marimite posted:It is true that over time there has been a change in reproductive policies: what was once the one child policy for Han and its lack of enforcement on Uyghur has become a two child policy for both.
Don't want to get too hung up on this because I think you make an important point regardless, but I thought minorities were still exempt from the new 'universal' limits. Struggling to find a decent source on this right now though
tears posted:i re-read Lenin's imperialism, made notes on it, then the cpi-maoist's document and made notes on that, then this whole thread. i now know whether china is imperialist or not
swampman posted:i'm pretty sure china is good and you are all racist
was turning beet-red with rage until I realized you posted this on opposite day
mediumpig posted:Salute to the brave sacrifices of the Deng brigades in defense of the world proletariat.
*under fire*
Xi, send help!
*delivery driver arrives, drops off a package*
*opens package, there are seeds*
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/26/forced-labor-china-us-nato-arms-industry-cold-war/
britain was a capitalist country in the late 1800s, and British capitalists didnt care about British proletarians let alone American or French. they still developed industry via capital exports in those countries by leeching off of Britain's colonies. they set up the basis for mass white labour aritocracy, and not just the small upper quarter or so of workers envisioned by lenin as being materially invested in imperialism.
I'm not interested in upholding the ccp or any communist party, or communism. I'm arguing against flattening context in the exact same way that liberal discourse attempts to do at every opportunity, except from a faux-orthodox Marxist leninist angle. and just to be clear it's faux orthodox because to my knowledge no one has decided what Marxism leninism is or what deviation from it entails or how it applies to well known aspects or reality. no one will either, in the absence of a Marxist leninist world order. it is bullshit posturing in lieu of original thought at best and racism at worst, or both.
the first questions any good faith discussion of chinese imperialism today should ask is what is Chinas import dependence for various food groups, how does it compare with that of the first world, what % of chinese people have access to products with input content derived from tropical crops produced elsewhere and how does it compare with the first world, why does Chinas govt defy western demands for it to produce "profitable" export crops in favor of food grains. and how much have any of these things changed if at all since the 90s.
I'll keep saying this until it gets through, it is impossible to condemn all instances of 'imperialism' in this blanket way. blaming the ccp for betraying socialism etc is useless idealistic posturing without a thorough analysis of how it could develop in the context of capitalism's structural dependence on continuous pre or quasi capitalist accumulation of tropical crops and temperate lebensraum.
and to repeat, I dont care about any communist party, government or doctrine. I care about human liberation. the vast majority of Chinese and indian peasants have a material interest in overthrowing capitalism, an interest they do not share at least in the short to mid term with the overwhelming majority of western people, as well as a similar proportion of chinese and indian capitalists and petty bourgeoisie. and contrary to what mao said they never did.
vimingok posted:and just to be clear it's faux orthodox because to my knowledge no one has decided what Marxism leninism is or what deviation from it entails or how it applies to well known aspects or reality. no one will either, in the absence of a Marxist leninist world order. it is bullshit posturing in lieu of original thought at best and racism at worst, or both.
what on earth are you talking about. obviously there is no council of nicaea that has decreed an inerrant interpretation of its principles, because it's an active living tradition that is the product of continuous revolutionary theory and practice. we can determine fidelity and revision of these principles by engaging with the terms set by and through this tradition. if you wish to understand what anti-revisionism constitutes in the context of these struggles, then read and listen to what the revolutionary organs of these struggles produce
you are claiming to argue against flattening context but you are doing so by depriving the masses of their greatest voice and their greatest weapon, the revolutionary communist party. the peasantry are reduced to an amorphous mass whose interests can only be speculated upon and collated by post-colonial theorists and anthropologists of the bourgeois academy, rather than something capable of forming an active revolutionary consciousness and direct expression of its interests and perspective through political organisation
this is exactly the same error made by those thinkers who read exclusively the work of western academic communists and deride the entire thing as eurocentric chauvinism, as if anyone is to blame for their ignorance but themselves
To see how China squanders and exploits the resources and labour of Latin America and Asia, let us look at some key examples.
Laos is one of the poorest and most backward countries in the world. It is located south of Yunan in China. Laos was destroyed during the imperialist wars in Indo-China, and it is now experiencing a new kind of investment and exploitation. China imports timber and minerals on a large scale. Huge numbers of farmers cultivating rubber do not own their land, but instead are toiling under Chinese contracts. China is building a $7.2 billion rail line from Boten on the border to Vientiane, the capital, for the looting of timber, rubber, food crops, and minerals from Laos. Nearly 50,000 workers are involved. This route is important for China to organize its programme in Southeast Asia. This route connects Vientiane to the important business centre of Bangkok. It will then expand to encompass Rangoon in Myanmar. In Laos, China operates a number of special economic zones. Many projects are being constructed. In turn, if Laos is not becoming a state of China, then it is certainly becoming a state for China.
China’s Influence in South Asia
It is important to understand China’s imperialist interests and the impact of Chinese expansion into Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
Pakistan: Pakistan is currently the strongest and most trusted ally of China. China has provided diplomatic support and broad military aid to Pakistan, including nuclear technology, for decades. The objective of China’s operations in Pakistan is to create a source of commercial and energy resources to the Gulf and Africa. Pakistan’s support to China is not only against India, but also aligns with its strategic rivalry with the United States. China has provided two new nuclear reactors to Pakistan as a direct response to the US-India Nuclear Agreement. China provided significant counter-insurgency assistance to Pakistan and continues to make massive investments in the country. Business between the two countries grew rapidly in the past decade. The Pakistani economy has stagnated, foreign direct investment slowed, unemployment and prices have risen, and exploitation has intensified. China’s investment in the Pakistani economy is especially fruitful on this latter basis.
China is providing an investment of $50 billion with the goal of creating a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) by 2030. This corridor will have strategic importance for China as a naval base and as a source of energy, connecting Xinjiang in western China to Balochistan in Pakistan. China has been involved in large-scale infrastructure projects, including nearly three thousand kilometres of roads and railways, as well as pipelines. Part of this is to upgrade the Karakoram Highway connecting Xinjiang to Pakistan. There is a plan to add a train route, and China has purchased rights to use the Gwadar Port in Pakistan for over 40 years as part of the CPEC project.
China is dependent on the Malacca Strait to cross the Indian Ocean. This has become a repeated source of tensions in a time when China is sorely in need of allies in this region. America is clearly still the dominant power. CPEC came into existence with the stated goal of managing export and trade with Pakistan, but in reality, Gwadar Port is the true prize. This subservient relationship of Pakistan to China is solidified by the paternalistic financial aid agreement obtaining between the two. This debt taken on by Pakistan does not help the local people, but all the Pakistani people will have to pay it. However, China has been hampered by the burden on the politicians in Punjab and Rawalpindi in Pakistan. Chinese officials who work on the project were provided 15,000 Chinese soldiers in the name of defence. This will make China politically, economically and strategically stronger in the region.
China is also attempting to suppress Indian supremacy in the Indian Ocean. China’s presence there is a growing concern to India’s ruling class, who are worried that these routes might go through Gilgit-Baltistan in Kashmir and deliver the Peoples Liberation Army into the Indian Ocean. China will of necessity abandon the neutral attitude adopted since 1963 in Kashmir. On the other hand, Russia has united its Eurasian economic project with CPEC, as Russia’s growing strategic alliances between India and the US have not proved amenable to the idea. India cooperates with US military exercises meant to isolate Pakistan. In this context, 100 million dollars were spent developing Chabahar port in Iran.
China’s rise in the Arabian Sea, along with the CPEC project, will continue. China’s route in the Persian Gulf and the Hurmuz Strait has been shortened to 600 kilometres. The 12,000 kilometre stretch of the old sea route to the Persian Gulf via the Malacca Strait is between the South China Sea and the North Indian Ocean, from Sri Lanka to the Arabian Sea. This will streamline the process of importing oil from the countries of Central Asia and Africa for cheap sale. In fact, these markets represent the largest oil supplies in the world. With the completion of this project, China will have direct connections with 60 countries and will control the flow of oil and petroleum products to other nations. As competition from China has increased, intolerance is increasing in rival imperialist countries, but others are not threatened by the CPEC project. England, for instance, is interested in investing in the CPEC project.
On the other hand, people from Balochistan and Sindh have been displaced due to CPEC. Pakistan is not willing to pay to relocate them. China also does not mind these expatriates. In this way, CPEC has become a life and death issue to Baloch and the Indus people. In the meantime, local small and medium-sized manufacturers and handicraft producers are pushed into a severe crisis with the shipment of Chinese goods into Pakistan. Overall, the China-Pakistan economic project reminds one of the American-led Marshall Plan. In the end, it is also dangerous for Pakistan’s sovereignty.
Afghanistan: As NATO withdraws in Afghanistan, China has accelerated its economic, political and security operations. In recent years, China has launched some major economic projects in Afghanistan, including copper mines at Mes Aynak, as well as oil and gas exploitation. China has now become the largest foreign investor in Afghanistan, after the collapse of aid and investment by Western countries after 2014. China has improved its political and security ties in Afghanistan. In June 2012, China and Afghanistan developed their relationship in the form of strategic and cooperative partnerships. China is not only strengthening relations with the government, but also encouraging dialogue, both public and secret, with the Afghan Taliban. Recent security agreements include intelligence, co-operation in counter-insurgence and more training for Afghan security forces. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has been active on Afghan issues since 2002. In 2012, it hosted Afghanistan as an observer. Both China and Russia are expected to have a high level of investment in Afghanistan in the future. Overall, China has made strategic, economic, and military movements to bring Afghanistan into its sphere of influence.
Sri Lanka: Despite good relations between China and Sri Lanka, ties have significantly strengthened since President Rajapaksa’s rise in 2005. Today, China is Sri Lanka’s largest financier and defence supplier. Sri Lanka’s strategic place in the Indian Ocean is important for Chinese designs. 90% of China’s energy imports are funneled through Sri Lanka’s adjacent seafaring routes. For this reason, China wants a strong political partnership with Sri Lanka, which includes infrastructure development and harbour facilities for Sri Lanka. In this way, China continues to curb India’s dominance in South Asia.
China has backed non-interference policies in the case of China, but in practice, utilizes its “backyard” countries as part of its global strategy. China gave all manner of support to the Rajapaksa government’s war against Tamil national liberation. The LTTE (the Liberation Tigers), and all Tamil people, have suffered immensely as a result. Thousands of Tamil people, from infants to fighters, were ruthlessly killed during the war, and continue to be murdered in state-sponsored pogroms. China repeatedly objects to United Nations proposals for war crimes investigations in Sri Lanka, as well as making significant profits on weapons sales during the war. China has continued to train the Sri Lankan armed forces long after the war’s end. Plans for US operations continue.
Since 2009, China has been a huge financer of major projects within Sri Lanka, offering huge liabilities for infrastructure projects. Most projects funded by China are in southern and central Sri Lanka. Land squabbles abound. America is ready to abandon Sri Lanka. With no intention to support reparations for war crimes, with no intention to improve the rights of oppressed peoples, it is clear that China’s imperialist interests are responsible for much of the abysmal state of Sri Lanka today.
Nepal: Since China and India border Nepal, it is strategically important for both countries. Nepal was always a close ally of India while maintaining good relations with China. Relations with China have increased since the fall of the monarchy in 2008. The main goals of China in Nepal are to force Nepal to suppress the political activities of Tibetan refugees, to acquire Nepalese support for China’s security forces across the border, to enhance its influence in South Asia, open up new business routes through Nepal, and expand Chinese influence while isolating India. Amidst all these strategies Nepal’s condition is as follows:
Since 2008, China has dramatically intensified its political and economic security operations in Nepal. In 2012, the Prime Minister of China visited Nepal for the first time in a decade. He announced a large amount of Chinese aid. China has expanded its diplomatic presence in Kathmandu to encourage the arrival of people and build Chinese study centres across Nepal. The growing Chinese influence in Nepal is a serious concern for India. While the Nepalese Army has traditionally been in close contact with the Indian Army, it is expanding relations with China’s security forces. The armies of India and Nepal are beneficiaries of extensive US training, but that is beginning to change. China is now supplying the Nepalese army with weapons and equipment in limited numbers, but that will certainly balloon in the future.
China’s operations in Nepal are among the largest in the economy. China is one of the five countries that provide “aid” to Nepal. Since the end of the civil war, it has significantly increased its business and investments in Nepal. China offers loans for Nepalese infrastructure and hydro-power projects. China’s investments in Nepal have contributed to increased tensions between China and India. For example, in 2008, Tibet signed a plan for a railroad project to Nepal. While India is likely to benefit from this expansion of Nepal’s economy, the ruling class of India are seriously concerned about this. It also reduces Nepal’s dependence on India’s ports and Indian energy resources, while China supplies a new corridor to enter South Asia. Beyond this, India fears that China has gained an opportunity to make the PLA as fast-deploying as possible on the Himalayan border.
Faostat:
China rubber production 2017-817000 tons
Laos rubber production 2017-137000 tons
ETRMA
https://www.etrma.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/20191114-Statistics-booklet-2019-Final-for-web.pdf
Edited by vimingok ()
also forgot to add from faostat:
EU natural rubber production 2017-0 tons
pogfan1996 posted:China’s Investment in Asia and Latin America as a Neo-Colonial Style of Exploitation
this could do with a little less hyperbole about infant-killing, and more references.
blinkandwheeze posted:vimingok posted:and just to be clear it's faux orthodox because to my knowledge no one has decided what Marxism leninism is or what deviation from it entails or how it applies to well known aspects or reality. no one will either, in the absence of a Marxist leninist world order. it is bullshit posturing in lieu of original thought at best and racism at worst, or both.
what on earth are you talking about. obviously there is no council of nicaea that has decreed an inerrant interpretation of its principles, because it's an active living tradition that is the product of continuous revolutionary theory and practice. we can determine fidelity and revision of these principles by engaging with the terms set by and through this tradition. if you wish to understand what anti-revisionism constitutes in the context of these struggles, then read and listen to what the revolutionary organs of these struggles produce
I'm not even sure what is the point of a single tradition of *making* proletarian revolutions when there is already a theory that explains *why* revolutions happen. All attempts to construct or allegedly advance the former seem to eventually drown in a tub of violent abstractions distilled from the actual experiences of revolutions carried out under different circumstances with different trajectories and consequences etc. Ending the tropical commodities/temperate lebensraum dependence I talked about in the earlier posts was not a factor in the European (incl Russian) and US communist movements. The oppressed nation struggles in the US are an exception but a lot/most of them were and are situated around the subtropical portion of the US landmass. Anyway, overcoming that dependence relationship was and still is the primary cause of third world revolutions/national liberation.
you are claiming to argue against flattening context but you are doing so by depriving the masses of their greatest voice and their greatest weapon, the revolutionary communist party.
No.
the peasantry are reduced to an amorphous mass
I'm talking about the pre- and quasi- capitalist peasantry and dispossessed, underemployed proletarians/lumpen in the global south. The two overlap to such an extent they are arguably the same class. And nothing I said implies they are "amorphous" if that even means anything and isn't something you made up as a placeholder for saying something. Anyway, they are right at the centre of what I believe to be a key structural contradiction within capitalism. Namely, requirements of expanding capital met via theft of tropical commodities in fixed supply so as not to decimate the value of money in the parasitic cold countries. Their interests are represented by all movements genuinely constructed around its resolution. Whether that happens to be communism doesn't matter to me.
whose interests can only be speculated upon and collated by post-colonial theorists
If you're referring to the subaltern folks they're the ones who most rely on the "reduced to amorphous mass who are spoken for by cosmopolitan high caste PB" argument, to "deconstruct" communists. They accidentally do have a point there but for entirely different reasons than what they claim.
this is exactly the same error made by those thinkers who read exclusively the work of western academic communists and deride the entire thing as eurocentric chauvinism, as if anyone is to blame for their ignorance but themselves
Except I'm not making that error! And most of the communism I've read and heard about is from Indian communists and left-libs, many of them I'm acquainted with and a few are my family/friends with whom I sometimes discuss these issues.
vimingok posted:I'm not even sure what is the point of a single tradition of *making* proletarian revolutions when there is already a theory that explains *why* revolutions happen.
???? i believe this is a case where the answer is provided in the question
vimingok posted:And nothing I said implies they are "amorphous" if that even means anything and isn't something you made up as a placeholder for saying something.
they are treated as an amorphous mass in that there your refusal to acknowledge the organs of revolutionary class composition reduce them to the bare empirical fact of their existence as a class category. the only systemised and developed class perspective we can receive from a class at any stage is in the institutions of their revolutionary struggle
in ignoring such institutions, their class perspective is dispersed and soluble, only accessible to us through the indexing and cataloging of the bourgeois academy. something that can easily be seen in your idiosyncratic hyperfocus on a handful of heterodox empirical research while stubbornly refusing any investigation of the body of thought produced by revolutionary perspective
blinkandwheeze posted:vimingok posted:I'm not even sure what is the point of a single tradition of *making* proletarian revolutions when there is already a theory that explains *why* revolutions happen.
???? i believe this is a case where the answer is provided in the question
Communist revolutionaries haven't adhered to any universally agreed upon tradition of making revolution.
vimingok posted:And nothing I said implies they are "amorphous" if that even means anything and isn't something you made up as a placeholder for saying something.
they are treated as an amorphous mass in that there your refusal to acknowledge the organs of revolutionary class composition reduce them to the bare empirical fact of their existence as a class category.
That doesn't follow, especially not if you expect me to believe the organs of Indian peasant revolution are represented by an English language article on an obscure blog about China, claiming to be translated from an unavailable original published by Indian Maoists.
the only systemised and developed class perspective we can receive from a class at any stage is in the institutions of their revolutionary struggle
Ideally, yes. But if such a perspective is unavailable or inaccessible for whatever reason we can still reproduce it ourselves, to an extent, via a correct analysis of that class. And in any case recognition of cold-tropical parasitism as the primary contradiction within capitalism is already part of the perspective of many third world communist movements, including the Indian ML parties I know about and follow like CPI-ML Red Star.
your idiosyncratic hyperfocus on a handful of heterodox empirical research while stubbornly refusing any investigation of the body of thought produced by revolutionary perspective
These are barely disguised ad hominems. What exactly is heterodox in Patnaik's research, compared to what? How is it "dispersing" the class perspective of Indian peasant-labourers because it's done in a bourgeois academy? How do you know what the institutions of Indian peasant revolution are or what their perspective is or that they even have a single perspective? Why is their perspective even relevant to my argument that Lenin's work on imperialism cannot be used to explain the causes of their exploitation and its role under capitalism?
vimingok posted:Communist revolutionaries haven't adhered to any universally agreed upon tradition of making revolution.
their most developed revolutionary currents have. it's true that anti-revisionist marxism-leninism is a living body of thought rather than principles ossified and etched in stone, but this is exactly why it demands our continuous attention and study
we can know that the cpi-maoist and the related parties carrying the tradition of naxalbari are the revolutionary institutions of the peasant movement because of their tireless, years long commitment to the people's war. this is simple. your suspicions that the available english language translations of their material may somehow be inauthentic is a truly desperate reach
lo posted:is there any actual reason to think that the OP document wasn't written by indian communists
Can we get some more rubber graphs to prove whether or not bannedthought.net is a CIA plant
Acdtrux posted:vimingok posted:the vast majority of Chinese and indian peasants have a material interest in overthrowing capitalism, an interest they do not share at least in the short to mid term with the overwhelming majority of western people
I think it would be a mistake to ignore the demands and interests of the western working classes. Although the labor aristocracy obscures these class interests and makes it more challenging to obtain class consciousness, I'm not sure if I could say it contaminates the overwhelming majority of westerners -- al least, understood in a broad context including US, Canada, all of Europe, Russia, AUS/NZ.
I'm not ignoring them, I'm pointing out they do not have a short-term (at least) stake in overthrowing the system that redistributes credit/land/other stuff to them to stabilise itself. This isn't about evil white people, it also applies to Indian/Chinese/etc with a similar relationship to capitalism. The difference is in the broader context of how many such people exist in a country relative to people who occasionally have to worry about starving, and why. Also not wanting to overthrow capitalism doesn't by itself imply that the actions of privileged labour are "ultimately" reactionary even when progressive in outlook.
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