A top economist has joined the growing list of China’s elite to have disappeared from public life after criticizing Xi Jinping, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

Zhu Hengpeng served as deputy director of the Institute of Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) for around a decade.

CASS is a state research think tank that reports directly to China’s cabinet. Chen Daoyin, a former associate professor at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, described it as a “body to formulate party ideology to support the leadership.”

According to the Journal, the 55-year-old disappeared shortly after remarking on China’s sluggish economy and criticizing Xi’s leadership in a private group on WeChat.

    • @escapesamsara@lemmings.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      192 months ago

      Transport and a personal vehicle are two different things, go to any country outside the US, car ownership is reserved for the upper classes globally.

      • @TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        9
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        So I, a resident of Europe, am an upper class for owning a 2004 1.3 litre petrol engine Toyota Yaris.

        We started this comment chain poking fun at the most laughable arguments by tankies… And you guys keep on giving.

        • @escapesamsara@lemmings.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          22 months ago

          Yes given you statistically don’t have a reason to own the car as you have well designed cities and functional public transport, the latter almost exclusively due to the socialist movement.

          • @TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            22 months ago

            functional public transport, the latter almost exclusively due to the socialist movement.

            Dublin is nowhere near a socialist city, nor having a “functional public transport”. Many people in Ireland still live in hinterlands and rural areas with sparse public transport that comes only an hour or so. Ireland is ranked as having one of the worst public transports along with Poland, the latter being a former communist country!

            Lol, you give the worst cope I have seen from a tankie. Even tried to gaslight me that I don’t need a car! I wish so I don’t have to spend ludicrous amount of money! I can tell you’re an edgelord Yank who thinks capitalism oppresses you personally, even though you are typing this from a computer or smartphone, developed thanks to capitalism, and while sipping hot cocoa that is not being rationed. And expressing opinions safe and sound protected by the rule of law of wherever you are.

            Tankies keep on giving the most absurd responses and cracks me up. Thanks for giving me a quick chuckle!

            If you are so enamoured by communism, go to Cuba, China or North Korea and let’s see if you won’t return begging for your passport back!

    • @volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      92 months ago

      And access to transport was widely available to the overwhelming majority of the population through trains, trams, buses and trolleybuses. Even if your American mind can’t comprehend this fact, owning a car isn’t the ultimate form of mobility, there are alternatives that are arguably better. City design was centered around walkability, density and public transit; metro systems were luxurious and a predicament all out of themselves, and housing being generally obtained through the worker’s union implied that workers usually lived in relative proximity to their workplaces.

      The soviet economy was a developing, centrally planned economy, not running under the premise of overproduction and surplus but running under the premise of 5-year plans of production. There was full employment, and almost complete usage of the raw materials extracted and industrial goods produced. Making twice as many cars, implied removing all of that labor and those resources from another sector of the economy. When the premise isn’t to “make money selling cars to rich people”, but to “grant adequate material conditions and welfare to every citizen”, you have to make decisions like that. More cars could have implied, for example, fewer hospital beds or fewer trams, but my point is that making more private cars would have NECESSARILY meant making less of something else of which there’s also no surplus (because the premise of the USSR was the non-existence of surplus). It’s very easy to have surpluses in a capitalist economy when you don’t care about 80% of the population not having access to the goods and services available, when you want everyone to have access it’s a different story.

      • @TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        62 months ago

        Tell that to people living in the countryside, lol. Even if your wannabe-communist, Western-born, city dwelling, mindset tell you otherwise, those on the country have limited access to transportation and infrastructures that city folks take for granted.

        • @volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          32 months ago

          Data says otherwise. Since the end of the soviet block, there’s been a massive migration outwards from the countryside in favour of urban life all over the former socialist republics. Maybe the idea of subsidizing the infrastructure of the countryside despite it not making sense within capitalism wasn’t such a bad idea after all… Please, try to respond to that: why are people flocking from the degrading countryside in post soviet countries

          • @PugJesus@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            62 months ago

            Please, try to respond to that: why are people flocking from the degrading countryside in post soviet countries

            “I don’t understand why people live in cities.” - Peak Tankie Analysis, apparently

          • @TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            42 months ago

            Since the end of the soviet block, there’s been a massive migration outwards from the countryside in favour of urban life all over the former socialist republics.

            We’re talking about during communist era, you goal-post moving dong head.

            You are literally just did what this comment chain is criticising lol.

            • @volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              3
              edit-2
              2 months ago

              Think harder. I’m not “moving goalposts”, I’m saying, if life in the countryside was so bad during soviet times, why are people from the countryside moving out now and not before… You said “tell that to the people living on the countryside”, the reality is that the people in the countryside were forced to leave the countryside after communism. So why don’t you go ask them?