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.
China’s foreign policy was completely unhinged during this period.
The transition from leadership by a war hero guiding a fledgling country through difficult circumstances into a more “relaxed” leadership governing over a more stable and peaceful country is a conundrum that AES states struggle with. Mao attempted to prevent that transition by any means necessary, and splitting with the Soviets, training the Khmer Rouge, and normalizing with the US were driven by that fear, fear of a Chinese Khrushchev.
From a big picture, outside view, and with the benefit of hindsight, it’s easier to say the Khrushchev and Deng were the result of changing material conditions, and no matter how hard one tries to stop it, changing conditions lead to changing leadership.
However, if you’re the wartime leader it’s harder to see that, not only for self-interested reasons, but also just in terms of personal experience and personality. The person most capable of leading the revolution to victory is generally not a person who is easy to convince to stop seeing threats everywhere. I agree with what seems to be the prominent strain of thought on Hexbear that people like Stalin and Mao were necessary but also that modern China is socialist. Unfortunately, I don’t really know what the solution is to get from point A to point B other than waiting for the leadership to die.
Imo Mao really put the cart before the horse with his concept of “permanent revolution,” as if the end goal of leftism is to create ideologically pure revolutionaries. The goal is to create a more peaceful and equitable world where we don’t need revolutionaries.
In any case this is a definite black spot on the PRC and it’s worth noting that it’s history is pretty messy in general. Don’t think you can or should defend everything.
This makes no sense. Siding with the world’s genocidal hegemon against the anti-colonial movements is much, much worse than a ‘Chinese Khrushchev’.
Yes, but the US didn’t represent the ideological strain they were trying to root out. Conciliation with the USSR would make one look like they agreed with the USSR’s path and wanted to do the same in China.
I’m not saying it made sense or was in any way excusable, but that paranoia was a factor in it.
If you aren’t trying to root out that ideological strain - of supporting colonial subjugation of the world by the European powers, - you should be the one rooted out.
By this logic, they found it more acceptable appearing to agree with genocides and colonialism of NATO.
These excuses do not work.