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.
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.