#41

Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia posted:

tears posted:

i thought to put this here as a companion to what the op is posting

how did they manage to write all this without a single mention of the US 🤔


by mentioning the US 11 times

#42

pogfan1996 posted:

In fact, according to China’s statistics, the enterprises regarded as being run by foreign capital are not really run by foreign capital at all. Companies catered by Hong Kong – part of China since 1997 – are also considered in these appraisals of “foreign” capital. Hong Kong is the single largest entry point for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in China. For example, FDI that entered China from Hong Kong deposited 456.2 billion dollars (41% of the total) by 2010. Compare the FDI deposited by America by 2010 was only 78.7 billion dollars (7.1% of the total).

There is a myth that powerful countries like the US, Britain and Germany dominate the economy of China. This is false. The accumulated FDI that is added from all the countries like America, Britain, Germany, France and Japan was only 197.4 billion dollars in 2010, not even equal to half the FDI from Hong Kong.


It's more than a little disingenuous to claim that investment coming via HK originates in HK. Not sure why they would make such a big point out of this when they appear not to have a basic understanding of HK's status and role.

The larger point, the elephant in the room, is the rules of global trade. China has been a member of the WTO for almost two decades, and with that membership comes a set of rules around things like foreign investment and market liberalisation - a "trade off", if you will Anyway, there's a lot to criticise about the Chinese economy, not least of which are working conditions and exploitation by an apparent bourgeois class. But it strikes me as being in bad faith to rattle off a list of black marks against China - both legitimate and incorrect - in order to condemn China without examining the context in which it operates.

#43

88888 posted:

Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia posted:

tears posted:

i thought to put this here as a companion to what the op is posting

how did they manage to write all this without a single mention of the US 🤔

by mentioning the US 11 times


In the thing tears posted?

#44

Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia posted:

88888 posted:

Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia posted:

tears posted:

i thought to put this here as a companion to what the op is posting

how did they manage to write all this without a single mention of the US 🤔

by mentioning the US 11 times

In the thing tears posted?


yes. did you actually read it

#45
Mea culpa. I skimmed it and then did a ctrl+f in my text editor for strings including 'us' which didn't pick up the instances of the capitalised 'US'.
#46

Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia posted:

Mea culpa. I skimmed it and then did a ctrl+f in my text editor for strings including 'us' which didn't pick up the instances of the capitalised 'US'.



#47
i did the same thing but i did ctrl+f for "u$" but the revisionist "c"pp doesn't use the correct terminology
#48
a better question is "why do communist insurgents writing an article about china, a government that, ignoring whatever else people want to (wrongly) dispute, is currently selling weapons to the government that is shooting them, need to be about the united states, even though it's mentioned a whole bunch anyway"
#49
It doesn't have to be ABOUT the US, it would just have been weird not to mention them given the Philippines' former status as an outright US colony and current status as an imperial outpost. I mean, come on. But they do mention it so the point is moot.
#50
there are lots of statements by the cpp which deal with the primacy of us imperialism, thats just the recent one which talks in depth about china, since the thread is specifically about china and social imperialism; and it should be possible to discuss that with the implicit understanding that amerikkka bad

extract from https://cpp.ph/2019/07/04/end-seven-decades-of-semicolonial-yoke/ posted:

End seven decades of semicolonial yoke
Statement of the Communist Party of the Philippines
July 04, 2019

[...]

The US imperialists are working double-time to strengthen its economic, political, military and cultural hegemony in the Philippines and across the world in the face of continuing international capitalist depression, intensifying inter-imperialist competition and rising contradictions over trade routes and spheres of investment and influence. The US is particularly wary of China and its effort to exert economic, political and cultural influence in the Philippines as well as its build-up of military strength and presence.

China is already making headway under the US-Duterte regime in terms of gaining a military foothold in the South China Sea and strengthening its economic presence in the country. It has also been carrying a campaign to influence public opinion through the Philippine mass media by flooding it with stories and advertisements depicting Chinese economic growth and strengthening its influence among columnists and opinion makers. It is using both economic pressure, bribery and corruption in connection with large amounts of onerous loans to get favors from Philippine officials. However, China remains a far secondary imperialist country in the Philippines compared to US imperialism.

The Philippines is presently in the middle of a gathering inter-imperialist storm which provides opportunities for asserting the country’s national sovereignty. However, starting from a policy of subservience and sellout of patrimony, the US-Duterte regime has succeeded only in worsening the country’s state of economic dependence and debt bondage, strengthening foreign military domination and putting the country in danger of being caught in the middle of superpower armed conflict.

Under the US-Duterte regime, the Philippines status as a US semicolony continues to worsen. The Filipino people must continue to strengthen their patriotism and unite to wage national democratic struggles to end seven decades of semicolonial subjugation and achieve national and social liberation.

#51
"Three of the ten largest corporations (super monopolies) in the world belonged to China. These are Sinopec Petroleum Corporation, China National Petroleum and the energy giant State Grid Corporation."


A capitalist economy encompassing one sixth of the planet’s population must possess some gigantic companies. China does. Four of the world’s top 10 corporations by gross profits are Chinese. However, this doesn’t really tell us much. Here is the list in order of gross profits, with each company’s return on assets (RoA) in brackets: Exxon Mobil (13), Apple (24), Gazprom (10), Industrial Commercial Bank of China (1), China Construction Bank (1), Volkswagen (7), Shell (7), Chevron (11), Agricultural Bank of China (1) and Bank of China (1). Thus, according to Fortune, imperialist giant MNCs’ average return on assets is 12 times higher than that of Chinese monopolies!

This reflects that most Chinese monopolies are not budding MNCs, but domestic conglomerates. They’re also not in sectors in which China is supposed to be internationally competitive, or that have driven its economic growth – principally export-oriented manufacturing. The biggest companies are mostly giant domestic banks. Nolan and Zhang explain that by 2009, the world’s three largest banks by market capitalisation were Chinese. “However, the international operations of China’s leading banks remain far behind those of the Atlantic core. China does not have a single bank among the world’s top fifty, ranked by geographical spread. The 2008 financial crisis appeared to offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire banking assets in the high-income countries – yet, despite their huge market capitalisation, China’s banks were conspicuously absent from the wave of mergers and acquisitions in this sector.” Giant Chinese banks’ failure to capitalise on imperialism’s “great recession” starkly contrasts with imperialist finance capital’s aggressive expansion during the 1997-8 “Asian” economic crisis.

https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/lenins-theory-of-imperialism-a-defence-of-its-relevance-in-the-21st-century/

#52
I'm not sure if return on assets is the best measure of whether an organization is a budding MNC or a domestic conglomerate, return on assets is just net income/avg assets. Within the global imperialist system, the trend is to keep high Marxian value/low price manufacturing in the periphery while keeping low Marxian value/high price activites in the core, which will distort the return on assets calculation. It seems to me that the trend in China has been to use the high value/low price industrial base to build more low value/high price industries. More on the price/value relationship here.

I'm also confused by the graphic's definition of core vs non-core corporations. It says China doesn't have a bank in the top 50 in the Global 500 for 2017, but Industrial & Commercial Bank of China was ranked 22nd and doesn't appear in the list.

Edited by pogfan1996 ()

#53

pogfan1996 posted:

I'm also confused by the graphic's definition of core vs non-core corporations. It says China doesn't have a bank in the top 50 in the Global 500 for 2017, but Industrial & Commercial Bank of China was ranked 22nd and doesn't appear in the list.


if it helps clarify anything, from his thesis (pg 245, where the table is referenced): "Financial corporations are excluded because they cannot be meaningfully measured using RoA." idk

#54
Yeah I dunno either. Just curious about that and thinking of this as like a particle accelerator experiment where I'll smash that into the RAIM translation and see what pops out the other side.
#55
So, to sum up what I have read so far in this thread: China is communist
#56
[account deactivated]
#57
Foreign Investment in China

The first economic principle of imperialism is monopoly. The second is the formation of some financial investment, thereby forming into financial monopoly (oligopoly). Along with the evolution of monopoly in the industrial sector, there emerges monopoly in the banking sector. Major banks infiltrate the industrial sector by investing money in shares of the industries. Monopoly brings finance and industrial concerns together to form monopoly-finance capital. Some of the investors who are in the process of gaining authority over the largest financial investments have emerged as financial oligopolists in China. The central government has unassailable control over this sector. For example, beverage manufacturer, Hangzhou Wahaha group chairman, and the richest man in China in 2012 and second-richest in 2013, Zong Qinghou, had an annual income of 68 billion yuan. Similarly, the family wealth of Wu Yajun, the chairwoman of Longfor Properties in Beijing, is 40 billion yuan. Moreover, she is the richest woman in China. Former Prime Minister of China, Wen Jiabao, is the patriarch of a billionaire investment family with 2.7 billion dollars in assets under its control.

Four of the top ten banks in the world belong to China. The biggest one is the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). Its property is valued at 2.8 trillion dollars. The others are China’s Constructions Bank (2.2 trillion dollars in assets), the Bank of China (2 trillion dollars in assets) and the Agriculture Bank of China (2.1 trillion dollars in assets). These banks are the centres for monetary investment. These four banks are under purview of senior men within the leadership of the CCP. All the major banks in China are under strong governmental and party control. They have become the main tools by which the government rewards or punishes certain trends, sectors, or individuals, and they are the linchpins of government policy. They encouraged mainly bank loans to SOEs. This is one of the main reasons that the government needs long-lasting control over the public sector. This strong control over finance in China is not like the significant control in the hands of beneficiary of Wall Street in America. The bureaucratic private monopoly capitalist class which entered the CCP has rotted the state from the inside out and refashioned China in their image.

The financial oligarchy in China not only has a grip over political power, but also on different sectors of the society. For example, nearly 70 members in the National Peoples’ Congress (NPC), China’s parliament, have accumulated vast wealth. The total wealth of these members surpassed the combined wealth of the 585 members of the American Congress and its president, cabinet members and the Supreme Court. The net collective income of these 70 lawmakers increased up to 565.8 yuan (89.8 billion USD) in 2011, and has risen since.

Banks in China have two roles. One is to finance corporatisation in the public and private sectors. The second is to accumulate investments according to the direction of the government. These banks, however, are individually wildly profitable firms. For instance, nearly 50 billion dollars of tax-free profit was netted for ICBC in 2012. The top four banks in China earned nearly 150 billion yuan (30 billion dollars), equal to 3/4th of the total profits of China, by the end of 2012. At the same time this is also 3/4th of the total profits gained by the top four banks in America.

Labour Aristocrats

There emerged two social tiers, namely labour aristocrats and the petit bourgeoisie in the development of capitalist China. Their number might be 100 to 150 million. There are two aspects of this. Firstly, there were trade unions and farmers’ unions in large numbers in China for a long time. The leadership of these unions was taken over by revisionists during the period of capitalist restoration. The private and public leadership was concentrated. This became a prime resource to the rise of a labour aristocracy. Secondly, there was also a bourgeoisie among the people in occupations such as factory management, service management, and millions of broker agents, lawyers, educators and engineers. Those tiers that received recognition as professionals and managers served major local and foreign corporations and the emergent capitalist class in China. This special layer of people reflects the birth of imperialism in China. Subsequently, the majority of workers and farmers were subjected to super-exploitation. The massive profits gained through monopoly investment are the financial foundation for this labour aristocracy, and so to the development of revisionism within the working class movement. The birth of a labour aristocracy under conditions of an emerging imperialism gave rise to revisionist policy and ways to protect this fledging imperialism. Labour aristocrats are in fact the agents of the unseen bourgeois class. Revisionism is bourgeois ideology in the mask of Marxism.

Economic Anarchy in Capitalism

China was affected least by the global overproduction crisis, as well as inflation, as it has developed more and faster capacities to balance the weight of credit/debit transactions. There were attractive stimulus packages during the inflationary period of 2008 to 2009. However, as a part of competition in the monetary sector, China was moving towards allocating investments by irrational means. This is inevitable under capitalism in the view of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. It can be compared to the dot com bubble in the US in the late 1990s, when huge investments in internet companies were allocated irrationally. Many of them could not make any profits and met with billion-dollar losses. There was a new wave in attracting investments after this crisis from 2000 to 2006 in America, which transformed into the prime housing loan crisis and sub-prime crisis at the end of 2007. The same crisis happened in Japan in the late 1980s. The Japanese real estate bubble burst in the early 1990s.

Crises continuously develop in the Chinese monetary system, the same as all other capitalist-imperialist countries. For example, a housing crisis is forming in China – in truth, it has been present for many years. For the first time in 2013, the sale of new houses crossed the trillion-dollar threshold. The total value of new houses increased by 27% per year ahead of this boom. Average new housing sales in Beijing before one year to this boom increased to 16% in 2013. Moreover, average new housing sales were increased to 18% in Shanghai and 20% in Guanzhou and Shenzhen. There is also a banking sector in China (though with different characteristics from Western countries) under the control of the government. At present in China, overproduction is underway, just as in all capitalist economies. One such manifestation is the phenomenon of “Ghost Cities,” as well as apartment and office blocks that stand empty.

There are no ideological differences between the other capitalist-imperialist countries and China in economic anarchy. There will be wealth bubbles and expansion of debts in times of economic boom in any country. Economic anarchy is ensconced in the nature of capitalist policy
#58
A lot of criticism I've seen lately has been with China's treatment towards Africa. On the opposing side, I read this article that suggests it's not an exploitative relationship, but I get the feeling they're leaving some details out. As cliched as it is, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
#59
The impression I have of the state-level - financial, trade - relationship between China and African countries is quite positive. It is the relationship between Chinese companies and African workers that is not always so laudable.
#60

88888 posted:

a better question is "why do communist insurgents writing an article about china, a government that, ignoring whatever else people want to (wrongly) dispute, is currently selling weapons to the government that is shooting them, need to be about the united states, even though it's mentioned a whole bunch anyway"


The USSR's relationship with India was unquestionably imperialist, but the USSR had no part in the centuries-long English undervaluation of Indian labour and its fruits, or the devaluation of the rupee imposed by the US-led capitalist bloc. The rulers of the USSR could have decided to support genuine socialist development in India and other third world countries but doing so would have incurred costs and risks proportional to the stakes that both rulers and subjects of NATO had in such development not occurring, eg-


So to answer your question, Chinese imperialism is about US/NATO imperialism to the extent the latter created the conditions for its development. Theres nothing wrong with identifying and then denouncing all instances of imperialism - Chinese imperialism in Africa, Iranian imperialism in Iraq, black-on-black imperialism in US inner cities, provided one keeps the broader context in mind, which is fairly easy to do if one actually does want to understand them. I don't get the sense the OP essay/article about Chinese imperialism claiming to be translated from (unavailable) documents published by an illegal Maoist party, is doing that.

I think the Chinese leadership/bourgeoisie and middle classes are social-imperialist, but you can say the same thing of India, South Africa and the US. That doesn't in itself say much if anything at all about them. Chinese social-imperialism is by and large sustained by the demands of its western counterpart, while also (for that reason) having a much smaller base materially bound up with it, much less room for growth and being far more (under current conditions) prone to crisis. To my mind, this fact alone complicates the issue and renders it very different from 1910s Euro/US inter-imperialist rivalry. The actual conflict between China and the USA seems to be more about the USA wanting more control over Chinese labour and markets, and access to US tech, than inter-imperialist rivalry over chunks of colonial territory where the owner gets to dictate terms. Obviously, it might develop into a more full-blown conflict, perhaps sooner than any of us realise. But it's not at all clear to me that such a conflict would be over who gets to hold aloft the sceptre of imperialism and enslave all oppressed nations. The colonies/semi-colonies of the west won both world wars for them, not by housing them in "neoliberal" ghetto-ringed luxury condos that they invested in, but by (involuntarily) feeding their people and giving them the resources that built and fuelled their planes and tanks. Imo if outsourcing of production in and of itself opened up the possibility of US imperialism getting supplanted by Chinese, it wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Edited by vimingok ()

#61

vimingok posted:

Iranian imperialism in Iraq, black-on-black imperialism in US inner cities



do you mind expanding on this, this seems like a big divergence from the commonly understood concept of imperialism

#62

pogfan1996 posted:

vimingok posted:

Iranian imperialism in Iraq, black-on-black imperialism in US inner cities

do you mind expanding on this, this seems like a big divergence from the commonly understood concept of imperialism


Well inner city black-on-black imperialism would be, but I wasn't serious about that. Iran considers Iraq to be a part of its natural sphere of influence, and US and Iranian backed politicians are the only ones that have any power there. Don't know how things stands right now though. Regardless, Iran and the US aren't equally guilty of exploiting Iraq even if both do it. And the end of US imperialism in Iraq won't necessarily lead to the same conditions as before but with Iran as the dominant perpetrator. You can't oppose all instances of imperialism equally any more than you can equally oppose all crime.

#63
'sphere of influence' is not, i would have thought, synonymous with 'empire'.
#64
The World Bank is a sphere of influence, not an empire. It's the instrument used to pressure global south countries to abandon domestic food grain production for cash crops, sold at ridiculously depressed prices for proportionately jacked up food/feed grains of which the western countries run huge surpluses, the value thus extracted used to subsidise their own farmers. Iran exports food to Iraq, including crops that Iraq domestically produces like Jaffa oranges. So is Iran a rival imperialist power to the US for doing that, and is it anywhere near as bad as what the World Bank is doing? I don't think so, the context matters not the bare fact of any form of imperialism occurring between countries. The OP's article seems to disagree.
#65

vimingok posted:

Iran exports food to Iraq, including crops that Iraq domestically produces like Jaffa oranges. So is Iran a rival imperialist power to the US for doing that,


i like to think we can all agree on lenin's concept of imperialism, at least as a starting point, and i'm not the expert, but i think he is pretty clear that imperialism is not found in any one form of exploitation of one state by another. it is a combination of factors. as for the world bank, it doesn't do imperialism, rather it is a tool of imperialism.

#66
i really think this forum is premised on the notion that you can in fact "oppose all instances of imperialism"
#67
Was reading this Turkish think tank report, about how Turkish elites see things, and there is a part about China in Central Asia and it says: "Due to today's populism in international arena, the gap between the rich and poor is huge, both domestic and internationally. China is also trying to reduce this gap between a lot of countries." Seems pretty reasonable.
#68
when posting about imperialism it would seem, at the very least, a requirement to engage with the basic leninist concepts of both imperialism and also the state, rather than just throwing the term around in reference to bad thing done by x to y, which seems to do nothing but promote confusion

op doc posted:

Its nature is threefold:

Imperialism means
1. Monopoly.
2. Parasitism and general decay.
3. Moribund capitalism.

The economic aspects of imperialism are fivefold:

1. The general victory of monopoly.
2. The formation of financial oligarchies that unite industrial and bank investment.
3. The primacy of capital export over goods export.
4. Formation of monopolies which split the world among themselves.
5. Accomplishing the division of the entire world among the different major capitalistic states.

#69
Capital Export leads to the Global Primacy of FinanceCapital

Export Investments in the Form of Bonds and Loans

Lenin taught that the rise of monopolies and the importance of capital export are the two most important defining features of imperialism. The sudden development of export capital is the prime cause for this transformation. The impact of extreme accumulation via industrial investment, financial investment (bonds and debts, etc.), imperialist rent, and industrial productivity coupled with massive bank investment – these factors make capital export both possible and necessary. This can be clearly seen when there is an abnormal, sudden growth in local and foreign stock exchanges. These stocks increased to 3,305 billion dollars in March 2012 from 165 billion dollars in the year 2000. Interestingly, foreign stock exchange is equal to the total foreign stock exchange values of the next six countries. Foreign stock exchange is utilised by financial capital in the form of debts. The share of additional value gained from the country which drew the loan will be realized by shareholders. Usually, foreign stock exchange should have some special consumer rights. These will be secured in the form of foreign government bonds or IMF bank deposits (as per international contract laws) which are very relatively secure and transparent. In fact, 3.3 trillion dollars of China’s economy is exchanges in foreign stock only.

Presently, China has become the largest capitalist creditor to America in the form US treasury bonds. At present, China buys shares of government loans from countries in the Eurozone.

Even in bilateral debts, China is an active lender to many countries. According to the Financial Times, Chinese banks have emerged as prominent world financial institutions in the last few years. China loans more to backward countries than the World Bank. Banks like the Export and Import Bank of China and the China Development Bank were ready to give loans up to 10 billion dollars to many other imperialist countries and companies, and they even made agreements during 2009 and 2010. The World Bank made an agreement for 100 billion dollars to lend to other countries between the years 2008 and 2010.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as Export Capital

China began their “Go Global” strategy in 2000. The object of this slogan is the need to re-centralisation export capital partially in the place of cheap goods exports in the economic sector. According to Xinhua, on 15 March 2011, then Prime Minister Wen Jiabao stated: “We must implement the Go Global policy in a more accelerated way. The policies that support this Go Global policy must be improved. Scrutinising and approving processes must be simplified. We must help the companies or enterprises and people who can invest in other countries. Let us encourage the companies to work globally very fast with prime policies. We must reinforce macro guidance. Let us improve the necessary machinery to take them forward to uphold and prevent capital from disasters.”

There are some primary goals for the “Go Global” policy of China: creating “global champions” and encouraging them is one strategy. This means that multinationals headquartered in China should compete effectively with global brands in the international market. For example, Pearl River is the manufacturer of the best pianos on the market. It has surpassed its competitor Yamaha even in quality. Similarly, as a multinational in the modern world, it has access to a world-class technological base. Backwardness does not exist for Chinese multinationals. It is possible to get foreign technology through OFDI, rather than FDI. It is possible to solve substantial hurdles, like import quotas and tariffs, by utilizing different companies and their world branches. In this way, the “Go Global” strategy has matured as a basic precondition for modern export capital. It is a basic necessity for all imperialist countries to find the most profitable places in the world and exploit them to the fullest possible extent. China came out of the world financial crisis as a major capital exporter. The 2008 crisis began in the US and led to the insolvency of many major firms and public banks. To maintain stability, the Western government bailed out MNCs with large stimulus packages. This opportunity was seized by China and utilised to invest in other countries. Hence capital export rose significantly. The Chinese imperialists are investing capital in huge sums for raw materials and industrial assets in other countries, rather in their own country. The scarcity of credit after the crisis, and a sharp demand for cash by growing corporations in countries north and south, was skilfully played upon by Chinese capital. This enhanced enormously the capital investments of China in other countries.

Chinese OFDI in the past was as low as 2.5 billion dollars. It took until 2007 for it to grow to 18.6 billion, but shot to 52.2 billion dollars by 2008. According to data from Standard Chartered, OFDI reached 65 billion dollars by 2009, while FDI into China was at 150-180 billion dollars. China has emerged as an imperialist power only recently. It is weaker than the Western imperialist countries and Japan, who rule international finance. Hence FDIs are more in the hands of the old imperialist powers than in China. Their shares are as follows in China: America 21.1%, Britain 8.1%, Germany 6.8%, France 6.4%, Hong Kong 4.9%, Italy 2.4%, whereas China has 1.7%. However, China has been developing very rapidly towards investing FDIs from 2005 onward. According to official statistics, China’s FDIs reached 344.8 billion dollars between 2005 and 2012. Chinese FDI has surpassed some of its opponents, including Canada and Italy. It has reached the level of Germany. As per Heritage Foundation data, the most important countries in which China kept capital between 2005 and 2010 are as follows – Australia: 45.3 billion dollars, America: 42 billion, Brazil: 25.7 billion, Indonesia: 23.3 billion, Nigeria: 18.8 billion, Canada: 17.2 billion, Iran: 17.2 billion, Kazakhstan: 12.3 billion, Greece: 5 billion, and Venezuela: 8.9 billion.

China has the highest savings fund interest. The highest surplus in current accounts is about 195 trillion dollars, which is the highest surplus in the world. At the least 80 million foreign employees working for Chinese companies live in the semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries. The role of China is growing rapidly in backward countries. Monopoly enterprises of China are focusing investment on important infrastructure projects such as harbours in addition to other strategic investments like oil refineries. China has already sunk 200 million dollars in the construction of modern harbours at Gwadar in Pakistan. The Ramu Nickel Mine, worth 2.1 billion dollars and situated in Papua New Guinea, was captured by the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC). It reflects the highest Chinese investment in the South Pacific and has come under armed attack by disgruntled villagers resentful over the destruction of their homes and the poisoning of the waters with nickel and cobalt by-products. Similarly, COSCO, the massive Chinese shipping giant, acquired a 51% controlling share of Piraeus, an important Greek port in the eastern Mediterranean.

By the end of 2006, China had made 5,000 regional investments and TNCs installed 10,000 FDIs in 172 countries around the world. Accumulated FDIs in other countries totalled only 90.63 billion dollars. China was saved from the global economic crisis because the banking sector in China is under the control of the government. Due to this strong position, China was able to invest in other countries and approved 100 million dollars in local investment in Chinese companies, encouraging local enterprises to invest more in other countries. China is focusing mainly on minerals and electricity resources, and it has consented to arrange a 46 billion dollar investment to supply oil on a long-term basis from countries like Russia, Brazil, Venezuela and Kazakhstan. Along with this, China is investing huge amounts of capital in power resource companies. Chinese conglomerates are inevitably reorganizing to compete on a global level. It was also mandatory for China to create or buy marketing networks, bonds, and technology to develop.

In order to carve itself a place among the top conglomerates, China regularly engages in shady and/ or unethical business dealings, as well as massive acquisitions. China arranged a joint venture with ALKATEL, a French manufacturer of telecom machinery, and TCL, the massive television and electronics manufacturer. China gained control over operations for THOMPSON, one of Europe’s largest TV and DVD manufacturers. Zoomlion, a producer of concrete heavy machinery in China, acquired Italian construction machinery firm CIFA in 2008. Although foreign investment surged, Chinese businesses and bureaucrats feared for the stability of the US dollar. China has kept its 1.95 trillion dollars of foreign exchange in treasury bills and other American companies as capital. Chinese leaders are tense about the security of their assets and their value and feared the US stimulus package might endanger their holdings. China established the China Investment Corporation with an intention to invest 200 billion dollars in MNCs and global monetary enterprises in 2007. It established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to gather investment and to gain a strong foothold in Asia and Europe, in order to solidify the dream project of an integrated “One Belt, One Road.”

Heavy currency holdings enable China to extend its economic and political impact on other countries. China has become one of the sources of investment, debts and support for backward and indebted countries. For example, when Jamaica’s traditional allies such as the United States and Britain languished in the financial crisis, China advanced $138 million to “save” that country. China lent large sums to Russia and Kazakhstan. To overcome the global financial crisis and to support northwest Asia, China declared a 10 billion dollar capital co-operative fund and a 15 billion dollar loan for Asian alliances. Countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, which have strong alliances with America and Japan, are at present looking to China for capital investment.

In this way, imperialism is the strongest foundation for the exploitation of markets at the highest level, as well as exploiting the poorest nations
#70

lo posted:

i really think this forum is premised on



lol

#71
SIGNED,

THE AD-HOC COMMITTEE OF PARTISAN FORUM ULTRA-PREMISERS
#72

Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia posted:

vimingok posted:

Iran exports food to Iraq, including crops that Iraq domestically produces like Jaffa oranges. So is Iran a rival imperialist power to the US for doing that,

i like to think we can all agree on lenin's concept of imperialism, at least as a starting point, and i'm not the expert, but i think he is pretty clear that imperialism is not found in any one form of exploitation of one state by another. it is a combination of factors. as for the world bank, it doesn't do imperialism, rather it is a tool of imperialism.


Yes it's a combination of factors, hence why I said the broader context matters, ie the material conditions created by global imperialism or more fundamentally, the conditions that capitalism has always needed and created to sustain and propagate itself.

My very amateur impression is that Lenin was mainly concerned about *national* finance and industrial capitalism as it manifested in his day. But we are now, and have been for a while, living in the era of *international* finance capital, which quite apart from being the force driving between-nation rivalries is materially interested in preventing or at least mediating them. I don't see how imperialist rivalry in Lenin's sense can be said to exist in post-WW2 capitalism. Also Lenin limited his observations about inter-imperialist contradictions to the period he was writing in, where 'economic territory' had become vital to capitalism's survival. But that was nothing new, monopoly over the colonial labour, land and resources was always vital to capitalism. It was always parasitic.

I don't think it makes sense to derive inter-imperialist rivalry by comparing lists of 'imperialism' done by various countries. Nor does it make sense to assert that the west's highly privileged position within global imperialism/capitalism is being supplanted by some other 'imperialist' country/region determined as such using the above method. There is nothing to supplant, the power held by the west in dictating the terms of trade and production in the global south is a feature of global imperialism/capitalism, pertaining to its overall needs and historical reality.

#73
what on earth are you talking about, of course lenin was concerned with international finance capital & international capitalism at its highest stage
#74
i read that post five times and still have no idea what is going on
#75

vimingok posted:

My very amateur impression


you're doing a very good impression of a markov bot

#76
somebody should really write a book about capitalism and its development and concentration internationally. oh well.
#77

vimingok posted:

Well inner city black-on-black imperialism would be, but I wasn't serious about that.


So you were joking? What did you mean?

#78
i hope china dies
#79
♫ i hope we both die ♪
#80
[account deactivated]