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I broadly agree with this. China has an obligation to do much more than they’re doing. Badempanada is confrontational, but he’s rarely just wrong. I fail to see how he’s wrong here, as well.
You ask these people what they’re doing to fight Zionism and they’ll just insist that they’re posting and fighting in the information war, meanwhile this is what they post.
It’s just incredible how western leftists will expect real revolutionaries and real leaders of real communist societies to imperil their many hundreds of millions of citizens and their thriving socialist projects to clean up messes borne of our own sins. Yes, Palestinian genocide is evil and it must be stopped, but how is that China’s burden to bear? As if we haven’t foisted enough burdens directly onto them already…
I don’t think he has ever said that and I know that he has said the opposite. All countries party to the genocide convention have a legal obligation to prevent AND PUNISH genocide.
China is not enacting its legal obligations.
I remember like 2 yrs ago I was telling people on Deprogram subreddit “hey this guy is an abrasive asshole that only gives hot takes for views” and like 80% of them were like “lmk when you admit you’re a Zionist” or like “stfu, he’s done more for the global left than you”. Fine. Nowadays it’s obvious that he’s at least a lil transphobic (that tweet about trans people using their gender identity as an excuse?? for not having their political takes be criticized, it didn’t make sense so I don’t know how to even word it, my bad) and admitted himself that he isn’t a Marxist/communist. Fuck Israel and the USA, but seriously we can’t act like everyone who comes to those 2 VERY OBVIOUS leftist conclusions is a good person or even a smart person. The day I don’t have to hear about Bad Empanada again will be a very welcome one, can’t wait until his ass shuts up. Not to mention that he doxxed or helped to Doxx BayArea415, a great fount of info on PRC history and politics, as well as DPRK stuff
More like ‘Westerners when you ask them to do anything’.
Servility in the imperial core is very special. We express it by complaining loudly until someone takes notice, and if they don’t, it’s their fault for not hearing us. Learned helplessness from centuries of liberalism.
Complaining on the internet about a country that does not even speak your language will not shame them into acting the way you want them to. All it will do is create more anti-communists and give arguments for color revolution. Of which 3 attempts have been made in China in just the past 8 years, and more are brewing.
Like most of his audience is statistically Statesians. He should be telling them ways of organizing shipments for Cuba instead of trying to get a dunk in for the twitter likes. There are routinely convoys that organize shipments to Cuba, mostly food medication and basic goods. Did he post about them? I did.
People like him do this very deliberately. Their hatred of AES outdoes their irritation at US imperialism. I mean what else do you call it when you have all these accounts posting endlessly about China trying to influence public opinion? They never mention that 38% of Cuba’s daytime electricity is produced by Chinese-provided solar farms, for example. They want China to do everything everywhere all at once when that is precisely a factor that led to the dismantling of the soviet union.
Some of them are even the same people that will say Cuba was a ‘sugar colony’ of the USSR.
Beware: going down this path of always finding fault within things you can’t act upon will only lead you to ultra-leftism. He’s the living proof.
Well said, I think we really ought to evaluate our own excuses for inaction before looking to the other hemisphere.
To me Empanada’s opinion is one that follows the “President Xi, fire when ready” meme.
And I’m not criticizing the meme, but there seems to be this trend amongst us in the western “left” to expect China to swoop in and take care of all our problems in a style akin only to the nostalgic “memories” we’ve developed of the Soviets.
And I’m not criticizing the meme, but there seems to be this trend amongst us in the western “left” to expect China to swoop in and take care of all our problems in a style akin only to the nostalgic “memories” we’ve developed of the Soviets.
This is an interesting point because the key here is the USSR doesn’t exist anymore. And for quite a few of us in these spaces, it probably never existed while we were alive (or not while we were cogent adult beings). The USSR as a world savior simply never existed. As impact beyond itself goes, the USSR made a huge difference in defeating Nazi Germany and being the first to establish a socialist state project, but it also took massive losses in the process of fighting Nazi Germany and was stretched thin from that and its international efforts. Meanwhile, the US was positioned really well after WWII to steamroll over the planet, utilizing pre-existing colonial and imperial tendrils to make it all the easier to do so.
In other words, what I’m trying to say is that although the USSR did great things for people, it was still heavily limited by its material conditions. And if it was still around today, it would be getting criticized by ultra-leftists in similar ways to how China is criticized now. Because it wouldn’t be making all of the most plainly “moral” decisions, it would not be saving the world but instead acting in a complex way that tries to move the international and local cause of liberation forward, and the western empire propaganda machine would be telling people from day one to despise everything it stands for.
Here the Christian culture that Jones Manoel talks of rears its head again. Now that the USSR is no more, we can freely romanticize what it was, in a form unmarred by complex and uncomfortable realities. We can wallow in the comfort of the idea untouched and untainted by good will having to work within circumstances full of cruelty and neglect. It’s reassuring in a way to hide in the purity of the idea, if one believes that acting within a cruel world, rather than rejecting it with the most swift and bridge-burning measures, has an inevitable corrupting influence that destroys otherwise good efforts or damns one (if not the whole world) to depravity.
Likewise with praise of China. It is dangerous (to their comfort) for the purist to sincerely learn about China in detail because the ideal will be shattered in favor of the material realities. The Christian-influenced conclusion will lead to the belief that it has been “corrupted”. It is then knocked down from the pedestal that it never asked to be on, where it can be spat upon like a fallen angel who seeks to lead lost souls astray.
The USSR has made a number of mistakes in foreign policy:
- wanting to apply their own methods of revolution to China rigidly (both in organization and warfare),
- urging China to wait for a more opportune moment for revolution,
- urging the same of DPRK,
- overly funding communist parties to the point they had no reason to try and find other avenues of funding. When funds stopped, all of these parties almost died and most of them turned eurocommunist to retain dues and membership.
- pushing of a soviet theoretical line, which had the effect of teaching only one method of revolution/marxist thought.
- getting pulled into “proxy” conflicts (I don’t really like the implications of ‘proxy’ but I digress), which opened the way for color revolutions to take hold.
As the first successful socialist experiment we could argue, and I do argue that, that it’s not like there was a lot of textbooks to pull from. They applied what they knew that worked and everything else was still to be determined, and they did a lot of things right too. Furthermore I also think the world situation around that time was very different; Asia was freeing itself following the defeat of Japan in ww2, there were a number of socialist revolutions all around the same time in the 50s, then in the 60s Africa struggled for independence.
And yet we see that all of this was not enough to defeat the imperial hegemony, so what went wrong? And why repeat the mistakes of the past? We see that it wasn’t always correct to ‘just’ follow the USSR. These mistakes are not entirely the USSR’s fault, they’re just dialectical. They exist in contradiction and as one element grows the other grows as well. And likewise not everything was of their own making, they were after all constantly under siege from the United States.
Probably nobody thought the USSR would ever be able to be dismantled. And yet it was, and it wreaked havoc in the soviet republics, the DPRK, Cuba. If the PRC were ever to fall, what would remain of world socialism? Are we today in a situation where it would not lead to the post-1991 periods other countries saw? I think so yes, because the PRC has picked a different direction from the USSR in that regard, but I’m presenting the question.
And yet with these mistakes, so to speak, I still support the USSR and would never speak ill of it publicly. My criticisms of their policies are to notice the pothole and mark it clearly so people coming after me can avoid it. Capitalism itself was not established overnight; it took decades of struggle and centuries overall to reach the level it has. Even today there are some countries that have retained their royal family after compromise with the feudal lords.
People like empanada are “neither washington nor beijing” today (he has called China imperialist and ‘communist in name only’) and would have been “neither washington nor moscow” back in the 60s no matter what they might say they think of the USSR today with hindsight. But where do these words lead new comrades? Imagine just starting to read Marx and your group tells you there is no such thing as a socialist country today and everything sucks, what are you even struggling for at that point? To be right? To flex? To teach newcomers that communism has been thoroughly defeated in the 90s, and we have reached the end of history?
Yeah, there is a really important difference between examining certain choices as mistakes of strategy or limitations of the material or gaps in knowledge and experience, as opposed to treating an AES state, past or present, as something shameful that one must distance themself from in its realities in order to be a good, wholesome commie. Being able to talk about the things these projects have done well and continue to do well (of which there is a lot) is critically important and as you put it, if you can’t stand behind them, then what exactly are you fighting for.
In a way, I get why people can end up in that place. The west can be so vicious toward actual support of AES, or even support of self-determination, that people become motivated to couch what they say in softer terms, to water it down, to avoid saying things that would them look like “the enemy”. But the danger is also just part of the fight and is unavoidable as part of it. If you remove all the danger from it, you’re no longer opposition. You’re a career reformist pushing for tweaks.
I can’t speak for other countries, but in the US context, I think wannabe-commies who linger in those awkward places of “trying not to be vilified” could learn a thing or two from the far right as audacity goes (not to be confused with learning from them in ideology! fuck patsocs). Granted, the far right has more acceptance and agreement from the offset in the existing power structure, but it also doesn’t always go well for them and they keep chipping away anyway. Too many on “the left” are too liberal still and so (I suspect) on top of the fear of being vilified, they succumb to the allure of “going along to get along”. But the world does not need liberal would-be commies in the imperial core. It needs the kind of people who would go to a protest knowing they may get arrested, but also directed by the strategic thinking of ML, not just Christian martyrdom thought; so that their actions are put toward the most strategically effective rather than the most self-sacrificing and performative.
I’m sure the latter part of this sounds a bit preachy and I know there are various strategic reasons at times for being careful about how obvious one is in what they believe. But conscious strategy is different from fear-based avoidance. So it’s important people identify which they are operating on and try to move more according to conscious strategy, lest they water themselves down into nothing in order to avoid the boot.
To address last point, even the russians struggled knowing there is no socialist nation, doesnt mean it was pointless
Like most of his audience is statistically Statesians. He should be telling them ways of organizing shipments for Cuba instead of trying to get a dunk in for the twitter likes. There are routinely convoys that organize shipments to Cuba, mostly food medication and basic goods. Did he post about them? I did.
not to defend the annoying prick but he did in fact do exactly that in a recent video
that’s good of him at least!
Racist fuckers pretty much asking the Chinese to risk death and nuclear WWIII while they are too incompetent to do fuck all in their own countries (^most lenient scenario. actual scenario - they partake in the benefits of imperialism).
It is left-liberals (whatever the fuck they want to call themselves or even decide to drape themselves in sickle and hammer aesthetics or that annoying fucking A) who effectively prevent the underclasses from overthrowing the government of whatever Western country or vassal state they are in (you take your pick of reasons why including socdem apologism), and thereby nullify the option that if the Chinese do decide to risk a hot war that there would be any real chance of material solidarity and not have to then face retribution of whatever fascists and liberals leftover hellbent on revenge.
It is pretty much these “leftists” who prevent any real hope of Chinese intervention.
Put it this way, if so-called communists cannot see the self-evident truths above then what chance is there with rest of them. The only fucking country that has managed to build a socialist fortress and the rest of you all have the gall to fucking lecture.
/rant over
Racist fuckers pretty much asking the Chinese to risk death and nuclear WWIII while they are too incompetent to do fuck all in their own countries (^most lenient scenario. actual scenario - they partake in the benefits of imperialism).
So kind of like this
Read some history books nerds, Palestine wouldn’t even likely still be an alive entity without the historic support China provided. Like the PLO with arms, mediation support and money.
This position has allowed them to exert massive diplomatic force in the present day - look at the 2024 Beijing Declaration.
All people ask is to not trade with a genocidal entity. The fact China can’t even manage that is pathetic.
So don’t trade with the US? With the EU? With any of the western empire’s proxies? That’s a lot to be cutting out.
Lets just start not with Israel, is it that hard to do or is trademaxxing and fuck everyone else really gonna be the only way.
trademaxxing and fuck everyone else
One of China’s main things is doing trade that has mutual benefit. Trade is not inherently predatory, so I don’t know where you get the “fuck everyone else” part. I’m kind of just lost as to what standards you think you’re holding China to here (standards which you don’t seem interested in applying to any other country on the planet).
I don’t care if China wants to improve the condition of their people and their country. That’s fine, just find it annoying when people bring them up as a bastion of the Global South. Why should I not hold them to a greater standard? Solidarity can come in different ways and China can’t even be bothered to do even that.
It’s sounding like we need a compiled resource on all the ways China does act in solidarity with countries that are targeted by imperialism. I cannot recall all that stuff from memory and rattle it off, but I know from things I’ve read in recent years, I have no doubt that China does generally act in solidarity. So it is weird to read “they can’t even bothered” like they aren’t doing anything internationally at all.
The DPRK – Secured the existence of the DPRK, Mutual defense treaty; trade lifeline; diplomatic shielding; border stability. China’s position prevents DPRK regime-collapse scenarios.
Cuba – Massive solar rollout; grid support; equipment and financing replacing lost Russian capacity under U.S. blockade, food aid.
Iran – Primary buyer of sanctioned oil; infrastructure investment; 25-year cooperation framework; diplomatic resistance to U.S. isolation. Military aid and intelligence assistance.
Venezuela – Oil-backed financing; infrastructure; sustained trade under sanctions; prevented total economic implosion.
Russia – Energy rerouting; industrial supply chains; strategic coordination after Western economic warfare.
Laos – China–Laos high-speed rail; power grids; landlocked transit economy.
Cambodia – Roads, ports, hydropower.
Myanmar – Pipelines, ports, rail; Indian Ocean access.
Indonesia – Jakarta–Bandung HSR; nickel processing; ports.
Malaysia – Rail corridors; ports; industrial parks.
Thailand – Rail links; logistics hubs.
Vietnam – Manufacturing integration; rail upgrades; energy projects.
Pakistan – CPEC: Gwadar port; highways; power plants; fiber optics.
Sri Lanka – Ports; expressways; power generation.
Bangladesh – Bridges; coal + solar plants; telecom.
Nepal – Roads; hydropower; cross-border trade links.
Kazakhstan – Rail hubs; pipelines; dry ports.
Uzbekistan – Industrial parks; rail.
Kyrgyzstan – Roads; power.
Tajikistan – Energy + transport.
Iraq – Power stations; reconstruction.
Ethiopia – Addis–Djibouti railway; industrial parks.
Kenya – Standard Gauge Railway; port upgrades.
Nigeria – Rail; power plants.
Angola – Oil-for-infrastructure.
Egypt – New administrative capital; industrial zones; power.
Zambia – Roads; hydropower.
Tanzania – Ports; rail.
Uganda – Power dams; roads.
Zimbabwe – Energy; airport modernization.
And honestly too many more to list in a single comment since basically all of Africa makes use of the BRI and other Chinese development pathways.
Brazil – Ports; agribusiness logistics; industrial investment.
Peru – Megaports; mining corridors.
Bolivia – Lithium; roads; telecom.
Ecuador – Hydropower; transport.
Palestine – Diplomatic support for statehood; humanitarian aid; rejection of Israeli/U.S. framing, support of PLO.
is it that hard to do
Yes. Taking unilaterally aggressive action against “Israel” would be about as close to declaring war on the US led empire as you can get without a formal declaration. You can’t separate the imperialists forward base from it’s whole. They are not separate entities.
- no it is not
- treating international trade like consumer choice opt out is the bone-headed take that is unbecoming of anyone who considers anti-imperialism as a science. That’s the most polite I can be (like BDS barely works - like it hits bottom lines of companies as best case scenario and does fuck all for ethnic cleansing and genocide. The reason we have to even consider as a litmus test for western politicians is because westerners are so fucking retrograde and backwards)
- pathetic does not even begin to describe the racism here against the Chinese (and let’s be honest, against the Palestinians too by offsetting any guilt and playing perfomative politics. “Raising awareness” politics is apparently radical)
Do you at least harbor some amount of disappointment for how little China has distanced themselves from “Israel”?
I’m not going to sit here and say China should start deploying troops to Tel Aviv, but isn’t it fair to be a little disappointed with how little they’ve browbeaten “Israel”?
On the other hand, I would have absolutely no rebuttal if you say something like “its not our place (as members of the Imperial core), to be disappointed in a nation that doesn’t want to clean up a mess that we created”. I could potentially see the orientalism in this perspective.
Or, maybe you reject the entire premise and DO think that China has been effectively browbeating “Israel”?
Honest questions.
China have a consistent policy. They recognize the state of Palestine and vote for its membership in the UN.
China want to mediate a peaceful resolution. To achieve that, they will not distance themselves from or sanction Israel. They can’t be an effective mediator otherwise.
They only use trade sanctions in RETALIATION to attacks on China from other countries.
Sanctions aren’t going to beat Israel. It’s supported by the US with billions of dollars per year.
Do you at least harbor some amount of disappointment for how little China has distanced themselves from “Israel”?
Any disappointment I may have had is because of leftover liberalism ie my own ignorance and ineptitude. My own anger comes from how little has been done by the peoples collectively as westerners/vassal states.
The likes of Soviet Union and Cuba has done things that should jam more with western mores of what “socialism” is outside of their borders and they fucking suffered for it AND don’t get the credit they deserved.
Their peoples died en masse for the world so the rest of us can write fucking memes.
Whereas the one country that learned what that overleverage costs is the only reason we are talking here today about a realistic end of Western Hegemony. Marxism-leninism is a science and we are so backwards that we do not have the courtesy of humanity to learn it.
Or, maybe you reject the entire premise and DO think that China has been effectively browbeating “Israel”?
I suspect they are but I want to currently submit to the concrete evidence we do have rather than the speculation of what may be likely (ie high impact but low visbility eg dual use metal export ban).
The simple answer is the US is orders of magnitude worse than Israel and if one understands despite that China had to trade with the US and is avoiding hot war with it then it is telling when folks not get why the same should extend elsewhere of said hegemony. If one wants to downplay the only country to drop nuclear bombs on civilians twice then that is on them to take that risk not China’s.
Any disappointment I may have had is because of leftover liberalism ie my own ignorance and ineptitude. My own anger comes from how little has been done by the peoples collectively as westerners/vassal states.
The likes of Soviet Union and Cuba has done things that should jam more with western mores of what “socialism” is outside of their borders and they fucking suffered for it AND don’t get the credit they deserved.
Their peoples died en masse for the world so the rest of us can write fucking memes.
Beautifully written.
🫡
I think rainpizza put it the best here: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10742177/7761032
To enforce that economic blockade, you have to declare war to the entire West and decouple completely from the Western system(USD, SWIFT, Maritime Shipping Routes, et all).
As long as the West is willing to save their Zionist dog by bleeding their economies dry, there is no viable way to do an economic blockade without a military siege.
The problem with people here is that they see the entity as something separate rather than something within the Western system. To eradicate Israel, you have to destroy the West.
(bold emphasis mine)
In other words, we cannot take the western empire out of the picture and try to understand China’s dealings with israel as dealing with a purely sovereign, independent entity (because that’s not what it is). We have to understand it in relation to israel’s dependence on / connection with the US. When we put it in that way, it’s easier I think to understand that the question is not one of distancing from israel, but distancing from the west, and actively doing that is a valid choice for an AES state to make but it’s not the path China took when they focused on building up their productive forces and becoming the productive powerhouse that they now are. For them to go a different way has much broader implications than trade with any one nation and needs to make sense in the context of how they’re engaging with unipolar capitalism and the dynamics of global trade in order to develop toward multipolar. Were they equipped to reject the west and its genocidal ways on a broader scale, I would expect that israel would only be the tip of the iceberg and they would have a million excuses to do so with the way the west treats them and others.
So then the question becomes why? The cynical ultra-left view seems to be something like that they’re not rejecting the west because they benefit from the trade deals or something. But the west wants to undermine them no matter how they try to work for mutual benefit and the evidence points to them still being thoroughly led by communist principles. So the ultra-left view doesn’t make sense. You have to essentially believe they are either stupid or compromised on a large scale, while still putting on a face like they aren’t, both of which reek of racism that the Chinese people are incapable of recognizing internal threats and acting competently.
I think the ML answer is that the west wants to isolate and encircle them, always has, and China does not (yet) have the power to cut the west out, rather than be cut out by the west, if it comes to that; in bits and pieces maybe, and we saw some of that in the way China handled the attempted browbeating from the US with tariffs. But I think it’s still in a fragile rather than well-established state. And until the balance of power shifts enough away from western economic dominance, China playing fast and loose with rejecting trade partners means cutting themselves out of deals that could broaden their influence and weaken the west’s. This after they have worked really hard to forge the trade connections they have in the world.
I could imagine a counter argument regarding proxies going something like: Well what about Ukraine with Russia? Russia intervened militarily in Ukraine, in spite of it being a proxy of the west. But Ukraine wasn’t always a proxy, it took a long time for all out war to happen including from the west sabotaging peace deal efforts, including from Ukraine being an aggressor in the donbass, and this in the context of Ukraine being near Russia. The closest comparison for China would probably be when the US was openly at war in Korea, the Korean liberation forces were trying to fight them back and they asked for help from China and China of the time stepped in militarily. It was not only a matter of helping those in need, but it would have also been dangerous for them to have the US knocking on their doorstep next.
What’s happening to Palestine is unquestionably horrific, but it’s also far from the first time the west has done genocidal things. I think it seems unprecedented in its way largely because of how televised in real-time a genocide it has been. But the destruction itself is already characteristic of colonialism for hundreds of years and the imperialism form that developed after. If China treated it like an anomalous level of evil that has never been done before and threw massive weight behind trying to stop it as a result, they would be ignoring everything else the west has gotten away with and how important it is to ensure its power falls as a whole, not just through one proxy.
Is there a better way than what they are doing? Maybe analysis would show there is, I don’t know. But there are other countries and peoples who are more closely positioned to oppose what’s going on, namely those in the west, whose trade deals and leadership actively manufacture support for genocide day in and day out.
Pulling the race card for China max trading with genociders will never get old
For anyone still lurking, and to add to what I have already said:
- “Race card”; scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds
- If they decide trade cessation you will do fuck all if any Chinese die as a result
- If they decide not to do trade cessation, with the ongoing escalations to further hot wars the likes of you will go “oh well, they didn’t do much for palestine anyway” as a narrative for a social license to back imperialism
So the only reason you are comfortable with risking Chinese blood either way is because you’re on the samewave length as the genocidaires you nominally admonish. The likes of you are the reason why Chinese intervention is so damn risky, you make up part of the imperial cores defence, because you will offer no real stake in solidarity with Chinese and you have no real plan to threaten your own government and state.
We are, however, dialectical materialists. Matter is always in motion and we do not believe necessarily a person’s abhorrent views are set in stone; we welcome you to change them - to begin with educate yourself. A lot of us here were once liberals too.
LOL ya it’s fascist to say China doing nothing is actually bad. People like you’d be stanning for China even when they supported the khmer rouge too bud. Keep writing essays about how China is the savior of the world while the world burns.
- China doing nothing is actually bad
- Claiming ww3 will start from not trading with israel is stupid
- China stans will write essays about how you’re racist and a fascist for expecting better from the 2nd most powerful nation in the world.
People like you’d be stanning for China even when they supported the khmer rouge too bud.
You talk like you have just learned what socialism is from the back of a milk carton. One of the top things MLs criticise China is the war against Vietnam and its dealing with Khmer Rouge.
But you don’t know that because you don’t realise what this is. The chances of you being convinced here is very close to zero; this is for anyone lurking here so they may have a chance to educate themselves and not become a piece of shit compatible-left of the US empire.
You are functionally not against the genocide, you are what makes the genocide possible.
Hope that helps, buddy.
No I do know that, which is why I brought it up the fuck. You brought up I was racist when I criticize China. I brought up another valid criticism of China and you go off some bullshit.
Keep deflecting how China NEEDS to trade with a genocidal entity to prevent future entities and criticizing that makes you racist. Joke of the century.
Perfomative politics is all you got. Materially you’re no different that those more vocal in supporting the genocide; they are just more honest.
I mean you could learn why the Chinese have the foreign policy they do, having learned from the Soviet Union but you choose not to. Your crocodile tears mean nothing when there’s zilch about trade cessation with every other western country (like why not the US? Or Europe? They’re all orders of magnitude worse than Israel. Every war crime in palestine is theirs and then some) because you decided to hold “standards” for a country of a global south that you haven’t elsewhere. And the ongoing mass murders with other countries by the West for the past > 1 century. And this is if I pretend to take your argument at face value that all you mean is just trading.
So yeah what you said is fucking racist.
Removed by mod
You have a lot of moral outrage over this but you have completely divorced it from any dialectical or historical materialism.
You have not looked at the material conditions, China’s actions outside of this incident, the balance of powers or seemingly anything beyond the fact that this action makes you feel shitty and offends your moral sensitivities.
You act like aggression towards “Israel” economic or otherwise would receive no blowback or retaliation when that is blatantly false. It’s like saying China should take up economic warfare against Florida and pretending the rest of the US wouldn’t retaliate.
China may be the world’s second largest power but it is far from capable of total war against the 1st and 3rd through the rest, who absolutely would band together as they have every time US interests are threatened.
You need to move beyond leftism in vibes only and start applying the scientific socialist method even when it’s on topics that are frustrating or make you feel bad.
So I should just make excuses for China not being able to manage not trading with Nazis? If they can’t manage that then they are not some savior socialist state that will help or protect the global south. They are fine with genocides happening around the world as long as it doesn’t affect their bottom line. If it was profitable to help Palestine they would do it. Instead it is profitable to them to support Israel. To think that ceasing trade with Israel will provoke some greater war when there’s no evidence of this continues the same old excuse. Power should and can be exerted to do good things. Not using it because you are afraid of other great power nations is what leads to Nazis taking over the entire globe.
I wonder where you learned the phrase “pull the race card” from to use it that way and what war crime your grandfather is guilty of.
I mean you are doing a real convincing impression of you offering no solidarity with the Chinese - you are more than happy if the Chinese are fodder for your politics.
Palestine is on your radar because of Hamas and what BE does here appeals to your westernised sensibilities because you’re a parasite leaching off the Global South.
This is an oppurtunity for you to learn rather than double down on whatever this is.
I find it funny how hard you’ll defend China for abetting a genocidal state, and wonder why you feel the need to defend it so.
The fact you are fine with them trading with genociders and nazis shows your moral lacking, not mine.
Also Lol at Palestine was on my radar cause of Hamas, I got a kick out of that.
Some really impressive and well written takes in this post, I’m really happy to see the engagement.
I learn so much from reading these threads. Marxism, history, socioeconomic dialectic analysis, even good prose.
BadEmpanada wants China to intervene because he wants to stop a genocide.
Posadists want China to intervene because we want nuclear war.
We are not the same.I have plenty of criticism when it comes to China’s foreign policy, but BadEmpanada is the last person I’d want to hear it from.
Any valid criticism he may have is completely tarnished by him routinely spreading flat out misinformation on China using US state department talking points like the “Uyghur genocide”.
I don’t understand how any self-respecting communist and anti-imperialist can still take this guy seriously.
Maybe he figures if he posts hard enough, China will give up on the plans it puts into place years in advance and rapidly shift gears into an adventurist world liberation military campaign.
He should read: Left-Wing childishness and petty-bourgeoise mentality.
This is precisely the case with our “Left Communists”, who in words (and of course in their deepest convictions) are merciless enemies of the petty bourgeoisie, while in deeds they help only the petty bourgeoisie, serve only this section of the population and express only its point of view by fighting—in April 1918!!—against . . . “state capitalism”. They are wide of the mark!
BadEmpanada is 70% acceptable, 30% very questionable takes
70% bad, 30% empanada
Who was the comrade that coined this line? I love it and I would like to start attributing them when I use it
I have no idea but it’s a certified banger lol
He might be less empanada than previous calculations show
it spoils over time it seems
I mean, yeah, they do kinda do that.
They do but BE is doing that annoying idealist shit Lenin, Parenti, et al have roasted where nothing China does is ever good enough for Leftists because they’re not a super wholesome big chungus perfect real communist society in our time that has no flaws and is a utopia for everyone.
He could be calling out the countries actually backing the genocide but he’s choosing to attack China instead. Like, really? Priorities.
nothing China does is ever good enough for Leftists because they’re not a super wholesome big chungus perfect real communist society in our time that has no flaws and is a utopia for everyone.
China has been forced into a strategic and largely non-interventionist posture on shit like this because they know openly bombing Pissr*al would be the easiest way to foment a coalition of xenophobic backlash, and at precisely a time when the West is crumbling on itself and China makes enormous strategic gains, day by day, by doing nothing.
Having said that, I’m still critical of China’s position on Gaza. It’s a bleak fucking time for most of the world right now.
Yeah I feel like, BE’s takes on China are pretty shit on the regular but honestly I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel like this sometimes. Most leftists on this site have agreed at one point or another that China’s international policies have a history of being… Not the best, but the second you criticize the lack of any real support for Palestine, all of a sudden you get a 10 pages essay about why their strategy of inaction is 10D chess and how they have to keep doing business with Israel and having their politicians literally praise trade deals with them in order to somehow eventually prevent the single last Palestinian child from being murdered.
Like we get it, they can’t really do shit because the west, and none of us is ready to die in nuclear hellfire. It’s the simple truth, but damn if they don’t make it come off like they really just don’t give a single shit about stopping it.
As bleak as it is, in my personal opinion, Palestine is doomed. The world will fail to do anything till it’s too late for them. The only powers that CAN stop it, have all but blatantly admitted they won’t. I know this will piss a lot of people off, and we should all still support them to the last, but I just don’t see this genocide being stopped in time.
China’s foreign policy has always been shit. Even the most hard-core MLs on this site know that. What I am not gonna do is tell China how to build their socialism when my own country keeps glazing pissrael and we haven’t built anywhere near a possible revolution.
but the second you criticize the lack of any real support for Palestine, all of a sudden you get a 10 pages essay about why their strategy of inaction is 10D chess and how they have to keep doing business with Israel and having their politicians literally praise trade deals with them in order to somehow eventually prevent the single last Palestinian child from being murdered.
This is just bad faith nonsense. People have really got to stop believing negative stuff they read about an AES project just because it aligns with what they already suppose is happening.
I can’t seem to find it in my bookmarks at the moment so maybe I didn’t bookmark it, but there was a thing just recently about a company that was having problems because of China having blocked new investments in israel and marked it as high risk since 2023. I could not figure out from that one story whether the blocking new investments part was recent or if that was also since 2023, but this is part of the problem. Most sources English-speaking people will come across about China organically are not sources coming directly from China about what China is doing.
I use this as an example because it demonstrates how it already isn’t as simple as “they are doing business with israel as normal”.
Another recent example, about Venezuela, was some people falling for an imperialist headline that claimed Venezuela was sending oil to israel and they took this as evidence of Delcy Rodriguez being a sellout. But official Venezuelan sourcing corrected this claim.
As for the stuff about “10D chess”, I can only assume you’re referring to analyses that delve into the situation China found itself in after the USSR got destroyed and why it has taken the path it has. It’s not 10D chess, it’s dialectical and historical materialism, which can probably sound convoluted sometimes, but that’s because 1) taking on a hegemonic global capitalist empire is complicated and 2) we’re largely trying to explain it from the outside in without having grown up in the Chinese context and being privy to how it all went down.
You’re welcome to challenge the analyses and do your own, but dismissing it as 10 page essays of excuses is not helping anyone. It’s pretty low effort to fling shit at people who are trying to understand the world and shout some moralist proclamations. It takes more effort to contribute to that understanding, but more importantly, it can require real sacrifice to take moral stands that have consequences for doing so that can result in a painful end.
And if the people of Palestine can be steadfast throughout the decades of torture and genocide they’ve faced, what is your excuse for proclaiming them doomed?
So I had a big ass well thought out and well written post to detail on all my points but then lemmygrad seemed to crash on all my browsers and it’s gone, so I’ma just do a summary on my lemmy account cause I’m too annoyed to retype it all.
Basically, the Chinese blocking trade was a fabrication made by a pissy Isn’real company that made excuses for a Chinese firm not wanting to buy up a bunch of their stock. At least that’s how it looks to me. The Chinese embassy refuted their claims. See link. Now maybe there’s a secret ban, but China typically stands by their statements.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202602/1355318.shtml
As for the rest… Basically, I think they are doomed because the west is ramping up the genocide, and the aid is running out. Countries are backing off. I’m not belittling their efforts nor saying anyone should give up. Just acknowledging the bleak nature of the world. I also think we have a major issue with “someone will save us/them.” And that’s that mentality issues all to common and is only hurting us We gotta just accept that no one gonna save us but us. China isn’t gonna get themselves nuked for me, you, or anyone else, if they can avoid it. I’d say the same for most other countries.
I never said I was a “China bad because not helping” person, just that I understand how people get there. Like is said, China isn’t gonna get themselves nuked for you, me, or anyone else, that’s isn’t China. It would be stupid to. I wouldn’t if I was them. But sometimes, I have to hate on the optics and commentary they give about it. Like when Chinese ambassadors go on about how great trade relations are going with Israel and how great of a trading partner they are. Like " oh cool, glad you having a good ol time with the genocidal maniac state."
I had so much more to say/better wording but I don’t have an hour to remember and retype it all, so this is what I got.
The burden for China to have to do something against the wests genocide when they have nothing to do with Palestine, even historically is weird. Despite that the diplomatic perspective of China has always been one of contesting the Golan heights, supporting North Korea and historic support of the PLO when it was a marxist entity.
To say they are not anti-colonial is wrong, they are also pro-trade and diplomancy - im not going to get mad at them for mirroring what the US does which is just bomb them.
My issue wasn’t that China isn’t doing anything. I get it. I wouldn’t get my countrymen in a war, and probably nuked unless there was no other possible option. Certainly not when Isn’treal would just nuke Gaza on its way out anyway. It would be starting WW3 and not actually save anyone in the process. But damn some of the optics and statements they make really make you feel disheartened, and pissed off. When I see big statements by the ambassador praising their trade relations and how they are such good partners and yada yada, it can get rather infuriating. “Oh, so glad you got those priorities right there buddy. So glad you are such happy trading partners with the genocidal child rapists. Good for you.”
Imagine your neighbor is regularly beating their wife and raping their kid in front of the whole neighborhood and then you make a comment at how great their last BBQ was. That’s what it feels like and IDC what people say or how they justify it. It’s fucking sucks and I will say it fucking sucks.
We know how bleak things are. We know what has been happening and what will likely happen. You don’t always have to spell it out when it doesn’t help anyone.
Why wouldn’t Israel destroy itself and take Palestine with them if China decided to militarily overthrow this entity? And who would the world blame? China. It’s always China’s fault.
There is an epidemic of “someone will do something and save us, we just have to hold out.” Across so much of the people I see. On here. On Reddit. IRL. And it need to be broken. Shit is bleak and I’m tired of seeing people hide from it. The world is bleak and it’s abandoned Palestine and nothing is more awful and disgusting than that. Nothing is more enraging that people not accepting what is happening. Thinking it’ll all be ok. It’s fucking not. No one is coming to save them, no one is coming to same us. We have to save ourselves, and maybe, if we hit enough people in the face with that, we won’t be alone in doing so. People need a wake up call. People need to top hiding from it.
And Israel will absolutely nuke Gaza on its way out. It’s one of many reasons no one will do anything. China isn’t going to get itself nuked over it. They aren’t stupid. I am not in the “China bad because do nothing” crowd. I get it. And I accept the bleakness. The world leaders have pretty much quietly accepted they will let Palestine die to prevent global nuclear war. My gripe isn’t that China isn’t doing anything. They do what they can. I am sure of that. It’s that damn I could go without seeing shit like their ambassadors going on about how great their trade relations are with Isn’treal and how great partners they are and all that shit. And I can see why people form the opinion that they are just sipping mimosas while all this goes on.
I don’t agree with everything written here, but I think this is a decent critique of what’s happening under Liberalism Oscar Wilde 1891
The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim.
That pretty much sums up liberalism, what it does, how it carries out it’s evils while pretending to be good and how imo. we desperately need healthy Individualism. But I am struggling to figure out how to pitch this. Right now I’m trying the approach of: “I see you’re trying to rescue people here, that’s awesome that you care, but we really need to do something about what’s causing it.”
But people are so propagandized they don’t listen to me. I’m talking about building power locally and then we can use it to assist other causes, but they don’t want to build power. They keep on relying on private industry and show no interest to work with me to build an alternative. Shit’s so bleak, but I’ll try to figure out something.
I tried to convince a person I know is a liberal today that like, changing the “current regime” in the Whitehouse will not stop what is happening and that this shits not gonna just get better and there no “weathering this crazy phase.”
And it basically made me realize that… We’re doomed. These fucking people. They will just pretend like everything is fine until they are being shoved into an incinerator. They really just cannot fathom that things won’t just “be ok.” It honestly was part of what spawned my entire rant here… I just… How? How can people be so god damn delusional? I am actually going insane. I can feel my mental faculties snapping a little bit more every time I interact with them.
I know I’m going to sound cheesy and like what you’ve already heard before, but you have to approach it dialectically.
The more ignorant and incompetent the system re-produces the easier it will be to defeat. They’re a paper tiger.
I mean, they could do a Trump strategy and declare an economic blockade on Israel and put tariffs on anyone who does business with Israel. But they’re too busy complying to the WTO for some reason…
declare an economic blockade on Israel
To enforce that economic blockade, you have to declare war to the entire West and decouple completely from the Western system(USD, SWIFT, Maritime Shipping Routes, et all).
As long as the West is willing to save their Zionist dog by bleeding their economies dry, there is no viable way to do an economic blockade without a military siege.
The problem with people here is that they see the entity as something separate rather than something within the Western system. To eradicate Israel, you have to destroy the West.
Why don’t they stop Chinese companies from doing business with Israel then? At the very least they could do that.
Ending trade with Israel means nothing if the U.S. and the EU keep financing, arming, and shielding Israel on every international stage. If we delve into this idea further, we will actually find that it will hurt the Global South as a whole instead of actually hurting Israel because it will push the West for more vicious actions toward China(examples: weaponizing the USD, weaponizing maritime shipping and oil routes, worse coercion than before to the point of blackmail to isolate China from the Global South). As long as the viable alternatives to the Western system(USD, SWIFT, Maritime Shipping Routes, et all) are not ready, any actions like this from China will only trigger more confrontation that will affect everyone including the Palestinians.
That’s why I will highlight once again that seeing Israel as something separate from the West instead of something from within is a big problem that will only lead you to oversimplification.
If we really want the end to the genocide instead of performative actions that will lead us nowhere, Israel’s lifeline must be destroyed and that lifeline is U.S’s and EU’s. military aid, markets, weapons, UN protection. The US and the EU must collapse as a whole.
This would involve an immediate reaction by the west and probably end up being almost as bad as taking physical action in the long run. It would only really hurt China and China isn’t going to take actions that hurts itself. It’s not in their playbook.
Yes, but that’s exactly what’s frustrating in their foreign policy. They won’t do anything that upsets the West. Even Russia was willing to eat up all the sanctions, but China won’t do anything. Eventually that will come back to bite them. After all, the destabilization of the Middle East is part of the US plan to destroy China. But the CPC doesn’t seem worried, so what do I know?
Not really. They are not exactly relaxing when it comes to western imperialism and opposing it.
There just is not exactly much to do against it if they don’t want to jeopardise their own people, their goal of a multipolar world and the idea of socialism in the world.
We are talking about nuclear powers and china is not that well liked yet in the west. They also don’t want to make it seem like they are behind the Palestinian struggle and therefore give an excuse for the genocide because the evil and powerful CCP is behind it and not normal people that wanted to live in peace and are violently resisting due to being attacked.
To paint china as simply relaxing on this issue is a huge insult imo and we should trust our comrades conducting one of the most successful socialist experiments a little bit more. Especially when we consider that the USSR might have spread itself a bit thin by helping around the globe before securing themselves
If China can make moves in the trade war like banning the sale of rare Earth metals then they can boycott Israel IMO
Boycotting Israel would be a unilateral movement of active hostility that, unfortunately, would be viewed with hostility by the US and its vassals. China gets away with bilateral trade wars because they are acting in response to actions taken against it directly, not for a third party.
The US views China’s mere existence as a hostility. What would the US do in response, launch missiles? Economic sanctions against China would hurt the US more than they hurt China, no?
Obviously the West holds 1000x more culpability for Israel. I’m not saying “China bad”; I’m just trying to do “ruthless criticism”.
China is not officially banning the sale of refined rare earths. It mereley does not process export orders by the US.
I am not gonna pretend like I specifically know a lot about their trade with Israel and why they continue some of their trade, but then also block investments in Israel.
I just know that they have been building up one of the most successful socialist experiments ever and that they have been phenomenal at navigating their politics and economy as to lift their people up into greater heights while not relying on the destruction of other people to achieve that.
I am sure that Israel is not an integral part of their economy and I am also sure that banning trade will not affect Israel at all because America and the EU are gonna pick up the slack
Anyway, trade is not support so maybe they just don’t see it as a problem at all and are concentrating on navigating the downfall of the empire and dodging the lash outs while trying not to agitate them into nuclear war.
‘They’re actually sweating profusely and waiting to hit the big communism button’ is really not convincing
Literally no one said that and you made that up completely. They are supporting anti-imperialist causes on the globe just like Russia and the DPRK.
I swear you people just really want to start WW3 out of nowhere and it’s driving me crazy
What anti-imperialist causes is China supporting in any significant manner, besides just improving its own productive forces? Cuba is about to be destroyed through sanctions, Venezuela just had a coup orchestrated by the hegemon, one that China probably did nothing to intervene in. What exactly is China doing besides profiting from all sides?
I swear you people just really want to start WW3 out of nowhere and it’s driving me crazy
Imagine if we held all parties to the same standard we hold China wrt this genocide
Go and grab a gun and fight for the Palestinian resistance otherwise stfu I swear to god. Trade isn’t support! Trading with the entity is no worse than trading with the US itself.
Cuba is building up its solar energy infrastructure and is able to do so purely because of the existence of China. The global south is able to develop past neocolonial condemned poor development solely because of the USSR and now China. They are fulfilling an important role even if you personally would rather see a few million Chinese people die for the cause.
LOL when you resort to dogshit arguments like this. Comparing 1 guy in living in the West vs the 2nd largest super power in the world. Get a grip. China does nothing cause all they care about is themselves and they don’t care how much they have to trade with an entity that kills babies for fun to get there.
sorry, you’re right, the biggest opposition to the Western empire and capital should come from the destitute poor in the imperial core who are actively being hunted down by cops and ICE. Incredible vision for the future, sorry Palestine
Yeah the PRC just popped into existence and was never poor and destitute and being hunted by fascists you’re right we shouldn’t do anything and if the Chinese don’t sacrifice themselves by the millions they are the reason why everyone around the world suffers.
Entitled, pathetic behaviour.
time to read Settlers.
Yes, unironically - do you expect Palestinians to swim across the ocean to come clean up the mess that your people is causing? Its the US thats bombing them!
Just like literally every country that has experienced revolution, yes. You think the commies in 1917 russia where not hunted down before they won? Feudal China fucking loved the commies, everyone knows that of course. The commies famously had a great and easy revolution in germany as well and the police just let them be.
Zero thought behind that reply and clearly just written in order to try to affirm your anti-china bias.
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Imagine if we held all parties to the same standard we hold China wrt this genocide
But we do. Nobody criticizes any country for trading with the US despite the US being more heinous than the Zionist entity. It’s not comparable if you consider its entire history or the fact that the Zionist entity is a military, economic, intelligence, and somewhat political extension of the US anyways.
Nobody who hasn’t fallen for NATO talking points criticizes the Soviet Union trading with fascist Germany while the non-aggression pact was in effect and nobody criticizes the Soviet Union for trading with fascist Japan while the other non-aggression pact was in effect.
Nobody who hasn’t fallen for NATO talking points criticizes the Soviet Union trading with fascist Germany while the non-aggression pact was in effect and nobody criticizes the Soviet Union for trading with fascist Japan while the other non-aggression pact was in effect.
That’s a very good point, but the difference I see is that Israel and China are nowhere near economic peers. A boycott would devastate Israel and China would barely feel a thing from the loss in trade.
the Zionist entity is a military, economic, intelligence, and somewhat political extension of the US anyways.
There’s no such thing as an independent boycott of the Zionist entity especially since the Zionist entity is completely reliant on the US anyways. If anything, the real cynical kabuki theatre pro-wrestling move would be to partially boycott the Zionist entity while simultaneously increase trade with the US with the understanding that the US would use the increase in traded commodities to further subsidize the Zionist entity and fill in the holes left by the “boycott.”
The only real way to economically hurt the Zionist entity is to hurt the Zionist entity’s master. Notice how a lot of countries that have no economic ties to the Zionist entity like the DPRK also don’t have economic ties with the US either. Because the US is very willing to subsidize the Zionist entity and because the US has a much bigger economy than the Zionist entity’s, a complete boycott the Zionist entity is essentially just a partial boycott of the US and the Zionist entity. For various reasons, China is not ready to wage economic warfare in so open a fashion against the US.
A boycott could work if the US vassal is unimportant enough that the US would rather leave them to their fate than save them. If China boycotts an expendable US vassal and the US refuses to save them, it could open up opportunities for the US compradors in charge to be overthrown, ideally by anti-imperialist forces. However, this is 100% untrue for the Zionist entity, which is probably the US’s most valuable vassal to the point where it’s not even a vassal anymore since the Israeli political class is completely self-aware of the settler-colony’s value in destroying WANA unity among many other things.
What anti-imperialist causes is China supporting in any significant manner, besides just improving its own productive forces? Cuba is about to be destroyed through sanctions, Venezuela just had a coup orchestrated by the hegemon, one that China probably did nothing to intervene in. What exactly is China doing besides profiting from all sides?
North Korea? Did the entire Korean war just go over your head?
The implicit threat from America has always been that if China starts exerting influence over Palestine, they will escalate North Korea - China is still technically at war with the US over this, peace was never agreed.
‘They’re actually sweating profusely and waiting to hit the big communism button’ is really not convincing
I honestly don’t know what you mean by this.
They could stop profiting off of a genocidal fascist state for one.
Or they could not do that because there is nothing specifically wrong from profiting off of your enemies’ actions as long as you don’t rely on it for your entire economy. We don’t really deal with moralist arguments here
Good quote!
Yes, and the trade with the entity was that China got US miltech in the 90s (when it was still the top provider in the world) when no one else would trade it with them bc of sanctions and in exchange the colony gets AC units and some agriculture. Basically consumer goods.
I’m not going to do a good trade bad trade comparison because that’s meaningless but this was the historical reason for the normalization of relations with the zionist entity and the exporting country does get the most benefit out of it. There is a strict ban on exporting weapons or anything that could be made into weapons.
I can’t be in their mind but China is probably worried that if they completely change course it will only alienate them from the ties they’ve built in the region. Most countries in the region have normalized relations with the occupation, what is China supposed to do when they inherited a situation they had no hand in forming? Instead of yelling at them on english websites the CPC doesn’t read we should be demanding that our governments send Cuba oil.
Seems like sound logic. Trade with the genocidal ally of the increasingly fascistic global military super power while they systematically eliminate all other smaller “AES” states and major trade partners you have (or economically force them into submission) while you sit back and shore up your metaphorical walls.
Sounds like a one hell of a gamble to me.
Yada yada. The other comments in this thread already addressed everything and explained in easy terms why China is doing what they are doing.
Thank you for the well thought out eloquent response. It contributed much to the discussion.
There is just no more discussion to be had. All the bullshit you come up with has already been answered in this very thread.
Stop being a racist failure and just read the 100 comments here and be educated
A deeply flawed understanding of reality, as usual.
Polymarket bet on BadEmpanada getting institutionalized when?
That’d be a bad bet. He’s a gringo in Argentina. Most people hearing him talk wouldn’t be able to parse his insanity through the filter of being a gringo. On top of that Argentina being in the middle of a anrcho-capitalist “experiment.” (disaster) With the type of cuts going on they are more likely throwing institutionalized people out onto the streets.
Hell, if his takes get bad enough he might get placed in the government.
Heartbreaking
More like BadEmpanada with a spot on take
