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.”
This article is so bad I almost threw up, thanks a lot op
None of this is news
Maos turn to Nixon and the subsequent shitty foreign policy of China until 1979 (China hasn't been to war since 1979) can basically be described as funding and arming whoever was anti-soviet
There's a reason Maoist groups were heavily infiltrated and funded by the CIA throughout the 70s and 80s (due to their Anti Soviet stance)
Chinas foreign policy since Maos turn to Nixon is essentially "we'll wait, but we must avoid war at all costs".
So Chinas foreign policy has been one of not putting their head above the parapet.
When US imperialists wanted to destroy Yugoslavia China was helping the Yugoslavs and got their embassy bombed for that privilege. They then meekly nodded to everything US imperialism wanted even abstaining as the imperialist bastards destroyed Libya in 2011
None of this is news. Mao (erroneously in my opinion) came to the conclusion they would have to hug tightly to the USA until they had far surpassed the USA and do it in such a way that the imperialists could not invade China like they wanted to in 1950 in the Korean war (the plan then was to strike up through Korea, into China then onto Soviet Union but they got bogged down in Korea).
The Chinese have then stepped back into essentially full capitalist relations to avoid war with USA and they have only avoided war with USA because of proletarian heros like Gordon Chang running a psyop on USA by telling them China will collapse every year since 1999 (and the US press believing it). They've done this strategically and pragmatically to bind the world economy to China, to avoid a capitalist coalition against it whilst also obtaining as much technology as possible to overtake them. Regardless of their previous awful foreign policy we are where we are and China is moving rapidly into US imperialisms cross hairs. They are becoming Anti-Imperialist by A) force of necessity now US has cross hairs on them and B) by undercutting Western imperialism with the Belt and Road initiative and loads to 3rd world at much better rates than IMF or World Bank as well as their debt forgiveness.
There is something so rat like when opportunists and distorters of Marxism (and the analysis on Imperialism) try to wrap their words in Marxist language due to the theoretical victory of Marxism
China’s complicity in these horrors teaches us that anti-capitalism is a class war, not a war between states, and that any attempt to confront imperialism—the great spawn of capitalism—by those same means is doomed to fail.
In the era of Class Society humans organise into States and class war inevitably becomes a war between States. Does this writer think some Venezuelan can survive and live without being murdered by (US funded) far right militia squads without the utilisation of the State to protect them? Does the writer think the Koreans in DPRK can disband their state and "focus on class war" to "confront imperialism" without organising themselves into a highly organised and disciplined State? When USA practices invading DPRK every year?
Any form of anti-imperialist politics that focuses on nations invariably arrives at pitting one of the faces of capitalism against another, which can only ever reproduce the very system it claims to fight. Only through a confrontation with the entire capitalist world system, no matter the color of its flag, can the nightmare of empire end.
Absolute trash and how does one fight the "entire capitalist system" without first settling accounts with your local bourgeoisie ie. your State
The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie. (Marx, Communist Manifesto)
If humans outside the imperial core wish to survive and not have their populations turned over into a nightmare like The Congo or any number of African States that are completely subservient to international capital and thus have to have their children mining coltan under the threat of child soldiers they must organise into States and States therefore become the principle battleground of imperialism.
If someone here hadn't already pointed out that Lausan came out the fascist/far right Hong Kong protests I would've told you Lausan is CIA (which they are)
From Lausan.hk About Page
傘 (“san”) is the character for umbrella, referencing our ongoing critical engagement with Hong Kong’s social movements. 流傘 is also a homophone of 流散 (decentralized/diaspora), referencing our dispersal across the world. Lausan is a collective of writers, translators, artists, and organizers. We have no founders, only members. We are 100% independent and volunteer-run.
Tip for anyone here: any slipper revolution , any velvet revolution, orange revolution , sunflower revolution and indeed any umbrella revolution is not a revolution. It's the CIA
Anytime some "pro democracy" group tries to popularise an inanimate object as a symbol of 'revolution'.
It's CIA.
Lausan is CIA
https://amp.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3091438/us-has-been-exposed-funding-last-years-hong-kong-protests
This article is so bad I almost threw up, thanks a lot op
sorry, lol.
None of this is news
Maos turn to Nixon and the subsequent shitty foreign policy of China until 1979 (China hasn’t been to war since 1979) can basically be described as funding and arming whoever was anti-soviet
This was news to me. I knew of the Sino-Soviet split but I had no idea about the true scale of the animosity.
The Chinese have then stepped back into essentially full capitalist relations to avoid war with USA ... They’ve done this strategically and pragmatically to bind the world economy to China, to avoid a capitalist coalition against it whilst also obtaining as much technology as possible to overtake them ...
This, I take some issue with. I'd written somewhere else -
Yeah, I mean, just one article isn’t going to make me hate China or the CCP. But I guess 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 commented this -
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?
So, like, idk.
On BRI and Africa:
They are becoming Anti-Imperialist by A) force of necessity now US has cross hairs on them and B) by undercutting Western imperialism with the Belt and Road initiative and loads to 3rd world at much better rates than IMF or World Bank as well as their debt forgiveness.
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:
The heavy policy burdens and the soft budget constraint also lead to lower performance among SOEs. Because of their special role in the economy, such as the need to maintain social stability, Chinese SOEs bear heavy policy burdens, including (a) high capital intensity (especially in strategically important industries), suggesting high financing costs, and (b) the costs related to retirement pensions, social welfare, and the hiring of redundant workers
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.
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.
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
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.
This was news to me. I knew of the Sino-Soviet split but I had no idea about the true scale of the animosity.
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 -
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.
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
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.
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.
Maos turn to Nixon and the subsequent shitty foreign policy of China until 1979 (China hasn’t been to war since 1979) can basically be described as funding and arming whoever was anti-soviet
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.
Yeah, I mean, just one article isn’t going to make me hate China or the CCP. But I guess 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?
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.
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.
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."
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.
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 -
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.”
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
this whole thing is just all a giant free lunch for the US Empire. Well the whole financial economy is a free lunch and if you're going to get a free lunch then you protect yourself by saying there is no such thing as a free lunch obviously not want to make itself visible. it wants to make itself invisible as possible. well most of these countries in Asia get the dollars from US military spending then "what are we going to do with the dollars" they buy US Treasury bonds that finance the military spending on the military bases that encircle them. So they're financing their own military encirclement. it's a circular United States spends dollars in these countries the local recipients turned them over for local currency the local currency recipients the food sellers and the manufacturers turned the Ballet's over over to the banks for domestic currency which is how they operate and the dollars are sent back to the United States and it's a circular flow that is basically military in character and the gunboats don't appear in your economics textbooks - Michael Hudson
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 -
American empire is built on debt: its financial and military power are inseparable. American deficit spending pays for the American army, which in turn is used to extract tribute in the form of forcing other countries to buy American debt that can never nor will ever be repaid. It is through this arrangement—debt purchases at gunpoint—that the American empire is maintained.
It's claim is that China profits off of this. As you said -
China may as well have their manufacturing become competitive to undercut USA.
Which the article frames as -
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.
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.
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.
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"
Do not be misled by the attribution to a seemingly independent Chinese professor: it would not have been the frontpage article unless it was sanctioned by the Chinese government. While China has already taken the top off its US Treasury holdings, the announcement (for that is what it amounts to) that China is prepared to escalate the financial war against America is very serious. The message should be clear: China is prepared to collapse the US Treasury market. In the past, apologists for the US Government have said that China has no one to buy its entire holding. The most recent suggestion is that China’s Treasury holdings will be put in trust for covid victims — a suggestion if enacted would undermine foreign trust in the dollar and could bring its reserve role to a swift conclusion.[ii] For the moment these are peacetime musings. At a time of financial war, if China put her entire holding on the market Treasury yields would be driven up dramatically, unless someone like the Fed steps in to buy the lot.
If that happened China would then have almost a trillion dollars to sell, driving the dollar down against whatever the Chinese buy. And don’t think for a moment that if China was to dump its holding of US Treasuries other foreign holders would stand idly by. This action would probably end the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency with serious consequences for the US and global economies.
There is another possibility: China intends to sell all her US Treasuries anyway and is making American monetary policy her cover for doing so. It is this possibility we will now explore.
https://www.goldmoney.com/research/goldmoney-insights/china-is-killing-the-dollar
China is killing the dollar
:amerikkka:
Thanks for your replies. Both you and @skeletorsass have been very good.
any Communist Party that is not behind the CPC in 2021 can go die in a ditch as far as I’m concerned
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
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.
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...
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"
Even if we accept that there is a difference in the way in which China operates in Africa, in Asia etc, in comparison to other imperialist powers (something which is questionable, since they develop similar “humanitarian” and “educational programmes” in less developed countries e.g. the EU up until 2008 was the largest aid sponsor and commercial partner in Africa)
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.
Lol I was just saying that because I remember JoeySteel citing KKE etc and KKE is very anti CPC.
Also worth mentioning that Wilfred Chan, who is a founder of Lausan, worked for the hawkish and vehemently anti-China United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission of the US government and was one of the many who helped produce their 2011 Report to Congress which recommended a more hostile foreign policy against China. After working for CNN for years as well as interning at the White House he managed to even get their hawkish 2019 Report to Congress to cite one of his articles. Lausan has also recently put out a Xinjiang hit piece to help contribute even further to Western anti-China atrocity propaganda by casually citing an Adrian Zenz article as well as Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) which is an organization founded by the Australian government and is funded by the US State Department, the Australian Department of Defense, and military contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
"Why is it when something happens (re:China), it's always you three?
CIA Zenz ASPI
Has your understanding of the biases inherent in this article changed?
Fuuuuck, after reading JoeySteel mention Lausan, then reading your post—in particular, the name Wilfred Chan—reminded me that I have heard of this group/guy, in particular I listened to the Antifada episode where they interviewed Chan regarding the Hong Kong protests.
I was even more of a baby leftist then, but I really felt like something was off in that interview, at the time. I remember him blaming mainland China for the lack of democracy, but not mentioning the vestiges of British colonial rule, eg the influence corporations have over parliament.
I think my details are extremely fuzzy, and a quick internet search isn’t giving me more info on this aspect of Hong Kong. But I remember someone who lived in HK for a time talking about it on the discord.
It sucks. I like what Antifada does a lot of the time (although I rarely listen nowadays), but this sort of thing really sketches me out
This is one of the best comments on this website and you should make it its own post
Posts like this are good for people (like me) to learn, both in the moment and later down the road. I didn't make it with any bad intentions.
Thanks for clarifying :) You all are doing a great job preventing this site from becoming just another liberal, incremental, 'chyna bad' place. :rat-salute:
try to wrap their words in Marxist language due to the theoretical victory of Marxism
British Trots
Mao (erroneously in my opinion) came to the conclusion they would have to hug tightly to the USA until they had far surpassed the USA and do it in such a way that the imperialists could not invade China like they wanted to in 1950
I can see the counter-argument, but there's something to be said for the strategy of "we have three times their labor power so we can become an overwhelmingly superior economy if we bide our time."
I'd say it was a very rational approach to the situation that has clearly paid off.
Yeah, a lot of the "China should have done this in the 70s and 80s" dialogue feels like Monday morning quarterbacking, especially when the results so far (a significant improvement in material conditions with a bright future) are positive on balance.
they have only avoided war with USA because of proletarian heros like Gordon Chang running a psyop on USA by telling them China will collapse every year since 1999 (and the US press believing it).
Overall this is a great comment, but I do have to disagree with this bit(I am assuming this is 100% serious). First of all fascists are delusional by nature so if anything this whole idea that China is going to collapse at any moment is their own coping mechanism. Remember the enemy is weak and strong, the evil CCP must be destroyed, yet it is about to collapse at any moment now. Basicaly what we see online today is just what the capitalist class believed 20 years ago. It is not a psyop but 100% what these ghouls generally believe and how they see the world.
Secondly analyzing the capitalist economy we know profitability is decreasing historically. The neoliberal period starting in the 80s is a counter tendency. But this isn't enough and by the late 90s early 2000s there is a further decline.
So how to cope with this? Imperialism of course, China opens the floodgates for US companies to move their manufacturing overseas as a counter tendency to falling profitability at home. There are many questions as to why China became the manufacturing center of the world instead of either one of the infamous BRICs. The reason is simple the CCP proved capable of providing the support for rapid infrastructure/industrial development something countries like Brazil or India could never aspire to(historical and material reasons for this) and in the case of Russia would come with far too many strings attached.
Then there is the fact that the past 30 years the US has been busy in other far more profitable wars. Why bother invading a country with over 1 billion people when you could make the ME your backyard. Also nukes.
So my point here is that I'd say the main reason the US missed out on invading China was because this wasn't a US government decision that could be made without consent of the capitalist class, back then and even more so today. Overseas expansion was the only answer to the profitability crisis and if you took out China the future would be even more uncertain. There was never a good alternative for overseas redeployment of such a large scale industrial complex at a scale necessary to counter the falling rate of profit. If you looked at the world in the year 2000 and suggested moving your industry to Taiwan/Vietnam/Philippines/Bangladesh etc instead of China or at least the BRICs you would be laughed at. Eventually some of those countries got some industrial investment but not nearly enough.
So my point here is that I’d say the main reason the US missed out on invading China was because this wasn’t a US government decision that could be made without consent of the capitalist class, back then and even more so today.
This is such an important point. In my liberal days, I always used to wonder (and ask others) why hasn't the US managed to stop China from rising (like it has done countless times before to countless other countries). Now I know the government is subservient to capital and capital is addicted to China.
I agree the Sino-Soviet split was complete brainworms and CPC foreign policy is uh, imperfect I guess but I don't think this article is being realistic.
Selling out to western capital was a necessity, it was literally either that or enjoying the same fate as the USSR. If the CPC fell China today would probably be balkanized, exploited and reactionary as hell like a lot of former Soviet countries instead of just exploited, and even that is slowly coming to a stop.
Yeah, I mean, just one article isn't going to make me hate China or the CCP. But I guess 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.
But I guess 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?
Good questions to which I don't have an answer. China definitely did a lot of yikesey shit.
I tend to play devil's advocate for China a lot online in recent months but that's just because most of the attacks on them are just lazy or just plain lies.
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?
Yeah exactly. Everyone I know irl just swallows up Zenz and Epoch Times and BBC. I always defend China from their propaganda, just like I defend any other country from that draws the ire of US/Western imperialism. I've had success defending Bolivia and Venezuela and Vietnam and Cuba. But when it comes to China, people's brain just freeze and they start viewing me as idk a Chinese agent or something. And I see a lot of what you see online too.
how can they really be so sure of themselves?
That's the shit. I want to believe but...see above.
These extremist actions always backfire. Ethnic cleansing of the Chechens comes to mind. It opened the region and people to more extremist ideas and many fought the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Yeah so this is something I grapple with a lot as someone who's still learning. My formerly liberal anti-US imperialist & anti-Bush stances are one of those things that has remained fairly unchanged as I've moved toward Marxism - this idea that the US invading the middle east to kill terrorists is at least in part what leads to the terrorism. Though idk, this on its own is a bit shaky and kind of buys into anti-terrorism propaganda when the wars were more about oil. But in any case, I have this idea that invading a region to stop terrorism is both morally bad and also leads to more violence, which in your Chechnyan example holds true in that they eventually fought against the soviets. It's a big part of what makes it difficult for me to call myself ML, and why I can't entirely dismiss anarcho-communist arguments even if I lean toward the former (but like Brace says, don't be a dork, just call yourself a communist) :ypg-brace:
That said, historical context matters, Chechens had sour tensions with the USSR and it was a difficult position all around. It just makes me do a double-take when Chinese media does their "fight against terrorism" rhetoric in e.g Xinjiang because it triggers my anti-Bush 'anti-anti-terrorism' sentiments and I struggle to know when to apply these feelings.
Btw for those of you itching to debunk my concerns about Xinjiang, know that I've heard your points and am still working through a recent pro-China essay-comment I got and my puny brain needs time to process it pls forgive me
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.
yeah I made it sound way too neutral: China has attempted to subjugate the Vietnamese people for centuries and Vietnam had resisted for centuries.
somewhat of a historical conflict between those two peoples
And only one of them is the aggressor basically every single time
Yeah I'm sure. Communism/socialism is meant to cut across all divisions (racial, religious, gender etc) but so often communists/socialists/anarchists fall prey to them.
The CPC would have almost certainly fell if they hadn't bent over to the west a bit, had it continued the same path it would have a very slowly growing economy because it wouldn't have sufficient access to the rest of the world's economy and thus would be that much more vulnerable to attacks from imperialists.
You can't grow your productive forces as fast just by having a lot of people, it doesn't work like that. You also need the knowhow from more developed countries unless you want to do all the R&D from scratch, which is painfully slow.
I agree that the Sino Soviet split was a complete disaster, it really could have gone differently but given that it happened I think what they did was the best they reasonably could. I think by the time Deng got into power it was too late to patch things up with the Soviets and the Soviets themselves were already on a downwards trajectory.
If you want to see how China's economy would look like isolated you should probably look at the DPRK. Like, they're trucking along but they're clearly very far behind most of the world. Also the DPRK itself wouldn't really have survived without China easing tensions with the west by compromising.
Also the USSR itself was lagging behind. What Stalin accomplished was remarkable but the USSR's forces have always lagged behind the west, even at the height of Soviet economy.
Check out this article for more detailed info: https://thechinawiki.com/2021/01/14/what-is-socialism-with-chinese-characteristics/
It's clearly biased but it presents their point of view rather clearly.
Population does not create development magically. Especially when it is very poor. To be stranded decades behind the west technologically with no international friends invites doom. In 1970s we were not the Soviet Union. We were not a superpower that could hold out against all of capital any more than Vietnam.
Selling out to western capital was a necessity, it was literally either that or enjoying the same fate as the USSR.
Except it wasn't foreign policy that killed the USSR. It was internal disputes and economic decay.
China's economic reforms may have helped it avoid the fate of the Soviet Union, but alienating them and actively supporting Imperialism? No.
It was internal disputes and economic decay.
There was plenty of that, but the U.S. also had a direct role in the Soviet-Afghan War, not to mention the immediate events surrounding the fall of the USSR.
Aren't they kinda pretty reactionary now as well? As in racism is a thing and LGBTQ rights arent exactly stellar and things like that...
I'd say it's about as good as you can expect considering the Chinese are generally still very socially conservative. At least LGBTQ people aren't actively persecuted (that I know of) and racism is, eh, at least not worse than in most places.
It'd for sure be much worse if some reactionary political party was at the top.
There was a point in this video where the speaker said how, while individual Chinese have been racist against Africans, there hasn't been any systemic racism from the Chinese authorities against their African counterparts (in contrast with the US). It's a really insightful video.
idk
I don't, like, read it that often. I just browse random leftist websites looking for something interesting to read.
Anti-China propaganda with "leftist" colonialist characteristics. Cool.
The 'Anti-China' is obvious, others have laid down pretty strong and convincing cases for this being 'propaganda', the 'leftist' I still think is genuine though (at least in an ideal sense), and I can't really find anything 'colonialist' either.
Who knew the Central Intelligence Agency actually has access to basic historical facts?
Yeah that did seem sus but the article didn't bring up HK or any of the other typical anti-China talking points and focused on something I hadn't known before.
I don't really agree with the article, but I do think it is bringing up neat stuff, so... upbear?
Thanks :D
There's been some good dialogue in this thread. Probably because the article doesn't cite Zenz as a source lol. Or bring up any of the usual anti-China talking points. This stuff blows my brain -
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.”
Edit - There have been very good criticisms made of these points below.
I'll take inaccurate left wing criticism over bad faith right wing criticism any day of the week
i knew what was up with the PRC when I found out they sided with the nepalese monarchy over a literal maoist uprising. shit like
-
killing 100,000 Vietnamese communists in the war
-
hiring erik prince/blackwater for xinjiang
-
supporting the US against cuba
hardly registers any more.
The PRC and the now communist Nepal actualy enjoys really good relations rn
there's quite a bit of conflict in the communist movement of nepal and a lot of radical maoists in nepal claim the current nepalese government is basically just larping as socialist
While this is certainly true and the support for the former Nepalese government was rather minimal, it's still the worst foreign policy decision China has made post-Sino-Soviet split imo. It was done out of a selfish desire for prioritizing stability at China's borders because the party at the time was paranoid about right-wing Tibetan exiles in Nepal exploiting the instability caused by the uprisings and establishing a base for promoting Tibetan separatism from Nepal which borders Tibet. The Gyanendra government of Nepal had a policy of prohibiting Tibetan exiles from promoting separatism and any political organizing that would threaten Chinese interests. Certainly not the first time a socialist government has opted for pursuing selfish nationalist interests over socialist internationalism though and it unfortunately won't be the last.
fuckin sad man. i don't get how any communist can still fall prey to nationalism, racism, sexism etc. like....how?
The Sino-Vietnamese War was a horrible consequence of the Sino-Soviet split that began under Mao, escalated in the 70s, and didn't really end until the late 1980s. It led to some atrocious foreign policy decisions under both Mao and Deng. Nevertheless, since the end of the Sino-Soviet split, China has largely repaired its relations with the many socialist countries that they had previously spurned during that era (although there is still some tension with Vietnam especially due to South China Sea disputes). Erik Prince involvement in anything is certainly cringe though.
The relations between China and Cuba are today an example of transparency and peaceful collaboration between two nations that hold the ideals of socialism.
China has objectively become the most promising hope and the best example for all Third World countries. I do not hesitate to say that it is already the main engine of the world economy. In what time? In only 83 years after the foundation of its glorious Communist Party and 55 years after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Fidel in 2014:
Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life.
China has become Cuba's largest trading partner:
The year 2016 saw the first year ever that China became Cuba's largest trading partner with bilateral trade reaching $2.585 billion, according to a newly released report by the island's statistics, ONEI.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi declared in 2017 that China will continue to “put Cuba at a special place in its foreign policy and will as always support Cuba's legitimate fight for sovereignty and its endeavors against the U.S. embargo.”
-
decolonial left perspectives on Hong Kong
if anti-colonialism loves the CIA so much why don't they get married?
Xi, if you're lurking here, you've got some explaining to do. First cut ties with Erik Prince.
Lol, ikr?
@skeletorsass stated -
Chairman Mao considered the USSR as having abandoned communism and to be a traitor imperialist nation.
I'm sure the opposite was true too. There are a lot of reasons for the Sino-Soviet split but I think we can all agree that the it led to some pretty disastrous stuff.
Damn, I'm surprised that two communists would accuse eachother of being revisionists.
The communist movement was killed the moment the USSR and China fell to revisionism
i dont think its fair to just blame one country for the fall of the Marxist-Leninist movement during the cold war, both of them fuck up plus capitalist incirclement, so at least there were 3 factors
Yeah definitely, China's more like a knife the US used to stab SU. Or maybe US is the knife China used? Idk. SU did a lot of shit too. One thing the article mentioned, among others, was -
USSR’s de-industrializing of the Manchurian industrial belt. This belt, developed by the Japanese during its occupation of Manchuria, was hauled by train to the other side of Russia at the end of WWII to rebuild the Soviet’s manufacturing base (against the pleas of the Chinese communists), leaving the nascent Chinese state less industrialized than Russia had been in 1917
They are talking about this kind of place and genzedong :stalin-heart:
The type of person you are claiming doesn't exist would be like a quarter of the posters on this site.
also posters on this site: claims to be the reincarnation of Gaddafi and the prophets of Time Cube
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.
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.
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
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.
Are you saying China v Vietnam did not break "the back of the communist movement in East Asia"? Or something else?
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.
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?
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).
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.
