GenZedong

Maybe there's experience I'm missing here that informs the take in this clip. Because I'm not following it much at all. I understand the general idea put forth that you can't force change via magic interventionism brute forcing of material conditions. But I'm not sure I agree with how he explains China's policy. The way he frames it makes it sound to me something like the argument Christians put forth about "free will", where they explain away god not interfering to prevent horrible stuff because that would be violating people's "free will". But this is obviously bogus because most human laws would consider it a crime if you see something terrible happening, can intervene, and don't.

I don't believe that is what China is doing. The way I understand it roughly (which I will admit could be muddled and missing important elements of it, but I present it for dicussion) is that China does not, and did not when they shifted to "reform and opening up", believe the conditions are such that intervening more directly will have more gain than loss and so they focused instead on building their productive forces and becoming a production foundation of the world. Thus enabling them not only to dramatically improve the lives of their own people, but also become so integrated that it's hard (if not impossible by now) for the world capitalist model to isolate and encircle them. This also gave them the power to build material trade ties with other countries and make mutually beneficial deals that could help strengthen those other, otherwise-exploited and isolated countries. Finally, the model of not militarily intervening is directly tied to the legitimization of the multi-polar world model that is situated to replace the dominant imperialist world model.

I don't see this as meaning that China or its allies couldn't ever reach a point where they intervene in some situations, in the capacity of "killing slavers", so to speak, but that such a stage would have to mean an explicit coalition of countries under the banner of liberation and may not be feasible until imperialism has been defeated, or is much weaker militarily (or until China and its allies are stronger military, or both). While imperialism is dominant, engaging in that capacity means hot or cold war with it and China appears to be trying not to get caught up in such a death by a thousand cuts engagement, where they are contending with all of the imperial tendrils lashing while also trying to manage their own affairs.

In other words, it comes across to me like this person is presenting ideology resulting from conditions as being ideology that exists in a static, unchanging state in Chinese culture across time. Although I'm sure Chinese culture impacts the development of its particular version of communist theory and practice, that does not mean it exists outside of it as a separate entity that is unchanged by it.