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.
Yeah, well communism with Chinese characteristics is just, like, do some capitalist bullshit with your communism. Shockingly this leads to crimes against humanity.
This is way before reform and opening up, read a book.
Dude shut up, that’s not what I meant.
My bad then
Ehh, whether one believes that Reform and Opening Up lead to capitalist restoration in China, or not, is kind of immaterial here.
The Sino-Soviet Split, which is what Chinese support for the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam was an expression of, is far more pertinent, and predates the Reform period by a couple of decades.
Some real “The enemy of my enemy” type logic on display for China at the time. I feel like a Blowback season on The Sino/Soviet Split might be interesting, but then again, probably a highly covered topic already. It just runs right through so much of the previous seasons though, that in some ways it would act as a thread stitching many of these seasons together.
I feel like “the enemy of my enemy” happens a lot on the world stage, especially during the Cold War. And I get it. But it still sucks.
What are we doing here? This is straight up china as a “deformed” workers state bs.
I didn’t say that. Chinas style of communism has been improving the lives of their working clans for decades and is far superior to the way capitalist countries do things.
Yes, they have some capitalist bullshit, but the capitalists don’t own the state. They don’t buy politicians or dictate policy. It’s not too dissimilar from the New Deal. It’s how China is currently leading the world in solar and nuclear – new technologies don’t have to struggle in the shadow of established firms.
Actually comparing it to the New Deal is a great way to describe it to people who haven’t really read about Chinese government or history. I’m going to steal that.
I know! From a broad historical perspective, it’s almost bafflingly funny. The US managed to throw together a system of coordinating state and private power in a way that could out-compete any of the older capitalist powers. Then we dismantled solely for ideological reasons. Now our leadership can’t even recognize that dynamo being recreated anywhere else! It’s somehow “cheating” and always moments away from violent collapse.
The Maoist period in which the Sino-Soviet split peaked and enabled the Cambodian genocide was substantially different than the Dengist/reform period. This was before they started doing capitalism.
Yes but Deng did allow for the further support of the Khemer Rouge in their guerilla phase after Vietnam rolled in and kicked them out.
The unequivocal Deng “L” was allying with the US to support the rebels against the Vietnamese supported government. I can understand the choice as brutal Realpolitik but that doesn’t make it right. The fact that China basically took an aggressive posture versus Vietnam in this era was unfortunately the big L
Yeah I know I absolutely fucked up with what I was trying to say here.
Fair enough