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.
History proves them right then 🤷
The world being resubjugated by the imperial core, millions dead, anti-colonial movements largely stopped in their tracks is not something that I would call ‘history proving them right’. That also ignores the fact that having a privatised economy does have significant negative consequences for working-class people, including the lack of guaranteed housing - something that disturbingly many people like to ignore.
The CPSU is the one that built a world where all socialism revolved around and depended on their support and then just sort of gave up. It was a catastrophic error on the part of the Soviets to place themselves incontestably at the helm, and the fruit of that error is the near-instant collapse of the entire second world. If China had remained aligned with the USSR, it wouldn’t have stopped the party’s internal issues. China would most likely end up just like Vietnam, forced to implement market reforms.
Okay, so, the PRC is not doing that. Now, the presence of socialist and anti-colonial movements in the world is much weaker (which the PRC did contribute to directly). You do understand how this is worse, right?
The Soviet Union’s colossal fuckup created the world we’re in now. China’s efforts one way or the other have been tiny, and while I’m largely not a fan it is absolutely nothing compared to the way the Soviet Union squandered the strongest position socialism has ever been in globally, and ushered in a period of utterly unchallengeable American dominance.
I can only pray that we get another revolutionary moment as big as postwar decolonization and that whatever exists at that time doesn’t waste it again.
The USSR helping socialist and anti-colonial movements of the world doesn’t seem to have been a contributing factor in either its fall or NATO becoming stronger.
The PRC is yet to contribute to international socialist and anti-colonial struggle to the extent the USSR did.
Helping socialist and anti-colonial movements largely benefitted the Soviet Union and it was in a perfect place to do so. The problem is that, especially post-Stalin, it did not treat them as equal partners or set them up for independent success. It created dependants, and this was great for its own position in the cold war game, but left the whole socialist world in shambles without it. This was an issue with most of their allies, and caused a number of major geopolitical rifts.
Internationalism doesn’t mean shit if you build it in a manner where it all falls apart almost instantaneously, and in fact I think the way the USSR lost pretty much all the ground gained in the biggest decolonial moment in modern history is an unforgivable sin.
I do wish the PRC would do more, and I think that most of its post-split policy can be summed up as stupid anti-soviet realpolitik, but I also don’t think there’s really been many viable moments (outside of Palestine) where the PRC’s support would leave a lasting impact since before the fall of the USSR. I want more, but resources shouldn’t be wasted on hopeless projects that turn China into a pariah in the meantime.
The USSR itself was also extremely sparing and strategic with its international efforts prior to the second world war, because it was in a vulnerable position. This was the basis for the concept of socialism in one country. Time will tell if the opportunity arises again.
Notably, the PRC is not taking any better action in this regard, and no alternatives from the ‘the USSR helping anti-colonial liberation movements of the world was somehow bad’ camp seem to be produced.
Also, what would be your solution when it comes to those movements not becoming dependent on the USSR in a world where NATO exists? Do you think that the USSR had the power to instantaneously make those countries as powerful as itself?
It did not ‘fall apart almost instantaneously’, and it did not ‘lose pretty much all the ground gained’. They are still better off than before their liberation.
It’s also silly how you pretend as if the USSR helping those movements is an ‘unforgivable sin’, while the PRC helping NATO, such as by aiding the Mujahideen and fighting Vietnam, is somehow not.
Okay, so, you expect the USSR to make other countries as capable in terms of economics and military as itself in the blink of an eye, but you also want to make excuses for the PRC being either unable or unwilling to do much more realistic things?
Apply the same standard to both, and either admit that the PRC has not only not produced independent/equal anti-colonial powers and should be criticised for that, or admit that the USSR having the liberated countries depend on it was better than what the PRC has been doing.
I’m not sure why you think I’m arguing that helping these movements was bad? I’m arguing that the USSR was chauvinistic and deliberately set up its allies as dependants ideologically and economically. I would never suggest that they should be made magically as strong as the USSR, but that it simply not deliberately subordinate them to itself. If it were just one ally of the USSR that accused them of that it would be one thing, but it was visibly structurally true and was a major fracture point for their relations with several other socialist countries.
Are you really going to suggest that the socialist bloc didn’t disintegrate almost immediately in the late 80s-early 90s? Post-colonial states typically fared better, but very firmly regressed and were almost all forced to re-enter the imperialists economic sphere.
Also, I’m not saying any of the things about China that you are claiming. If you’re going to argue entirely past me at some strawman I’m going to ask to disengage.
I don’t think it’s that simple. It’s impossible to say now how much or if any of their mistakes were actually necessary to that survival.
If losing four decades of progress while waiting for the PRC to reach parity with the US and establish multipolarity when the USSR was already at near parity, then china sacrificed the interests of humanity in service of its own, full stop
We passed 1.5C ffs
The USSR built a socialist world around and wholly dependent on itself, and then capitulated internally (due to the utter decay of the party as a revolutionary institution), destroying that order almost all at once. I don’t know what China could have done to prevent that. An unsplit China would have been significantly more dependent on the USSR and at best would most likely have been forced into a similar position to Vietnam after the collapse anyway.
One could argue letting the US have a unipolar moment induced a terminal delusion in the minds of it’s ruling class and untethered them a lot from reality,and now we’re beginning to see the payoff
The soviets,by doing those things,kept the western world on its toes and made it necessary to boot out any cranks or truly incompetent people
fuck off, china did what they thought it was best for them, and now they’re positioned as beacon for the global south while the USSR got dismantled by a freaking drunkard, that’s a clear sign that they were not even close to near parity with the west.
The ones responsible for the misery in the world are primarily the western working class, the privileged henchmen of the bourgeoisie, not china ffs.
“supporting the Khmer Rouge was good, actually”
-literally you
So does NATO with things like colonialism. So did Germany, Britain, France, the US before the formation of NATO.
Doing what’s best for you, or what you think is best for you does not, in fact, make those actions good.
What does being a ‘beacon’ entail here? Other countries are not in a position to do what the PRC did (make itself the most attractive option for foreign investments at the exclusion of other countries (including the imperial core)), and the PRC does not seem to be supplying arms or anything like that to them to fight off NATO, nor is the PRC taking military action to help anti-colonial and socialist movements around the world.
The successes of the PRC, while very significant, do not seem to play much of a role outside of the PRC.
It’s primarily the western bourgeoisie, and the western treatlerite aristocracy comes after, but sure.
Not exactly an excuse to do stuff like literally supporting NATO (and, by extension, the western bourgeoisie), including by doing stuff like helping the Mujahideen against socialists in Afghanistan and fighting against Vietnam.
I agree, but still they have stood the test of time where as the USSR failed miserably. Which is ultimately what really matters.