None of that idealistic fantasy about siding with the people we like or don’t like.
Also, I didn’t quite pay attention to this part in my previous reply.
This is an incredibly silly sentence. We are not arguing that the PRC should have sided with the ‘people the PRC liked’ as opposed to the ‘people the PRC didn’t like’. We are arguing about the PRC acting against the interests of the working class of the world while, I would argue, hurting itself in the long term (if you destroy your allies for the benefit of your enemy, you end up in a worse position - that is how politics work in the real world, and none of that wishy-washy ‘everything the PRC does is good and has the interests of the working class in mind’).
But it didn’t hurt China in the long run. China was able to procure tech from the West and more or less steal the West’s manufacturing capabilities thanks to the short-sightedness of Western capitalist who didn’t look part cost savings from labor arbitrage. That’s the real long term goal. China began technologically lagging behind the West around the Ming dynasty, so the long term goal was to technologically catch up with the West after lagging behind for at least two dynasties. And the funny thing is China used the same exact playbook the late Ming did to bridge the tech gap: they gesture towards embracing whatever popular ideology and governance is in vogue at the West if you would only give us the tech. For the late Ming, it was Jesuit priests and Catholicism, and for modern times, it is technocrats and liberals. But unlike the West, China rarely makes the same mistake twice. The problem with the late Ming/early Qing was that the West would eventually figure out the ruse, and imperial China lacked the means of being truly innovative after the tech transfer was cut off. This was not so with the PRC.
Just because the PRC and the Soviet Union share the same ideology doesn’t mean they are above geopolitics. Geopolitical alliances are ever-shifting. The Sino-Soviet split officially ended with Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing, so it lasted only a couple of decades. And now Russia is closer to China than ever even when they don’t even share the same ideology. Vietnam and China are also very close no matter how much cope Burglanders have of Vietnam hating China. As another example for why geopolitics have little to do with ideology, just look at how almost all Sunni Arab countries have betrayed the Sunni Arab Palestinians to the Zionists while the Sunni Arab Palestinians’ greatest saviors are a bunch of Shia Muslims with Shia Iranians as the head. Meanwhile, the tech gap is a centuries-old problem that must be resolved. This is what it means to truly have long-term vision, to be able to distinguish between mid-term vision and long-term vision.
Also, I didn’t quite pay attention to this part in my previous reply.
This is an incredibly silly sentence. We are not arguing that the PRC should have sided with the ‘people the PRC liked’ as opposed to the ‘people the PRC didn’t like’. We are arguing about the PRC acting against the interests of the working class of the world while, I would argue, hurting itself in the long term (if you destroy your allies for the benefit of your enemy, you end up in a worse position - that is how politics work in the real world, and none of that wishy-washy ‘everything the PRC does is good and has the interests of the working class in mind’).
But it didn’t hurt China in the long run. China was able to procure tech from the West and more or less steal the West’s manufacturing capabilities thanks to the short-sightedness of Western capitalist who didn’t look part cost savings from labor arbitrage. That’s the real long term goal. China began technologically lagging behind the West around the Ming dynasty, so the long term goal was to technologically catch up with the West after lagging behind for at least two dynasties. And the funny thing is China used the same exact playbook the late Ming did to bridge the tech gap: they gesture towards embracing whatever popular ideology and governance is in vogue at the West if you would only give us the tech. For the late Ming, it was Jesuit priests and Catholicism, and for modern times, it is technocrats and liberals. But unlike the West, China rarely makes the same mistake twice. The problem with the late Ming/early Qing was that the West would eventually figure out the ruse, and imperial China lacked the means of being truly innovative after the tech transfer was cut off. This was not so with the PRC.
Just because the PRC and the Soviet Union share the same ideology doesn’t mean they are above geopolitics. Geopolitical alliances are ever-shifting. The Sino-Soviet split officially ended with Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing, so it lasted only a couple of decades. And now Russia is closer to China than ever even when they don’t even share the same ideology. Vietnam and China are also very close no matter how much cope Burglanders have of Vietnam hating China. As another example for why geopolitics have little to do with ideology, just look at how almost all Sunni Arab countries have betrayed the Sunni Arab Palestinians to the Zionists while the Sunni Arab Palestinians’ greatest saviors are a bunch of Shia Muslims with Shia Iranians as the head. Meanwhile, the tech gap is a centuries-old problem that must be resolved. This is what it means to truly have long-term vision, to be able to distinguish between mid-term vision and long-term vision.