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.
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.