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.”
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.