this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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As the saying goes, you can't be neutral on a moving train.
By refusing to condemn China, I must therefore support it. That's how it works. You can't just be a third positionist about this and say "I oppose everybody with my own special snowflake socialism!"
My country managed to legislate better labor rights and worker protections under milquetoast SocDem governments than whatever the CCP managed to implement in China. So the CCP's brand of "socialism" is not appealing to me.
This is literally the tankie position, so I'm not sure why modern tankies take offense at being labeled so. Even in 1968, socialists & communists disagreed over the squashing of the Prague Spring, but tankies now still demand unconditional loyalty for their anti-US crusade, with little regard for anything else.
Your country extracted super profits from the exploitation of the third world and then redistributed a small portion of that stolen wealth to pacify the workers. Mine did that too and that's nothing to be proud of!
Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, which means the contradictions of US hegemony are the highest contradictions and take precedence!
It doesn't matter if I personally disagree with how China is responding to Muslim extremism or how it responds to protesters or how it is supposedly "developing the means of production" with state capitalism, because China is still an ally in the fight against empire.
When the empire is dead we can deal with the lesser contradictions.
And the CCP wholeheartedly supports that. Companies such as VW even set up a factory in Xinjiang to take advantage of Uyghur slave labour, with full CCP acquiescence. The CCP itself has no issue with exploiting workers, exploiting its own population, or that of the 3rd world either.
I fail to see the advantage of replacing US hegemony with CCP hegemony. Substituting an empire with another is pointless.
For that to be true, one would have to believe in the idea that the CCP is interested in solving the contradictions of capitalism. Is there any evidence that this is the case? At this point, the CCP has abandoned socialism in favour of state capitalism & nationalism. A pivot back to socialism after the end of imperialism is within the realm of historical alt-timeline fiction.
Tankies may think of the CCP as an ally, but that view might not be mutual. Once the empire is dead, their role will end. They are only useful to Stalinist regimes insofar they run interference for them and undermine any democratic opposition. Beyond that, they have no use. Attempting to "deal with lesser contradictions" under these undemocratic revisionist regimes will simply result in purges.
To be clear, nobody will be dealing with any contradiction under the CCP. It's a totalitarian, statist regime which has squashed, and will squash any glimmer of dissent. Bringing up contradictions at any level is likely to result in a futile re-enactment of the cultural revolution, with predictably similar results. There will be one option: To follow the party line to the letter.
I don't believe Chinese hegemony is possible. US hegemony is a historical anomaly created by the very specific circumstances of colonialism, slavery, and then the post-WW2 period that saw all the old empires destroyed.
Once this empire is dead, there won't ever be another. The material conditions won't allow for it.
US hegemony is not a "historical anomaly". It is the logical consequence of the imperial center i.e. the US/UK/Europe winning the geographical lottery. The triangular slave/goods/textile trading scheme in the Atlantic resulted in rapidly developing markets and massive extraction of wealth, ensuring US dominance. These geographical factors have become less important in the 21st century, however.
That is because orthodox Marxist discourse hasn't evolved in any meaningful way since the cold war. It's just people repeating the same platitudes with almost-religious fervor, willfully ignoring newer research.
Not only is Chinese hegemony possible, but trends suggest that it is poised to inherit the role of the imperial center possibly by the end of the century. Ian Morris' "Why the West Rules—For Now" graphs the development of China and the West based on the amount of energy each civilization can capture, and extrapolation suggests that China will overtake the US by no later than 2100, possibly even earlier.
In the very least, that wouldn't have been a regression if China wasn't controlled by the CCP. But as things are currently, Chinese hegemony is synonymous with CCP hegemony. Some people attempt to argue otherwise, but that's just sophistry. The hypercentralized statism of the CCP and its propensity to use all available technological means to coerce will leave little room for reform or discussion.
It can only be an anomaly, because not only did the US/UK/Europe win the geographical lottery (making it an anomaly that can't be repeated) but also the Atlantic slave trade and the rapid expansion into the so-called New World was another anomaly. Then, like I said, WW2 created another anomaly that saw literally every other empire fall and the US gobble them all up with only the USSR around to challenge them. Then the USSR fell and the US became the sole global hegemon, another anomaly that created the first global empire in history!
China doesn't have the same geographical advantages. China doesn't have the opportunity to steal trillions in wealth from native lands and native peoples. China can't make a new slave trade. China will be forced to compete with other powers, like the declining US and EU as well as regional rivals like India and Russia. China can't recreate US global hegemony, and neither can any other country because all the low-hanging fruit has already been eaten. There's no bonanza of resource to exploit anymore, it's all gone, and now we'll be entering a post-neoliberal world with permanent multipolarity.
Let us not forget that global warming is going to continue to destabilize the entire world with billions forced to migrate. Country after country will collapse into uninhabitable dead zones. China isn't going to build an empire in the ashes left by this particular epoch, no one will and no one can.
This is a new situation and I obviously could be wrong, but unless China figures out cold fusion or asteroid mining or something I don't see them becoming the new global empire. We're at the end of an era and something new is happening.
These geographical advantages aren't as important today as they were at the beginning of industrialization. As for the other things: They're all ethical issues and "international norms" established under US hegemony. The reason the slave trade isn't a thing anymore is because the US/UK-led global empire decided to collectively abolish it in the first place. The same goes for old-fashioned colonialist conquest & plundering, which the old European powers were forced to abandon under US pressure (among other factors).
All the things you're describing are features and consequences of the US global order, so why would anyone expect any of them to remain intact if that global order gives way to something else? The reason almost every single state, even totalitarian ones, adhere to "international norms" on slavery, colonialism, or nuclear weapon usage is because the consequences of breaking these norms would be highly disadvantageous, and would result in punitive action in the current global order. The reason why almost every single state - even the most totalitarian - holds elections (even if "fake" ones) and attempts a facsimile of democracy is because the current global order inherently lends democracies more legitimacy than autocracies.
Assuming the current global order disappears, why wouldn't totalitarianism, slavery, disenfranchisement of women, or even colonialist conquest make a comeback? There would be nothing to enforce the norms against these at that point – and any actor could easily break them with no consequence whatsoever.
External pressure is just as likely to incentivize empire building. Physical domination and control of habitable land at any cost will likely become very important, if not essential, and everyone will get away with it.
They don't need to figure out any of that. They simply need to be able to capture more energy than their adversaries, and that is possible without cold fusion or asteroid mining. The CCP only need maintain its current trajectory of development to be able to overtake the US by the end of the century. Unlike western liberal democracies, a high-tech totalitarian society like CCP-controlled China can expand and maintain stability even in a collapsing environment without being constrained by norms or concepts such as the rule of law.
That's really what you think, huh? They just abolished slavery because they decided to? For what? Because they're so nice? lol
Does the motive matter that much? It was the result of US/European abolitionist movements' success, who ended the practice within their respective empires, and which eventually extended into a global ban. The point is that the practice was banned & ended worldwide.
Reformist movements don't and can't exist under CCP rule period. An anti-exploitation movement in China would be crushed immediately, if it were even allowed to develop at all.