Episode 65: Poverty Alleviation and Socialist Construction in China with Tings Chak

This weeks discussion thematically compliments and follows on our previous episode on Marxism and China (episode 64 - give it a listen!).
Sitting down with Tings Chak, we examine China’s radical transformations from 1949 until today by centering a few questions: how was the mass alleviation of poverty accomplished in China? Is it an ongoing process? What does “socialist construction” have to do with it? Is China socialist? What kinds of contradictions has Chinese economic development faced? And how has China’s rapid and radical improvement in living standards shaped it’s place in the world? And what does this all mean for the global south in 2026?
Tings Chak is the Asia co-coordinator and art director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. She is an editor of Wenhua Zongheng: A Journal of Chinese Contemporary Thought and is currently pursuing her doctorate at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Find Tings on social media at:
X: @t_ings @tri_continental
instagram: @tingschak @thetricontinental
Some links:

• Poverty alleviation: https://thetricontinental.org/studies-1-socialist-construction/

• Chinese Revolution historical overview: https://mronline.org/2024/10/01/seventy-five-years-of-the-chinese-revolution/

• Wenhua Zongheng latest on Trump: https://thetricontinental.org/wenhua-zongheng-2025-2-trump-2-0-global-order/

• Go To Yan’an: Culture and National Liberation: https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-yanan-forum/