• kristina [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        I mean they probably are trying to build core infrastructure so that they can reap profits once the area has a higher standard of living, but obviously that’s mutually beneficial

        • SacredExcrement [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          Sure, and it reflects a different manner of thinking

          China’s ‘investment’ is lifting a country up so that they can engage in additional dealings further down the line, which also helps build goodwill (which will no doubt help with such dealings)

          Western ‘investment’ is trying to rip out everything down to the studs while giving as little back as possible

          • Cowbee [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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            3 months ago

            To add, it isn’t simply due to a different mindset, but due to a different mode of production. Western imperialism and China’s socialist market economy express clear, demonstrable differences when it comes to foreign policy like this.

  • BeanisBrain [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 month ago

    Chinese “imperialism”: “As agreed, we have built a railway in your country. We won’t charge interest on the debt, and we might just forgive it entirely.”

    American imperialism: Bombs schools, drone strikes weddings, assassinates leaders, blockades countries for decades

    • GoodGuyWithACat [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Imperialism is when a country puts military bases in all of your neighboring countries, including an island that was once part of your country, and constantly threatens you, and so you build ships to defend yourself.

      • Grapho@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        You’re all being so disingenuous. Imperialism is when you get colonized and partitioned so you lose control of your peripheral mountainous areas, and then you come back and liberate the slaves but make a weird monk sad because he lost all his slaves.

  • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    The really funny part is that the whole “lesser evil” is completely throw out of the window when they speak about China.

    Okay let’s assume China is doing imperialism. How choose China is different them voting for Kamala shitlibs?

    Person1: “Do you want Trump genociding more or Kamala trying to end genocide(heh)?”

    Based person: “I want no genocide”

    Person1: “TANKIE!!!”


    Person1: “Do you want America imperialism or China imperialism?”

    Person2: “I want China imperialism”

    Person1: “TANKIE!!!”

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Nobody really believes in lesser evilism, it’s just that people are willing to compromise as long as it’s not crossing a line.

      Genocide isn’t a moral line for them. Defending a rival state is.

    • ComradeRat [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      -Kautsky about Lenin, 1916

      Too many marxists take a kautskyite position on imperialism (its a set of policies a state can decide to choose or not choose) instead of lenin’s position (its a whole era of capitalism predicated on monopolies and exporting capital)

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      outside it’s borders.

      That’s very generous of you. Most of what they call “imperialism” is stuff that China does within its own borders.

    • SevenSkalls [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Please do conquest through economics and trade not bombs, if this is the best we can hope for then please just do that.

      The thing is, US (and Europe) does conquest through economics and trade too, via the IMF, WTO, World Bank, and similar institutions. It’s absolutely brutal. They loan foreign money (like USD or euro) to countries who need help, but then these counties lose control over their debt because it’s in a foreign currency. Attached with these loans are strict rules about how to run your state after usually related to austerity, like what happened to Greece and many states in Africa.

      The terms of these loans are such that they are forced to destroy their own economic and political structures. They have to do things like destroy their welfare states, privatize their own natural resources and sell it to foreign firms, prioritize paying back loans over investing in their people, forced to organize their governments for the West and against communism, things like that.

      China is very different. First, they’ve forgiven lots of loans given out. In addition, even when they don’t, their BRI projects provide infrastructure that actually helps bring in more money, while Western loans make you strip the copper from your own state’s walls usually causing you to bring in less money after. They also come with a lot less rules and more generous terms to pay it back. So they’re even different in the way they do “economic imperialism”, if you want to call it that.

      • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        The thing is, US (and Europe) does conquest through economics and trade too, via the IMF, WTO, World Bank, and similar institutions. It’s absolutely brutal. They loan foreign money (like USD or euro) to countries who need help, but then these counties lose control over their debt because it’s in a foreign currency. Attached with these loans are strict rules about how to run your state after usually related to austerity, like what happened to Greece and many states in Africa.

        Noting though, that the West can do those things because of the threat of military option, not to mention the coups that have made the receptive government possible. The West is an organized crime family running a protection racket vs China building a symbiotic relation with other countries.

        Like, being able to explain this shit still comes down to your audience acknowledging the difference between 2 consenting countries making a business deal and one country with a gun to its head ceding sovereignty to the global north.

        • SevenSkalls [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          Well from what I’ve heard, they’ve learned their lesson and are now trying not to teach kids to do that so much lol. (More in some states than others, but still.)

  • Soot [any]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    What even is the point supposed to be? That ‘bad imperialism’ is NATO doing genocides in your country, while ‘good imperialism’ is China building railways and hospitals in your country? You can mess up the semantics if you want but it doesn’t exactly make me think China evil.