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.”
sorry, lol.
This was news to me. I knew of the Sino-Soviet split but I had no idea about the true scale of the animosity.
This, I take some issue with. I'd written somewhere else -
@space_comrade commented this -
So, like, idk.
On BRI and Africa:
Yeah, I made a post about that earlier. The video states pretty clearly why African nations prefer China over the US. So, no arguments there.
On to Lausan, I don't really have anything to add. I don't know about them and there's enough evidence that a lot of the HK riots/protests are funded/supported by the U.S. Same with the rest of the article (which you responded to). I found this article and wanted to have a discussion about the things it mentioned w.r.t. the Cold War and Chinese involvement in U.S. wars.
The Sino-Soviet split and the subsequent falling out is pretty unanimously regarded as a tragedy and misguided, not as some sort of necessary evil where the ends justify the means.
But also, foreign policy is a very different beast from domestic policy, especially considering the time period and development of China at the time. You have a brand new state, which was still 80%-90% agrarian, with very little to speak of in terms of sophisticated foreign intelligence agencies, working with a lot of imperfect and incomplete information with regard to current foreign affairs. You end up with foreign policy decisions that are fueled by spite and bad blood, rather than a rational accounting of the facts.
And none of that context is meant to be used to justify those mistakes or rationalize any of the harm that was done as a result. Those actions should be condemned, and they are condemned by most everyone who is pro-China.
But the idea that the Sino-Soviet split is evidence that China abandoned socialism and embraced capitalism has to ignore a lot of context in order to present that conclusion.
However, it presents a compelling narrative when paired with the Deng market reforms and China opening up their markets to private enterprises, so let's take a bit of look at the rationale for this policy.
When discussing China, it's important to note that the communist cliche of "seize the means of production" could never apply to China. This is due to the fact that China was just emerging from a century of colonial rule, where all their labor and natural resources were robbed at gunpoint and used to develop the colonial powers rather than their homeland. There were no means of production to seize, all that capital was locked away behind the doors of global trade. They were left with a country of roughly 90% peasant farmers, most of whom were working the land with hand tools. Developing advanced productive forces capable of providing for everyone will be an arduous task no matter what. So let's look at the options available and see the rationale behind each.
First would be to pursue socialist development in alliance with the Soviet bloc, getting access to a valuable trading partner and material assistance for developing your economy. Unfortunately, that bridge was burned so this one gets thrown into the honorable mentions/alternative history pile.
Second, you could attempt to build up advanced productive forces out of sticks and stones. And the whole time you're doing so, you'll also have to fight off the imperialist aggression that's directed toward every socialist project in the Cold War era, extending into today. This might be doable, but it would require tremendous amounts of toil.
Which brings us back to seizing the means of production. If you don't want to start from nothing, you need some mechanism of exchange to gives you access to the capital that your working class built.
You could make an argument that they'd be morally justified in using their military to take back some of that stolen wealth by force as a form of reparations, but challenging a superior military power in such a way is a recipe for failure and incredible suffering.
Which leaves us with the market reforms. The main issue with the market reforms is that you reintroduce all of the contradictions of private enterprise, namely exploitation, uneven development, inequality, and so on. But you get some important benefits in exchange. For one, you gain access to important investments in labor saving tools and machinery. Which means that even though you're introducing exploitation, you're reducing toil by a far greater degree. The second primary benefit is that the market reforms act as a powerful deterrent to imperialist aggression and allows for peaceful development during the epoch of imperialism. This is due to the fact that by tying your economic livelihoods together, you create a kind of "economic mutually assured destruction."
This is fully consistent with principles of socialist development, in my opinion. It's a case of pick the best out of a bad set of options, but when accounting for the full context and conditions they were responding to this is the plan that seems to advance the interests of the masses in the most effective way available. And as these conditions change, as China has become more self sufficient and less reliant on foreign investment we see this strategy continue to change in order to best benefit the masses. Reduced reliance on investment and the sunk cost of existing investments is transformed into leverage that constantly puts pressure on private enterprise to increase wages, with an average increase of 17% each year for a total increase of 400% in the past 30 years. As capital starts getting priced out of Chinese labor markets and private enterprises start going out of business or move to more favorable labor markets, the state simply takes over and manages the business as a public enterprise instead.
That's not "capitalist roading" no matter what the ultra-leftists might tell you.
Thanks for your comment. This is all very informative. I definitely haven't seen it put together in such a concise way before.
But where do you draw the line between "capitalist roading" and "socialist development"? If you have market reforms along with the contradictions of private enterprise, how do you draw the distinction between the two? Do you just take the CCP at their word? That is a fair stance to take but it isn't one that would be accepted by all, and especially not those affected by the downsides of such a deal with the devil.
I don't have to take the CCP at their word.
I have the benefit of hindsight, and I can observe the incredible gains that this plan of action has won for the working class whose interests the party claims to represent. I can see that the party consistently meets or exceeds the stated developmental and economic goals that they commit to in each of their publicly available 5-year plans. This combination of consistently fulfilling their promises, and committing to 5-year plans that consistently advance the interests of the working class, would lead me to conclude that the CCP is an organization that is committed to representing the interests of the working class, and is doing the best they can with the set of options available to them.
As for where you draw the line, that always depends on the material conditions you are molding your theory of change to, and what is required to address those conditions. If, for example, America turned socialist tomorrow, I would never endorse a plan of Chinese market socialism for this new socialist states of America, because you wouldn't be able to make a case for what needs are being met and what contradictions are being resolved in exchange for permitting private enterprise. America isn't going to imperialize itself, so you can't make the case for shared economic development acting as a deterrent to aggression. And America is already a highly developed economy, there's no need to attract foreign investment to help build up your productive forces. You can just follow the standard playbook of "seizing the means of production," because that theory of change was written with the highly developed western economies like America in mind.
Also, I would argue that capitalists are the ones making a "deal with the devil," in this case, and not China.
To explain this idea, let's step back into the realm of theory and ask why would we expect this theory of market socialism to work. I've already laid out the case for why the CCP, as a representative of the interests of the working class, would find value in sitting down at the negotiating table to make some compromises with capital. But what is the motivation of capital to play along?
Well, if we trust Marx, and we trust that the labor theory of value holds true, then we know that capital is worthless without labor. A capitalist who owns all sorts of equipment and machinery and other inputs of production, but who has no labor, in reality only has piles of lifeless junk, which on average can only be resold for the same price he paid for it, and in all likelihood will actually depreciate in value over time, either through the ravages of time and weather, through costs affiliated with maintenance and storage, or through the forward progression of technology rendering his current tools and equipment obsolete. The only way to increase the value of these inputs of production is to have them be brought to life by the application of labor, and transformed into new use values and exchange values.
So, at the end of the day, even though the capitalist tries everything in his power to increase his leverage and power over labor, he will always be subservient to labor in the end. All of his property is worthless without labor, and will tend to continue to lose value until he can offload it. If conditions existed where the capitalist enjoyed none of the leverage that he does today, then he would gladly pay labor the full value that it contributes and take no profits for himself, simply so that he could rid himself of his investment at cost rather than hemorrhaging money due to holding onto a depreciating asset.
But, unfortunately, capital currently does hold leverage over labor. Most of that leverage comes in the form of the industrial reserve army of labor. The idea here being that if I can buy and sell labor as a commodity on the labor market, and there is a surplus of labor that is desperate for work and willing to work for scraps, then that's the price that wages will tend to be depressed towards. After all, why would I pay you a fair wage when there's someone else starving on the street who's willing to work for pennies?
So when China began the reform and opening up period, their leverage was tied to the labor conditions in the global labor market, and specifically tied to the conditions of other global south and previously colonized countries. When you're trying to attract foreign investment, the same idea of the industrial reserve army applies, but on a national scale. "Why would I open a factory here when I can hire cheaper labor in Malaysia or Indonesia or the Philippines?"
As a result of this lack of bargaining power and a desperate need for investment, this often meant accepting sweatshop conditions and poverty wages.
However, a capitalist roader would've stopped here. You have private control of markets and production, you have super profits driven by hyper exploitation, all the capitalist aligned people are happy.
But this is obviously not where the CCP stopped. They continually built up the leverage of the working class, and continually applied more and more leverage on behalf of the working class, pushing through mandatory pay increases and improved labor conditions, constantly developing public enterprise alongside private enterprise and in competition with private enterprise, which then exerts more pressure and creates more leverage, as well as using revenue from taxing these private enterprises to build up public infrastructure that massively improved quality of life outside of work too.
One of the downsides of relying on investment from capital is that your hands are largely tied by how much leverage you have, and how desperately you need that investment. But what I consistently see out of the CCP is the transformation of self sufficiency into new leverage over capital, and the use of that leverage to consistently improve wages and labor conditions.
It's basically like if your whole country was one big union, but when the company collapses or leaves for cheaper labor markets under this pressure, you can just nationalize that work place and keep running it as a public enterprise.
And you can see this same logic applied to their current day foreign policy and investment strategy with the development aid they give to Africa and the infrastructure being built up with the belt and road initiative. China is deeply aware how intertwined the bargaining power of labor in the global south is with the rest of the world, and that hyper-exploitation is made possible by virtue of how desperate and struggling these nations are, and how capitalism uses that as leverage. So China has a policy of aiding the economic development of these nations, regardless of political affiliation. The idea being that ruling classes are fickle and ephemeral, but real, material development will bring about lasting change.
The reason that this is a "deal with the devil" for capital is that while they are getting short term profits out of the deal now, their leverage over huge segments of the labor market is being eroded in the process, which shifts the balance of power between labor and capital to where capital is the weaker of the two, and exploits the fact that capital will always need labor, but labor won't always need capital.
This write-up deserves its own post.
Please post this on main to counter the ridiculous resurgence of western chauvinists. I thought we were done with this bullshit.
Thank you for this reply. Once again you explain it in a way I've never heard before but makes so much sense. You were able to take the theory we are all familiar with and actually apply it to the real world in a way I couldn't do. One last question.
Wages were rising every year in the US post WWII till the 70s. In this era, the American working class (specifically the white, male, cis workers) thought they this was the way it was always going to be. This period saw the rise of medicare, social security, the civil rights movement etc. You will live better than your parents did was a statement of fact like water is wet. We now know this isn't the case.
What differentiates modern-day Chinese wage (and general quality of life) increases from this one? I know here the increases are driven by the government itself rather than the market (which took them away from the American workers when countries like China opened up). But if the government is dependent on markets (and capital) then as capital goes to cheaper locations what will stop the conditions in China from declining like they do in the US?
So I kind of answered this question already. Because you're right, the increased bargaining power of labor in one labor market is met by capitalists outsourcing jobs to cheaper labor markets, and you do see this happening as Chinese wages increased just as it had happened when wages were high in America. The difference being that when a business closes their doors in America the result is that everyone is out of work. When a business closes its doors in China, in comparison, all of the fixed capital, the warehouses, the factories, the machinery, ect, becomes property of the state at which point production can either resume as a public enterprise, or other public works can step in to "fill the void," so to speak.
Chinese wages are also a result of Chinese labor. The post war period in America was a unique time period that was a result of the convergence of several factors. One of which is being a major actor in a war that they were largely untouched by, which means that all of the wartime spending and production was basically just a huge public works program and a massive stimulus for the working class, with none of the domestic economic destruction that is typically accompanied by war. Couple this with European markets that have been crippled by the war resulting in the increasing domination of US capital over these markets, things like the Marshall plan making the US the center of international trade and how that creates leverage for mechanisms of unequal exchange with the global south, and the US labor movement still representing somewhat of an organized threat to capital and having just won some important victories, you have a recipe for an American capitalist class that is experiencing super-profits on a global scale and is willing to be conciliatory with domestic labor because it's not costing them much comparatively. The unique conditions of the US labor movement is covered pretty thoroughly in this /r/AskHistorians thread. But at some point, when you wages are being subsidized by the hyper-exploitation of imperialism abroad, that well is eventually going to run dry. Capital may have been willing to placate an organized working class at the time, but the same fundamental relationship between labor and capital still exists.
The opposite is true for China. If you accept the premise that the CCP is a representative of the working class and maintains control over the markets, and you understand that the profit motive of private enterprise is used to encourage needed investment that is mutually beneficial for the private enterprise and the Chinese working class, and you can see that once this arrangement is no longer beneficial for both parties then the state steps in on the side of labor and manages production as a public enterprise instead, then what you have is an economy that is not organized around capitalist principles. In capitalism, the profit motive is what all production is organized around, and the entire point is to maximize the profits of private enterprises. In the Chinese market, the profit motive is simply used as a mechanism for exchange that is used to gain access to important investments in labor saving tools and technologies that are needed to develop advanced productive forces that are capable of providing for everyone.
And you can see this evolving process take place over the course of China's development throughout these market reforms. As time goes on, more and more of production is happening under these State-Owned enterprises, with around half of production today being State-Owned. Traditional economists observe this growing trend of State-ownership, and decry these enterprises as incredibly "inefficient" in terms of maximizing profits, and therefore doomed to fail. As one economist observes:
Source
What this kind of analysis misses is precisely the point that they are not profit oriented organizations, they are organizations that are meant to provide a public service. These services aren't "losing" money, they cost money. Or, rather, they cost labor and resource inputs. But that's precisely the point of socialist development. You are spending our shared resources in ways that maximize the public good and advances our mutually shared interests. You aren't "losing" money when you build housing for the homeless, you are providing a service that "costs" money. So the declining rate of profit that inevitably plague capitalist economies don't have a depressing effect on the wages of Chinese labor, because China is poised to take over development and administer it according to a public plan once the profit motive is no longer sufficient for organizing production.
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Also keep in mind cost of living.
I was watching the PBS documentary on poverty alleviation in China, and a teenage girl was talking about being the first member of her family to go to college. And I remember them talking about the costs, and how room and board for the whole year came out to around the equivalent of $1,000 USD. Which stuck with me, because that wouldn't even but me one months rent over here.
Almost like you can allow for lower wages of the difference is made up in either free or incredibly affordable necessities like housing, food, and transportation.
I'd take $6.50/hr with 1 months wages paying for a year's rent over $15/hr with 6 months wages paying a year's rent (and that's on the cheap side of $1200/month)
Fuck that isn't even including food/board. Add another $200-400/month to that $1200 and you're up to 8-10 months wages for a year of survival.
Would that be the documentary that PBS didn’t end up airing because it was “too pro China” lol because the facts end up making China look pretty good
Yup, that's the one.
same
It is a very important context to any Chinese foreign policy after the split. Chairman Mao considered the USSR as having abandoned communism and to be a traitor imperialist nation. All action after the split are informed by this.
Yeah, SU went revisionist and we all know the end result. I will defend China (fwiw) against any US action or BBC hit piece and Zenz and everything else. But what about when it makes deals with Erik Prince and with Israel?
And no one so far has addressed this part of the article -
These are not anticommunist actions. I do not like them, but they do not harm international communism.
I do not agree with them, but logistics company investment involving Erik Prince is not on the same level as the other and is similar to dealing with any foreign capitalist. They are all evil, this one is just notable.
The United States would not have stopped doing these things without Chinese bond purchases. The arrangement did not cause the US to do these things, and is not quite support of them (even if it does help them), especially because US treasury bonds are 100% necessary to participate in the world economy. These decisions were also made under Jiang (and his premier Zhu), who is closely associated with "pragmatic" relations with the west and of opening markets. Even more of a reformer than Deng. Within the party much of Jiang's work is quietly seen as having gone too far and have been rolled back, and his "Three Represents" is often snubbed.
The Chinese position on Israel from the beginning of reform and opening up is not one I agree with, but it is more complex than described. China is a rare country that has good relations with both Israel and Palestine. There is consistent condemnation of settlements and support for the UN borders, and a large amount of aid to Palestine. It is the two state position. I do not think I need to repeat the critiques of this here, just to say that I do not agree with the two state position. Relations with Israel became closer during the Deng years, because of shared anti-soviet positioning on the invasion of Afghanistan, and became closely tied moving forward.
Okay, that's useful to know re:Israel. So is the information regarding Jiang. Idk if I'd call Erik Prince just "any foreign capitalist", though. Blackwater is a unique kind of evil and I don't see how associating with them has any benefits.
And on international communism - imo it's weaker today than it has been at nearly any point in the 20th century. The reasons are numerous and there are multiple parties to blame, capitalists obviously but also the communists.
The dealings are not with Blackwater, but with a supposedly civilian security company he set up in Hong Kong. I do not trust him, but this was probably not a decision made centrally, but by a state foreign investment bureaucrat who was most likely filling a less clear demand from above to invest in foreign security-related companies for the BRI. The logic seems to be that enterprises using BRI would not want to contract security directly from the Chinese government and that the government would not want to administer them. I think it is a bad idea, and I expect he is still doing military things and is no better than before, and I hope that the company is kept on a tight leash or divested from. I would not use these dealings the way the piece has however.
I think that the Sino-Soviet split is the largest disaster of the 20th century. It did not happen for no reason, but blame falls to both parties, and it is part responsible for the position of accommodation we are all under. I think that the weakest moments were in the 1990s however. The reform and opening up here was very active, and all socialist countries depending on the USSR were either collapsed, in NEP-like reforms and placating the west, or experiencing famine. All communist movements are made up of flawed humans and I hope that we can learn from the past.
Thank you for the discussion! It is time for me to go to bed now (－_－) zzZ
Thank you! Good night :)
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The much larger difference between the Iraq & Afghan Wars and the Vietnam War was the transition from the gold-backed USD to the petrodollar.
The 1973 oil crisis ended with a US monopoly on the global oil supply. First Saudi Arabia, then OPEC in general, agreed to only sell their oil in USD. Every country which purchases oil through OPEC has to buy US debts. That's not unique to China.
Adam Curtis would not have a contract with the BBC if he didn't misrepresent socialist states.
bbc is so fucking bad. it's literal state propaganda. why the fuck to liberals even listen to it (but still cry state censorship/bias when you cite rt or people's daily or global times or something.
Why does buying oil through OPEC result in buying US debt? Are the two tied to each other?
Other countries having to buy U.S dollars simply allows the U.S to run more debt.
I'll look that up, thanks. It's not an argument I've really heard before.
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A'ight, thanks. I'm waiting for someone else to address that here lol. Lot of people raising lot of good points but so far no one's countered the last two paras of the post.
Edit - @JoeySteel has provided a response below.
It's a reason I'm quite critical of Mao along with his 3 worlds theory. He still stands as a giant in the Communist movement but as he got older he made some quite glaring decisions. You can read letters from Mao to Nixon and Kissenger here.
If you wanted a further more critique of Mao you can read here https://espressostalinist.com/marxism-leninism-versus-revisionism/chinese-revisionism/
My opinion is the CPC has made many mistakes both under Mao then subsequent leaders but any Communist Party that is not behind the CPC in 2021 can go die in a ditch as far as I'm concerned. This is the principle battleground of the 21st century and it's the reason CIA outlets like Lausan write this stuff.
The aim of the article is to get you dislike China from a "left" perspective. To do this they've raked over dead issues over 40-60 years old to produce an emotional response in you. By bringing up Chinas previously terrible foreign policy. Afterall China also supported Polpot (who was funded by CIA and would never have come to power had the US not dropped so many bombs on Cambodia allowing a demagogue like this to come to power).
The CPC corrected their line on foreign policy and have not been at war since 1979 so it's easy to see the game the author is playing.
As stated...The CPC corrected their line on foreign policy and most communists were against their ultra leftism at the time. And the ends do justify the means. With the passage of time if you ask most French whether it was better to cut the heads off the monarchy...Most French walking around in 2021 will be like "yeah of course."
I see that, yeah. If that was all the article did, I don't think I would've made a post about it. As you said, China (unlike US) hasn't bombed or invaded a dozen different countries in the past 20 years.
But what do you feel about this part of the article -
The author is hoping you don't know enough about economics here and is doing a shotgun of nonsense. They're presenting the fact China buys US treasury bonds whilst neglecting to tell you this is how the USA has organised the world economy. There is nothing for other countries to buy except US treasury loans - what in essence underlies the petrol-dollar and what is enforced by the US military. This gives United States teh ability to kick their "debt ceiling" down the road every year. It will never be fixed and when it is "fixed" it'll be because the petrol dollar has collapsed and the US economy with it
You can download Michael Hudsons book Super Imperialism which explains this exact process that the author is berating China for doing!
Here's Michael hudson in a 50 minute interview explaining how the US essentially gets countries to pay for their own encirclement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paUgY6SGlgY
I've provided the whole video I expect you to watch (if you want to learn the intricate details in how US does this) but here's the bit I'm referring to
The author is neglecting to tell you every country does this and if they didn't they'd probably have the US army in their capital by midnight
China would be subsidising the American war machine either way - the USA has essentially turned the world economy into a casino where everyone pays for their own military encirclement. China may as well have their manufacturing become competitive to undercut USA.
I think the article mentions the same process in a different way -
It's claim is that China profits off of this. As you said -
Which the article frames as -
So, I think everyone's in agreement here?
The point then becomes is to what end is all this happening? And while this Great Powers dance is going around, what is happening to the world? I don't really know. If you believe the end result will be a China that is socialist (once it is powerful enough to be independent) then it might seem worth it. But that calculation depends on how much (and how directly) you're effected by all this. China's involvement with Israel or their deals with Erik Prince are just two of the issues mentioned that complicate matters.
The author doesn't provide any solutions other than an idealistic "anti-imperialist" one. I suspect they don't really have a solution to this dilemma.
Edit - Oh also, thanks for the book and the interview. I'm definitely interested in learning more.
Is an incredibly disingenuous way of putting it and why the author is CIA or NED funded or whatever shitty NGO the US is funding to create chaos in China with HK protests.
They are funding Americas wars because they are forced to (like every other country on the planet except Cuba and DPRK). Both China and Russia have reduced reliance on the US dollar by huge amounts in the last year. This isn't a position neither Russia or China want to be in
https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3013246/china-russia-urged-continue-efforts-defang-us-dollar
And even then Gold Money ran a great piece on how China is killing the dollar - or rather putting the US in a position to kill their own dollar as a form of "active defence"
https://www.goldmoney.com/research/goldmoney-insights/china-is-killing-the-dollar
:amerikkka:
Thanks for your replies. Both you and @skeletorsass have been very good.
Like KKE?
I think kke are one of the best parties in Europe dont get me wrong but there stance on China being "no different to the imperialist powers" is nonsense (doing same thing as this article...highlighting their poor foreign policy prior to 1979) and their epiiogue on China is the same conclusion as all the other decent communist parties have drawn: that the market will inevitably lead back to counter revolutoon
You don't think there is any substance to that argument?
China has not been at war for 42 years whilst Usa has only seen 19 years of peace in its entire existence
Theres substance to that argument if you ignore the last 42 years
otoh, you can argue that it is the US' global dominance that allows it to go to war without any repercussions whereas if China had tried it would have resulted in severe reprisals. And that isn't an argument for what happens when the time comes to roll back these market reforms.
In particular, here's an article from KKE's central committee outlining their takes on China's international relevance: https://www.komep.gr/m-article/O-DIETINIS-ROLOS-TIS-KINAS/
It's in Greek but you can translate it. I'm not saying I agree with it fully, it's just that it really isn't about their pre-1979 foreign policy, which is not remotely the point of emphasis.
Hey comm this is same article I was referring to (written in 2010 by same author) but I read the english translation
https://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-International-role-of-China/
So when I said"no difference to china and the imperialist powers i was referring to this piece"
I think 11 years on from this article and it is quite obvious that China has behaved very differently toward the 3rd world
I'd like to see an article by KKE written in the last year or 2 and see if their stance has shifted.
They are not highlighting the foreign policy prior to 1979? That's not their main concern. They don't like what China is doing now, not 40 years ago...
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Lol I was just saying that because I remember JoeySteel citing KKE etc and KKE is very anti CPC.