this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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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.
I pretty generally agree with you. I do think it should be said though that the (critical) support of Russia in the Russia Ukraine conflict is due to Ukraine, since 2014, being pulled into the western us-backed orbit, and Russia mostly reacting to this encirclement, and of course the civil war against Russian separatists in the east since 2014 (who knew that under the us-backed regime they’d be likely genocided as Russian speakers). So there’s a bit more context than just which one is more fascist explaining why leftists seem to support Russia to varying degrees. Russia acts as a bulwark against U.S. imperialism, and their current action was a reaction to us imperialism.
Yes I agree with everything you've said.
I think it's worth adding that we also need to be aware that in any multipolar world, preferable as it may, or may not, be, it is perfectly possible that other spheres of influence around the main poles develop imperialist positions. I personally think that Russia has already well displayed this capacity. It's interests as a nationalist state capitalist power will naturally drive it to an imperialist position in its region of influence, imo.