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.
Is there any kind of reconciliation about this history? What do modern Chinese historians have to say about this period of their history? I have to wonder what someone like Xi would have to say about the split. As I wrote that, I decided to do a quick google search: https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/xi-jinping-and-the-memory-of-the-soviet-union
The only thing I know about that is that there’s one interview somewhere with deng where he’s asked about china’s support for the khmer rouge and he said something like “we fucked up, we didn’t know”.