On the one hand, hooray for supporting the development of infrastructure in Africa and stuff. On the other hand, booooo for being a top trading partner with the Zionist Entity, and selling drones to Indonesia, and all that.
So what the Hell do you make of it all! Like I get that there’s this term called “realpolitik” which is somehow relevant, but I’d like a longer explanation than just one word. Like how does the good and the bad fit together at its core?
You could certainly write tomes about this topic — many people have done exactly that — and maybe I’m being a bit incurious to expect someone to serve me a quick answer on a silver platter instead of diving into as many articles and PDF books as I can get my hands on… But I’m also just kind of tired of having such extremely underdeveloped views on the most populous AES state and country in general, after I came to unlearn or mistrust whichever views I’d had on China previously.
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.