B-b-b-b-b-but China might, possibly, at some point in the future, try to reclaim Taiwan! Both sides! Two things true at once! Me speculating about something possibly happening is the exact same as the thing actually happening!
Also Taiwan is a staging ground for a US invasion, claims sovereignty over China, has it’s airspace go far over mainland China, and so much more. Somehow China not being a fan of this is the same as when the United States coups another country because it elected someone that doesn’t align 100% with us policy.
Is it possible for more than two things being true at once? Is it in fact possible that reducing everything to “both sides bad” isn’t some supreme insight, but instead just a mantra that allows libs to support the status quo of us imperialism?
Is it possible for more than two things being true at once?
Scientists recently managed to get three things to be true at once, but it only lasted for a couple seconds. It may be possible for as many as four, even five things to be true at the same time, but that’s purely theoretical at this point.
Are two things true at once in this thread by the way? I looked for someone saying it yesterday, but no one ever said so.
I’ve got a liberal bingo I am trying to fill out.
I’m also looking for someone writing in speech affectations a la “ummm… Wo-wow did you just say that? Haha that’s uhh crazy” and if you’ve got an checks notes then that’s nice tooAuthoritarian is a nothing-word used to describe enemy-nations. It’s like calling their government a “regime” or their intelligence agencies “secret police” or the vice-president the “hand picked successor”.
I’ve never seen a definition - neither academic or by some farthuffing Redditor - that wasn’t so broad as to just be describing a state or so specific it wasn’t just a longer way of spelling “China”.Every state is authoritarian. Reducing political analysis to wether a state does stuff and not what it does, why it does it, or with what amount of popular support, is top-tier liberal winecave apparatchik intelligentsia thought. No actual insights, but it makes you seem like you know stuff, if you don’t think about it at all. And going against the concept makes you seem like a villain because who wants to defend “authoritarianism”?
The definition came out in the fucking 60’s while the US was busy beating the shit out every protestor it could, yet somehow that wasn’t authoritarian.[1]
Running around with HUAC screaming about authoritarian communism. Funding death squads, secretly approving money to royal families, forcibly relocating the poor and marginalised, all the shit the west did in Africa, all the crackdowns in west Germany, the ongoing colonialism, Robert Moses and his European copycats, shit like the syphilis and LSD experiments; all this occuring in the nations decrying the USSR - and now China - for being “authoritarian”.
Britain is a police state today, the US is a modern Prussia, but the army is replaced with 17 different types of cops, the EU is funding concentration camps for refugees abroad and I can tell you from experience the cops have pretty free reign here too. We’re all surveilled up the ass and out again, but somehow China is an authoritarian danger? I’m supposed to be afraid that TikTok tells Xi Jinping knows when It take a shit, but its completely fine that my own overlords get the same info from the billion other trackers that are everywhere? People say “two wrongs don’t make a right” in response to this, but it seems like they think one of the wrongs is pretty right, and it’s the wrong that’s hanging over our heads - while the one around the globe is something to worry about[2]Its the same shit as totalitarianism - incidentally both concepts popularized by Hannah Arendt - which was just a fuckass way for dumbasses to sound smart when they uniquely observed that both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union used state power to do stuff - What stuff they did apparently having no matter at all, what percentage of approval from the populace or involvement mattering neither. No, what was important was that both states Did Stuff and that meant they were the same.
Now what if you pointed out that the US Did Stuff too? Well that’s whataboutism, a clever Russian ploy to make you want to have a consistent ideological throughline in your geopolitical critique.
What if you pointed out how old colonial powers like France were still Doing Stuff?[3] Well that’s Old Stuff so it doesn’t matter. Or it doesn’t matter because they aren’t superpowers or whatever.Here’s someone else shitting on her better than I could https://mirror.explodie.org/Losurdo___Critique_of_Totalitarianism_(2004).pdf
If you’re not a commited anarchist then I will not hear you utter a word in favour of Authoritarianism as an academic concept.
If you claim to be one then I am going to need to see some serious dissertation on leftist theory from you, as well as proof that you actually organise in the real world, because I know there’s enough larping lemmitors who don’t want to admit they’re just libs, because they can’t stand the thought of not being a special smart little kid.
Even then I am going to shit in your mouth if you’re an anarchist and you’re more concerned or preoccupied with what china is doing rather than whatever hellhole of a nation you live in yourself.
Incidentally from the early 50’s and onwards the soviet gulag system had a lower recidivism rate, lower death rate and overall higher QoL than the US system. ↩︎
Did you know the “social credit system” only ever applied to businesses? Fuck i wish the yeomen farmers back home were kept half as responsible as they are in China ↩︎
and are still Doing Stuff, did you know they control the monetary policy of several African nations? ↩︎
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Libs
FascistsResorting to chauvinism whenever someone disagrees with them.
Read a book
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What an odd thing to write
It’s the ableism in your comment, throwing neurodivergent people under the bus for a quick jab.
It must be exhausting, getting offended by everything that way.
Trying to dodge responsibility for your ableism by flipping around to how annoying you percieve those that call you out for it doesn’t work. Just take ownership and do better, it isn’t particularly difficult to do either and it results in personal growth and development.
Wtf of course china is authoritarian. China is all about total surveillance and total control by one party.
Surveillance in China is no greater than in western countries, though, and the decisions made by the CPC are made through constant polling and consensus building. This is why a much larger portion of Chinese citizens support their system and believe it represents their interests:
It’s still a centralized system, which is undemocratic. I agree that the majority of chinese citizens seems happy with how it works.
Who is doing this consensus building? Who decides what questions to poll?
Its surprising that you claim that the surveillance of chinese citizens by the CCP is on the same level as let’s say Germany. Hard disagree. I thought the CCP is proud of the surveillance.
Centralization doesn’t mean a lack of democratization, that’s why socialist democracy centers cohesion and unity over endless fragmentation. In China, for example, local representatives are directly elected, and then these representatives elect from within them the higher rungs of government. The CPC itself has over 100 million members, has a presence in every major company, and thus has its finger firmly on the pulse of what people actually want.
Progress is slow but extremely stable, and as such China has been able to consistently outperform other countries when it comes to improving the lives of the citizens of China. The CPC conducts this polling, and you can see this in action when looking at how Five Year Plans are made. You can read more about this system in Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance.
I don’t see what you are saying by claiming Germany spies on its citizens less than China. Both Germany and China are better than Five Eyes countries, sure, but Germany absolutely is spying on its citizens, not to mention privatized spyware. China isn’t “proud of the surveillance,” I don’t know what you mean by this in a way that makes it different from western surveillance.
Imagine being so utterly delusional to think that number of parties has anythign to do with how democratic the country is.
I do think explaining the difference between democracy and competing parties can be helpful, because it’s so thoroughly ingrained into people that democracy means voting between competing parties and not reflecting the will of the people.
It’s one of the more subtle propaganda narratives I find. On the surface it almost makes sense, but once you apply materialist analysis the whole thing falls apart because the whole discussion of democracy is meaningless when the means of production are privately owned. This arrangement takes away from public debate the key question of who governs our common economic life and to what ends?
Genuine democracy must include the power to shape the material conditions of our existence. The nature of labour, the distribution of its fruits, and the purpose for which we can produce are fundamental decisions we make as a society. When these are decided by a capitalist class alone with the absolute authority of private property, then political democracy becomes merely an ornamental competition on secondary issues. Citizens vote to choose politicians, but not regarding the structure of industry or finance, or the necessity for maximum profit which places all social and ecological considerations in a subordinate position. This creates an inherent contradiction where citizens are called equals politically, yet remain subordinates economically.
Any system where there is a private dictatorship over industry is not democracy but a carefully staged charade which legitimises the rule of money through the hollow ritual of elections. So you can have as many parties as you like, but there’s no actual democracy to be had.
Agreed, my point is that it’s helpful to explain that rather than jumping to insult right off the bat. Bloodsport is fun and all, but at the bare minimum I think it’s helpful to showcase why the point is bad, not just claiming that it’s bad. I know it isn’t as fun, and we do explain time and time again, but that’s the task we have as communists, to help bring the working class to more correct ideological lines.
There should be an Australian guy who is still just hating on China in the 2nd panel anyway.
China is very vocal about taiwan being theirs.
it is tho, it’s been a part of china since the qinq dynasty in 17th century, the people in taiwan are exactly alike the ones in mainland china. It’s also in the best interest of both to reunificate, the US just wants to turn them into chinese ukraine for their geopolitical goals.
And Taiwan is very vocal about having airspace that goes several hundred miles over mainland China. Taiwan is also very vocal about being a part of china, so what are you gonna do?
Also, why would I be against a full incorporation of Taiwan into China, if it has popular support? The island was occupied by the fascist Kuomintang, the party carried out a genocide on the native population and it’s only around to day because it can function as a military launching ground for the US.
What’s the actual rational explanation for why Taiwan should become an independent nation when that’s not what Taiwan wants nor what China wants and doing so would only be in the interest of the imperialist US?
If this is the kind of stuff you actually care about, then why not start with all the national sovereignty that whatever place you’re from doesn’t respect? You know, something you can actually influence, instead of doing something that just so happens to further imperialist interests?
Do you have a reasonable explanation of why it should be the US’s and not theirs?
Both the PRC and ROC (Taiwan) claim sovereignty over all of China. Neither considers the island of Taiwan to be distinct from China, the question is over which government has legitimate sovereignty over all of China, and the overwhelming consensus globally is that it’s the PRC. Taiwan’s government is made up of the ones that lost the Chinese Civil War and fled to the island, slaughtered resistance, and have been protected by the west.
Probably because it clearly is
It is theirs. If you support Taiwanese separatism then you should be consistent and support all separatist movements. There’s plenty in Europe you should support them.
I refuse Taiwan separatism but support European separatist movements. What does this makes me?
Morally correct on my book.
Your moral book shall be kept on based library of fully-automated gay space communism.
I haven’t looked into all European separatist movements, but afaik that makes you based
I checked the list and I think I’m against separatist movements in Russia and Serbia for now because of their obvious impcore-led origins.
Brexit/ukip is/was an independence movement of sorts and pretty shit.
Anything against britbong interests are good.
There used to be strong anti-EU movements on the left, but they’ve all died out. It’s a shame
Yeah, a shame. Now the so called Euro-left is filled with left anti-coms, and they would rather side with imperialists than MLs.
There’s so many Types Of Guy that could make you, it’s hard to count.
I’m available if any libs for fashes wanna throw hands.
And Republic of China—aka the government of Taiwan Island—is very vocal about China, Mongolia and old Qing Dynasty territories being theirs.
old Qing Dynasty territories
Would be real funny to watch the US and friends do a 180 on freeing Tibet
If Tibet was actually ever “freed” (it already is free) then that is sort of what would happen
Chinas military stays in and around china as far as i know…
But the us is everywhere interfering in everyones business
I do know China meddles in Africa a lot. I think because they are interested in resources, maybe mining or oil?
I read in the past that a lot of the Sudanese groups that pillage and fight with a lot of South Sudan are funded and given firearms or something by China or Chinese groups. I think this was more prominent around 15 years ago when South Sudan was trying to be independently recognized.
Side note: I also remember reading that George Clooney used to fund some kind of satellite thing that helped South Sudanese track movements of North Sudanese so they could preemptively avoid attack.
China definitely meddles. But yeah, probably nowhere near the degree the US does.
I do know China meddles in Africa a lot
Oh you know that? That’s something you know? How exactly do you know that? Did it come to you in a dream?
China has mutual development projects in Africa, the reason is because in the long run mutual development benefits everyone.
While it does have benefits, the overarching Chinese plan is to own everything, and have countries on the debt hook.
USA is the world bully by might, China does it by strategy
This isn’t true though, as I elaborate on over here. China doesn’t seek to own everything, nor does it debt trap. In fact, it frequentlt forgives billions in debt. China’s goal in Africa is mutual, win-win development, as long term cooperation benefits everyone more greatly than western imperialism does.
The US, Canada, Europe, etc, in being dominated by finance capital and the profit motive, are ecomomically compelled into the strategy of keeping the global south underdeveloped so as to super-exploit them for cheap labor and resources. The PRC is socialist, though, and the finance industry is dominated by the state, meaning long-term planning and mutual development is not only possible, but economically compelled.
There’s lots of other links that discount your denial of their plans and how they leverage. USA is like 5 year plan, 10 year plan. China has 100 year plan and 1000 year plan.
China does have long-term planning, I’m not disputing that, I’m disputing the idea that China is predatory towards the global south. These narratives are largely pushed by the west in order to scare the global south away from pivoting to China, whose mutual cooperation programs are proven to result in dramatic and rapid development.
No. Its not. Go read about their lease agreements. Theyre doing the same thing just through financial means.
“go read this thing I haven’t read, I assume it supports my argument”
Me telling people to read Capital
Join comrade @oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net 2026 Capital reading group! They just started, you can absolutely catch up!
You have the perseverance of a saint
I have read, and China is absolutely not doing “the same thing just through financial means.” Financial domination secured with millitant means is the western method. China is not debt trapping poor African nations. We can see that this isn’t the case when we can observe countries in BRI engaging in rapid development and industrializing, and this is confirmed by China forgiving tons of debt. The goal of China isn’t to make countries reliant on them, or to earn money from debt, it’s because China gains personally through mutual development. Here are some articles debunking the “debt trap” myth:
There are many more examples I can use. China isn’t doing this out of the goodness of their own heart, but because they stand to gain from mutual development. A more developed global south means China is less reliant on the US Empire as a customer, provides new avenues to facilitate trade, and creates more markets for customers. The west harvests the global south for cheap labor and resources, and we can see hard comparisons in data between BRI participants and those imperialized by the west to see fundamentally different results.
It’s clear at this point: participation in BRI results in sustained and rapid development and mutual cooperation, and working with the west results in sustained impoverishment. It appears that you believe any cooperation between more developed and less developed countries is inherently imperialist, and impossible to be mutually beneficial. I’d like to see proof.
As a side-note, this is also why I hate the “go read” argument in online discourse. Reading very well can be the answer, but the other user isn’t going to do it unless they have a compelling reason to take your advice. This goes for Marxists that tell other users to read as well.
https://africacenter.org/spotlight/china-port-development-africa/
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W3Ek6HZ5nD4&t=670
The only thing clear is if yoy do business with them they will take control of whatever it is they build. And acti g like they wont use it for military means when needed is a childs mentality.
Linking a bunch of people fearmongering about China’s increasing presense in Africa doesn’t actually mean this is to take away sovereignty from African countries. China gains from this mutual cooperation, but so do African countries, and unlike the west China doesn’t force trade at the barrel of a gun. That’s part of why it’s mutally beneficial, and results in development in Africa, vs underdevelopment and western enrichment.
All this really proves is that you have a deeply chauvanistic view of China, assuming that every country is as evil as the west. The simple reason why China isn’t economically compelled to imperialize is because it isn’t dominated by finance capital, and thus prioritizes long-term results. It’s simply better for everyone for there to be mutual cooperation, but western countries are dominated by the profit motive and finance capital, which compels them to take short term gains via looting the global south.
I suggest you read the articles I have already linked, they help debunk the fearmongering from your gish-gallop.
Your articles keep talking about “increasing Chinese millitary domination” despite a whopping 3 millitary bases overseas. China has a defensive millitary and benefits from stability and development in the global south, while NATO has hundreds of bases and installs compradors, coups, forces austerity, and more.
meanwhile in the real world https://jasonhickel.substack.com/p/is-china-doing-colonialism-in-africa
Construction projects =/= military occupation, try harder
I think it is more that Americans are so used to extractive austerity and warfunding/fighting that we’ve completely forgot that economies can build civil society.
https://africacenter.org/spotlight/china-port-development-africa/
I dont have to try. Theyre selling everything to the chinese already. Acting like china wont use these for military opperations when needed is just stupid
This does absolutely nothing to support your dumbass claims, try again
It does if youre literate. Thats a tall ask on here though.
China gains as much as $13 in trade revenues for every $1 invested in ports. A firm holding an operating lease or concession agreement reaps not only the financial benefits of all trade passing through that port but can also control access
Chinese firms hold operating concessions in 10 African ports. Despite the risks over loss of control, the trend on the continent is toward privatizing
Ports in which Chinese firms have equity arrangements provide similar leverage over port operations. Notably, under China’s technical standards for “military civil fusion” (junmin ronghe; 军民融合), many Chinese state owned commercial shipping and civilian air cargo capabilities meet military specifications for defense logistics purposes.
It’s possible for two things to be true at once.
It’s also possible to try using whatever your brain instead of just regurgitating imperial propaganda uncritically, but here we are
It’s possible for you to not talk solely in rote, word for word, recitation of thought terminating cliches, and yet you don’t.
It’s possible for your entire hand to fit in your ass
I would love for you to actually make a claim rather than this meaningless bullshit.
The World isn’t the West. China is an enemy of choice for the West due to racism, otherwise it poses no threat.
China is a threat to Africa, trying to buy land for military bases from African countries. China is constantly trying to expand and dominate its culture. If that isn’t the definition of imperialism, I don’t know what is.
It must be so nice being an anti-communist. You can just make up whatever unsourced bullshit you like and expect people to believe it
I am pro communism. China is not communist, it is authoritarian and state-capitalist.
Is China State Capitalist?
- The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2 The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.
- Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
- Is modern day china communist? Is it staying true to communist values?
- Didn’t China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn’t it liberalize its economy? Is China’s drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
- Is the CPC committed to communism?
- The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
- The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
- Tsinghua University- Is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics real socialism, or is it state Capitalism?
- Isn’t China revisionist for having a capitalist sector of the economy, and working with capitalists? Why isn’t it fully planned like the USSR was?
- Castro on why both China and Vietnam are socialist countries.
- Roderic Day - China has billionaires.
- What is socialism with Chinese characteristics (SWCC)?
- How is SWCC not revisionist? How is it any different from Gorbachev’s market reforms?, 2
- Domenico Losurdo - is China state capitalist?, 2
- Did Lenin say anything about Market Socialism, or productivism?
- Vijay Prashad - Is China capitalist?
- Why do Chinese billionaires keep ending up in prison? Why are many billionaires and CEOs going missing? China sentences Ex-Chairman of a major bank, guilty of embezzling ~$100M USD, to death in 2019.
- China cracks down on billionaires - Ben Norton interviews Ian Goodrum
- Do capitalists control the communist party? No, pic
And yet you accept anti-communist slander as true without question.
Have you ever, even just once, asked yourself where those accusations come from? Who made them? Who propagated them? Why they did?
No one is claiming China achieved communism, we just believe its policies reflect an attempt at building it. It’s also silly to slander a socialist state as “authoritarian” if you have read the bare minimum of Engels. If you’re earnest on supporting communism I encourage you to look into the compatible left and seek non western perspectives more broadly.
The PRC has a socialist market economy. The working classes control the state, and the large firms, key industries, finance sector, are all dominated by public ownership. Public ownership is the principle aspect of China’s economy. State capitalism as a term more fits the Republic of Korea, where the state is controlled by capitalists and private ownership dominates the economy, but with heavy state influence.
Where are you getting your ideas about communism from that leads you to believe that China isn’t building towards communism? Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners is a great place to start with learning about China’s socialist system.
If that isn’t the definition of imperialism, I don’t know what is.
Yeah, its clear you have no clue what that is. Trade and development are not imperialism.
No sources for that claim of course, as usual.
To my knowledge the only military base China has in Africa is the one in Djibouti, and literally every country who can afford to have a base there has a base there.
If that isn’t the definition of imperialism, I don’t know what is.
Indeed, you don’t have a clue what it is. Try looking up “unequal exchange”, or better yet reading a book on the subject. Lenin’s Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism and Fanon’s How Europe underdeveloped Africa are good reads on the subject.
Walter Rodney wrote How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Frantz Fanon’s most famous work is The Wretched of the Earth, which is also a banger. Here’s Lenin’s Imperialism, the Current Highest Stage of Capitalism and the Prolewiki page on unequal exchange, for reference.
You clearly don’t know. I suggest you read about France’s parasitic relationship to Central and Western Africa that continues to this day, it even controls the issuance of the currency for eight West African nations and six Central African nations. Nothing China does even in your imagined worst case scenario comes close. And that’s just France.
China is not trying to expand nor dominate its culture. China has mutual development projects with African countries, it isn’t dramatically expanding its millitary presence. The US Empire has hundreds of overseas millitary bases, China has 3. This is just the typical western projection of its own sins onto China.
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
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Sadly, sh.itjust.works can’t see grad comments.
Oh, right. I forgot.
The reason this cliché is utterly unconvincing to me is because it’s incomplete. Nobody seems to be able to genuinely prove how both statements are true, whenever hypocricy is pointed out. It isn’t at all grand and revealing to say that 2 things can be true, what matters is investigating the truth of the 2 things.
True.
- European nations gleefully join with USAmerica-led invasions against other countries and talk about Freedom n Democracy
- But they think it’s against Freedom n Democracy when USAmerica just mentioned an invasion directed against them
Both true
thx you filled my liberal bingo card for this week :)
‘Liberal’ really just does mean anyone you disagree with, huh?
O7
Wow, another word for word recitation from the book of tedious shitlib cliches.
Are you actually capable of forming a sentence of your own? Or just repeating the ones you’ve had programmed into you?
Covfefe, authoritarian, Ruthkanda forever, if Kamala had won we’d be having brunch
You suck at this
No, I usually use this term to describe people who e.g. use cookie cutter sentences which just empower the powers that oppress us and which stay in the frame of the general western (especially EU-centric) propaganda doctrine.
