Much like the old soviet joke:

A Soviet and an American get on a plane and get to talking. The Soviet says he works for the KGB and he’s on his way to go learn American propaganda techniques.

“What American propaganda techniques?” asks the American.

“Exactly,” the Soviet replies.

Thank you. I might at some point but for now I’m happy simply posting comments on anything interesting I come across.

Had a quick look at your profile. With very few exceptions, (all of which I saw were pretty much about calling America bad (which is fair, fuck America)) every single one of your ~340 comments averaging about 10 comments a day every day for the past month, have been about defending China.

Not true I discuss communist theory among other topics.

Also

Your account is almost strictly dedicated to Chinese propaganda. Whether that propaganda is true or not is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, you’re spending hours every day to push an agenda. You’re a government boot locker honestly.

Again not true. I use this account to practice my English while discussing something I had enough interest in to get a masters degree in (Marxist theory). China makes up a large portion as being the largest and most successful socialist state to date it is a major topic of discussion. Did you think this reply through at all? Bootlicking is when you have a nuanced take on a government. You are a brain poisoned by your dogshit government that sees you as less than dogshit.

I never said a Chinese (or otherwise) person can’t defend their government without being paid or brainwashed. So far I’ve not actually said a negative thing about China, nor do I plan to.

So when you said “Which reeks of people paid to post biased propaganda” you weren’t implying the people replying to you with analysis and nuance were paid?

What I have said is the amount of people who with such vehemence, eloquence and verbosity who come out to defend China every single time about every single thing, is in fact suspicious.

Communists posting essays is literally a meme even in the west. To be a communist requires study of dense theory is it really that surprising communists are elequent and can get verbose when it comes to debating a topic they have studied far more than you clearly have?

Sticking around on a thread for hours refreshing it so you can argue about China is a bit stakeout-ish. But you do you.

my entire home feed is is set to comments then sorted by new.

You should stop getting pissy and try actually engage with the content of what the communists and Chinese people who are correcting you when you “criticise” China are saying. No one says China is perfect but all the criticisms need to be taken in the context of the material conditions and the both the good and the bad for them to be worth anything more than a toddlers tantrum.

Sort feed by new comments. See comment. Reply. That is how forums work. An hour is not a stakeout.

Your real argument at its core is that no Chinese(or otherwise) person could genuinely support the Chinese government unless they are paid or brainwashed. That is chauvinism. You dismiss my lived experience, my family’s gains, and the material progress hundreds of millions have seen because it does not fit your Western notions of “how it should be”.

It is the same logic as the person earlier today in this very thread who told me mainlanders only support the government because we “do not know any better.” Different person, same paternalism. Any Chinese(or otherwise) person who offers a nuanced, factual critique that weighs both gains and flaws must be compromised. Any mass consensus in China must be manufactured. The only valid analysis, in your view, is the one that confirms Western superiority.

I am not paid. I am not brainwashed. I am someone who applies materialist analysis and sees what China has actually delivered for its people. If that threatens your worldview, that is your problem. Not mine.

Everyone and their dog just seem to be waiting for the chance to write their dissertation on the benevolence of China, and yet rarely do I see the same in defence of western countries.

Have you considered that what looks like “dissertations” might just be people applying materialist analysis, seeking truth from facts against the propaganda wave?

That China, flaws and contradictions included, has still secured historical wins for the proletariat of the periphery (especially in China), while the Western imperial bloc runs and has been running the world’s largest and most advanced exploitation and immiseration machine in human history on throughout the periphery?

So of course dissecting China takes nuance to weigh the real gains against the flaws and discern the truth from the wave of lies?

When you do a material analysis of the West and what’s left to weigh? Just capitalist plunder, imperialist immiseration, and fascism.

Have you considered a lot of your criticism are not accepted or have paragraphs of denials analysis because a lot of your criticism stem from a faulty base understanding and/or analysis (such as overstating the scale/scope of the issue if it exists or hammering on criticisms that aren’t real like the “genocide”)?

Just an example of what I’m talking about: The hukou system in the modern day is deeply flawed and there are many criticisms to be made of it such as it leading to wage disparity etc. However if I were to then say that the hukou system never made any sense, was senseless cruelty or some other such nonsense jumped off from it that would necessitate a few paragraphs of explanation and rebuttal to reach the truth of the matter. Which is that the system in the modern day is outdated and harmful but was a necessary policy to avoid massive slums forming and despite it’s harms does have some positive aspects such as the guaranteed land and homesteading rights should one end up homeless.

It’s important that criticism be principled and precise for it to have any meaning. I’d be very interested to hear some of your criticisms that were faced with paragraphs of “denials”.

This new article is again garbage. It repeats the same fundamental errors as the last one: it abandons dialectical and historical materialism for mechanical economism and abstract moralism. To break with the method of scientific socialism is to break with socialism itself. Pröbsting reduces the question of China’s class character to a tally of billionaires and Fortune 500 rankings, which is bourgeois sociology dressed in Marxist phraseology. As I established in the previous reply, imperialism is defined by the qualitative enforcement of unequal exchange and the extraction of super profits from the periphery to the core, not by counting rich people. Pröbsting ignores this entirely, substituting a schematic checklist for the concrete analysis of concrete conditions that is again the living soul of Marxism.

The claim that China restored capitalism in the 1990s rests on a vulgar understanding of the socialist transitionary period. Yes, China retains contradictions. Yes, market mechanisms operate. Yes, inequality has grown. But none of this proves capitalist restoration when analyzed dialectically. The commanding heights remain under public ownership, the Communist Party retains the leading role, and development is subordinated to long-term social stability rather than short-term monopoly profit maximization (mass poverty alleviation, massive public infrastructure investment etc. all non monetarily profitable) . This is not “socialism in textbooks only” as Pröbsting sneers. It is actually existing socialism navigating the contradictions of hostile imperialist encirclement. To declare that any use of market tools equals capitalist restoration is to abandon historical materialism for a purist idealism that has never existed nor will ever exist in any successful revolution.

Pröbsting’s characterization of China as imperialist repeats the same false equivalence I dismantled in the previous reply. He points to Chinese FDI in the Global South and declares this proof of imperialist extraction, ignoring the qualitative difference between infrastructure investment that builds productive capacity and the predatory loan conditions, structural adjustment programs, and military coercion that define Euro-Amerikan imperialism. As noted before, China’s engagements operate within a framework of non-interference and sovereign partnership that, however imperfect, creates space for development outside Western conditionality. To conflate these distinct modalities is to abandon the dialectical method.

The article’s reliance on tables of billionaire counts as “proof” of imperialism is the same economistic error I identified in the RCIT piece. Modern imperialism is defined through the fusion of bank and industrial capital, the export of capital superseding commodity export, and the territorial division of the world among monopoly alliances. Applying this today requires examining how value actually flows through the global circuit of capital. Pröbsting’s tables prove that China has wealthy individuals and large corporations. They do not prove that China extracts super profits from the Global South through unequal exchange. In fact, numerous studies show that terms of trade between China and African nations have improved relative to the pre-2000 period, and that Chinese investment has contributed to industrialization in ways Western capital systematically avoided. This is not apology. It is insistence that historical materialism analyzes concrete social formations, not abstract labels.

The political conclusion Pröbsting draws, that socialists must “oppose all equally,” is the same abstract internationalism I criticized before. Detached from dialectical analysis, this slogan collapses into centrism that objectively upholds the hegemony it claims to reject. As I argued in the previous reply, to declare neutrality between an empire with eight hundred overseas bases and states that merely seek to weaken that empire’s stranglehold is not principled internationalism. It is a refusal to analyze the concrete balance of forces, and in practice it aids the stronger power. Lenin criticized this centrism as the highest form of opportunism because it cloaks passivity in revolutionary phraseology.

Underlying all these errors is the Trotskyist method I identified in the previous reply: a sectarian refusal to engage with actually existing struggles in favor of a pure, abstract schema. Pröbsting demands that anti-imperialist movements be led by perfectly conscious proletarian forces before they deserve support, which isolates revolutionaries from the masses they seek to lead. This is the “infantile disorder” Lenin warned against. Scientific socialism requires us to start from material conditions, not doctrinal purity. Multipolarity is not an end-state to be celebrated or condemned in the abstract. It is a contradictory terrain within which class struggle must be advanced. The task is not and has never been to stand outside denouncing all equally, but to engage it, to build proletarian independence within anti-hegemonic movements, and to push multipolarity beyond bourgeois limits toward genuine internationalism. To do that, you must return to the method that makes socialism scientific: the concrete analysis of concrete conditions. Anything else just dogma dressed in revolutionary phraseology.

They just do that sometimes

You really should research things before you just make statements on things you have no understanding of.

I know you’re replying in bad faith but if you change your mind even out of curiosity if you engage with the content of these 3 replies I’ve already written

https://lemmy.ml/post/44457794/24524987

https://lemmy.ml/post/44457794/24529983

https://lemmy.ml/post/44251521/24507103

I’m happy to have a conversation about why you believe what you do and the analysis and lives experience underpinning my thoughts as well.

The slogan “oppose all equally” may sound revolutionary in its refusal to compromise, but detached from dialectical and historical materialism it collapses into abstract moralism that objectively serves the very hegemony it claims to reject. Dialectics teaches us that not all contradictions are identical, and that the principal contradiction must guide our strategic orientation. To declare neutrality between an empire that maintains eight hundred overseas bases, controls the global financial infrastructure, and routinely overthrows governments, and states that merely seek to weaken that empire’s stranglehold, is not principled internationalism. It is a refusal to analyze the concrete balance of forces, and in practice it aids the stronger power by dispersing opposition and denying tactical support to forces that, however imperfectly, challenge the core of imperialist domination. This abstract stance upholds capitalist hegemony by ensuring that resistance remains fragmented and that the most powerful aggressor faces no coordinated counter-pressure. Lenin criticized this kind of centrism as the highest form of opportunism because it cloaks passivity in revolutionary phraseology. Scientific socialism requires us to engage with actually existing struggles, to distinguish between the hand that wields the whip and the hand that seeks to break it, and to build proletarian independence within anti-hegemonic movements rather than abstaining from them in the name of purity. To do otherwise is not to stand above imperialism but to leave its structure intact.

The comparison of contemporary China to Weimar Germany seeking a “place under the sun” is not merely imprecise; it is fundamentally ahistorical because it transplants categories from one historical epoch onto a completely different material and geopolitical conjuncture. Weimar Germany operated within a world order defined by colonial scramble, pre-nuclear military technology, and the absence of any binding international legal framework constraining territorial conquest. Its mode of production was monopoly capitalism in crisis, with a bourgeois state increasingly fused with fascist political forms, driven by the imperative to seize colonies for raw materials and markets through direct coercion. The superstructure of that era reflected this: social Darwinist ideology, overt racial hierarchy, and a diplomatic culture that accepted war as a legitimate instrument of policy. Contemporary China exists in a post-1945 world shaped by the UN Charter’s nominal commitment to sovereignty, the constraining reality of nuclear deterrence, and a dense network of multilateral institutions that, however imperfect, raise the political cost of overt aggression. Its mode of production retains some of the contradictions as is expected in the socialist transitionary period, grounded in public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, the leading role of the Communist Party, and a development logic subordinated to long-term social stability rather than the short-term maximization of monopoly profit. The superstructure reflects this: an ideological framework centered on “community of shared future for mankind,” non-interference principles, and South-South cooperation rather than civilizational hierarchy. When China engages the Global South through infrastructure investment and trade partnerships, it does so within a historical context where former colonies possess sovereign statehood and can negotiate terms, however unevenly. This is not to deny contradictions. It is to insist that historical materialism demands we analyze the concrete social formation before us, not force it into an abstract analogy that ignores the vast differences in geopolitical structure, productive forces, class relations, and ideological superstructure that separate the interwar period from the twenty-first century. To do otherwise is to abandon the method that allows us to understand history as a process of material development rather than a cycle of repeating labels.

The concept of “social imperialism” as applied to China and Russia in this context is not just analytically weak; it is politically absurd because it detaches the label from any concrete examination of how value actually flows through the global economy. To claim that a state is imperialist simply because it engages in international trade, invests in infrastructure abroad, or seeks to protect its sovereign interests is to empty the term of all scientific content and reduce it to a sectarian slur. This misuse of theory reflects the deeper problem of Trotskyism as a reactionary and ultra-leftist tendency that substitutes dogmatic formulae for materialist analysis. Lenin warned against the “infantile disorder” of communism, and this article exemplifies it perfectly: a refusal to engage with the messy contradictions of actually existing struggle in favor of a pure, abstract schema that exists only in textbooks. This approach worships the letter of Marxist theory while abandoning its living soul, applying quotations like incantations rather than using dialectics to grasp the movement of real historical forces. By demanding that anti-imperialist movements be led by perfectly conscious proletarian forces before they deserve support, Trotskyism isolates revolutionaries from the masses they seek to lead and objectively strengthens the hand of the principal enemy. It is reactionary because it blocks the formation of united fronts against hegemony, dismisses the genuine anti-colonial content of multipolarity demands, and substitutes moral denunciation for the patient work of building working-class independence within actually existing movements. Scientific socialism requires us to start from material conditions, not from doctrinal purity, and to recognize that the path to revolution runs through the concrete contradictions of our time, not through the abstract categories of a frozen orthodoxy.

All the errors traced through this critique flow from a single, foundational break: the abandonment of dialectical and historical materialism as the method of scientific socialism. When analysis begins with abstract categories like “imperialist” or “social-imperialist” applied mechanically, rather than with a concrete examination of production relations, class forces, and historical specificity, the conclusions are predetermined by the schema, not discovered through investigation. This is why the article collapses distinct social formations into a false equivalence, why it substitutes moral denunciation for strategic assessment, and why its prescription of “oppose all equally” becomes a sterile formula that objectively upholds the hegemony it claims to fight. Scientific socialism does not proceed by labeling but by uncovering the movement of contradictions within actually existing conditions. Multipolarity is not an end-state to be celebrated or condemned in the abstract; it is a contradictory terrain shaped by the struggle between hegemonic capital and sovereign development, within which class struggle must be advanced. Our task is not to stand outside this terrain in doctrinal purity but to engage it, to build proletarian independence within anti-hegemonic movements, and to push the logic of multipolarity beyond bourgeois limits toward genuine internationalism. To do that, we must return to the method that makes our politics scientific: the concrete analysis of concrete conditions, rooted in the living dialectic of historical materialism. Anything else is not Marxism, but book worship dressed in revolutionary phraseology.

This article is garbage because it abandons the very method that makes socialism scientific. Dialectical and historical materialism are not optional accessories to Marxist thought; they are its core foundations, and to break with them is to break with scientific socialism as a whole. The article’s definition of imperialism remains stuck at the level of quantitative description, ignoring how modern imperialism functions through the enforcement of unequal exchange and the systematic extraction of super profits from the periphery to the core. This qualitative dimension is essential because imperialism is not merely about military bases or corporate size; it is about the global circuit of capital that reproduces dependency and drains value from oppressed nations. When we apply this materialist framework to Russia, we must acknowledge that it is a capitalist state with possible imperialist ambitions, yet the devastating aftermath of shock therapy left it without the economic means to project power as a classic imperialist state. This structural weakness has pushed Russia toward backing anti-imperialist struggles throughout the periphery as its primary method of competing with the entrenched imperial core bloc, a position determined by concrete historical conditions rather than abstract moral equivalence. China presents a fundamentally different case because its mode of production retains a socialist character grounded in public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, the leading role of the Communist Party, and a development model subordinated to social need rather than monopoly profit maximization. This does not mean China is free of contradictions, but the dominant logic of its political economy is not driven by the imperative to extract super profits from the Global South. Instead, its foreign policy, however imperfect, aligns with breaking the chains of unequal exchange and creating space for sovereign development. To collapse these distinct material realities into a single “multi-imperialist” label is to abandon the concrete analysis of concrete conditions that Lenin identified as the living soul of Marxism.

This false equivalence between US hegemony and the multipolar framework extends from a refusal to analyze the actual architecture of global power. The contemporary imperialist system is not a collection of equal great powers but a hierarchical structure of Euro-Amerikan hegemony led by the United States and integrated through institutional mechanisms like NATO, Five Eyes, AUKUS, and the G7. Europe, Oceania, and numerous vassal states are not independent poles but subordinate components of this core bloc, bound by military integration, financial dependency, and ideological alignment. This is the actually existing unipolar order that multipolarity challenges. Within this context, both Russia and China support anti-imperialist struggles across the periphery, but they do so for fundamentally different reasons rooted in their distinct material conditions. Russia, as a capitalist state weakened by the catastrophic legacy of shock therapy, backs anti-hegemonic movements as a strategic necessity: lacking the economic mass to compete through direct imperial projection, it aligns with forces that weaken the US-led bloc, creating breathing room for its own sovereignty and regional influence. China, by contrast, operates from a socialist mode of production where the state retains command over the commanding heights of the economy and where development is subordinated to long-term social stability rather than monopoly profit extraction. Its support for multipolarity stems not from a drive to dominate the Global South but from a structural interest in dismantling the unequal exchange mechanisms that have historically drained value from oppressed nations, including its own experience of semi-colonial subjugation. To conflate these two distinct positions, or to equate either with the predatory logic of Euro-Amerikan imperialism, is to abandon the dialectical method that requires us to analyze the specific character of each social formation and its place within the global contradiction.

Lmao you’re another one of the post soviet 20 something’s who think shock therapy was communism’s fault. Or you’re a reactionary who fled because you’re a right wing loser either way it explains your white man’s burden chauvinism.

People living there don’t know better

Peak white man’s burden. Complete chauvinism. Why am I not surprised.

Perception != reality

Correct. Which makes it strange that you ignored everything I explained in this reply to you and just went back to the same checklist again.

Functional democracy needs: Opposition

No. That is the liberal electoral model, not the universal definition of democracy. Democracy means political authority comes from the people and that they participate in governance.

China’s system does this through whole-process people’s democracy. People directly elect local People’s Congress deputies, those bodies elect higher congresses, and the system scales upward to the National People’s Congress. Most representatives come from those directly elected levels. Officials advance after years working through those layers.

It is a different institutional design. Pretending it does not exist because it is not your familiar Western party circus is not an argument.

Free media

Again you should read Michael Parenti on “inventing reality.” In the West media is not magically independent. It is owned by a tiny number of massive corporations and billionaires. Those owners decide what gets covered, what narratives dominate, and what perspectives disappear.

Calling that “free” while pretending ownership power does not shape information is extremely naive.

Open voting / Free elections

China holds direct elections at the grassroots level where the majority of representatives originate. Higher levels are elected by the bodies below them. Again, a hierarchical representative system instead of a national campaign spectacle.

Different design. Not absence.

Same law for everyone

This one is especially funny coming from systems where billionaires routinely dodge consequences while corporations treat fines as operating costs.

Civil liberties

China prioritizes social stability and development as core measures of legitimacy. Over forty years it lifted hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty and massively expanded infrastructure, education, and living standards.

You may not like that model. Fine. But dismissing it with slogans while ignoring the outcomes is not serious.

As far as I’m aware

Yes, that part was obvious. Your entire argument is basically “it doesn’t look like my system therefore it isn’t democracy,” plus a “citation” from the eagle burger institute of goodness democracy index in your other comment made it abundantly clear.

If China is a democracy, what opposition parties and media not related to government are in there?

Democracy is not defined by how many parties exist. It means that political authority comes from the people and that the population participates in governance. Different societies organize that participation differently. Liberal systems center competitive parties and election campaigns. China organizes participation through elections at the grassroots level combined with consultation and representation throughout the policy process.

In China we call this whole-process people’s democracy. The idea is that democracy should not exist only on election day every few years. It should exist through the entire political process: discussion, drafting policy, consultation with social groups, implementation, and feedback.

At the local level, people directly elect deputies to township and county People’s Congresses. These bodies then elect representatives to higher levels, which continues upward through provincial congresses and ultimately to the National People’s Congress. Because of this structure, most officials reach higher positions only after years working at lower levels where they directly interact with voters. Advancement depends on performance, governance results, and evaluation by the people and bodies that elected them.

China also has a consultative system through the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Multiple legally recognized parties and mass organizations participate there along with the Communist Party. Trade unions, ethnic organizations, professional associations, business groups, and other social bodies submit proposals and participate in consultation before policy decisions are finalized. It is not an adversarial party competition model, but it is still a structured form of representation.

There’s only one party in China, every communication channel is controlled by party

China does manage information. But I would recommend learning about Parenti’s concept of “inventing reality.” In capitalist systems the media is formally private, but in practice it is owned by a handful of large corporations and billionaires. Those owners decide what stories are emphasized, what narratives are framed as legitimate, and what perspectives are marginalized.

That kind of control is less visible but still very real. A small group of capital owners has enormous influence over what hundreds of millions of people see and how events are interpreted. So the idea that Western media is completely free from power structures is not serious. Remember Cambridge analytica?

China consistently ranks near the bottom in every democracy index

“But the eagle burger institute of goodness says China bad”. These indexes measure democracy using a definition that assumes Western liberal institutions as the universal standard. If your scoring system requires competitive multi-party elections and privately owned media corporations, then of course a different political model will rank poorly.

China measures legitimacy differently. The government is evaluated based on outcomes and public satisfaction. Long-running surveys like the Harvard Ash Center study consistently find extremely high levels of reported public satisfaction with government performance in China.

You can disagree with the Chinese political system. That is fine. But reducing democracy to “number of parties” or citing Western indexes without examining how the Chinese system actually works is not a serious analysis.

China has democracy. Just not bourgeois liberal democracy. The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local levels are directly elected, and then these representatives from around the country elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Also due to the nature of things the vast majority of representatives are among those directly elected by the people. You should research things before you just say things. And we’re very happy with our system. Even Harvard puts the approval rating around 95%.

So we’re just too subhuman and brainwashed to answer a Harvard poll about our thoughts correctly?

Their were excesses during the ETIM crackdown no doubt, however much of those have since been rectified and the crackdown was unfortunately necessary. The crackdown was also far more humane and reasonable in response to the terrorism in comparison to the western world that spent decades killing hundreds of thousands to over a million innocents in the middle east (not to mention Abu gharib, Guantanamo and the other black sites).

Tibetan serfs and slaves requested the PLA’s help in overthrowing their violent theocratic slave state.

Do you support the reunification of Ireland? Do you support the reunification of Korea (who reunified with who being irrelevant)? Are you a supporter of the American confederacy? Why should China not be allowed to finish it’s civil war? Also invasion is the last resort, peaceful reunification is the ideal.

A violent clash between police and protesters (who started the violence) over 35 years ago makes China awful? Certainly an interesting perspective.

It was a thing in ~40 of the big tech firms during the 2016-2019 tech boom, the supreme people’s court explicitly ruled it illegal in 2021 and with the 2025 consumption boost plan more frameworks for cracking down on excess overtime alongside enforcing rest and vacation rights better alongside many other things is being put in place.

Well for a start 996 is illegal so I don’t think I need to justify that.

And censorship can be annoying but is far less pervasive than you people imagine. The amount that is censored is probably on par with that of the western world, China is just open about where the lines are. Even then it’s entirely confined to the digital domain/media you can still talk about whatever you want which becomes very clear if you ever get a taxi lmao. Some amount of censorship is good anyway, fascists should be censored for example.