cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10270361
As you may know, China is rather passive about the recent kidnapping event. Many people I talk to about it believe China and Russia are staying silent because they made a deal with the USA about Venezuela’s oil sources. There are more conspiracy theories about the incident, but it’s for another topic.
Furthermore, Türkiye granted visa-free travel to Chinese nationals, and there’s a residential area being built for the new BYD Auto factory at Manisa city. These developments fueled sinophobia in Türkiye.
I talk about Turkish history here; feel free to skip.
Now, before talking about my question, I should briefly talk about why Türkiye is very xenophobic. Since the foundation of the country, the Turkish government has been pushing the narrative that every person living in Türkiye is Turkish and Muslim. They were teaching how Sumerians and Hittites were Turkic back in my parents’ day to back this claim up. They taught me how Turks have been the legitimate settlers of Anatolia for thousands of years, and we are the true defenders of the faith at every level of my education—even at university.
To strengthen the nationalist ideas, the government purged the Rums (Anatolian Greeks), Armenians, Jews, and non-Muslim Turks, then oppressed and massacred the Alawites and left-wing groups.
Decades under conservative and near-fascist polities made people prone to governmental propaganda. Now, the current government doesn’t push anything against China because they need the money. But when you dictate to people that China was your “historic enemy” and grow them as xenophobic as possible, they will behave like that.
A lot of people here claim China has been pushing its agenda sneakily for years; by the 1980s, China became capitalist, and by the 2010s, it became imperialist. They are putting countries in debt traps and colonizing them by moving their populations to indebted countries and building businesses there. The kidnapping of Maduro inflamed this rhetoric, and now they claim China, Russia, and the USA set a deal for splitting Venezuela, like how the Allied Powers split the Ottoman Empire.
I know, and I try to explain why this isn’t the case, but the conservative/reactionary roots run too deep to convince them. Before anyone tells me to stay away from those people, they should know it is like trying to stay away from the sands in a desert—I’m living in a country full of people like these. I must defend my case in the best way possible so at least they will know I’m not just saying empty words (this last bit would open another can of worms, but again, I’ll refrain from diverting the topic).
This is a good source on what communists mean by imperialism and why China does not fall under that: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Imperialism#Chinese_"imperialism"
You may need to explain both to people because I know some people have this idea of imperialism that it is something like “a country is big and influential beyond itself and has a desire to conquer”, which misses the entirety of why a country is influential, what helpful or exploitative influence can look like, and where a motive to conquer derives from (if one can’t explain where it comes from and they’re claiming it about a country in today’s world that is not predominantly “white”, there’s probably racism involved in the worldview).
To compare:
israel has a motive to “conquer” in the region it inhabits because it’s a colonial project based on occupation and expansion, and is an extension of the western empire more broadly, who not only can benefit from having more land, labor, and resources to exploit, but is systematized to the point of being propped up on this parasitic relationship with the rest of the world.
China, in contrast, does not have any such motive. They are, as far as I know, largely self-sustaining in access to resources, lifted 800 million people out of poverty locally, and have plenty of internal work to do still toward their socialist/communist development goals, none of which is improved by undermining the international working class. What they are doing fits with a country that saw the USSR fall, saw countless countries suffer sanctions, coups, and bombings under the global imperialist and anti-communist campaign of the west over decades, and sees some of that still going on now. They are reinforcing sovereignty (such as in tech), they build mutually beneficial ties with other countries where possible which makes it that much harder for the west to isolate and encircle them and is also just something that strengthens both them and other countries.
Of course they are accused of these ties being exploitative because the western empire doesn’t want people escaping dependency on them and doesn’t want China being powerful in general.
We also need to keep in mind how racist narratives work, the nature of responsibility, and the difference between something explicitly designed and enforced by the CPC, versus something that happens outside of its direct control. The global order is still largely a capitalist one and as such, the movements within it are going to have capitalist characteristics that go with them some of the time. CPC China cannot extricate itself from this reality anymore than anyone else can. The options are to engage with it and the contradictions involved, try to exist outside it and attack it from the outside which risks fast decline and annihilation, or try to exist outside it and survive it which risks isolation and encirclement. China since the reform and opening up policy chose the option to engage with it and the contradictions involved.
Those who want us to hate China want us to believe some confusing things like that: “communism bad” but also “China bad because it’s not communist enough”. Or “capitalism good” but also “China bad because it’s being too capitalist.”
They try to use our own views against us and this is undoubtedly some of where ultra-left positions come from. We have to understand that not every action taken by the CPC or by a Chinese business is going to be saintly in all of its characteristics and that its lack of sainthood does not mean the vanguard has fallen and China is equivalent to the western empire now.
Intention cannot magically transform circumstances for the better. We have to investigate the context of where things come from, the motives involved, and the details of the actions taken. Much of anti-China propaganda depends on people doing none of these things and rolling with a racist narrative that China is a hegemonic extension of the CPC while simultaneously distinct from it and repressed by it, and that the CPC is uh, “bad” “because communism.” While also accusing it of doing very uncommunist-like things… that are more just what capitalists do. But “capitalist good!.. except when it’s China, then bad.” The origins of most anti-China propaganda are not remotely honest, in other words.