this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
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No, the arms manufacturers just don't have the same level of influence over the government and armed forces that they do in America, and the people in the government who decide whether to drop bombs won't personally get rich if they buy more bombs.
That isn't something unique to China btw but basically almost every country except USA and a few others.
Do you think that dynamic wouldn't exist for any country, including China, that had as much world influence as the US does now?
I mean- yeah, the birdcage model has been supplanted by majority public ownership at this point, the same incentives that create the military industrial complex don't exist- if you'd like, i would recommend reading "Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism" which can be a handy reference point for the US military complex.
Saying that China doesn't have a MIC is a non-sequitur. The incentive is power. If acquiring or maintaining power in China requires military expansion, it will happen.
Except imperialism is actually incredibly inefficient in the long term. Western nations become imperialist due to the contradictions created by capitalism.There is a reason why China's foreign policy is centered around mutual advancement.
If you want power over another country, attacking them is a very inefficient path. You will take losses, and you won't be able to take their resources intact. The easier and cheaper method is to just bribe their leaders into selling you whatever you want.
The US starts wars even when it doesn't need to, because there are a handful of companies that stand to make a lot of money selling weapons. No other country has such a large and influential military lobby, so other countries tend not to start wars for private profit.
Can you be more clear in your question?
My point is that the real hard-to-swallow pill for people like OP is that China is not a magical place where everyone just sings kumbaya all day. China is just like any other country comprised of humans that has existed ever, and would do the same things the US is doing now if they could. The only reason this meme is in any way accurate is that China can't realistically drop bombs like that, otherwise they would. Tankies like OP will defend imperialism all day long, as long as the imperialists say "Death To America!". If the US poofed out of existence today, there would be a power vacuum quickly filled by exactly the same sort of people that are dropping those bombs in the meme.
So I guess my question is "What's the point of pretending that China is any different?"
Yeah, except they're different countries, made up of different people, with a different culture, with a pretty much fundamentally different kind of organizational structure governing them. I don't think "well, they'd probably do it too, if the US were gone" is a super convincing argument in favor of the US dropping bombs on people.
To be clear, I'm not in favor of dropping bombs on people. My argument is that saying "China isn't dropping any bombs" is silly. They would if they could and it would achieve a goal.
Human nature doesn't change just because you go over to the other side of the globe. History shows us that the wars over there haven't been any less bloody. Why are you proposing that human nature is fundamentally different now?
Because I don't think it's human nature that people just inevitably drop bombs on on another as soon as they're given the opportunity to do so, and I think that's an extremely oversimplified view of both human nature and history, to think that's the case. I think, broadly, it depends on a lot of factors. Economic factors, normal economic realities, and the ability of the economic systems to self-regulate and feed information from the bottom to the top, and vice versa, as a result of their political structures. Cultural factors, like the base level of xenophobia present in a culture for other cultures, you know, to what degree that xenophobia shapes the economic realities or is shaped by the economic reality.
I think saying, oh, well, if china was the world hegemon tomorrow, they'd drop bombs as soon as they could, I don't even really think that passes the smell test. They'd still have to deal with the EU, with Russia, with the militaries of basically every force they'd want to contend with, and with their lack of as nearly of a well-funded military industrial complex. They've shown a much higher tendency to approach geopolitical situations with their huge amounts of economic leverage as a result of their manufacturing base rather than just using a big stick to get everything they want.
I don't see any reason why that would majorly change if the US were gone. If they were to pivot to military industrial capacity, there's a certain cost-opportunity there in terms of what it would take out of their economic capacity, and it wouldn't really be the same cost-opportunity that we have (or, mostly, used to have histrorically) in the US, since their public and private sectors are more fused than ours, so they're not benefiting from the natural efficiency of a large government organization in terms of overall savings, when that's basically what every corporation over there is, or, is more than over here. Why would they risk their position bombing the shit out of other nations when they could basically just not?
The belt and road initiative has already showcased their geopolitical approach. It's still something they use a military to protect in terms of infrastructural investments, but those infrastructural investments seem to me to be more significant than those of most western occupying forces, and seem to take a different fundamental stance in terms of technology. China's economy doesn't revolve, to the same extent as the US, around the extraction, control, and importation of cheap, sour, heavy, crude oil, from other nations, which can then be refined into much more valuable petroleum products in terms of shipping while the US positions itself as a middle-man between this extractive base and the rest of the world's energy market. China's built like 50 nuclear plants since like 2014-ish, we've built 2 new plants since the year 2000. That's obviously shaped by necessity, but that's also just a vastly different approach.
First off, thanks for the substantive response. I appreciate these sorts of discussions over people just trying to dunk on each other like it's twitter.
I don't think China would drop bombs as soon as possible. I think they'll start dropping bombs as soon as that is the best or easiest way of achieving some goal.
China is super xenophobic, like many Asian countries. They won't even try to hide it behind a facade like the West does.
They don't bother using bombs right now, because it would give the US an excuse to get involved, and the US currently outspends the next 11 countries combined. That would be a total shitshow for them no matter what happened. Nobody bothers trying to outspend the US, because you'd wreck your economy and get nothing. If the US went poof though, you'd get a game theoretic situation where everybody invests in the military because everyone else is investing in their military and you don't want to be left out. If China then decided that they want to finish the job on making the Korean peninsula Chinese, who would realistically stop them?
The belt and road initiative is a great extension of soft power, but that says nothing about how they'd use hard power if given the opportunity.
See, now that's totally different, as a claim, slightly more reasonable, glad you clarified.
I also, I dunno, I think I just dispute that the disposition of the US empire would immediately lead to some sort of mass arms race, or struggle. I think at most you'd expect to see some more minor movement on china's other political objectives, like just, taking control of taiwan, which I imagine would be a pretty much instantaneous and relatively bloodless kind of move, since they're most of the way there already. But militaries, and military spending, isn't infinite, it's a direct drain on the economy in real terms, especially with modern warfare, as we've seen with ukraine, and especially with the threat of nukes.
We're able to produce all that military shit because we just dump a frankly massive and insane portion of our economy (and especially our extractive economy) into it, in a kind of constant feedback loop where people in power pay themselves. People who work at lockheed martin get hired from positions as US military personnel, where the FAANG is a revolving door with the CIA, that sort of shit. All as sort of a massive sunk cost, that would be pretty hard to disentangle from while maintaining the US economy, since the US economy is so tied to the US empire. We can look at the sort of, landscape that emerged out of the slow dissolution of the new deal, and post new deal government projects, as being less a sort of desert where everything just fell into ruins, and more being a morph kind of slow and incestuous merge between government organizations and private companies, since the "necessity" of those organizations still existed.
I think there's also definitely some extent to which we're getting cooked by china more than we realize with this kind of stuff because our economic metrics are so fucked as to be almost certainly useless.
If you can get your objective without draining massive portions of your economy, then there's really no reason to, and I don't think china would have many problems taking really any soft power objective they set their eyes on. Obviously I'm not a soothsayer, so I can't say what the landscape would form into given this hypothetical, but I don't see a whole lot of geopolitical conflicts of interest, or uncrossable roads, so far as china is concerned in terms of their longer term economic growth or outlook.
I think there's also something to note there about how like, I dunno. I think it's naive to think that military conflicts purely arise out of a latent cultural xenophobia. I think it would be naive to say that plays no role, either, but I don't think it's as nearly shaping a factor as people make it out to be. Certainly, if your nation's finding itself in such a position where someone so idealistic and delusional is making your higher level decisions, and especially your military decisions, as the US currently finds themselves in, you'd probably be cooked like, whatever that person's position is. Probably there's some sort of back and forth here also about china's interactions with their uyghur population, perhaps, as an example of how they've responded to that kinda stuff, and I don't think they have a bad track record.
The threat of nukes is real. I wouldn't expect any major wars between nuclear states right away, but there would be a lot of consolidation of smaller countries without nukes into larger countries with nukes. In this scenario if you're Japan, you will have the option of getting nukes ASAP or deciding if you want to learn Russian or Chinese.
I'm not claiming that only xenophobia leads to military conflicts. It is often used to whip up support for conflicts that people in power want, though.
Soft power is preferable, yeah. The real measure is when someone has something you want and they say "no".
Definitely agree that they're all fucked up. It remains to be seen how much it helps vs hurts though. Like the saying "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent", sometimes the fact that the metrics are all made up can be useful. I say that as someone that doesn't like how little they resemble the real world.
Those savages. Yeah, that doesn’t sound racist at all, not orientalist at all. Are you Josep Borell?
What are you talking about? Koreans are still in Korea, speaking Korean. If it were in China’s “nature” to make Korea Chinese, then why didn’t they do it at any point over the centuries?
If that's what you jump to, you might want to introspect on that. They're not savages for being xenophobic, that just makes them human like the rest of us.
That paragraph is a commentary on power relations and geography. It's not in "China's nature", but if they decided to invade in a world that looked like ours today but without the US, there would realistically be nobody to stop them. Perhaps North Korean nukes would be enough of a deterrent actually, but shy of that there would be no realistic opposing force.
You are the one saying that they are xenophobic, and I reject your racist, orientalist, essentialist claim. Yours is an idealist position, not a materialist one, yet you’re the one trying to argue that communism as idealist.
You say, “if they decided.” What’s the point of this hypothetical? You’re doing a lot of mental gymnastics to construct a straw man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-RfHC91Ewc
Materially, they're xenophobic, like the rest of humanity. Claiming that they're uniquely not xenophobic is racist in its own way.
They've decided before. So has Japan. But you're missing the point here. It's not about likelihood of it happening, it's about what's possible today vs possible in a changed world.
I'll try stating it another way. If the US got busy with a civil war for the next few years and I was in a leadership position of say Korea or Japan, I would be pushing for a nuclear program posthaste, because that's the only real deterrent.
This is really really not true. Anyone that has actually visited China or engages regularly with Chinese people knows it's not really true. It's the kind of shit people who don't question anything see in a reddit comment and then accept as fact because it confirms racist biases you already have that you've not had questioned or self-examined within yourself.
You should question this. You should re-examine this view. You should self-crit. You're talking about the largest marxist country in the world, where marx is taught in schools and universities, where a marxist-leninist party leads, and where the established ideology of internationalism continues to progress. It's just so utterly out of touch with what China actually is.
https://youtu.be/WNPKRjNEZ5E
Your kind of reasoning is called "projection". You are actually choking on that pill.
That's not projection, that's basic human behavior. Do you think modern China just magically poofed into existence, or were there maybe a few bloody imperalist wars involved? Why would things be different now?
What is your idea that they "can't get away with dropping bombs" based on? They absolutely could, and they still don't do it. What it's based on is that you assume they would if they could, that's projection, because clearly you like the idea of bombing people for profit.
this also, yeah, there's plenty of people china could drop bombs on, or, opposition groups they could fund in proxy wars or civil wars, probably to their strategic advantage, and they mostly don't do it. they've taken a much softer strain in terms of geopolitics, I think.
Right now, it would be strategically unwise. They would get a lot of international blowback, sanctions, etc. As a country, it's currently better to achieve your goals with diplomacy and hostile actions that have plausible deniability. That can easily change, though. If it does, prepare to live in interesting times.
It’s has nothing to do with the material conditions, iT’s JUsT hUmAN NAtUre.
The problem is not human nature, it is imperialism, otherwise known as monopoly capitalism, otherwise known as the highest stage of capitalism. In the time of British hegemony it took the form of colonialism, and in the current time of American hegemony it has taken the form of neocolonialism.
Do better.
Imperialism is human nature, yes. Imperialism is not otherwise known as monopoly capitalism, which is where your whole chain of thought breaks down. Are you really trying to argue that Communists can't be imperialist?
It is human nature in the sense that humans have been known to do it. It is not human nature in the sense that humans will always do it when the opportunity presents itself.
That would be a strange form of communism. Imperialism is, however, baked into capitalism, because once the capitalist class has absorbed the domestic, it tries to exfiltrate new resources abroad and subjugate new labor abroad and access new markets abroad. That is what the UK did, and that is what the US, as the global imperialist hegemon, has been doing for decades, along with its imperial core junior partners.
What would be the best historical example that you can think of? To be specific, what is a historical example of when a country would have benefited from expanding an empire, had the resources and ability to do so, and chose not to for an extended period of time?
Human greed is a base desire that has been a constant throughout our entire history. At some point, you're arguing for a fantasy. Either Communism is a realistic political system that can be implemented with humans as we are, including all of our base animal impulses, or it's a fantasy that requires humans to achieve a higher level of consciousness first or something.
That is precisely what it is.
That is precisely what it is not.
I think there’s ~0% chance you’re interested in understanding dialectical materialism or historical materialism, but I’ll link to this anyway: Elementary principles of philosophy
I agree on what it is and isn't, but that's the counterpoint to your statement that communism and imperialism don't mix. My assertion is that imperialism is a part of human nature, and so either you acknowledge that communism and imperialism do mix, or that communism isn't realistic for humanity.
It's hard to convey over text on the internet, but I am actually interested in better understanding the world. As much as I think places like Hexbear are silly, it's useful to encounter worldviews so alien. I really hate low-effort "dunking" even if it's something I agree with, because you can't learn anything from that and it loses all nuance.
I will second Elementary Principles of Philosophy, it's the best primer on Historical and Dialectical Materialism, which is why it's in my Introductory Marxist Reading List.
You're entirely ignoring davel's point. The reason the US bombs is because of what davel calls "Imperialism," and linked to examples of it. What you call "human nature Imperialism" and what davel calls "Imperialism as a stage in Capitalism" are fundamentally different concepts, you're talking past davel, and davel is 100% correct here.
The reason the US bombs countries is not because humans are mean. The US bombs to protect its interests. This you both agree on. However, davel has successfully identified why the US' interests depend on bombing others, and China's interests do not.
To simplifiy davel's point, Capitalism centralizes and spreads, until it spreads along international lines. This results in the country with more Capital leveraging this to gain favorable trade deals, so it can super-exploit foreign countries for super-profits. The bombing the US does is to keep their power projected and punish those turning against it.
China does not have a Capitalist system, it has a Socialist Market Economy. China manufactures the vast majority of its own goods, rather than manufacturing overseas, so its interactions with the Global South have a fundamentally different character. China wants to uplift the Global South so that the Global South buys from China and makes them even more money.
Both countries are acting in their own interests, but because of the structures in place, this results in the US bombing and plundering, and China building up infrastructure and hospitals. Even when China wants resources housed in the Global South, this difference in internal structure makes trade more mutually beneficial, rather than plunderous.
The world we live in now is not one where it's advantageous to China to be overtly aggressive. We can theorize all day, but looking at Chinese history, they're just like every other empire in history, and have been quite aggressive in the past. Even the idea of "China" is born out of bloody wars of conquest. I don't see any reason that they'd be different if given the opportunity.
So essentially your reply is to ignore analyzing why the US acts in the way it does materially, and why the PRC acts the way it does materially, and instead analyze based on vibes and some deterministic idea that Chinese people will turn to conquest even if it benefits them more to continue down their current path?
This is absurd. Analyze why things happen like we have, otherwise you have nothing.
I am analyzing why things happen, you just don't like it. The analysis is rooted in looking at the entirety of their history. Materially, they have been just as imperialist as anyone else. My point is that looking at their imperialist history and saying things will be different this time based on vibes is foolish.
They were Imperialist, and now they are not. What changed?
They're still imperialist, they just don't have the power to effect it as well as they have historically:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_salami_slicing_strategy
They lost out to bigger imperialists in the 19th century. Now, they're recovering and behaving exactly as you'd expect if they're still imperialist, just with less power (but growing).
EDIT: Fixed link above to be direct
That's a link to a wikipedia segment saying a Western Imperialist think tank has accused China of slowly going bit by bit to get larger gains than had they gone all at once. That isn't proof of the PRC hyper-exploiting the Global South for Super Profits via the export of Capital, nor proof of anything. It's an accusation from a biased source.
You are clearly rejecting the definition of Imperialisn davel, I, and other Marxists use. Whether it's intentional or not I don't know, but if it is, why have a conversation with us? You haven't proven that the PRC is Imperialist, just that it acts in its own interests, which we all agree about. Davel and I have just pointed out that the structure of the economic system of the PRC means it is moving to uplift the Global South so they can buy more from the PRC, rather than bomb them to death and hyper-exploit their workers like the West does.
I'm using a common definition of imperialism. If you wish to redefine it so that it can't be applied to your favorite imperialists, you need to justify that redefinition. To me, you haven't. Here's Wikipedia's definition. Whether or not you agree with it isn't really the point, it's a common definition and if you want to use it in a different meaning, you should make that clear upfront and/or justify the new usage:
I guess you could call that intentional? Intentionally doing the thing that makes sense, i.e. using the common definition, which is kind of a weird use of the word. At any rate, I'm having a conversation with you because you've been giving thoughtful replies, as much as we disagree with each other. This is the sort of discussion that is actually worth having. As hard as it is to talk about these things over text, I think this has actually been productive. I wouldn't have known that you're using a different definition of imperialism otherwise, for example. That is one of the hardest things when trying to communicate, is using the same words but talking past each other.
The article btw doesn't just reference western think tanks. India for example, has accused China of the same behavior. Many of their neighbors have accused them of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabbage_tactics as well. I also edited the link above to point at the main article, instead of a section that links to it.
I guess as long as we can agree that the PRC is acting in its own interests. I just have less faith in humanity than you do, I guess.
I already explained that what you use as "Imperialism" and what davel and I have been explaining is different, and I explained that the Marxist definition is better because it can accurately explain why the US is working in the way it is and why China is not. Even if you wish to claim the Marxist definition is "Extraction" or some other term, China still isn't Imperialist by your definition, because it isn't advantageous to be!
Again, to simplify:
Davel and I are explaining that it is in China's material intetestd to mutually cooperate with the Global South because a strong Global Soutb can buy more goods from the PRC, which focuses on exporting commodities.
Similarly, the US' material interests are dominating the Global South because it focuses on exporting Capital.
You have no counter to this so far, other than you don't "trust" China because in the past, under an entirely different Mode of Production, China has been Imperialist. This is a weaker explanation than ours, because our analysis focuses on mechanics while yours focuses on ideas.
Secondly, India has pivoted towards increased mutual cooperation with the PRC and has stepped down on its claims of aggression, and turned more away from the US. That point no longer really stands.
I don't necessarily have faith in "humanity," but economic systems and material interests. China has no material reason to turn to Imperialism (or "Extraction") while the US does and has. Simple as that.
That's just a thing you made up to justify not feeling bad, there is no reason to believe that anyone else would act the same way.
To be blunt, have you read a history book? People have been killing the outgroup in brutal struggles for power since time began. Are you aware of the phrase "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"? It comes from the Siege of Melos in 416 B.C.
I don't like it, but that's the way the world works, and has worked forever. Criticizing people in power for their actions is good. Saying "if only this other country was in power, things would be different" is foolish.
To be blunt, have you? If you had you would know that even among empires not every one behaved with the same level of bloodthirstiness every time. The leap from "people have been violent forever" to "therefore they must be the maximum amount of violent at all opportunities" is totally unsubstantiated.
Sure, what they can get away with to achieve their goals is one factor in how countries behave. But it is totally absurd to suggest that a country's culture would have no impact on the approach they take to foreign affairs. It has dramatic impacts on all their other laws and ways of doing things, by what possible crazy coincidence would foreign policy always be totally identical regardless of culture?
So yeah, things would be different. Way back in this discussion you snarkily characterised a straw man arguing that things would be perfect and people singing kumbaya, but nobody (here arguing against you in this thread) thinks that. This meme is about dropping bombs. We have substantial real world evidence that China does not prefer to take that approach. The USA absolutely does prefer to take that approach, even when other options would be more successful.
I'm not saying "therefore they must be the maximum amount of violent at all opportunities". Can you point to any period in history in which empires were just chill and sung kumbaya all day long, though?
We have zero evidence that China would not take that approach in a world without Pax Americana (as much as I think the term is silly, it's a convenient shorthand). We do have a lot of evidence that China is a normal country like everywhere else and pushes their interests where possible:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_salami_slicing_strategy
Ok, you just keep doubling down on straw men and not actually responding to any points made, so I guess we're done here.
When you're seriously engaging with what another person is saying