“Do us the basic courtesy of invading Taiwan”??? Man, fuck tankies.
If you think BadEmpenada is a tankie then you really do not know fuckin’ shit about politics…
I have no idea who this person is, but every single talking point in their lengthy pictured rant aligns perfectly with tankie viewpoints.
I am curious who are the people upvoting this
Well, on the fediverse votes are public.
For example any Mbin instance can show you who is upvoting.Although keep in mind that an upvote doesn’t necessarily mean that someone agrees with everything that was said (or even anything that was said). It could just mean that they think the post is fitting for the community and contributes to the discussion.
Personally, a tankie statement like that is definitely deserving of a downvote.
Not a tankie just an ass
What is the difference?
Tankie’s are Marxist Leninists of some Stripe.
BP isn’t an ML
Ummm…lol what?
You can’t just post the same comment on every post that contains the word China
EDIT: Mea culpa, I failed to see the last sentence in the BadEmpenada post on previous reads
If I can speak for the other Tankies though, this is a Bad Take.
It is true the Chinese have not embraced internationalism openly and forcefully like the USSR. However, they have been most powerful friend of independent revolutionary governments since the 90s and we would be in a different world if the Whites were in power in China.
Also, the Chinese are not going to invade Taiwan unless their red lines are crossed (primarily declaring independence). This is their stated position and also the exact policy they have followed for over 50 years
I don’t really understand people’s issues with this comment. They literally quoted the original post, about literally wanting China to invade Taiwan. Seems kind of tanky
You know, you are right. I failed to see the last sentence across multiple reads until just now, therefore the original comment made no sense
BadEmpanada seriously needs to shut the hell up. China realized that their only chance was to industrialize and modernize as quickly as possible. The Soviet model was clearly a failure and simply taking over the Soviet Union’s role as the foil to the US in a perpetual cold war and arms race was a losing strategy. China knew that. They knew they needed to develop, so that’s what they focused on, and they have succeeded, spectacularly. As a result China is well positioned to challenge US hegemony going forward, not through military escalation but through economic productive capability. Yes, China tries to keep a relatively low profile, that’s intentional. They let the US think we had won the world and no one would ever be able to challenge us again. That we were invincible, letting us stew in our own hubris. It has worked wonderfully. The US is significantly weakened by our own arrogance. Our politicians and business leaders are greedy, stupid, delusional lunatics. The world sees it, we’re losing standing, we’re losing economic prowess. China’s long game strategy is working.
China’s long game strategy is working
Is it though? Lets project a bit into the future:
Their focus on hyper productivity is based on access to a stable and open global market. When that market collapses their economy grinds to a halt and they suffer domestically. Idle factories and an unemployed populace can’t be put back to use without strong arm diplomacy to enforce geopolitical stability.
There’s no possibility for newly impoverished states to pay for your wonderful solar panels and batteries unless you loan them on credit, and you can’t collect that due without a mechanism to project your strength.
Those factories start to make tanks and drones and surveillance hardware because raw force is the only true way to preserve your power. This becomes a club to police problems both foreign and domestic which grows into a hegemony and starts the imperial cycle all over again.
It’s a smart strategy if your goal is to get your five minutes on the global throne. Then you suffer the same decay as the Assyrians, Rome, Persia, the Qing Dynasty, Spain, Great Britain, the USA, etc… The key issue is that time is running out on this game; no great power will ever be able to overcome the reality of the dwindling resources on our pale blue dot. In that sense it’s just another depressing and inevitable step on humanity’s march to self-extermination.
This is all old thinking. This is the kind of old world thinking that is holding the US back, because it fails to recognize one key possibility: progress. It fails to consider the possibility that a stable world order can be achieved without hegemonic dominance and violence; that global power can be diffuse, shared, and that international democracy and rule of law can maintain peace and stability.
Old as in proven? Diffuse, stable and peaceful power is infinitesimally unlikely because violence (or the threat of) is the only tool you can have in a sedentary civilization. Resources are not evenly and equitably distributed in the world, e.g. the people who can only grow wheat can’t stop the people with access to iron weapons from taking it. There’s no way to pack up their fields and run away. There is nothing to maintain an equilibrium of peace among polities except for a hierarchy of violence above or a balance of violence among them.
Let me know when you find a plausible alternative. There’s nothing special about our information age civilizations except for our vastly increased productivity and the efficiency of our violence. Somebody will always control the water/rare minerals/oil/food and that will create a power imbalance against their peers. When push comes to shove (e.g. a Carrington Event), whoever can project violence better will come out on top.
I suppose the best we could hope for is a global federation but I have no faith that something of that size + complexity could remain stable. Even if it could, it would still be subject to resource constraints and earth’s carrying capacity. Our modern infrastructure and technology all are based on the unlimited availability of non renewable resources. Once we inevitably run out of sand for concrete or petrochemicals for plastic or minerals for solar panels or arable topsoil the game is over.
I have no faith
I know. You’ve made up your mind: a better world isn’t possible, and that’s that.
Maybe you’re right, but if you are none of this matters. We’re just fucked.
My take may have come across a bit too doomer: I wouldn’t say humanity itself unavoidably fucked, and our current choices do matter for what generations may come after. My working theory is that the gravity of sedentary civilization is unavoidable due to clear benefits but it’s also inevitably self terminating. Our choice is in how we navigate it.
We can’t grow our way out of our universe’s material limits but we also can’t voluntarily exit the Nash equilibrium of our established civilization. At some point the treadmill of progress ends and we can’t avoid that no matter how slowly and carefully we approach it. After the dust settles we return to a primitivist state, except this time it is physically impossible to reach the same destructive heights. Accessible surface metals are expended, radioactive fuel is spent, mineral deposits have been tapped and diffused, etc…
Our main job is to ensure that the earth remains livable when that time comes. There’s nothing inevitable about a global nuclear apocalypse or total climate collapse. If we avoid those we can achieve something like a soft landing, but we have to accept that our global population and quality of life will plummet no matter what because it’s not sustainable in any other system. Notice that this isn’t quite the same as Anarcho-primitivism even if the end goal is similar, we can’t change the broad strokes of history but we can choose how hard we crash the plane.
china had the privilege of watching the USSR stumble and fall while they built an industrial powerhouse.
i simply wish they could see the advantage of going north instead of trying to fight the entire south pacific for some 9-dash bullshit and taiwan.
China is working with the Zionist entity and does nothing to protect its supposed “allies”. Venezuela and Iran are getting wiped and China is letting it all happen. Participating in it even.
China cares only about trade right now, they have no issue funding both sides of whatever conflicts are happening rn. Whether that changes in the future, we’ll have to see
And I think that’s what’s being criticized. The USSR had a stated goal of expanding communism worldwide, so I guess it made sense that they were quick to aid potential socialist allies like Cuba.
China, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have that same level of comradeship with other socialist and budding socialist nations, and are more focused internally.
OP seems to be taking issue with that. I guess it’s their belief that they should be helping the working class worldwide.
In the case of Cuba, I was actually surprised how reluctant they were to send aid in Blowback Season 2, due to US aggression. But anyway
Yeah, China doesn’t and I think it’s certainly a valid criticism. If I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt, I’d say China is focused solely on improving material conditions through trade. It seems like they’re waiting for the US to collapse and for BRICS to overtake the G7 before they play an active role, if they ever do.
I kind of think pan-africanism and an American uprising will be more central to global revolution, with China as a model. But that’s just a hunch of mine after reading Fanon
With whom they will trade once all allies are out?
I think their focus will be on developing markets in the global south
The USA will probably go after them in the future
I think the US will try to go after China in the future too, in an attempt in militarily dominate any opposition to their hegemony, the death throes of empire
Might happen sooner than anyone thinks, considering how fast this adminstration is spiraling towards complete collapse
I suspect that this is such a cavalcade of bullshit of different types that he’s deliberately baiting people to become unable to even begin to come to grips with everything that is wrong with it. And thus, in internet-troll-logic, it means he wins.
Westerners hate nonintervention
