The far-right populist Alternative for Germany party rejects a values-based foreign policy, just as much as it rejects NATO and the US. That approach has attracted the attention of Beijing.
Dengist foreign policy and the Sino Soviet split was such a disaster. China even invaded Vietnam at around the same time period. Went from backing the ANC to backing the PAC and even the apartheid government, as your article states.
China cooperates with everyone. It’s a pretty major point of contention among tankies; on the one hand it sucks when you’re backing fascists, but on the other hand, at least China isn’t going around warring and couping foreign governments (except the one mistake in Vietnam).
Yes, sure. It seems hypocritical to me to say, on the one hand, that there is no political difference between the yankies bombing Yemeni children directly, vs giving the Saudis the bombs to drop, and then on the other hand, say that there is a difference between China supporting fascists who murder children (i.e. Israel or the Apartheid goverment), vs actually murdering those people themselves. I’m not saying that you are defending this, but it strikes me as a weird mental gymnastic were some ‘tankies’ (or whatever term you want to use, no normative judgement intended) will engage in basically some classic liberalism in order to let China off the hook on this front.
We should also mention the Khymer Rouge. Fascist might not be the correct term here, but it was politically equivalent in terms of how destructive, bloody and reactionary it was.
Israel is fascist. There is no excuse, by the nature of fascism, for supporting it. Ever. Yet China is happy to fund both the Israeli army and the West Bank administration.
Again, people can’t have their cake and eat it too. You can’t both say (i) profoundly reactionary as Russia is, Ukraine is more deeply fascicized and that as an immediate consequence of that, there should be a preference for the war ending on Russia’s terms; and (ii) that China may be funding fascists, but this is understandable and justifiable in the context. Okay. So then what are the criteria and conditions here apart from biased vibes to decide when critical support in these extreme cases is justified or not? What’s the line? I know I have my own ideas about this, but it’s often difficult to see what other peoples’ are.
It’s should go without saying that China’s foreign policy, including during the Maoist period, has been by far one of its most reactionary aspects. Once again, the Sino-Soviet split was a historical tragedy and reflects the challenge for communists of avoiding finding themselves in post-revolutionary situations in which their politics becomes nationalist due to them coming to identify their interests with those of the traditional nation state as a matter of reality and pragmatic necessity.
Yeah as I said, Chinese Cold War foreign policy is a pretty contentious subject even amongst China fans and you won’t find many if any here supporting it. Clearly significant mistakes were made.
Modern day Chinese policy is a bit harder to judge. I’m not sure what the nature of China and Israel’s relationship is; does it go further than simply trade? Regardless I would say they still remain the best of the 21stC superpowers just because they aren’t engaging in open conflict, but no policy is perfect. Secondly I’d say that China’s stance of ‘respect and work with any state who respects us’ is more principled than the US’s selective list of designated friends and enemies; China works with Israel because they work with everyone, for better or worse, while the US works with Israel because they ideologically support Israel and its goals. I guess materially the result could be the same regardless of intention so maybe that doesn’t matter?
Its not about universal values at all but about what the Chinese People want and what the party determined is the interests of their communist goals. I don’t love that China treats Israel as anything other than the fascist government it is, but the biggest difference is locality/direct influence. Russia is directly affected by the fascists at their border, because their fascism is directed eastward. China isn’t impacted by the Israeli fascism and therefore has no direct interests.
Maybe you call this classic liberalism, but the analysis here begins in a materialist position. China just takes the very minimal-conflict path within their material position. This means that great evils occurring elsewhere do not trump their need to develop and become strong enough to become communist. Once those evils are aimed towards them, they react and sometimes not perfectly, but in the way which is protectionist. Hopefully, from their example, we can learn to be better at exporting revolutions like the USSR but without destroying ourselves, like the USSR allowed itself to be destroyed (the phrasing here isn’t meant to indicate systemic intent, but it wasn’t prevented obviously). I hope we can be better at internationalism than China but they’re surviving and influencing the world while every other communist led country has been marred by a sort of irrelevance to the rest of the world if they didn’t get destroyed.
I don’t know how many times this needs to be said but I’ll say it again: Marxism is a univeralist (at least applied to human history and societies) scientific theory and set of revolutionary normative principles of thought and action that emerged in modern Europe as the Proletarian stage of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.
If people want to do historical relativism of value based on nationalist considerations, then they’re basically a postmodern fascist whose view is identical to the basis of Dugin’s ideology. Dugin himself thinks that’s he’s synthesized and gone beyond liberal capitalism, communism and fascism here, by identifying the material interests of individual people’s with their national identity. Ofc this is just postmodern strasserism.
There are also several distinct questions here: firstly to what extent the Chinese people have actual democratic control over the CPC and the PRC, which I’d say is little, and which is different to whether or not the policies of the CPC are in their interest (to a great degree, I’d say yes), and is also different to the question of whether or not they have objectively high approval ratings (also genuinely very high compared to any other society that comes to mind).
I agree with you that there is a locality/directness factor that is imporant, but the two examples are not fully analogous because in the one case we are talking about whether Russia’s invasion is understanding from the pov of Russia’s interests, whereas in the other we are not talking about invasion, but about whether China should be supporting fascists. It answers why China might be excused from not intervening in Ukraine more directly but it doesn’t answer why they should be economically supporting Israel. Ofc, perhaps they want economic leverage to eventually pull Israel away from the US orbit based on Irsael’s perception of its own interests. I don’t know. I’m not saying we should unilaterally and unequivocally condemn China on a purely detached ‘moralist’ basis here. The final judgement has to be in terms of whether or not their actions contribute positively or negatively in the long-term to world communist revolution.
The way you’ve phrased it would suggest that China’s interests are those of the realist modern nation-state. These are inevitably part of them, but China is not the nation state. The latter is the state of the society, which is part of but not identical to the society itself. The Chinese working classes interests are ultimately those of a transition to socialism and world-revolution. Your phrasing also suggests that Israel is not in their direct interests. I think you need to make clearer what you mean by direct interest. Do you mean no interest at all if not direct? Or can they still be of indirect interest if not direct? But Israel is a bulwark of American influence in the middle east and key source of black ops and intelligence operations. No-one is better at killing radicals than Israel. It is also in the interest of China as a society, again, to contribute to a world revolutionary situation. How is the Chinese government doing this? If so, is it intentional? If not, then why is this not a problem, given that intentions are our guide to what China’s power structure would do in any future potentially revolutionary situation. If they were not an interest at all, then they wouldn’t be trading and helping the IDF to arm itself.
This is important because communism is not, I repeat not, possible without a world revolution.
I’m saying that the mental manouver justifying the position in one that is common in liberalism. I’m not even necessarily saying it’s wrong. But I’m asking for clarification why it’s justified to make that move when talking and thinking about China, and not about other states. Which states are not reasoning in terms of their materialist position? They all are, more or less, when looked at from a Marxist pov. This is explanation. It’s not justification. Justification in the Marxist revolution is always, first and foremost, what most likely contributes in the long-term to a world-proletarian revolution. This is always the end goal (although the end goal of the revolution is the production of conditions for real fulfilling and ethical life and advancement of the species).
They’re after that “peaceful coexistence” the USSR could never achieve because they failed to see that in order to peacefully coexist they first had to absorb most of the west’s manufacturing capacity.
Just for the record (and for context) - China cooperated with the Apartheid-regime.
Dengist foreign policy and the Sino Soviet split was such a disaster. China even invaded Vietnam at around the same time period. Went from backing the ANC to backing the PAC and even the apartheid government, as your article states.
China cooperates with everyone. It’s a pretty major point of contention among tankies; on the one hand it sucks when you’re backing fascists, but on the other hand, at least China isn’t going around warring and couping foreign governments (except the one mistake in Vietnam).
Yes, sure. It seems hypocritical to me to say, on the one hand, that there is no political difference between the yankies bombing Yemeni children directly, vs giving the Saudis the bombs to drop, and then on the other hand, say that there is a difference between China supporting fascists who murder children (i.e. Israel or the Apartheid goverment), vs actually murdering those people themselves. I’m not saying that you are defending this, but it strikes me as a weird mental gymnastic were some ‘tankies’ (or whatever term you want to use, no normative judgement intended) will engage in basically some classic liberalism in order to let China off the hook on this front.
We should also mention the Khymer Rouge. Fascist might not be the correct term here, but it was politically equivalent in terms of how destructive, bloody and reactionary it was.
Israel is fascist. There is no excuse, by the nature of fascism, for supporting it. Ever. Yet China is happy to fund both the Israeli army and the West Bank administration.
Again, people can’t have their cake and eat it too. You can’t both say (i) profoundly reactionary as Russia is, Ukraine is more deeply fascicized and that as an immediate consequence of that, there should be a preference for the war ending on Russia’s terms; and (ii) that China may be funding fascists, but this is understandable and justifiable in the context. Okay. So then what are the criteria and conditions here apart from biased vibes to decide when critical support in these extreme cases is justified or not? What’s the line? I know I have my own ideas about this, but it’s often difficult to see what other peoples’ are.
It’s should go without saying that China’s foreign policy, including during the Maoist period, has been by far one of its most reactionary aspects. Once again, the Sino-Soviet split was a historical tragedy and reflects the challenge for communists of avoiding finding themselves in post-revolutionary situations in which their politics becomes nationalist due to them coming to identify their interests with those of the traditional nation state as a matter of reality and pragmatic necessity.
Yeah as I said, Chinese Cold War foreign policy is a pretty contentious subject even amongst China fans and you won’t find many if any here supporting it. Clearly significant mistakes were made.
Modern day Chinese policy is a bit harder to judge. I’m not sure what the nature of China and Israel’s relationship is; does it go further than simply trade? Regardless I would say they still remain the best of the 21stC superpowers just because they aren’t engaging in open conflict, but no policy is perfect. Secondly I’d say that China’s stance of ‘respect and work with any state who respects us’ is more principled than the US’s selective list of designated friends and enemies; China works with Israel because they work with everyone, for better or worse, while the US works with Israel because they ideologically support Israel and its goals. I guess materially the result could be the same regardless of intention so maybe that doesn’t matter?
Its not about universal values at all but about what the Chinese People want and what the party determined is the interests of their communist goals. I don’t love that China treats Israel as anything other than the fascist government it is, but the biggest difference is locality/direct influence. Russia is directly affected by the fascists at their border, because their fascism is directed eastward. China isn’t impacted by the Israeli fascism and therefore has no direct interests.
Maybe you call this classic liberalism, but the analysis here begins in a materialist position. China just takes the very minimal-conflict path within their material position. This means that great evils occurring elsewhere do not trump their need to develop and become strong enough to become communist. Once those evils are aimed towards them, they react and sometimes not perfectly, but in the way which is protectionist. Hopefully, from their example, we can learn to be better at exporting revolutions like the USSR but without destroying ourselves, like the USSR allowed itself to be destroyed (the phrasing here isn’t meant to indicate systemic intent, but it wasn’t prevented obviously). I hope we can be better at internationalism than China but they’re surviving and influencing the world while every other communist led country has been marred by a sort of irrelevance to the rest of the world if they didn’t get destroyed.
I don’t know how many times this needs to be said but I’ll say it again: Marxism is a univeralist (at least applied to human history and societies) scientific theory and set of revolutionary normative principles of thought and action that emerged in modern Europe as the Proletarian stage of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.
If people want to do historical relativism of value based on nationalist considerations, then they’re basically a postmodern fascist whose view is identical to the basis of Dugin’s ideology. Dugin himself thinks that’s he’s synthesized and gone beyond liberal capitalism, communism and fascism here, by identifying the material interests of individual people’s with their national identity. Ofc this is just postmodern strasserism.
There are also several distinct questions here: firstly to what extent the Chinese people have actual democratic control over the CPC and the PRC, which I’d say is little, and which is different to whether or not the policies of the CPC are in their interest (to a great degree, I’d say yes), and is also different to the question of whether or not they have objectively high approval ratings (also genuinely very high compared to any other society that comes to mind).
I agree with you that there is a locality/directness factor that is imporant, but the two examples are not fully analogous because in the one case we are talking about whether Russia’s invasion is understanding from the pov of Russia’s interests, whereas in the other we are not talking about invasion, but about whether China should be supporting fascists. It answers why China might be excused from not intervening in Ukraine more directly but it doesn’t answer why they should be economically supporting Israel. Ofc, perhaps they want economic leverage to eventually pull Israel away from the US orbit based on Irsael’s perception of its own interests. I don’t know. I’m not saying we should unilaterally and unequivocally condemn China on a purely detached ‘moralist’ basis here. The final judgement has to be in terms of whether or not their actions contribute positively or negatively in the long-term to world communist revolution.
The way you’ve phrased it would suggest that China’s interests are those of the realist modern nation-state. These are inevitably part of them, but China is not the nation state. The latter is the state of the society, which is part of but not identical to the society itself. The Chinese working classes interests are ultimately those of a transition to socialism and world-revolution. Your phrasing also suggests that Israel is not in their direct interests. I think you need to make clearer what you mean by direct interest. Do you mean no interest at all if not direct? Or can they still be of indirect interest if not direct? But Israel is a bulwark of American influence in the middle east and key source of black ops and intelligence operations. No-one is better at killing radicals than Israel. It is also in the interest of China as a society, again, to contribute to a world revolutionary situation. How is the Chinese government doing this? If so, is it intentional? If not, then why is this not a problem, given that intentions are our guide to what China’s power structure would do in any future potentially revolutionary situation. If they were not an interest at all, then they wouldn’t be trading and helping the IDF to arm itself.
This is important because communism is not, I repeat not, possible without a world revolution.
I’m saying that the mental manouver justifying the position in one that is common in liberalism. I’m not even necessarily saying it’s wrong. But I’m asking for clarification why it’s justified to make that move when talking and thinking about China, and not about other states. Which states are not reasoning in terms of their materialist position? They all are, more or less, when looked at from a Marxist pov. This is explanation. It’s not justification. Justification in the Marxist revolution is always, first and foremost, what most likely contributes in the long-term to a world-proletarian revolution. This is always the end goal (although the end goal of the revolution is the production of conditions for real fulfilling and ethical life and advancement of the species).
They’re after that “peaceful coexistence” the USSR could never achieve because they failed to see that in order to peacefully coexist they first had to absorb most of the west’s manufacturing capacity.
And Chile.