Reminder this is a leftist unity site, but, if you’re the one urionic I support Duterte / Marcos Jr over the NPA guy, show yourself so you can be publicly shamed

  • star_wraith [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    I generally stan China but IMO they definitely have some of their comrades' blood on their hands. Making nice with the US certainly helped them be the strong nation they are today, but it wasn't like friendship came without a cost. Literally a deal with the devil.

    Vietnam for example. The Vietnamese had to fight brutal wars against imperialists for what 20-30 years? It took them everything they had to defeat the US. They had absolutely nothing left in the tank by the late 70s. And what did the Chinese do in the late 70s? Help their comrades build the initial stages of socialism? Nope! They fought a border war with them that the Vietnamese wanted no part of but had to get dragged into it. Hard to believe that didn't come at the behest of the USA. I believe that was the straw that broke the camel's back that was Vietnam's economy. And since then they've had to take a much more free-market based approach than China because they've literally had no other choice.

    This is all what I hear from podcasts and audio books so I may have some facts wrong but I think the gist is right. I don't blame the current CPC for this but they really could do more to help Vietnam, ngl

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It's just geopolitics in the end. At the end of the day, polities will still compete for resources and will make morally dubious and ideologically inconsistent alliances for the sake of advancing geopolitical interests. China, Russia, and Iran have absolutely nothing in common outside of some extremely tenuous link of being once ruled by Mongols more than 600 years ago, but they all have a vested interests in sticking together for the sake of opposing the US. Socialism by itself isn't going to somehow make geopolitical rivalry go away or dissolve century-old beefs in the same way transphobia or racism wouldn't instantaneously go away under socialism.

      Socialists need to stop viewing everything through an ideological lens. The Sino-Soviet split isn't my team anti-revisionist the other team revisionist. It was honestly mostly geopolitical. At one point, Khrushchev threatened to nuke China, so obvious Mao et al had to do something. This has nothing to do with revisionism or some ideological difference. China just didn't want to get nuked. Did the border clashes between the SU and the PRC happened because of one communist party not understanding Marxism-Leninism well enough or did it happen because of border disagreements the Tsarist Empire and the Qing Dynasty had and which carried over to their successive polities?

      In their article about the recent Taiwan visit by Pelosi, the CPP somehow shoehorned in a paragraph about how China doesn't respect the Philippines' maritime territory. Whether this has merit or not, what does this have to do with Taiwan? To me, it just reinforces my point that the beef the CPP has with China isn't actually ideological and more has to do with them believing that China does not respect the Philippines' sovereignty. It wouldn't matter if China is revisionist or state capitalist or feudal or even socialist.

      This also tells me that the CPP is probably not going to capture state power anytime soon because they have the luxury of not having to play the geopolitical game. They might shit on the CPC now, but as soon as CPP capture state power by overthrowing some US puppet of a president and have to play the geopolitical game like everyone else, they're going to pivot towards the social-imperialist power for the sake of opposing the imperialist-imperialist power because that's the smart geopolitical move to do.

      • star_wraith [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        This is a great point. I've always wanted to do some deep investigation into the material causes of the Sino-Soviet split. Ideology can play a part but I would think in the end it's really just material interests competing.

    • Vncredleader
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Honestly I am sure the NPA would not consider their blood to be the blood of China's comrades given the situation. Per Joma Sison

      The Philippines was not originally covered by the Silk Road Economic Belt or the Maritime Silk Road of the BRI. This was used as a bait to the greedy and corrupt Duterte regime in exchange for its unwavering subservience to China’s dictates.

      China’s gain in the country for almost five years is already huge, despite releasing only 5% of the funds which it promised to loan Duterte.

      Aside from the ₱14.4-billion loan from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank supposedly for Covid-19 response, China currently has only two “Infrastructure Flagship Projects” in the country with signed contracts. These are the ₱4.37-billion Chico River Pump Irrigation Project and the ₱12.2-billion New Centennial Water Source-Kaliwa Dam, which are bound to destroy communities and grab the ancestral lands of national minorities.

      According to the Chinese Embassy in the Philippines, only 11 Chinese-funded projects projects have been delivered, while 12 others are yet to begin. Majority of these are bridges and roads, including the Binondo-Intramuros Bridge and Estrella-Pantaleon Bridge which are both in Metro Manila. Other projects were cancelled such as the 32-kilometer Panay-Guimaras-Negros Bridge, which according to Sen. Franklin Drilon will be left to the next administration. Other projects were cancelled by local governments such as the Sangley Point International Airport Project in Cavite.

      In sum, the Philippines has received ₱28.8 billion in loans from China, which is way lower than loans from Japan (₱537.6 billion), Asian Development Bank (₱408 billion), and the World Bank (₱254.4 billion).

      https://cpp.ph/2021/06/07/china-wagers-on-duterte/

      Here is their statement on ordering the NPA to target Chinese companies in the Philippines, yes they sent the statement to RFA originally, but that's honestly not surprising. The left wing of the party (often called Stalinists) in Romania who wrote the Letter of the Six used Radio Free Europe to distribute it. Which got some understandable pushback, but you get why they used them. According to very much pro-Stalin Apostol, others who wrote it hated using imperialist means to communicate, but it seems they wanted to be clear this was an internal party thing and not necessarily agents of the USSR.

      I don't necessarily agree with the framing 100%, and there is plenty of understandable rhetoric involved as any political statement, but the concerns are interesting to dive into. Here is Marco Valbuena's annotations on Xi's speech on the centennial of the CPC. Plenty of silly hangups, but interesting nonetheless. Above all I get why they want no fucking involvement with foreign industry coming into the Philippines, and no ceding of sovereignty over the waters even if the international law on those zones is biased against China. For them it is a matter of fishing communities being screwed over by major companies and a fear of military encroachment which will put them in the crossfire

      https://cpp.ph/statements/critical-annotations-of-xi-jinpings-speech-at-a-ceremony-marking-the-centenary-of-the-communist-party-of-china-on-july-1-2021/