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I obviously largely agree with this assessment. It correctly identifies that the expectation of rescue by external powers reflects a lingering ideological inheritance from colonial modernity, rather than a materialist understanding of how emancipation actually occurs. The insistence that sovereignty must be produced internally through class power, state capacity, and concrete struggle is fully consistent with the Marxist Leninist tradition.

Everyone who has properly applied the dialectical materialist method should reach the same position. This is because socialism and Marxism are not belief systems or moral positions but a science. They apply the scientific method of dialectical materialism to the study of history, social development, and class relations. By examining material conditions, contradictions, and historical motion, Marxism allows us to understand how the past shapes the present and how those conditions are likely to shape future developments. As has been emphasized in different formulations by countless marxist scholars, Marxism is a science, and those who apply it correctly to concrete reality will arrive at the same conclusions.

When this method is applied to the contemporary world system, it becomes clear why the question of China or Russia acting as global saviors is wrongly posed. States are not abstract moral agents but historically situated concentrations of class forces operating under specific constraints, including imperial encirclement and the threat of escalation. Genuine internationalism does not mean substituting for another nation’s struggle. It means expanding the material space for oppressed peoples to develop their own productive forces, strengthen their sovereignty, and consolidate their own class power. Anything else risks reproducing dependency under a different flag rather than advancing the real project of anti imperialist emancipation.

Thank you for raising these very important questions, because as a Marxist and socialist, these are the issues most close to heart for me rather than the amazing technological breakthroughs in China. I have many on the table, for example, class division, rural/urban divide, healthcare system, etc. that I simply haven’t found the time to write amidst a very busy work schedule.

As a starter, it is important to understand why the Chinese economy is in the state it is currently. Whenever you hear someone argues why China should/shouldn’t have billionaires with all the rhetoric without telling you anything about the history of its economic development, especially the watershed moment of the 1994 Tax Sharing Reform, then you know they don’t know what they’re talking about. My favorite one is “China keeps billionaires under their control” lol - if that’s the case, then why would you need billionaires in the first place?

The simple answer is that the decentralized nature of the economy forced the local governments to seek financial support from the rich business elites, who then formed cliques with the government officials and became billionaires in the process. It is a product of the system itself. Read my post here about the 1994 Tax Sharing Reform and its consequences. It explains a lot about why there are billionaires and why the property market booming is such a big deal in China’s recent history.

For class division, I recently came across a lecture from Prof. Wang Ou and while I was writing up the notes, I realized that someone else has already done a professional translation of the full lecture. I strongly recommend you read this article: Wang Ou: Migrant workers, after the honeymoon which is essentially the entire transcript of the lecture translated into English.

Prof. Wang’s research is mostly focused on women migrant workers and the challenges they face after getting married and having kids, but even taking such a glimpse into a slice of the migrant worker’s lives will tell you a lot about class division in China.

I wrote a bit about this in another comment the other day in response to someone else in a different topic, I am reproducing my comment here to add on to what is in the article above:

In China, your hukou (i.e. where you are born, or rather, the residence of your parents) determines your access to housing, education, healthcare, pension/insurance and public utilities in the urban areas. There are ~40% of people with rural hukou registration that are effectively barred from what urban citizens get to enjoy - not completely, but it’s extremely limited.

Currently, there are ~300 million migrant workers (农民工) in China (~40% of the 700+ million total labor force, and nearly the entire population of the US!) who work in the cities but their rural hukou registration limits their access to housing (and education for their kids - both are connected, see below).

Migrant workers are the true underclass that makes your cheap iPhones and build all those amazing infrastructure across China, yet because of their rural hukou registration, are not entitled to public utilities in the cities they work in, because technically they are not residents of the cities they work in. Your home is tied to the village/provincial town you came from. This allows the municipal governments to exploit their labor while providing minimal services in return. (Remember, there is no personal income tax in China (only 70 million people have to pay income tax), the most important tax revenue is value-added tax, so the more labor hours being squeezed out of the workers, the higher tax revenues the local governments receive).

Similarly, employers are not obligated to contribute to pension funds and insurances (五险一金) so migrant workers usually get screwed the worst because they have little to no safety net if they get sick or become unemployed.

It is class division based on where you’re born.

Now, on to housing, more than 60% of them live in rental units, ~20% live in company-provided hostels/dormitories (shared living spaces) and a proportion of them (~20%) did purchase houses (especially with marriage and kids) but mostly in the provincial towns. A lot of them were scammed into purchasing houses because the local governments, in an attempt to drive up land prices, tied education resources to housing, and effectively coercing these migrant working class families to purchase a house in the county in order to even have a chance of sending their kids to public schools due to the points-based system that prioritizes home ownership:

According to Prof. Wang Ou’s research (see my linked article above):

So, how much does it cost for a migrant worker to buy a home in the county? While staying in newly purchased apartments of migrant workers, I calculated the expenses carefully. In a county in southern Jiangxi, homes cost 6,000–7,000 RMB [$852-994] per square meter; in a county in western Guangxi, 4,000–5,000 RMB [$568-710]. A 100-square-meter shell apartment plus full fit-out costs at least 600,000–700,000 RMB [$85,215-99,418]. This is an enormous burden—often draining the savings of two generations and still requiring loans for ten or twenty years.

Education is very important in China (and East Asian culture) as it is essentially the path towards upward social mobility. Many parents who want their kids to even have a chance to get enrolled in public schools were coerced into purchasing a house, because of the point-based system. If they are not wealthy enough to own a house, their kids will not be eligible for public schools (simply not enough places for everyone) even though they are born and raised in the city where their parents have worked for years. In this case, they will have to resort to private schools, which are more expensive and draining on the parents’ expenses. That’s how the system favors the wealthy.

As a result, the parents will often seek the financial support from their parents (the kids’ grandparents) and use their life savings as downpayment for houses, work hard themselves while saving very little to pay the mortgages for 10-20 years, all in the hopes that their kids will have access to good schools.

So, the purchasing of one house is not just about one family, it’s about three generations of people. The plunging property prices in China is now taking its toll on the Chinese households across multiple generations. This is how you get low domestic consumption.

I wish I have more time to write about these in more detail because they are very important and interesting topics to discuss. I hope this is enough to serve as primers for you into navigating these topics.

Just a minor correction, the recent development of IMF Shanghai Center isn’t sudden welcoming, and IMF has been in China for a long time, but the further integration of the Chinese monetary system into the IMF framework, with the IMF now recognizing China’s role as an economic powerhouse in the region and in the world.

China will continue to play a major role in the global economy in the years to come, but I don’t see them abandoning the IMF neoliberal framework anytime soon.

"An egg that cracks from the inside is life, an egg that cracks from the outside is food"

Production scale for advanced gallium nitride amplifier MMIC was very important as well. From decades behind now lead the world. Very difficult material science design and manufacture.

The crank stuff is really annoying. Like with regards to Venezuelan military capabilities for instance, all over social media you had these alt media sphere accounts acting like Venezuela's ancient S-125/SA-3 Goa air defence systems were going to shoot down F-35s in a repeat of the Serbian F-117 shoot down (with zero understanding of what the F-117 was, what the F-35 is today, and how the F-117 shoot down even happened). Acting like a single S-300VM/SA-23 system, which wasn't even deployed to the capital, was going to protect the entire country. Acting like Kh-31 anti ship missiles, missiles that the US Navy used the exact same model of to test their air defence systems, were going to deter the US. Acting as if Maduro talking about 6000 MANPADs was going to shoot down fighter jets. Saying that the Buk air defence systems would do well in Venezuela because they perform well in Ukraine and Russia. Saying that some "anti stealth radars" Venezuela got from China were going to locate the F-22s and F-35s.

And then when the US did capture Maduro, those same alt media sphere accounts said that Venezuela just surrendered in a deal, ignoring all the pictures of destroyed Buks (there were quite a lot), and videos of US helicopters shooting anything that moved, and the close to 100 casualties amongst Venezuelan and Cuban forces. They did the same with regards to the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, saying that the US never actually flew into Iranian airspace and dropped bunker buster bombs, they just launched cruise missiles for show to make holes on the surface.

I guess most of the left (outside of China) doesn't want to engage seriously with military matters because most experts are western aligned and ideologically opposed to leftism. But then again, look at what China is doing. They are very much learning from the doctrine of the USA, making stealth jets, advanced electronic warfare aircraft, etc. China even has their own F-35 analogue, the J-35, an aircraft type many on the left constantly make fun of, despite it being a very capable aircraft produced in large numbers. Is China stupid for making their own F-35s? Or are the alt media sphere and exaggerated RT articles wrong? You can decide for yourself, but I very much think that China is right here by building J-35s.

I also feel like a complete idiot for taking the alt media sphere seriously years ago.

Absolutely. All that “peaceful coexistence” bullshit is just to cover that their military is not strong enough.

What makes you think this?

ML types only concern themselves with economic analysis, forgetting that there’s more to hard power than the economy. I see reading lists from ML orgs and few of them incorporate texts on revolutionary warfare.

A lot of the best titles on revolutionary warfare were written by MLs and most MLs are not worried about engaging in revolutionary warfare before properly building a party, a disciplined cadre and a vanguard while addressing class contradictions in the area/country that they are working in instead of distributing COIN manuals on Instagram pages and calling PSL police (NATO Anarchists, as you said, not jabbing at you.). This is demonstrable in the fact that actually existing socialist nations fall (generally) under the M-L banner and had to fight constantly for their existence/survival and only survived through addressing class contradiction via their own socialist characteristics deployed through extensive theory and party discipline.

And if I were the kind of person who wants to get a good theory reading about revolutionary warfare, where would I begin?

the bulk of fighting was done by vietcong in vietnam war.

They wouldn't have been able to without material support from the Soviets and China. The Vietnam War saw a situation where the US army fought a population that could essentially recruit every young person reaching military age, ever year, almost with impunity. Laos was bombed, but China wasn't. And the Chinese also sent instructors to help the Vietnamese organize their forces after Soviet methods proved unsuited for the kind of war that was being fought.

Whoops, you responded before I refreshed the page. 😅