I’m finishing the last episode of S5 now, and I’ll be fully caught up on this series. Between Afghanistan and Cambodia, China’s willingness to play ball with the US and its agenda is frustrating to learn.
It leaves me wanting to learn more about the Sino/Soviet split. The way this division manifested really aligned China with some dark forces, it would seem.
I also imagine the process of “normalization” with the US plays a huge role in the way this history unfolds as well.
It makes me wonder what they knew about The Khmer Rouge’s operations. I was left with the impression, based on how the history was laid out, that China was aware of just how aggressive and bloody the Khmer Rouge’s policies were.
Something about that stretch of time between 79 and 89 seems to have resulted in a bunch of weird geopolitical stuff.
Need to finish this episode, I guess.
Been saying this for years now, on sino-Soviet split issues always side with the Soviets. (Not an absolute rule but I’ve yet to stumble on something where the Soviets were on the wrong side and the pre-21st century PRC was on the right side)
It seems to me that China’s one and only W from this era was surviving to become the 21st century PRC.
At what costs
History proves them right then 🤷
The world being resubjugated by the imperial core, millions dead, anti-colonial movements largely stopped in their tracks is not something that I would call ‘history proving them right’. That also ignores the fact that having a privatised economy does have significant negative consequences for working-class people, including the lack of guaranteed housing - something that disturbingly many people like to ignore.
The CPSU is the one that built a world where all socialism revolved around and depended on their support and then just sort of gave up. It was a catastrophic error on the part of the Soviets to place themselves incontestably at the helm, and the fruit of that error is the near-instant collapse of the entire second world. If China had remained aligned with the USSR, it wouldn’t have stopped the party’s internal issues. China would most likely end up just like Vietnam, forced to implement market reforms.
Okay, so, the PRC is not doing that. Now, the presence of socialist and anti-colonial movements in the world is much weaker (which the PRC did contribute to directly). You do understand how this is worse, right?
The Soviet Union’s colossal fuckup created the world we’re in now. China’s efforts one way or the other have been tiny, and while I’m largely not a fan it is absolutely nothing compared to the way the Soviet Union squandered the strongest position socialism has ever been in globally, and ushered in a period of utterly unchallengeable American dominance.
I can only pray that we get another revolutionary moment as big as postwar decolonization and that whatever exists at that time doesn’t waste it again.
The USSR helping socialist and anti-colonial movements of the world doesn’t seem to have been a contributing factor in either its fall or NATO becoming stronger.
The PRC is yet to contribute to international socialist and anti-colonial struggle to the extent the USSR did.
Helping socialist and anti-colonial movements largely benefitted the Soviet Union and it was in a perfect place to do so. The problem is that, especially post-Stalin, it did not treat them as equal partners or set them up for independent success. It created dependants, and this was great for its own position in the cold war game, but left the whole socialist world in shambles without it. This was an issue with most of their allies, and caused a number of major geopolitical rifts.
Internationalism doesn’t mean shit if you build it in a manner where it all falls apart almost instantaneously, and in fact I think the way the USSR lost pretty much all the ground gained in the biggest decolonial moment in modern history is an unforgivable sin.
I do wish the PRC would do more, and I think that most of its post-split policy can be summed up as stupid anti-soviet realpolitik, but I also don’t think there’s really been many viable moments (outside of Palestine) where the PRC’s support would leave a lasting impact since before the fall of the USSR. I want more, but resources shouldn’t be wasted on hopeless projects that turn China into a pariah in the meantime.
The USSR itself was also extremely sparing and strategic with its international efforts prior to the second world war, because it was in a vulnerable position. This was the basis for the concept of socialism in one country. Time will tell if the opportunity arises again.
I don’t think it’s that simple. It’s impossible to say now how much or if any of their mistakes were actually necessary to that survival.
If losing four decades of progress while waiting for the PRC to reach parity with the US and establish multipolarity when the USSR was already at near parity, then china sacrificed the interests of humanity in service of its own, full stop
We passed 1.5C ffs
The USSR built a socialist world around and wholly dependent on itself, and then capitulated internally (due to the utter decay of the party as a revolutionary institution), destroying that order almost all at once. I don’t know what China could have done to prevent that. An unsplit China would have been significantly more dependent on the USSR and at best would most likely have been forced into a similar position to Vietnam after the collapse anyway.
One could argue letting the US have a unipolar moment induced a terminal delusion in the minds of it’s ruling class and untethered them a lot from reality,and now we’re beginning to see the payoff
The soviets,by doing those things,kept the western world on its toes and made it necessary to boot out any cranks or truly incompetent people
fuck off, china did what they thought it was best for them, and now they’re positioned as beacon for the global south while the USSR got dismantled by a freaking drunkard, that’s a clear sign that they were not even close to near parity with the west.
The ones responsible for the misery in the world are primarily the western working class, the privileged henchmen of the bourgeoisie, not china ffs.
So does NATO with things like colonialism. So did Germany, Britain, France, the US before the formation of NATO.
Doing what’s best for you, or what you think is best for you does not, in fact, make those actions good.
What does being a ‘beacon’ entail here? Other countries are not in a position to do what the PRC did (make itself the most attractive option for foreign investments at the exclusion of other countries (including the imperial core)), and the PRC does not seem to be supplying arms or anything like that to them to fight off NATO, nor is the PRC taking military action to help anti-colonial and socialist movements around the world.
The successes of the PRC, while very significant, do not seem to play much of a role outside of the PRC.
It’s primarily the western bourgeoisie, and the western treatlerite aristocracy comes after, but sure.
Not exactly an excuse to do stuff like literally supporting NATO (and, by extension, the western bourgeoisie), including by doing stuff like helping the Mujahideen against socialists in Afghanistan and fighting against Vietnam.
“supporting the Khmer Rouge was good, actually”
-literally you
I agree, but still they have stood the test of time where as the USSR failed miserably. Which is ultimately what really matters.
The PRC even ended up on the same side as Taiwan, backing the contras to spite the soviets.
I like your quality commie-posting new guy, I’m gonna remember your name
oh fuck now there’s pressure. I’m gonna fuck this up, but I promise to do so in a new and interesting way
Just to let you know we’ve already had annoying leftcoms and shitheel patsocs bits play out so I’m excited for some new lore to add to the hexbear iceberg
Shoutout to when Haz briefly had an account here and said that weed makes you trans
Also a few other of the shitheels that would become their “executive council” they got bullied nonstop for their bullshit
Perhaps the Biafra conflict?
This is a completely uneducated guess based off of the vibes in the chart below. I have literally zero knowledge on the topic and this spitball assertion should not be taken remotely serious.
Things had to be so fucked up there to say that Colonialist France, fascist Portugal, post-6-day-war Israel, Apartheid South Africa, and the fascist settler statelet Rhodesia were on the right side of history with the PRC.
Darn I just posted something like that. The Biafra conflict is complicated. Because the Igbo people absolutely were persecuted prior to the war, and it’s hard to argue that Yakubu Gowon wasn’t a ridiculously corrupt dictator or that the charges of genocide against him aren’t at least credible. But the conflict was also on behalf of every non Nigerian/Igbo person involved nakedly a proxy war over the future of post-colonial africa (With the UK joining the Nigerians solely because their oil companies ran the Nigerian oil trade)
Yeah that sounds like a nobody wins scenario
That’s what I was thinking too. Foreign support for Biafra looked a lot like what Belgium did with Katanga aka divide and rule.
The Biafra conflict was in part france trying to regain a sphere of influence at the expense of the UK. Thats why the sides fell the way they did.
Yeah as if them getting their asses beat in Vietnam at the same time wasn’t enough for them the fuckjng frogs
France also did the same thing in the Congo, which was the reason for soviet support for Nigeria, despite the Igbo’s having a leftist element and having “global sympathy”.
Also what anglo wikipedia omits is that israhell supported both sides:
The Biafra conflict was (And remains) complicated and I’m not going to be the one who solves the moral issues of it. But it does bear remembering that the anti-Nigerian side included Rhodesia, Apartheid South Africa, and Israel for a reason.
Israel supported both sides.
Not really. They sold guns to the Nigerians before the conflict began but they provided aid (Including guns) to the Biafrans. They were very much interested in a Biafran victory, since the Nigerian government was aligned with Egypt and therefore Palestine.
I provided a source further down in the thread.