Like you’d think that doing things like selling weapons to imperialist forces would be counterproductive to the ends of fighting imperialism, even if it does domestically help build the productive forces… But I suppose the alternative would lead to China becoming isolated or something, right?

Correct. What this achieves is personal investment by the bourgeoisie in the free participation of China in world markets. They lose money if China is disconnected, and thus they as individuals want it to stay connected even if they understand that for the wider interests of their class it is a negative in the longterm. Each individual member of the bourgeoisie still wants personal enrichment and is still driven by the pursuit of capital, since keeping China connected means they can acquire more capital then that’s what they want.

In essence the entire strategy is to disincentivise the bourgeoisie from seeking to destroy China, as they did with the USSR, or as they do with Cuba, the DPRK, etc.

What this leads to however is untested. We can only speculate. What they have done with placing branches of the CPC inside every large business however is the infrastructural groundwork for a transition partial/fully socialist economy with a minimum of pushback.

There’s a lot to measure there, suppose a border nation is engaging in blatant capitalist style imperialism (kyrgyzstan invades the uzbeks) they need resources to create and build that imperial machine; do you continue to trade raw resources and garner influence as even the rest of the global community begins to draw away from them? Do you try to use that influence to reign in that neighbor, or even try to develop your own productive forces by staking a larger claimin those industries? Do you also draw away from the nation and continue to isolate them, weakening your industry, perhaps putting a target on yourself? Do you use you own miltary forces to put a stop to it? All of these approaches have been tried in some form or another in recent history, the only one which seems to result in anything remotely positive is to be the trading partner. Come hell or high water, non intervention has always proven an effective and politically easy solution, and theres historical precedent for China especially to act in such a way, when it didnt throughout the mid century (this had some to do with the Sino-Soviet split) it lead to insane outcomes like buddying up with the US to beat up Afghanistan and Vietnam, fund Pol Pot, etc. All are actions we can say didnt help China in the long run and are frankly embarrassing.

Yeah, it is odd, but it is as you say, the alternative is isolation. You could argue that selling arms to imperialists is kind of like paying a “don’t kill us” tribute. You could argue that China is not yet self-sufficient enough to pull the rug, or you could argue that they have actually reached that maturity, or you could argue that they are stuck in a trap and will never pull any rug, or that they never even had any intention of it.

There’s another dimension of making the West economically dependent on them. So yes, selling some weapons now, but in the long term, replacing the West’s industrial capacity so that they can’t keep up. But even our ghouls are smart enough to realize this and have specifically prevented offshoring a lot of military production, at a huge cost.