• mrbigcheese [he/him]
    hexagon
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    4 years ago

    I'm just saying this:

    to still think of China as being good

    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?

    • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      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.

      • mrbigcheese [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        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.