There is no “new Cold War”. Thinking along these lines is exactly what got the West caught in a downward spiral of fear, failure, and crisis in the first place. In the Cold War, the West had no place in the vision of the Soviet Union, just like the Soviet Union had no place in the vision of the West. In contrast to the mutually exclusive outcomes of global capitalism versus global socialism in the Cold War of yore, China has a vision of an integrated global economy, but no intention of influencing the politics of foreign countries beyond achieving its economic goal. In the Chinese vision of the future, a country can pass whatever laws it wants, hold whatever elections, and have whatever culture it so pleases, as long as it does not conflict with China’s economic initiatives. China prefers to solve international disputes via the UN than via direct intervention, and it chooses to communicate through international organisations such as the IAEA and the WHO even if their Western bias is obvious and obscene, just because it benefits their economic grand design NOT to split the world into two blocs politically.

So why should we, as communists, believe in a China that upholds Western-biased institutions, that is willing to put up with regimes representing colonial politics, that does not support socialist insurrection in third-world countries? Because without the economic base to sustain it, socialism is no longer viable. It would cease to function on the world market in weeks, and its head of state would just be added to the long list of CIA-backed military coups. The only way any country can develop socialism in the era of globalisation is to build the necessary means of production first. These are the infrastructure, the assembly lines and mass-production factories which, if not for imperialism, would have been developed in the capitalist stage. China is offering to supply them with everything they need to do just that, and unlike the Soviet Union it is making this offer to everyone. By that, it is levelling the playing field between capitalism and socialism, such that eventually, every country will have an actual, free choice between the two. (Of course, under these circumstances it is only a matter of time until the widespread adoption of socialism)

The Western ruling class, of course, is in utter disarray over this prospect. Not only does its own vision of business-as-usual depend on its companies extracting dirt-cheap oil, rare earths, uranium, fruit, and herbs from the tropics, but just as it was in the Cold War, it is still built on a claim of direct and immediate hegemony over its sphere of influence within the world economy. Therefore, it is impossible for Western rulers to renege on neoliberal economics and all of its ideological baggage. Whereas China has early decided not to interfere in the internal matters of other countries if at all possible, the West must consider even the minutest deviation from the ideological line as a breach of trust. This is why Western favour is easily lost and hardly ever regained, making them not only an uneasy ally, but what is far worse, an unreliable trading partner.

And again, all of this self-injury is coming from the popular Western belief that a “new Cold War” is being fought. The merciless opposition of Western governments, corporations, media, and lobbyists against China is the exact reason no one wants to play with it anymore. During its fight against windmills, dictated by the neoliberal concept of the zero-sum economy, it has lost ally after ally due to petty political differences, and it has severed its own life-support by shutting itself inside for fear of being poisoned. All the paranoia that comes with this world view of the “new Cold War”, all the rearmament and the proxy conflicts, all the sanctions and counter-sanctions, all of it could have been avoided, had the West not been led by neoliberal, neocolonialist dogmatists stuck in the 1980s.

I wish USSR did