The only cognitive dissonance here is your own buddy. The reality is that no human society is perfect and people who keep comparing societies that exist in the real world to some Platonic ideal of society are not serious. China has problems like any other country, however it's crystal clear that life for the vast majority of people in China has been steadily improving since the revolution, and that the government of China works in the interest of the working majority. People such as yourself will continue regurgitating empty rhetoric, while others will continue to improve their conditions.
yogthos
Bonus evidence of Chinese government screwing everyone in the country.
Here's the report explaining how a typical Chinese adult is now richer than the typical European adult https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-chinese-adult-now-richer-than-europeans-wealth-report-finds-2022-9
90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes
Chinese household savings hit another record high in 2024 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-bank-earnings-01-12-2024/card/chinese-household-savings-hit-another-record-high-xqyky00IsIe357rtJb4j
People in China enjoy high levels of social mobility https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/china-social-mobility.html
The typical Chinese adult is now richer than the typical European adult https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-chinese-adult-now-richer-than-europeans-wealth-report-finds-2022-9
Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8SvK0E5dI
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China%E2%80%99s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019&%3Blocations=CN&%3Bstart=2008
By the end of 2020, extreme poverty, defined as living on under a threshold of around $2 per day, had been eliminated in China. According to the World Bank, the Chinese government had spent $700 billion on poverty alleviation since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/world/asia/china-poverty-xi-jinping.html
Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million. With this, China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/07/5-myths-about-global-poverty
The $1.90/day (2011 PPP) line is not an adequate or in any way satisfactory level of consumption; it is explicitly an extreme measure. Some analysts suggest that around $7.40/day is the minimum necessary to achieve good nutrition and normal life expectancy, while others propose we use the US poverty line, which is $15.
https://www.cgdev.org/blog/12-things-we-can-agree-about-global-poverty
The fact that rich people are routinely executed in China is one of the clearest indications that dictatorship of the proletariat has been achieved. And this is precisely why China terrifies the west so much.
I don't think anybody knows what a perfect system is, and there simply might not be one. Any system will have a set of trade offs in the end. What we can do though is look at what sort of selection pressures different types of systems create, and try to tune the rules in a way where individual interest aligns with the common interest. It's going to be a process of trying things, seeing how they work, and iterating. Most people can now see the problems that capitalist relations create, and socialism is a way to address these problems. It's also worth noting that socialism is inherently democratic in nature.
gets reeducated, reappears as a productive member of society
yup that's what I mean
I mean that communist system demonstrably results in far better education, and stronger checks and balances than capitalism. Communist countries focus on building infrastructure such as schools and housing, and make education free for everyone. Meanwhile, public ownership of the means of production means wealth isn't concentrated in the hands of the few. This precludes the problem such as oligarchs owning media and then manipulating public opinion in their own interest. Hope that clears things up for you.
That's literally how capitalism has always worked. People who own capital exploit those who do not and are forced to sell themselves as wage slaves. That's how surplus capital is created.
All these things happen far more naturally under communism because systemic pressures favor these things.
it's purely to see if it can be done