one hand and catastrophic world war on the other.
The big cliff that capitalism went over was the creation of corporations. Corporations are legal fictions, in which a group of investors own a business and profit from it, but have little legal liability for its losses or the damage it causes. Corporations, by law, by their founding structure and by long practice, have as their main or only goal the maximization of profit. Other values, such as the lives of workers, the welfare of the community, and the natural environment, can only be afterthoughts, taking third place in decision-making behind profit margins and share prices.
Seeking profit above all sounds problematic, but it would only affect the people directly involved, had corporations not taken over democratic governments. To have fair markets, someone has to set them up and regulate them. To ensure that industrial or agricultural processes are sustainable, healthy, and profitable in the long run, limits have to be set on profit gouging, pollution, and labor exploitation. Corporations can't limit their own behavior, because their prime directive is maximizing profit. An outside force has to set those limits, which is why we need governments. Markets don't regulate themselves, no matter what libertarians say.
Unfortunately, in the last 150 years or so, corporations figured out that if they could control or manipulate governments, they could get away with unsustainable, unfair, or extremely shortsighted practices. Railroad industry influence is why we average three train derailments every day in the USA. Finance corporations' control of housing regulation is why we have hundreds of thousands of people sleeping in the streets.
Agricultural industry influence on government is why food is raised on factory farms that inflict horrible cruelty on animals, pollute surrounding water and land, and produce unhealthy food. Drug company control of the FDA and the Institutes of Health explain why Americans spend far more on drugs and medical treatment than anyone else in the world but have worse health to show for it. Military corporations' control of Departments of Defense and State is why America's wars never stop, and billions of dollars in weapons flow freely to Ukraine, Israel, and everywhere a war can be created.
Notice how the very same factors that make capitalism a wealth machine - individualism, creativity, and greed - also turn it in a destruction machine if it is not carefully controlled by an honest government.
Corporations work steadily to gain control of governments, using ever-more sophisticated strategies I described in a piece called How Capitalism Killed Democracy, and which others have described better. Funding politicians, bribing them (called "lobbying,") and shaping public opinion through their corporate-owned media have gradually led to greater, by now near-absolute control of government by corporations. Their lobbyists literally write most of the laws legislatures pass, and most of the people charged with enforcing the laws actually represent the companies they are supposed to regulate. Lobbyists even write international treaties like their so-called free trade agreements and Energy Charter agreements that allow corporations to sue any government that limits profits to protect environment or people.
Why communism hasn't worked
It's not hard to see how governments controlled by powerful multinational profit-seeking corporations could cause trouble. Unfortunately, government control without markets doesn't work either. Communism couldn't compete with capitalism's bringing together of resources, labor, science, and markets. People weren't as motivated to work if not faced with the threat of poverty or lured by the promise of riches. People with ideas weren't encouraged to work them up if they couldn't profit from them. The absence of market feedback led to bad processes and products going on until bureaucrats decided to stop them. It was inefficient and led to low material standards of living along with environmental destruction on a capitalist scale. (Think the Chernobyl nuclear plant.)
The fact that Russian socialism was attacked at its founding and constantly thereafter by the capitalist world didn't help the socialist system develop. They had to devote scarce resources to weapons to defend themselves. Eventually, leaders like Gorbachev in the USSR and Deng Xiao Peng in China realized that human creativity and energy were needed to lift people out of poverty. Totally planned economies don't work.
One could truthfully say that neither communism nor capitalism has been fairly tried, only the corrupted versions we have seen. But it is not possible to go back to the beginning of the industrial age and try again. Fortunately, there is a better way, and China is working on it.
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