Anti-communism with Chinese characteristics - Christopher Wong
libcom.org
An article by Christopher Wong, originally written for Lausan, examining China's role in global imperialism and the cold war. This article is available in Chinese here.

A relatively short article with some key assertions. The first paragraph is definitely going to irritate some people here. But the main thrust of the article is presented later, which is -

China’s late Cold War role as the great anti-communist power in the East, and its subsequent role in financing the American empire as it invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.

The article lays out a lot of history as it relates to the Sino-Soviet relations and shows how as a result -

The CCP picked the side of capital in the Cold War, doomed the international communist movement in the process

Most important is this paragraph w.r.t the Cold War -

The first sign of betrayal was China’s active role in supporting Pakistan during the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh By 1972, Mao’s meeting with Richard Nixon signaled that the full anti-communist pivot was complete. With this pivot, China became a close American ally and the bulwark of anti-communism in East Asia and beyond. By the middle of the decade, the CCP was giving out loans to Pinochet, supporting UNITA in Angola alongside South Africa and the US against Cuba and the Soviet Union and had opened diplomatic relations with reactionary capitalist powers, from the Marcos regime in the Philippines to Japan. Deng Xiaoping sealed this alliance by invading Vietnam in 1979 in defense of the US-backed Khmer Rouge which the Vietnamese government had been attempting to overthrow. The CCP claims to have killed 100,000 Vietnamese communists in that war, which broke the back of the communist movement in East Asia and essentially ended it as a Cold War front , thus allowing the US to fully pivot to its massacres in Latin America and Africa in addition to the defense of Europe against the USSR and domestic communist movements.

And in the post-Soviet world -

Unlike other major American bond purchasers (Japan, South Korea, Germany) who are American military protectorates and can thus even be coerced into increasing the value of their currency, China subsidizes the American war machine ... CCP funds America’s wars in order to maintain the high value of the dollar relative to the yuan, which gives China a massive competitive edge in manufacturing and is a critical source of China’s massive economic growth.

In coalition with the East Asian American military protectorates, China filled the massive budget shortfalls that resulted from the combination of the Iraq War, Bush era tax cuts, and the early 2000s recession, propping up the flailing US economy as the war commenced. Chinese bond purchases intensified with US spending in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, the CCP became an eager participant in the new War on Terror by allying closely with Israel, adopting American counterinsurgency techniques and technologies from the rapidly burgeoning trade, and eventually hiring American mercenary Erik Prince for themselves for deployment in “Xinjiang.”

  • LibsEatPoop2 [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Lol that's why I said -

    The first paragraph is definitely going to irritate some people here.

    There are a lot of opinions and statements in the article that seem unsubstantiated and meant to only piss off those it supposedly wants to court. But I wanted the discussion to not devolve into that and rather be about the points raised in it w.r.t the Cold War and post-Soviet US-China relations. It doesn't really delve into any criticism/defense of China itself.

    • skeletorsass [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      It is very poor and misleading on this too. Framing the conflict with Vietnam to be about "killing communists" is absurd and ignorant. Framing a long standing relationship with Pakistan as beginning in 1971 and being "betrayal" is similar.

      • LibsEatPoop2 [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Yeah, @LeninWalksTheWorld wrote this somewhere else in this thread -

        Just with Vietnam, it is something to note that is somewhat of a historical conflict between those two peoples. China didn’t invade Vietnam just to kill communists, I’m pretty sure there was also disputed land and just general animosity unfortunately.

        I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that the Chinese went into Vietnam to kill communists/end communism. But the article says that in the end -

        The CCP claims to have killed 100,000 Vietnamese communists in that war

        and as a result, this -

        broke the back of the communist movement in East Asia and essentially ended it as a Cold War front, thus allowing the US to fully pivot to its massacres in Latin America and Africa

        • skeletorsass [she/her]
          ·
          4 years ago

          That is simply not true. The conflict was a failure and did not result in Vietnam withdrawal. Vietnam withdrew because of the isolation from the world brought by the occupation and the Doi Moi reform as the Soviet Union collapsed.

          • LibsEatPoop2 [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Are you saying China v Vietnam did not break "the back of the communist movement in East Asia"? Or something else?

            • skeletorsass [she/her]
              ·
              4 years ago

              It did not. International response to the Vietnamese occupation did this. Vietnam was isolated and could not be supported by only the USSR. The invasion was not good for Vietnam or China, but it is even the Vietnamese position that Doi Moi was a result of isolation. The occupation did not even fully end until ten years after the conflict.

      • LibsEatPoop2 [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I'll definitely read the PSL article. Thanks for linking it.

        I don't advocate, nor do think the article does, the overthrow of the Chinese government. It would only benefit capital and specifically the US.

        But as I stated elsewhere -

        the question is how much do we forgive/accept as necessary? Killing 100,000 Vietnamese communists? Funding Iraq/Afghanistan? Ties with Israel for the War on Terror? Hiring Erik Prince?

        Clearly, the CCP has felt all of it is necessary/justified for the sake of developing China. But I bet the victims of these actions, maybe of whom are either communists themselves and/or are heavily oppressed by other Western imperialist powers, feel otherwise.

        @space_comrade added the following -

        What you mentioned here is something I hold against all ML states, the “ends justify the means” attitude tends to lead to quite a bit of excesses that are all nominally explained as necessary but how can they really be so sure of themselves?

          • LibsEatPoop2 [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            What do you make of -

            Unlike other major American bond purchasers (Japan, South Korea, Germany) who are American military protectorates and can thus even be coerced into increasing the value of their currency, China subsidizes the American war machine … CCP funds America’s wars in order to maintain the high value of the dollar relative to the yuan, which gives China a massive competitive edge in manufacturing and is a critical source of China’s massive economic growth.

            In coalition with the East Asian American military protectorates, China filled the massive budget shortfalls that resulted from the combination of the Iraq War, Bush era tax cuts, and the early 2000s recession, propping up the flailing US economy as the war commenced. Chinese bond purchases intensified with US spending in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, the CCP became an eager participant in the new War on Terror by allying closely with Israel, adopting American counterinsurgency techniques and technologies from the rapidly burgeoning trade, and eventually hiring American mercenary Erik Prince for themselves for deployment in “Xinjiang.”

            Claiming China is "imperialist", or equating it to the US, would clearly be wrong. But the claim made here is different from that (at least imo).

              • LibsEatPoop2 [he/him]
                ·
                4 years ago

                Both @JoeySteel and @skeletorsass have provided a lot of context for the US bonds issue (the latter also giving additional info on the Israel stuff).

                The rest of points are also very valid - there is a lot of weaselly language and not enough citations.