The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) commends the New People’s Army (NPA) for the series of successful tactical offensives across the country over the past two months. Various NPA units hav…
Revolving this discussion around the childish and western-centric ideal of bestowing your approval upon countries as though the world revolves around our every inclination makes this an entirely inane conversation, and it is in many ways a sort of remnant of a colonial imperialist mindset that makes westerners think their approval and "support" of this or that country to be of some sort of crucial importance. I support the efforts of the CPP but I have no delusions to their situation, and I don't expect China to either. They had materially supported the efforts of the CPP for decades until the 80s and then finally cut ties in the 2000s once the situation became more apparent as the internal conflicts within the CPP fractured and impaired the movement. The Philippines is a major economy and has a strategic importance to China and the region as a whole, of course they're going to trade with them, i'm not sure what you're envisioning the alternative as exactly because the US would love to swoop in and provide direct support instead.
Leftist support for a country should stem from the belief that they represent a model of governance that should be emulated by other countries and their own country. This isn't about should you be happy in the event of regime change or not, as obviously it would be bad if the CCP collapsed.
I think that is not consistently true one way or another for China. There are some things I think they do that are good, but for others, they act no differently than America would react in the same situation and I still think it's okay to say that's bad on a leftist forum.
Just like I said it was bad that Vietnam was giving up their sovergnty by joining the TPP and was downvoted for that.
is a very tiring way to frame things, especially when you consider the context of the existential threat to which the west has posed to these countries historically. Revolving your discussions around whether China or Vietnam or Venezuela or the DPRK are to be deemed good or bad or should be supported or not is a way of thinking that leftists need to be more critical of because it carries a lot of gross colonialist implications people often don't consider.
There's things to criticize about China, their foreign policy has always been less than ideal, but there's also a lot of history in the area to consider in this as well. I don't really see how China could uphold a non interventionist foreign policy while directly then punishing the Philippines with sanctions or tariffs or cutting trade on the basis of internal conflicts. How does that help the CPP if Duterte just turns to the US instead for support?
I'm more educated than that and I'm totally aware of the sorts of constraints that these countries are under, we're no longer on reddit and need to defend these countries to people who have no idea about the above constraints. But I generally do not believe contemporary China is under the same constraints as other contemporary socialist nation's are.
China is more powerful than you're giving credit for and the philippines is already US aligned by default due to the imperial legacy. China siding with Duerte is irrelevant as the US will then just try and push him out should they get a real foothold in there. They need a longer term solution anyways and supporting a neofascist is a very bad look. Communist nation's should at an absolute minimum be actively providing resources for countries that are actively suppressing communists (both electorally and against them in the streets).
They simply either just don't care or have more pressing short term concerns like how the philippines joined the TPP.
The Philippines is part of the NAM, so they are not aligned with any major power bloc, but they have had a historical relationship with the US which is exactly what China had been worried about and why its looking to counter that in order to diminish the influence the Quad has in the region. This recent relation with China is new in terms of its scope as the Philippines has been looking to move away from American influence recently. I think you might be underestimating the threat to which China is actually facing, we've seen the sort of attempts made by the west through things like the HK protests and Xinjiang and how they've escalated recently, as well as with Tibet and the Indian border. China is by no means a regional hegemon, and it still faces continual conflicts, so its understandable that it would need to have relations with all countries in the area to maintain influence. I'm not sure theres any such simple solution to this, China is going to follow its interests in surviving and developing.
Revolving this discussion around the childish and western-centric ideal of bestowing your approval upon countries as though the world revolves around our every inclination makes this an entirely inane conversation, and it is in many ways a sort of remnant of a colonial imperialist mindset that makes westerners think their approval and "support" of this or that country to be of some sort of crucial importance. I support the efforts of the CPP but I have no delusions to their situation, and I don't expect China to either. They had materially supported the efforts of the CPP for decades until the 80s and then finally cut ties in the 2000s once the situation became more apparent as the internal conflicts within the CPP fractured and impaired the movement. The Philippines is a major economy and has a strategic importance to China and the region as a whole, of course they're going to trade with them, i'm not sure what you're envisioning the alternative as exactly because the US would love to swoop in and provide direct support instead.
Leftist support for a country should stem from the belief that they represent a model of governance that should be emulated by other countries and their own country. This isn't about should you be happy in the event of regime change or not, as obviously it would be bad if the CCP collapsed.
I think that is not consistently true one way or another for China. There are some things I think they do that are good, but for others, they act no differently than America would react in the same situation and I still think it's okay to say that's bad on a leftist forum.
Just like I said it was bad that Vietnam was giving up their sovergnty by joining the TPP and was downvoted for that.
I'm just saying this:
is a very tiring way to frame things, especially when you consider the context of the existential threat to which the west has posed to these countries historically. Revolving your discussions around whether China or Vietnam or Venezuela or the DPRK are to be deemed good or bad or should be supported or not is a way of thinking that leftists need to be more critical of because it carries a lot of gross colonialist implications people often don't consider.
There's things to criticize about China, their foreign policy has always been less than ideal, but there's also a lot of history in the area to consider in this as well. I don't really see how China could uphold a non interventionist foreign policy while directly then punishing the Philippines with sanctions or tariffs or cutting trade on the basis of internal conflicts. How does that help the CPP if Duterte just turns to the US instead for support?
I'm more educated than that and I'm totally aware of the sorts of constraints that these countries are under, we're no longer on reddit and need to defend these countries to people who have no idea about the above constraints. But I generally do not believe contemporary China is under the same constraints as other contemporary socialist nation's are.
China is more powerful than you're giving credit for and the philippines is already US aligned by default due to the imperial legacy. China siding with Duerte is irrelevant as the US will then just try and push him out should they get a real foothold in there. They need a longer term solution anyways and supporting a neofascist is a very bad look. Communist nation's should at an absolute minimum be actively providing resources for countries that are actively suppressing communists (both electorally and against them in the streets).
They simply either just don't care or have more pressing short term concerns like how the philippines joined the TPP.
The Philippines is part of the NAM, so they are not aligned with any major power bloc, but they have had a historical relationship with the US which is exactly what China had been worried about and why its looking to counter that in order to diminish the influence the Quad has in the region. This recent relation with China is new in terms of its scope as the Philippines has been looking to move away from American influence recently. I think you might be underestimating the threat to which China is actually facing, we've seen the sort of attempts made by the west through things like the HK protests and Xinjiang and how they've escalated recently, as well as with Tibet and the Indian border. China is by no means a regional hegemon, and it still faces continual conflicts, so its understandable that it would need to have relations with all countries in the area to maintain influence. I'm not sure theres any such simple solution to this, China is going to follow its interests in surviving and developing.