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.
Some resentment should be reserved for sabotaging the Soviet Union.
I’ll defend them against the US and the West, but I find it hard to be a die hard supporter of China the way some people are, considering its history in the sino-soviet split and, well, their lack of vocal ideological support for communism on the world stage
This is the biggest caveat to China support for me, too. Like I’ve read and understand the arguments that if China were to support global socialist movements the way the USSR did, they would lose a lot of the leverage and power that they’ve accrued for themselves in the past couple of decades - but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow them supporting right wing governments against socialist guerillas. If they’re not going to send PLA volunteers to aid the rebels then at the very least they should use their neutrality to play some wishy washy word games about how they can’t get involved!
Plus, I think there needs to be a reckoning with the fact that in every way that matters China is the largest power in the world right now. America’s hegemonic status has been broken for a long time and the rest of the world is just figuring it out, China might see it in its interest to keep the dollar as the world reserve currency or whatever but they absolutely have room to be making moves that advance the socialist cause.
Exactly. Palestinians are literally on the brink of extinction, and China’s support for Iran is by million layers of proxy. Pakistan is their closest ally in the region. There are simply so many contradictions with China I can’t personally hand waive away through n degrees of abstraction.
Why should China be advancing the socialist cause directly in whatever nation? This is precisely the biggest blunder the USSR did and a historical lesson we should have learned already, why keep insisting on this. China already does their part by leading with example and proving that socialism is a superior system, the responsibility for liberating one own nation falls in the shoulders of the respective nation citizens. If a country wants a revolution they can have it, if not they won’t, the Chinese wanted a revolution and they had it, Russians wanted a revolution and they had it, etc…
Stopping colonialism and genocides is good, actually. Also, national chauvinism and claiming that all that matters is how well people live in China, as opposed to caring about the conditions of the working class in the world in general, is cringe, to say the least.
What basis does this claim have?
The PRC has been successful in improving the lives of people in China, but it does not seem to be doing much to help the rest of the world against capitalism and colonialism.
This is rather silly. Firstly, an ‘example’ is not something that gives peripheral states arms and productive capacities to fight off NATO, nor does it give those to the working class there to fight off the bourgeoisie in general. Secondly, what useful ‘example’ does the PRC provide? A shift to a privatised economy is useful in the short term for attracting foreign investments, which comes at the cost of workers’ rights, such as guaranteed housing. Currently, no country that is opposed to NATO seems to be able to compete with the PRC in terms of foreign investment attraction and exports, as far as I’m aware. For that to happen, the PRC would have to stop taking its 'W’s. Thirdly, as of right now, the PRC’s economy is significantly privatised, it has a profit motive. I’m not sure what your definition of a ‘socialist system’ is, but the definitions that I have encountered so far require the abolition of the profit motive. That is in addition to the fact that, due to this profit motive, the PRC cannot currently manage to provide people with guaranteed housing the way planned economies are incentivised to do.
Notably, even if we accept this as some sort of a natural law (it obviously is not), that does not mean that the other countries should be left to suffer NATO’s colonial atrocities.
This is literally a belief in the ‘mind directly shapes matter’ sort of magic.
Winning a revolutionary struggle is not a matter of wanting it more than your opponents do. History is often contingent on the vicissitudes of a seemingly chaotic universe. I can understand the USSR wanting to tip the scales in favor of their preferred winners. Their failures in part show how difficult the task of steering history can be, so I also can’t blame the CPC for their approach.
Why should China be socialist in the first place? Why not just go full cynicism and rig a capitalist system that directly benefits Xi and his allies?
“Because it’s the right thing to do and would greatly benefit a large number of people” is reason enough. You can argue over tactics, say that if overt support draws an even worse counterrevolution then a different tactic should be pursued, but you can’t argue over the morality.
Then why should any socialist support China?
Because the vast majority of socialists who can read this reside in imperial entities who wish to see China crushed. Part of the socialist struggle for internationalism is also defending anti-colonial and anti-capitalist struggles abroad, even if they’re not perfect, the net effect of opposing our current system in a real way is more important.
The vast majority of us reading are fucking peasants who need China to be the ray of light.
These are important things for all socialists to consider among ourselves. Let’s not make the same mistakes in the future and do our best to build unity among the working class at a global scale.
I’m very uneducated, but I feel like the USSR would have had a much better chance at pulling through if they had close relations with the PRC. Socialism would be in much better shape in the modern day if that were the case, it’s truly a shame.
It’s hard to say, since China was far weaker than the USSR at the time, and did not want to be an unequal partner to the USSR, especially with revisionists at the helm. Who’s to say China would have managed to lose its pariah state status and become a superpower if it was subordinate to the Soviets? This of course is no excuse for the atrocious foreign policy decisions following the split, a gross overreaction brought about by a combination of Mao’s senility and some realpolitik with Nixon, but there’s no guarantee that had the split not happened that things would have played out better; you’d still have a revisionist USSR in ideological decay to contend with, and now China would be poorer, still cut off from most of the world, and more vulnerable to the predations of imperialist states.
No easy answers here
The USSR would’ve had a better chance at pulling through by simply keeping to themselves and developing production instead of engaging in adventurism abroad.
Sure, let’s just damn every person that’s been helped by the home of the revolution. Let every spark be smothered in the tinder pile.
Their adventurism ended up damning their own nation and discrediting socialism all around the world, i definitely do not want China to repeat this historical blunder.
Their “historical blunder” is why the People’s Republic of China actually exists and isn’t a hyper-exploited resource and labor colony of the west. The same for Cuba, the DPRK, Vietnam and every people that had received the aid of the Soviets whether they still exist or don’t.
The faithful execution of communist internationalism is not a blunder, it is an obligation.
Yeah I mean, the Soviets have their flaws, but a commitment to international socialism was not one of them.
In what way?
What basis does this claim have? You do realise that the demonisation of socialism and violent suppression of socialists predate the USSR, right?
What damned the USSR was the sheer scale of damage to the social fabric caused by WW2. The death of millions of the most committed communists let revisionists like Krushchev into the seats of power, and led to the separation of the party from the people. You got a stagnating economy (that is, stagnating compared to the earlier USSR, rather than, for instance, the US today) because Stalin was the last actual trained Marxist to hold power, and the leaders afterwards didn’t understand the machine they were at the controls of. They could no longer consciously manage the structures of society or the party, and so internal forces grew that combined with external forces to rip the Union apart. But it certainly wasn’t because they took a principled stance of helping socialists around the world. Even the intervention in Afghanistan, which supposedly finished the USSR off, was a disaster due to mismanagement and taking the wrong strategic approach, not because it was some kind of totally unwinnable scenario.
I think the lack of vocal calls for communism is more a strategic necessity than anything else. The US and Europe love idly speculating about regime change in China. Any active support on China’s part will get spun as imperialism, and used to justify realizing those dreams of regime change. Do business with whatever institution is recognized as legitimate, keep the communism within your own boarders, and you can more safely entrench yourself within world systems.
I don’t think China not going publicly mask off about its gommunism, allowing it to escape western imperialism, is a convincing argument.
Keeping to yourself has more benefits than that. Active support always comes with the risk. A far off power throwing its weight into a set of conditions it doesn’t have an on-the-ground, real time understanding off. There’s always unintended consequences. The US has spent the last half-century demonstrating how that sours your global perception. China keeps to itself. China doesn’t presume to know local conditions better than locals do. And hey, if local communists do manage to take power, China is there, ready and willing to do business with them.