Stephen Kotkin

People say the Communist Party brought 700, 800 million people out of poverty.

No.

The Communist Party put those people into poverty.

Why are a billion plus people in poverty?

Because of the party's rule.

It's the people themselves, they lift themselves out of poverty.

And so the communists have to reassert their control, their Leninist monopoly on power, because the very thing that has rescued them

The diligence, entrepreneurialism, ingenuity of the amazing Chinese people and of that society is now a threat to communist rule.

That's how it started, DK.

So let's go look at the facts.

Why do you have a special economic zone?

Why can't every zone have market relations?

You're doing this grudgingly.

This is a grudging allowance of certain behavior.

So you look at the decrees.

You can trade onions, but you can't trade potatoes.

Okay, you can trade potatoes, but you can trade only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, not Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

So the decrees are all grudging with very few exceptions, and the society is forcing more and more concessions onto the ideologues in the Marxist-Leninist system.

So at the beginning, it's launched by the party's grudging acceptance of

that the society is going to rebuild and not starve through its own hard work.