So I've been putting off writing this for a long time and it'll probably need to be a series, but I've had a difficult time answering challenges from my friends who assert that China is either a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie or of the Bureaucracy (i.e. state capitalists), and that it's a competing imperialist power along with America (and they also say Russia but I can answer that one being stupid on my own).
The problem with China Discourse is that there is a serious paucity of sources dealing with nuanced critiques rather than just "debt trap!" bullshit or whatever, since the objections of liberals and the objections of smarter ultras are very different. At the very least, the sources dealing with this Discourse are less accessible to me.
But now I'm extremely bored and also recently saw Comrade Queermmunist's excellent rebuttal against the claim of China doing imperialism in the DRC, which gave me some hope that Hexbear would be able to answer some of these claims with something at least plausible.
The main objects of concern are the for-profit national businesses causing bureacratic class antagonism, foreign policy in the form of UN peacekeeping contributions, and straightforward imperialism at the base of its supply chain, along with miscellany like this:
https://newworker.us/international/chinas-stock-market-a-lesson-on-what-socialism-is-not/
I don't know, it's all a mess and putting off ideological work causes problems. If nothing else, let this be a practical lesson to you:
To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.
It catches up with you and makes things worse in the end.
The biggest misconception people have over the differences between colonialism and neocolonialism is that colonialism involves the military while neocolonialism is purely through economic means when as we can see with Francafrique, that's not remotely true. The boots never leave the neocolony, whether they are soldiers from the imperialist country or separatists (not so) covertly backed by the colonizer in order to destabilize the country or various members of the security apparatus of the colonizing country attempting to assassinate the revolutionary leader. Just look at Burkina Faso. Sankara was assassinated by a comprador traitor with ties to the French who then invited French troops back into Burkina Faso and even then, various Jihadist groups totally not backed by the French sprung up in the north to further destabilize the country giving France an excuse to station ever more French troops in order to "combat" terrorism. And once a Sankarist wrestled control away from the various comprador factions and kicked out official French troops again, Traore has faced numerous assassination attempts by the French. He has gone out of his way to ruthlessly purge people within the government who has sympathies with their French neocolonial masters.
This is actually existing imperialism. It's not just exporting capital, which is just 1 of 5 criteria laid out by Lenin. Even something like "owning every single gold mine" by itself means nothing since with a stroke of a pen, those mines can be unceremoniously nationalized exactly like what Castro did to property owned by United Fruit. Imperialism is more like "owning every single gold mine and having a drone base next to the mines in order to fight "terrorists" that you also supply with and having special forces assets in the capital ready to assassinate the president if they even think about nationalizing the mines." France owned the uranium mines in Niger, and when Nigeriens went out to protest, France scrambled French fighter jets to dump tear gas on the protestors. The jet obviously wasn't flown straight from France but from an airstrip located on Nigerien soil.