politics

China only has two allies: the People’s Liberation Army and the PLA Navy.

That’s all you need to know. The history of modern PRC is shaped by its unique position of being on a precipice and caught between the imperialist struggles between the US and the USSR during the Cold War.

Note: in China, it is not controversial to say that the USSR had imperialist ambitions against China, even if I don’t personally agree with it.

It has always been a balancing act. When the US is strong, we support the USSR as a counterbalance force against US imperialism. And when the USSR is threatening us, we side with the US to get rid of the USSR.

Play between the interests of both sides and win - that’s all you need to know about modern China’s geopolitical stance. This is the means of survival of a weak country caught between two strong powers. We have had 5000 years of history - the rise and fall of countless ruling regimes spanning dozens of dynasties - to learn from. It boils down to pragmatism and survival.

The success of modern China is a testament of how well this strategy has worked. After all, it is the PRC, not the USSR, that prevailed in the end.

China is interested in Raison d'État. same as any other modern state. They are capitalist because their economy obeys the law of value, even the SOE's are subject to this if anyone here took the time to read about it. This website's darling Michael Hudson, despite having some interesting contributions in american fiscal policy, has a remarkably weak defense of china, boiling down to "they dont have a federal reserve". Comrades here trying to run defense and tie themselves into knots for its foreign policy decisions are being very silly to be frank. The sharp contrast between pre and post maoist china's foreign policy can be explained simply, the capitalist roaders won the struggle, they have no interest at this point in time of fighting for global revolution. Their material support for cuba is a pittance, and possibly a strange artifact of cold war antagonisms. The extended loans with interest, they have privatized healthcare, and their economy runs on the extraction of raw materials from Africa and South America. None of this is to paint them as "imperialist" obviously we can defend them against western depredations, but trying to call them some bastion of socialism is bananas. And to paint them as some sort of special economy who succeeded because of the magic of "market socialism"is also a mistake. Their success is in fact highly similar with other "tiger" economies of Asia. Highly Prudent governance and massive state investment to ward off the falling rate of profit non-withstanding.

The red sails article linked below is the classic example of lazy dengist analysis that honestly falls apart with a little thinking. there is almost no political economic explanation of why billionaires must exist and the same, borderline gnostic, claim of a "master plan" by the CPC. Taking trite quotes from deng and saying "historical materialism" does not absolve people of actually having to defend their economic explanations. I have deconstructed myths about chinas "need" for market socialism, capitalist penetration, etc before and will do so again if asked, but this stuff is straight out of lenin and was functionally settled almost 100 years ago at this point.

Their decision to open up their economy and subject hundreds of millions was the force that saved capitalism. Those people labor now so the rich of the world can live lives in abject splendor. There is no such force waiting in the wings for next time. Who knows how that contradiction will resolve. Who knows how the seeming impending showdown with the USA will go.

China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.

:de-gaulle:

To add to the rest of the comments.

To put it metaphorically, the USSR helped revolutionary forces cross the river, a river they were never quite strong enough to cross on their own. China instead stands across that same river, offering help to those who manage to cross it. China’s history of undermining US sanctions against Cuba, the DPRK, and Venezuela does not in itself help any individual revolutionary party succeed. However, whoever succeeds knows they won’t have to deal with US subterfuge without support. The success or failure of any revolution will once again be up to national forces, not Washington, ex machina.

A large country inhabited by many Chinese.

China has seized the means of production.

China has taken the grill pill. They are just minding their business waiting for the US to collapse then they will just start being nice to people till everyone likes them and communism has won. That means they are helping a little worldwide as they can but they are only doing so if it doesn't mean any risk to their future position. They are using comunsit principles and theybare working and everything is getting better and that's rad. Unless things change

I went back and forth and deleted like, 3 or 4 full comments, lol. To do any justice to understand why the PRC takes the specific stances it does economically and from a foreign policy perspective requires looking into their history, and the history of the CPC in particular. What's the gist of your understanding there? Are you familiar with how the modern economy worke, as opposed to the Deng era, and the later Mao era? I could oversimplify and say that Mao, Deng, and Xi each applied Marxism-Leninism to the conditions they saw in their own time periods, and that regularly new analysis is needed to correct as conditions change, but that isn't an answer so much as it is a cop out.

I'll leave you with a famous proverb the CPC can be described as operating by: "cross the river by feeling for the stones."

Since Deng Xiaoping, the focus has been developing the productive forces, basically having a little capitalism as a treat, specifically trading internationally. The first and biggest of the trading partners was of course the US. So if they could trade with them, they could trade with anyone. They made a point of never interfering in the internal politics of other countries, however atrocious. I can only speculate that the legacy of the Sino-Soviet Split made them a little desperate, and maybe they were a little ashamed of having attacked Vietnam.

So the idea is that now they’re building the productive forces by trading with literally everyone until they can hold off the West. Just waiting to finally press that communism button. Any day now.

somewhere to the east

To help understand the background/history for their current strategy I’d recommend the 4/5 episodes of Guerrilla history podcast that has Ken Hammond on it. Here’s the link to the intro episode It’ll be detailed up to the 80s reform period and then briefly cover after that. It’s based on Kens book “China's revolution and the quest for a socialist future”. haven’t read the book yet but planning on getting it.

Basically they switched to a market economy to develop their country and raise the standard of living while keeping the core parts socialist.

As for more specific answers on stuff over the last decade I myself am looking for that currently so will share once I find some.

There are no quick answers or even an easy way to understand China. It's over 10k years of history and that's just what we know.

However, for your particular question, the one thing to understand is the ONLY thing China cares about is the Chinese people. The rest of the world could literally be on fire and everyone in the midst of genocide and China will do nothing. The Chinese strongly believe that every nation should just do whatever they want as long as they trade with China. The reasoning behind this is ironically from Europe, or at least Europe gets the credit. It's called westphanlian system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_system

The basic core of this is that China doesn't know any better than the country itself on how to rule. Maybe that country needs to commit genocide, China doesn't know and it shouldn't fall on China to try to fix it. Just look at American Adventurism and how it's affected Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, I could go on. Why try to impose your way of life on someone else if they don't want it anyway and will result in terrorism when the people revolt.

Unless of course, it's within China. If you don't like it leave as USA likes to constantly report, many people do. There's no travel bans, there's no restrictions on their citizens to force them to stay. Their only rule seems to be don't leave and attack China trying to make them change if you do.

So, ultimately to your question, the answer is China will sell pretty much anything to anyone if they ask. They're not big on restrictions outside of the country. It leads to some very strange actions to people who think a country should meddle in the business of others, but if you have westphalian values, it all makes perfect sense.

Being my one, my only, my everything.