Konstantin Syomin has weird takes sometimes. Aside from being super pessimistic, he actually called China imperialist on the show with no pushback (well, maybe a subtle comment from Hakim). It was weird since during his previous appearance he really didn't talk about NATO or the US. Like I get he was talking about Russia since that's where he's located, but it came off as indirectly/unitentionally supporting Ukraine. At least he mentioned NATO in this newest episode, but he just shifted to China. It's one thing to have people on the show that have different views on things, but this guy just comes off as an ultra if anything.
I also kinda felt like he was self-censoring so much that it wasn't really worth having him on.
The problem with the deprogram is that they're all too polite to interrupt one of their guests
People go on about China being imperialist when they can't even point to a single Chinese (neo)colony. And no, gesturing vaguely at Africa doesn't count. Africa is a continent with 40+ countries. Which one of those 40+ countries is the Chinese neocolony? "But China exports capital!" Yeah, and the fifth criterion from Imperialism is that the imperialist powers would territorially divide the world, which in the modern era means neocolonies. A cursory glance at how neocolonies are managed show that the colonizer constantly deploys troops into their neocolony to "restore order" or fight against separatists who are (not so) secretly funded by the colonizers. We see this right now in Niger where French troops are still in Niger and France is making a big fuss about how their French ambassador is "held hostage" by the Nigerien coup government, serving as possible casus belli for French troop deployment in order to "rescue" the ambassador. In truth, the Nigeriens want those French losers to gtfo Niger but the French ambassador refuses to do so and is now crying about being a hostage after the Nigeriens cut off their food and water supply. When was the last time you see Chinese troops involved in overthrowing a democratically elected government or assassinating anti-Chinese politicians?
I liked his episode. And I don't think his view is necessarily wrong, he said that there are 2 poles of imperialist powers China and the US which is true. Chinas approach is a "unity of opposites" thing whether you believe it or not, which means they are integrated into the imperialist world system. This also means that as other imperialist powers continue to be upset at China weakening their grip, there will inevitably be conflict as these are contradictions that can't be resolved amicably.
Chinas approach is a "unity of opposites" thing
What do you mean by this?
They are implementing economic policies that aren't specifically socialist in order to develop. It's a dialectical materialist term to mean negation of negation, which is how China explains their economic reformation.
Before reform and opening up China was the country on earth with the lowest wealth inequality by far. After reform and opening up, public sectors were opened up for purchase by national and international bourgeoisie, unions were suppressed and left groups were stamped out. Socialist construction in the end is supposed to demolish "the commodity form" and exploitation with it, returning production to the core of producing things that people need and not producing commodities for exchange.
None of these policies on their face help to reach the point of socialist construction, unless you take socialist construction as an overall process - that while it can backslide from time to time - reaches the abolishing of the commodity form in the end. Through the 90s and 00s up until Xis first term in 2013, there appeared to be no hope of China reversing direction from heading towards neoliberal capitalism to socialist construction and fulfilling Dengs promise on a Marxist basis. With the very rapid turn around with Xi implementing policies designed to curb the power of the national and international bourgeoisie, many people have regained hope in Dengs ideas.
"Maoists" don't see China as socialist at all due to the expansion of capitalist production in the Chinese economy. "Dengists" believe China is socialist and point to Dengs justifications on a Marxist basis for the current state of China. Either way China as a socialist state or not is integrated into the imperialist world system as a semi periphery country, with relations of relative exploitation (and development possibilities different to other imperialist countries) to smaller countries and being exploited by larger countries.
