Mike Whitney – The Unz Review May 22, 20225

“Our single biggest priority is to improve the lives of the ordinary people.” Xi Jinping, President of China

Polling data clearly shows that Americans prefer capitalism over socialism. In fact, it’s not even close. A 2021 Gallup survey found that 60% of Americans view capitalism positively, while only 38% felt the same about socialism. A 2025 Rasmussen/Heartland poll reported an even bigger disparity, with an impressive 71% saying they prefer free-market economics over socialism which garnered a meager 12% support. The clear implication of these surveys is that Americans overwhelmingly support capitalism over a system of government in which the state exerts greater control over key industries and the distribution of wealth.

There is, however, reason to believe that these surveys do not provide an accurate picture of the way people actually feel. If, for example, we check the results of other surveys, we find that attitudes towards the two systems are more ambivalent than we might think. What pollsters in America have found is that—regardless of what party is in power—the vast majority of the people don’t feel represented and don’t think the issues ‘that they care about’ are addressed. In 2025, for example, a majority of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction:

A Reuters/Ipsos survey (April 25, 2025) found that fewer than one in three Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction, with a majority expressing concern about the economy, tariffs, and political extremism.

Morning Consult’s daily tracking (May 12, 2025) reported 56% of U.S. adults saying the country is on the wrong track….

A December 2024 Ipsos poll showed 69% of Independents, 59% of Republicans, and 78% of Democrats believed the country was on the wrong track.

The results were equally dismal under President Joe Biden as one might expect. What this suggests is that one’s own “philosophical” bias (whether you like capitalism over socialism) matters less than one’s perception of whether the government is effectively implementing the policies that serve the interests of the people or not. When it comes to government, people tend to be more pragmatic than ideological. In short, efficacy trumps dogma.

By this standard, the “Communist” government in China is among the most popular in the world. Public opinion polls consistently show extraordinarily high levels of support for the central government. This may come as a surprise to many Americans who think they live in “the freest country on earth”, but it is true all the same. The Chinese people overwhelmingly support their government, do not regard it as authoritarian, and think is doing an excellent job of increasing prosperity and raising standards of living.

Harvard Ash Center Study (2003–2016): This long-term survey, one of the most comprehensive by a Western institution, found that in 2016, 95.5% of Chinese respondents were either “relatively satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with the central government in Beijing.… Factors included economic progress, nationalist sentiment, and positive state media coverage…

General Trends (2020–2025): Studies like those from the China Data Lab (2023) and China Leadership Monitor (2025) confirm high regime support, often above 80–90%, based on questions about trust in the CPC, pride in the political system, and satisfaction with economic performance. Support is tied to economic growth (e.g., poverty alleviation of 800 million since 1978) and stability.

Posts on X,… cite Harvard and other Western surveys claiming ~90% of Chinese support the CPC, viewing its system as democratic and effective. These align with academic findings but reflect pro-government narratives.

These numbers are literally ‘off the chart’. They show that people in China overwhelmingly “support and trust” their government and think it is doing an excellent job of reducing poverty, lifting standards of living, and steering the country towards a peaceful and prosperous future.

Given the disparity between the survey results in the US and China, we wonder if Americans preference for capitalism over socialism reflects a clear understanding of how each system actually works or if their opinions have been largely shaped by propaganda?

Bottom line: People care less about ideology than they do about jobs, health care, stable prices, good education and some reasonable government accommodation to take care of people who are too old or sick or mentally impaired to provide for themselves. They want a government that will create an environment where they can make a decent living and raise their children in safety. These are not extravagant demands, even so, they do not appear to be a priority among Washington’s political class.

There are many reasons why China is doing better in this regard that the United States (Special interests, corruption etc), but certainly incentives play a significant role. In the US, millionaires can become billionaires overnight without contributing anything of value to society. It’s just a matter of how adept they are at trading paper assets on Wall Street. In America, the market system is so degraded that companies are allowed to buy back hundreds of billions of dollars of their own stock in order to push share prices higher allowing them to skim hefty profits off the shuffling of paper. These stock buyback transactions are entirely legal even though the capital is deployed in a way that fails to boost productivity, R&D, worker training, innovation or anything else. It is simply a way to fiddle the system in order to enrich professional speculators. In the US, wealth is generated through financial engineering not through productivity, efficiency or innovation. As we said earlier, the incentives are all wrong.

If the western-style system actually deployed capital to productive outlets of investment, then one would NOT expect the country with the largest and most liquid markets in the world to also have rising poverty, a shrinking middle class, surging homelessness, falling standards of living, and some of the most dilapidated, out-of-date infrastructure in the developed world. But in the US, capital is not deployed to productive outlets of investment, it is recycled into a financial system that functions as a wealth-generation mechanism for voracious billionaires who use their money to buy yachts, luxury mansions and glitzy baubles at Tiffaney’s. Take a look:

Total Stock Buybacks in 2024:

According to S&P Dow Jones Indices, S&P 500 companies spent a record $942.5 billion on stock buybacks in 2024. This figure represents an 18.5% increase from the $795.2 billion spent in 2023
In the last decade—2015 to 2024—that sum soars to $7.33 trillion

$7.33 trillion!

Even worse, a sizable portion of the money (devoted to stock buybacks) is coming from “massively underfunded public pension” funds that retired workers depend on for their survival. According to Brian Reynolds, Chief Market Strategist at New Albion Partners, “Pension funds have to make 7.5%,” so they are putting their money “in these levered credit funds that mimic Long-Term Capital Management in the 1990s.” Those funds, in turn, “buy enormous amounts of corporate bonds from companies which put cash onto company balance sheets…and they use it to jack their stock price up, either through buybacks or mergers and acquisitions…It’s just a daisy chain of financial engineering and it’s probably going to intensify in coming years.” (“How a Public Pension Crisis Is Driving an Epic Credit Boom“, Financial Sense)

Here’s more:

Stock Buybacks: S&P 500 companies spent a record $942.5 billion on buybacks in 2024. (roughly $1 trillion in one year)

Dividends: S&P 500 dividends reached $629.6 billion in 2024, up 7% from 2023.

Total Shareholder Returns: Combined, buybacks and dividends totaled $1.572 trillion in 2024

For context, a 2019–2022 study of 280 large U.S. corporations reported $4.4 trillion in profits, with $4.4 trillion spent on buybacks and dividends, suggesting a near 100% payout ratio for some firms… (Think about that for a minute: So, between the years of 2019 to 2022, every dime of profit was diverted to personal enrichment. Explain to me how this embraces the capitalist ideal of deploying resources to productive activity? Is it any wonder why China has left the US in the dust?)

This explains why business investment (Capex) is at record lows. It’s because the bulk of earnings is being recycled into buybacks which, in turn, is being used to further inflate the Wall Street asset bubble. It’s a big circle and it can all be traced back to cheap money (artificially low rates), easily available credit, and financial engineering. Corporations no longer look for ways to grow their businesses, expand operations, hire more employees, improve productivity or innovate. Instead, they look for ways to load up on debt, goose their stock price, and walk away with a bundle.

It’s all about incentives, and the Fed has created incentives that encourage debt leveraging, stock manipulation and fraud, whereas other governments incentivize growth and productivity.

The “profit motive” is supposed to be the energy that fuels the capitalist system and leads to innovation, efficiency and productivity. But as you can see, stock buybacks undermine those outcomes by diverting money into personal enrichment and elite indulgences, which begs the question of whether the current system is really capitalist at all?

We should also note that, in 2024, an estimated $235 billion (25% of the $942 billion total) of S&P 500 stock buybacks were purchased with credit which points to a gigantic asset bubble that will cause severe damage to the broader economy when markets fall sharply.

In contrast, (to the US model) the Chinese government prioritizes productivity and growth over financial engineering, asset stripping or profiteering. They see the financial system as a means to an end, and that end is the creation of a prosperous and harmonious society in which “all boats rise.”

Along with its 4 decade-long industrialization policy that has transformed China into the world’s biggest manufacturing superpower, China launched another massive project in 2013 called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which is the largest and most ambitious infrastructure project in history based on its scale, scope, and global impact. From 2013 to 2024, China has invested over $1 trillion in BRI projects, with $121.7 billion allocated in 2024 alone.

The BRI spans more than 150 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America covering 60–75% of the world’s population and over 30% of global GDP. It includes roads, railways, ports, pipelines, and digital infrastructure. Over 3,000 projects have been completed or are underway, including the $68 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the $13.6 billion Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, and numerous African rail and port developments.

No infrastructure project in history comes close to the BRI’s $1 trillion investment or 150-country scope. It’s frequently compared to a “21st-century Marshall Plan” but with broader geopolitical impact. BRI not only links remote locations to markets around the world, it also increases the speed at which products and merchandise can be delivered to wholesale and retail buyers. The visionary project anticipates a world in which economies are more deeply integrated spreading prosperity to places across the planet. The World Bank estimates the initiative will lift global GDP significantly while reducing poverty in areas that are affected by improved infrastructure and increased trade. No other project rivals its scale or vision.

The difference between America’s hyper financialized model of capitalism and China’s state-led model could not be starker. Keep in mind, the Belt and Road Initiative invested a meager $121.7 billion in projects in over 150 countries in 2024 while US corporations dumped nearly $1 trillion into stock buybacks that added nothing to overall productivity. Even with that paltry commitment of resources, China is credited with building the most transformative infrastructure project in history.

China does not reinvest all the profits from its State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) into production. In sectors like “energy, telecom, and infrastructure, for example, profits are frequently reinvested to expand capacity or develop new technologies.” Whereas “state-owned hydropower companies’ may “use profits to fund dam projects.” Surprisingly, a portion of the profits (from state-owned industries) are distributed as dividends and, yes, even “share buybacks…. reflecting a focus on shareholder returns rather than solely reinvesting in production.” But these distributions pale in comparison to those in the US that pay out nearly 100% of annual earnings. In short, there is much more money available to support “broader state objectives, such as infrastructure and social welfare programs.

And the amount of money we are talking about is simply staggering. Consider this:

China’s State-Owned Enterprises account for 30-40% of China’s GDP and control about 68% of total firm capital. (which attests to the truly unprecedented economic power of the government.) In 2021, central SOEs reported net profits of $283.56 billion. ($100 Billion of which went to the Belt and Road Initiative)

In 2023, China’s SOEs generated $650 billion in profits, the vast majority of which was devoted to production, innovation, efficiency critical infrastructure and social programs.

Is it any wonder why the Chinese people are so “satisfied” with their government?

This isn’t a matter of capitalism vs Communism. It’s a matter of good government vs lousy government. Virtually all the profits extracted from our “free market” system go into the pockets of the people who need the money the least and who fail to contribute anything of value to the ‘greater good’. In contrast, the Chinese government is pumping nearly every penny into improvements that benefit everyone and that have transformed the country into a shining example of 21st Century modernity.

Shockingly, our leaders in Washington still think the United States can “out compete” and even surpass China if we just put our minds to it and make it a national priority. But anyone who can ‘do the math’ can see that’s not going to happen. It’s simply a matter of which country has the superior development model, and, in that regard, China has us beat hands-down.

Note—Missed opportunities?? Xi Jinping invited former Secretary of State John Kerry to join the Belt and Road Initiative at its inception, but the Obama administration rejected the offer. Kerry called it “the single biggest missed opportunity of my life.” video :22 seconds

 

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