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.
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 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, 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 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.