Is China communist or capitalist?

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Is China communist or capitalist? For decades, China was the true communist economy. [music] The government controlled basically everything: prices, land, factories, [music] production.

[00:00:12]Private businesses barely existed, and the results were absolutely disastrous.

[00:00:17][music] Economic stagnation, massive famines, and tens of millions of deaths.

[00:00:21]By the late 1970s, even the Communist Party knew that the [music] system just wasn't working. That's when Deng Xiaoping came into power and did something completely unexpected. He looked at [music] places where things were actually working, places like Singapore and Hong Kong, where people were freer to trade and build businesses and [music] make profits. So, China began experimenting. Private businesses became legal, farmers were allowed to sell their own crops, and foreign companies were invited to invest in the country. Basically, they injected capitalism [music] into a communist system. And it worked. Over the next few decades, hundreds of millions of people escaped [music] poverty during one of the fastest periods of economic growth in human history. So, what is China today? [music] It's not fully communist, but it's not fully capitalist, either.

[00:01:11]People can own businesses and compete in markets, [music] but the Communist Party still controls the banking sector, influences major industries, [music] and can basically step in whenever it wants.

[00:01:22]What's interesting, though, is that China grew the most in the areas of the economy [music] where the government loosened control, not tightened it.