But it didn't hurt China in the long run. China was able to procure tech from the West and more or less steal the West's manufacturing capabilities thanks to the short-sightedness of Western capitalist who didn't look part cost savings from labor arbitrage. That's the real long term goal. China began technologically lagging behind the West around the Ming dynasty, so the long term goal was to technologically catch up with the West after lagging behind for at least two dynasties. And the funny thing is China used the same exact playbook the late Ming did to bridge the tech gap: they gesture towards embracing whatever popular ideology and governance is in vogue at the West if you would only give us the tech. For the late Ming, it was Jesuit priests and Catholicism, and for modern times, it is technocrats and liberals. But unlike the West, China rarely makes the same mistake twice. The problem with the late Ming/early Qing was that the West would eventually figure out the ruse, and imperial China lacked the means of being truly innovative after the tech transfer was cut off. This was not so with the PRC.
Just because the PRC and the Soviet Union share the same ideology doesn't mean they are above geopolitics. Geopolitical alliances are ever-shifting. The Sino-Soviet split officially ended with Gorbachev's visit to Beijing, so it lasted only a couple of decades. And now Russia is closer to China than ever even when they don't even share the same ideology. Vietnam and China are also very close no matter how much cope Burglanders have of Vietnam hating China. As another example for why geopolitics have little to do with ideology, just look at how almost all Sunni Arab countries have betrayed the Sunni Arab Palestinians to the Zionists while the Sunni Arab Palestinians' greatest saviors are a bunch of Shia Muslims with Shia Iranians as the head. Meanwhile, the tech gap is a centuries-old problem that must be resolved. This is what it means to truly have long-term vision, to be able to distinguish between mid-term vision and long-term vision.
Just because the PRC and the Soviet Union share the same ideology doesn't mean they are above geopolitics.
But it does??? What the fuck is class solidarity meant to mean otherwise, it was and is in the best collective interest of the working class for socialist countries to support each other
History disagrees with you. The Soviet Union and the PRC inherited the contradictions of Tsarist Russia and the Qing Dynasty, and you can't just handwave that away. Russia was one of the eight nations in the Eight-Nation Alliance that came to oppress China during the Century of Humiliation. Russia also had unequal treaties with China. To make a long story short, Lenin was cool about annulling those treaties while Stalin was less so. Meanwhile, Khrushchev threatened to nuke China. Russia should be paying China reparations for its role in the Century of Humiliation if anything. The relationship isn't equal because Russia owns China for historical wrongs and ought to repay China in the form of reparations. "Uh aktually we're no longer Russia we're the Soviet Union." Yeah, and look what that got you.
Then Stalin shouldn’t have insisted on the independence of outer Mongolia, the use of Port Arthur (Lushunkou) as joint Sino-Soviet naval base as pretense to station Soviet troops in Chinese province, refused to return the Chinese Eastern Railway (Changchun Railway) rights to China, and keeping Vladivostok (Haishenwei) that the Russian Empire annexed as part of the Soviet territory.
All these infringed on the Chinese national sovereignty.
And these happened during the Sino-Soviet “honeymoon” period when Stalin was still alive. It got even worse after he died, as the USSR turned revisionist and started to expand on its “imperialist ambitions” (a terminology I don’t personally agree with but this is not a controversial thing at all to say in China).
But it didn't hurt China in the long run. China was able to procure tech from the West and more or less steal the West's manufacturing capabilities thanks to the short-sightedness of Western capitalist who didn't look part cost savings from labor arbitrage. That's the real long term goal. China began technologically lagging behind the West around the Ming dynasty, so the long term goal was to technologically catch up with the West after lagging behind for at least two dynasties. And the funny thing is China used the same exact playbook the late Ming did to bridge the tech gap: they gesture towards embracing whatever popular ideology and governance is in vogue at the West if you would only give us the tech. For the late Ming, it was Jesuit priests and Catholicism, and for modern times, it is technocrats and liberals. But unlike the West, China rarely makes the same mistake twice. The problem with the late Ming/early Qing was that the West would eventually figure out the ruse, and imperial China lacked the means of being truly innovative after the tech transfer was cut off. This was not so with the PRC.
Just because the PRC and the Soviet Union share the same ideology doesn't mean they are above geopolitics. Geopolitical alliances are ever-shifting. The Sino-Soviet split officially ended with Gorbachev's visit to Beijing, so it lasted only a couple of decades. And now Russia is closer to China than ever even when they don't even share the same ideology. Vietnam and China are also very close no matter how much cope Burglanders have of Vietnam hating China. As another example for why geopolitics have little to do with ideology, just look at how almost all Sunni Arab countries have betrayed the Sunni Arab Palestinians to the Zionists while the Sunni Arab Palestinians' greatest saviors are a bunch of Shia Muslims with Shia Iranians as the head. Meanwhile, the tech gap is a centuries-old problem that must be resolved. This is what it means to truly have long-term vision, to be able to distinguish between mid-term vision and long-term vision.
But it does??? What the fuck is class solidarity meant to mean otherwise, it was and is in the best collective interest of the working class for socialist countries to support each other
History disagrees with you. The Soviet Union and the PRC inherited the contradictions of Tsarist Russia and the Qing Dynasty, and you can't just handwave that away. Russia was one of the eight nations in the Eight-Nation Alliance that came to oppress China during the Century of Humiliation. Russia also had unequal treaties with China. To make a long story short, Lenin was cool about annulling those treaties while Stalin was less so. Meanwhile, Khrushchev threatened to nuke China. Russia should be paying China reparations for its role in the Century of Humiliation if anything. The relationship isn't equal because Russia owns China for historical wrongs and ought to repay China in the form of reparations. "Uh aktually we're no longer Russia we're the Soviet Union." Yeah, and look what that got you.
USSR did give China massive help in military and industrial equipment, tech transfer and help in education of specialists. Does it count?
Then Stalin shouldn’t have insisted on the independence of outer Mongolia, the use of Port Arthur (Lushunkou) as joint Sino-Soviet naval base as pretense to station Soviet troops in Chinese province, refused to return the Chinese Eastern Railway (Changchun Railway) rights to China, and keeping Vladivostok (Haishenwei) that the Russian Empire annexed as part of the Soviet territory.
All these infringed on the Chinese national sovereignty.
And these happened during the Sino-Soviet “honeymoon” period when Stalin was still alive. It got even worse after he died, as the USSR turned revisionist and started to expand on its “imperialist ambitions” (a terminology I don’t personally agree with but this is not a controversial thing at all to say in China).