• AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 month ago

    But it didn’t hurt China in the long run. China was able to procure tech from the West and more or less steal the West’s manufacturing capabilities thanks to the short-sightedness of Western capitalist who didn’t look part cost savings from labor arbitrage. That’s the real long term goal. China began technologically lagging behind the West around the Ming dynasty, so the long term goal was to technologically catch up with the West after lagging behind for at least two dynasties. And the funny thing is China used the same exact playbook the late Ming did to bridge the tech gap: they gesture towards embracing whatever popular ideology and governance is in vogue at the West if you would only give us the tech. For the late Ming, it was Jesuit priests and Catholicism, and for modern times, it is technocrats and liberals. But unlike the West, China rarely makes the same mistake twice. The problem with the late Ming/early Qing was that the West would eventually figure out the ruse, and imperial China lacked the means of being truly innovative after the tech transfer was cut off. This was not so with the PRC.

    Just because the PRC and the Soviet Union share the same ideology doesn’t mean they are above geopolitics. Geopolitical alliances are ever-shifting. The Sino-Soviet split officially ended with Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing, so it lasted only a couple of decades. And now Russia is closer to China than ever even when they don’t even share the same ideology. Vietnam and China are also very close no matter how much cope Burglanders have of Vietnam hating China. As another example for why geopolitics have little to do with ideology, just look at how almost all Sunni Arab countries have betrayed the Sunni Arab Palestinians to the Zionists while the Sunni Arab Palestinians’ greatest saviors are a bunch of Shia Muslims with Shia Iranians as the head. Meanwhile, the tech gap is a centuries-old problem that must be resolved. This is what it means to truly have long-term vision, to be able to distinguish between mid-term vision and long-term vision.

      • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        1 month ago

        Then Stalin shouldn’t have insisted on the independence of outer Mongolia, the use of Port Arthur (Lushunkou) as joint Sino-Soviet naval base as pretense to station Soviet troops in Chinese province, refused to return the Chinese Eastern Railway (Changchun Railway) rights to China, and keeping Vladivostok (Haishenwei) that the Russian Empire annexed as part of the Soviet territory.

        All these infringed on the Chinese national sovereignty.

        And these happened during the Sino-Soviet “honeymoon” period when Stalin was still alive. It got even worse after he died, as the USSR turned revisionist and started to expand on its “imperialist ambitions” (a terminology I don’t personally agree with but this is not a controversial thing at all to say in China).

        • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 month ago

          Then Stalin shouldn’t have insisted on the independence of outer Mongolia, the use of Port Arthur (Lushunkou) as joint Sino-Soviet naval base as pretense to station Soviet troops in Chinese province, refused to return the Chinese Eastern Railway (Changchun Railway) rights to China, and keeping Vladivostok (Haishenwei) that the Russian Empire annexed as part of the Soviet territory

          So, were the actions of the PRC guided by realpolitik (which requires abandoning grudges), or by grudges like these ones?
          Also, not sure why you want to claim military cooperation between the USSR and the PRC being a bad thing.

          All these infringed on the Chinese national sovereignty

          Notably, they all happened a long while prior to the split, meaning that they couldn’t have influenced the supposedly-realpolitikal reasoning for the relevant actions of the PRC.

          It got even worse after he died, as the USSR turned revisionist and started to expand on its “imperialist ambitions”

          You mean when the USSR was helping multiple national liberation movements in Africa, Asia, and the Americas against NATO colonialism? Those ‘imperial ambitions’?

          EDIT: Also, I find it rather ironic that I hold a much more realpolitikal position regarding the PRC than you do regarding the USSR and other Russian polities.

      • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 month ago

        But it does???

        History disagrees with you. The Soviet Union and the PRC inherited the contradictions of Tsarist Russia and the Qing Dynasty, and you can’t just handwave that away. Russia was one of the eight nations in the Eight-Nation Alliance that came to oppress China during the Century of Humiliation. Russia also had unequal treaties with China. To make a long story short, Lenin was cool about annulling those treaties while Stalin was less so. Meanwhile, Khrushchev threatened to nuke China. Russia should be paying China reparations for its role in the Century of Humiliation if anything. The relationship isn’t equal because Russia owns China for historical wrongs and ought to repay China in the form of reparations. “Uh aktually we’re no longer Russia we’re the Soviet Union.” Yeah, and look what that got you.

        • anarcho_blinkenist [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          1 month ago

          Uh aktually we’re no longer Russia we’re the Soviet Union."

          oh so you’re just weirdly vindictive and petty about this, and hide it under historical dynamics without an actual class analysis beyond “they inherited the contradictions” (without naming these contradictions, in their specifics and implications with real class analysis — and ignoring the actual industrial aid and capital transfers and sending specialists and bringing their political, scientific, military, and industrial leaders to study in their schools for free, and sharing intelligence operations and countless other things; and also somehow holding up historical power imbalances as justifying some of the most unhinged foreign policy decisions the socialist world has ever seen, as if you’re more interested in the concept of exacting revenge than in maintaining national and international unity through repairing wrongs)

    • anarcho_blinkenist [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 month ago

      the ignorance of the terrible impacts which hampered development which followed the loss of Soviet industrial aid and the capital to modernize (and not have to have peasants smelt pig iron in their backyards), and loss of advisors for proper, efficient, safe productive practice and managing contradictions with wrecking and between the new proletarian manager and worker relationships that the soviets went through and had valuable lessons in, and countless other things is astounding. Defending China doing shit like funding muhajideen terrorist groups and child-r*ping warlords alongside the largest most violent capitalist empire in history in the US to attack the Soviets and and helping make the suffering of Afghanistan what it became and is to this day is grotesque and unhinged, almost as Deranged as post split chinese foreign policy. And is TRIPLY ignorant because China has had to face its own blowback FOR EXACTLY THAT, due to them hosting and financing CIA/ISI terrorist training camps in Pakistan on the border of Xinjiang.

      You’re making incoherent gestures based on abstract images youve imagined

    • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      28 days ago

      But it didn’t hurt China in the long run

      TIL that destroying your allies and making your alliance less capable of effecting change in the world doesn’t hurt you.

      Or are you going to claim that the PRC+Russia today are more capable of fighting off NATO? When NATO is now capable of openly and to the loud support of its people carrying out invasions, genocides, and coups with nobody to stop them doesn’t hurt the PRC?

      I do hope that the PRC comes out on top in its struggle with the US, but claiming that the PRC+Russia can better withstand NATO’s harassment than the PRC+the USSR is very silly.

      China was able to procure tech from the West

      While also making itself quite dependent on the West and opening itself to having its exports and imports cut off, and while also diminishing the rights of its workers (albeit, this latter point has to do with the liberalisation of the economy, and not, strictly speaking, with the silly activities to destroy its own allies and potential allies).
      Thankfully, the PRC seemingly did manage to overcome being gradually cut off from western technologies, but the PRC also does seem to keep surrendering ground to NATO, such as allowing its banks to submit to the demands of NATO.

      and more or less steal the West’s manufacturing capabilities thanks to the short-sightedness of Western capitalist who didn’t look part cost savings from labor arbitrage

      Notably, neither this point nor the previous required the PRC to actively help NATO in Afghanistan or to invade Vietnam.

      I don’t have time to deal with the entire rest of the comment right this moment.

      EDIT:

      And the funny thing is China used the same exact playbook the late Ming did to bridge the tech gap: they gesture towards embracing whatever popular ideology and governance is in vogue at the West if you would only give us the tech

      And that’s kind of a silly strategy to employ against the opponent that betrays its own allies, and that can and does very easily smear its enemy-states that employ the same systems of governance and the like anyway.
      Also, a lot of people do seem to not understand that there is a significant difference for the working class between living under a planned economy and one with a significant degree of privatisation. I am not sure if you are one such person, but I am getting the expression that that is a likely case.

      But unlike the West, China rarely makes the same mistake twice. The problem with the late Ming/early Qing was that the West would eventually figure out the ruse, and imperial China lacked the means of being truly innovative after the tech transfer was cut off. This was not so with the PRC.

      So, you are just going to leave it at that, with no basis provided for how that is not the case with the PRC that NATO would figure out the ‘ruse’ (actually just playing the capitalism game and making yourself a source of cheap labour and resources for NATO on conditions that make you extremely competitive compared to the other neo-colonies and using that advantage to get ahead in the hopes that the West would not react fast enough - I do not see how there is any ‘ruse’ involved). This is especially silly, considering that NATO has been increasing its anti-PRC effort.

      Just because the PRC and the Soviet Union share the same ideology doesn’t mean they are above geopolitics

      Which is irrelevant to the topic, unless you want to argue that it’s in the PRC’s interest to ally with NATO and then be crushed by them after it has no strong allies left instead of siding with states that have ideologies similar to yours and which have proven themselves willing and able to fight against colonialism and help others do so as well.

      Geopolitical alliances are ever-shifting

      And the point here is that this shift was bad for the communist and anti-colonial movements at large, and cost the PRC its allies. I argue that it was ill-conceived, and am not seeing any good arguments in favour of this shift.

      The Sino-Soviet split officially ended with Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing, so it lasted only a couple of decades

      So, it only ended when the socdem who admitted to wanting to destroy the USSR took over the USSR, privatised the economy, and sought friendship with colonial metropoles instead of their dominions. Just swell.

      And now Russia is closer to China than ever even when they don’t even share the same ideology

      Now Russia is garbage and will need to be handled if and when NATO is gone.
      Russia is now a semi-peripheral state - it is on the colonial periphery of NATO (and very likely now also of the PRC, but I have not studied the economic relations between Russia and the PRC enough) while also having its own periphery (in the form of some of the former parts of the USSR, such as Ukraine). It is both much weaker than the USSR and also not only isn’t interested in the world’s anti-colonial struggle beyond opposing NATO and, maybe, elevating itself from the semi-peripheral status, it is directly interested in simply becoming a metropole.

      Why you are praising the PRC for being close with obviously shitty capitalist states and also for distancing from and sabotaging communist-led ones is beyond me.

      As another example for why geopolitics have little to do with ideology, just look at how almost all Sunni Arab countries have betrayed the Sunni Arab Palestinians to the Zionists while the Sunni Arab Palestinians’ greatest saviors are a bunch of Shia Muslims with Shia Iranians as the head

      Oh, hey, another example of religious organisations having no principles. Cool.
      Not sure why you wanted to bring up people arguing about fiction being shitty to each other as a reason for the PRC also doing shitty things that hurt the world and make its enemies stronger.

      • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 month ago

        You’ve mentioned NATO numerous times. Are you talking about the West in general because NATO is specifically an anti-Russian military alliance. What does NATO have to do with China? NATO is first and foremost about containing Russia. Their strength or lack thereof isn’t immediately relevant to China. Not even the most subservient Atlanticist seriously thinks about invading China due to its logistical impossibility if nothing else. The West’s strategy for containing China is through the three island chains (Taiwan, Okinawa, Japan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand). They already tried to have a NATO clone in Asia called SEATO which didn’t pan out much in the end.

        Like, you can’t be this picky at my above comment while at the same time be this sloppy in your reply. Come on now.

        • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 month ago

          Are you talking about the West in general because NATO is specifically an anti-Russian military alliance

          What NATO is de jure is irrelevant. De facto it is far from being ‘specifically an anti-Russian military alliance’. I am going to remind you that it is the same gang of states that recently invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, which make sure that the genocidal project of Pissrael is completed, etc. Among other things, it is the same gang of states that is trying to make the PRC submit to it as a neo-colony.

          What does NATO have to do with China?

          Literally the enemy of the PRC today.

          NATO is first and foremost about containing Russia

          NATO is first and foremost a white supremacist organisation that has the maintenance and strengthening of colonial relations between itself and the rest of the world.

          Their strength or lack thereof isn’t immediately relevant to China

          If you completely ignore their efforts to hurt and exploit the PRC, sure.

          The West’s strategy for containing China is through the three island chains (Taiwan, Okinawa, Japan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand)

          Cool. And who’s doing that? Is it not the gang of the usual suspects?

          • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 month ago

            NATO is distinct from the three island chains for the very simple reason that the US wants to futilely recreate the Sino-Soviet split (you know, the topic of this thread), so obviously they’re not going to have the fuck Russia alliance (NATO) be operationally the same as the fuck China alliance (three island chains). Putting the two alliances under one operational structure would just bring Russia and China even closer together because they would now have an explicit common foe.

            Like, there’s also the fuck Iran alliance (the Zionist entity, comprador Arab regimes, Wahhabi terrorists, separatist movements within Iran), but you won’t see NATO openly get involved in Palestine precisely because that would just bring Russia closer to Iran. Russia has been traditionally pretty pro-Zionist, but the Zionist entity’s involvement in the Syrian civil war combined with that Ukrainian cokehead’s dumbfuckery has pushed Russia away from the Zionist entity. So, you will have various NATO countries like Turkey and Spain pretend to be pro-Palestinian while other NATO countries like the UK ship weapons to the Zionist entity, but you won’t see the entire alliance as a whole push to support the Zionist entity because if they do, Russia will counter this by deploying S-300s within the Axis of Resistance (Iran, Syria, Yemen). (Of course, the IOF foolishly poking the Russian bear by bombing a Russian base in Syria means that Russia is going to get involved anyways, which means NATO will also make moves within WANA as a counter to Russia).

            We know they all have the same master in DC, but the agents within these formations themselves still get antsy when they are asked to step outside the scope of their organization. German troops aren’t going to defend Taiwan in the same way Emirate troops aren’t going to be shipped to Ukraine to retake Crimea. You might have Azov neonazis commit war crimes in Syria or show up in the Hong Kong protests, but actual state assets are reluctant to step outside.

            • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.net
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              28 days ago

              NATO is distinct from the three island chains for the very simple reason that the US wants to futilely recreate the Sino-Soviet split (you know, the topic of this thread), so obviously they’re not going to have the fuck Russia alliance (NATO) be operationally the same as the fuck China alliance (three island chains)

              All of these anti-Russia states are also anti-PRC and vice versa. They are bound by the same economic interests and collaborate in warfare, both economic and conventional.

              Putting the two alliances under one operational structure would just bring Russia and China even closer together

              Which is what has been happening lately, and which the PRC apparently failed to recognize last century. All of the relevant states are just free facto subjects of the US.

              Don’t have the time to engage with the rest of your content right this moment. Will Jane to do this later.

              EDIT:

              Like, there’s also the fuck Iran alliance

              Which also includes NATO.

              but you won’t see NATO openly get involved in Palestine

              We see that every day. We see them run pro-genocide propaganda campaigns, we seem them supply weapons to Pissrael, we see them continuing to support Pissrael via trade in general, and so on, and so forth.

              precisely because that would just bring Russia closer to Iran

              Which is what seems to have been going on.

              Russia has been traditionally pretty pro-Zionist

              Can’t really comment on if that is true, apart from Russia supplying the Palestinian resistance without a demand from the UN during this escalation, but I am going to note that you previously praised the PRC for being ‘closer than ever’ with this Russia that you claim to be pro-zionist.

              So, you will have various NATO countries like Turkey and Spain pretend to be pro-Palestinian while other NATO countries like the UK ship weapons to the Zionist entity

              So, you admit that NATO is also a ‘fuck-Palestine’ alliance? That weakens your claim that NATO is somehow separate from all those other ‘anti-X’ alliances.

              but you won’t see the entire alliance as a whole push to support the Zionist entity

              Except, we see exactly that.
              Name any de facto NATO state that has provided support for the resistance against the genocide. By your own admission, it’s not Spain, it’s not Turkey, and we also know that it’s not Norway (which is at the very least a known supplier of weapons used in the genocide), it’s not the US, not Germany, not the UK, not France. Who?

              We know they all have the same master in DC

              Which means that these alliances are not separate and that your attempts to deny their geopolitical interests of colonial domination over the rest of the world as being shared is rather silly.

              but the agents within these formations themselves still get antsy when they are asked to step outside the scope of their organization

              Doesn’t matter if they do so.
              Also, the scope of the organisation is colonial dominance over the world. It’s obviously not a specifically anti-Russia alliance.

              German troops aren’t going to defend Taiwan

              Yes, they are. The moment their USian masters tell them to, they are going to.

              but actual state assets are reluctant to step outside

              Notably, I do not see you provide any evidence for this claim.

              • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                1 month ago

                All of these anti-Russia states are also anti-PRC and vice versa. They are bound by the same economic interests and collaborate in warfare, both economic and conventional.

                This wasn’t really true for the EU until recently. The EU wasn’t that anti-China and is still digging their feet to join the anti-China crusade. Just look how divided they are when discussing the car tariffs.. Traditionally, they make a lot of noise about being anti-China and pro-human rights while doing fuckall from the perspective of actually anti-China countries like Japan and the ROK. Of course, when push comes to shove, they’ll do as they’re told in the end.

                Which is what has been happening lately, and which the PRC apparently failed to recognize last century. All of the relevant states are just free facto subjects of the US.

                They simply made the correct assessment that the US cared more about the Soviet Union than China because Soviet Union was far more economically developed with a much scarier military on top of having status as the world’s first worker state. Meanwhile, China then was poor as fuck with a GDR per capita lower than most African countries.

                Don’t have the time to engage with the rest of your content right this moment. Will Jane to do this later.

                I think we just disagree too much to have a productive conversation at this point. I don’t think it will be a fruitful use of your time to engage with my points since I would most likely disagree with it anyways.

                • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.net
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                  28 days ago

                  I have updated the previous comments.

                  This wasn’t really true for the EU until recently. The EU wasn’t that anti-China and is still digging their feet to join the anti-China crusade

                  By the same logic, it’s also not true that NATO is an anti-Russia alliance, given that, until relatively recently they were fine with Russia. In particular, they even controlled Russia in the 90s, and were fine exploiting Russia as their neo-colony with as little disturbance as possible until 2022.

                  Just look how divided they are when discussing the car tariffs

                  Do you call this ‘divided’? 10 in favour, 5 against, with the only prominent member of NATO voting against being Germany.

                  Traditionally, they make a lot of noise about being anti-China and pro-human rights while doing fuckall from the perspective of actually anti-China countries like Japan and the ROK

                  Except for attempting to dismantle the PRC’s access to a market that is important to the PRC and preventing the PRC from destroying NATO’s manufacturers while Japan and the RoK keep doing what, exactly?

                  Of course, when push comes to shove, they’ll do as they’re told in the end

                  Meaning that they are in an anti-PRC alliance, contrary to your prior claims.

                  They simply made the correct assessment that the US cared more about the Soviet Union than China

                  And the evidence for the correctness of that assessment is what, exactly?
                  Also, how does it follow from that assessment that the PRC should have sabotaged both the USSR and other countries anti-colonial struggles?

                  Meanwhile, China then was poor as fuck with a GDR per capita lower than most African countries

                  Yes, that’s kind of an expected consequence of decades of warfare, genocide, and victimisation by colonialism.
                  Notably, the PRC sabotaged other countries struggle against colonialism and genocide. Not sure how that was supposed to help the PRC with the problem you just outlined.