China has done a fuck ton to be where they are at and saying "do nothing, win" sometimes can feel like belittling all the hard work and sacrifice their people have done to get China where it is today. They are just humble about it and not actually looking at it like a race. They have a goal and they intend to reach it. That's it. The only one that's sees it as a grave is the US, and all they are doing is trying to hold on to an old lead they got through cheating and sabotaging the competition. But that isn't working on China, particularly because of all the work the pit it building themselves up.
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2026
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Do nothing but also build a gigantic ass army to defend yourself
Contrary to popular belief, China's "Do nothing. Win." approach actually involves doing quite a lot of things.
Wu Wei Wu, doing without doing?
Most overnight success stories involved a lot of hard work, just most people didn't notice.
Diego Ruzzarin is an interesting figure, at this point i think he is the most popular explicitly communist content creator in the world, there is Hasan but i say it's debatable. Somehow he has managed to cultivate his audience with this mix of pedantic+cynic+edgy style and by keeping his doors open and collaborating with virtually anyone, from far-right ex-presidents (Vicente Fox) to spanish patsocs (Santiago Armesilla) to mexican joe rogans (Roberto Mtz) to even getting an invitation to Maduro podcast, all the while proudly calling himself a communist and anti-imperialist, like him or not i think his method is worth studying.
I don't know much about Diego Ruzzarin (which is a shame, since he is a Brazilian). I only saw a podcast where he said he was student of Armesilla and when I searched more about the latter, I instantly hated him. So in the end I never gave Diego too much attention.
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.
Of course you are correct to point out that ideology results from material conditions, which can and do change. What is necessary and correct today may not be the right policy tomorrow.
That being said, i think the point that is being made here, if i can paraphrase a little, is that you cannot force liberation on people who don't understand that they need it yet. That just leads to resentment.
If the liberation movement is not organically grown through the experience of struggle but imposed from outside, then the resulting system is inevitably going to be fragile. If you do that then people will continue to cling to the idea that there was a better path that they weren't allowed to try.
People need to be allowed to make their own mistakes and experience first hand why those are mistakes. Just like China had to first experiment with the bourgeois model during the Republican period before understanding that only the socialist path could lead to liberation, sovereignty and prosperity.
The other argument for China's form of non-interference, which offers development and economic benefits but does not get involved in military conflicts, is that it allows imperialism to expose and discredit itself without being able to justify itself with the excuse of countering interference and global maneuvering by socialist states.
Meanwhile China presents itself as a beacon of stability, a stark contrast to the chaos of the declining imperial hegemony, an always reliable economic partner, a principled respecter of sovereignty, and ultimately a role model for other states to follow if they want stability, sovereignty, development and prosperity.
The biggest blunder that the dying US empire is currently making is giving up on its soft power, blowing up the ideological framework that had justified its hegemony for decades. They are falling into the trap of believing that you can dispense with the ideological pretense and just use hard power. But that pretense was necessary, even if it was understood by most to be a figleaf in front of the threat of hard power.
China is building up the new ideological framework to justify the post-hegemonic, multipolar world order. And for that it is vital that they cultivate an appearance of non-interventionism.
People need to be allowed to make their own mistakes and experience first hand why those are mistakes. Just like China had to first experiment with the bourgeois model during the Republican period before understanding that only the socialist path could lead to liberation, sovereignty and prosperity.
This also helps us understand the rise of communism in the Russian Federation. Capitalism has been disastrous, both imperialized and post-imperialized, and only socialism presents a genuine path forward for Russia.
We see from the failures of the USSR's socialist state-building attempts after WW2 that unless the people of a country fought and built their socialist system themselves, they will be more susceptible to counter-revolutionary ideas that things could be done some "nebulous better way".
This is a big reason why you see so many Eastern European dumbasses who think that everything wrong with their lives is due to the Soviet Union, forgetting that they were all shithole countries before the Soviet Union built them up.
Research shows that people put more pride and value in something they build themselves, termed the IKEA effect. The same seems true of governance systems.
I'm sure there's truths to that, but I'd just like to say that it was not a shithole for everyone, it was a shithole for the working peasants, the fascists quite liked the arrangement they had going.
In fact they're quite happy to turn my birthplace into overexploited shithole again. The only reason we haven't collapsed yet is because Brussels sometimes subsidizes and how are we supposed to become independent now?
I am wondering how much of this drive for Nationalism is the tendency of history to over-correct itself, like how is it even going to work? We all agree to just stay within our own borders and I'm supposed to believe that my neighboring capitalist nations will just watch a socialist revolution going on and be like: "Heh I won't send in some death squads to help squash that."
But I'm ngl I don't see a way out of this. I think someone bigger is eventually just going to shallow us. I have been trying to find a more appealing proposal for the locals, but everything is either a horror show, slow death or idealistic dreams.
Depends on how small the Eastern European countries you're referring to are.
I personally believe that any country with a population under 80 million people is essentially irrelevant in global politics barring specific circumstances, and should probably merge with its neighbors to get more leverage for development.
I've written earlier that:
Countries <80 million have markets that are too miniscule to be good bargaining chips when negotiating with capitalist companies, unfortunately eliminating the option of pressuring foreign companies into technology transfer agreements ala China. This hurts their industrial and technological growth, placing them at the mercy of larger countries' tech.
Countries that small also do not have enough workforce and internal market to foster vibrant, holistic domestic industry on their own. There simply is not enough money or workforce to cultivate the funds necessary to conduct advanced R&D to continuously keep up with the world in all aspects of industry. Oftentimes, this forces small countries to import most of their manufactured goods.
Lastly, countries that small also do not have enough money or workforce to build up militaries strong enough to go toe to toe against 100+ million population countries. While they may be strong enough to defend the country itself, they are not able to be expeditionary and act on geopolitical objectives abroad. If under threat, small countries ultimately have to seek protection from allied larger countries, again jeopardising sovereignty.
For these reasons, it is imperative for small countries to form unions to get to ~100 million population. At that size, they have the weight to push for industrial development and geopolitical interests.
Some countries are already doing this. Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have formed the Alliance of Sahel States, with a total population of 71 million, for the express purpose of establishing a common market, industrialization, military cooperation, and eventually unifying into a single sovereign state.
Of course, merging into larger states is unlikely to happen under bourgeois control because national bourgeoisies like to enjoy the minor insignificant spoil of leading a tiny country rather than joining up for the greater good. Also, Western capitalist powers enjoy the ease of pushing around these tiny countries, which might become harder to push around if they merged into larger collectives.
Yeah I suppose that's the crux of communism, it's a David vs Goliath scenario and even though a better version of USSR seems like an impossibility to me, that's probably where we'll end up and I'm sure it won't be called that and I probably won't get to see it, the more the bourgeoise class weaken the more room I have to breathe.
There's just this voice inside me telling me we'll suffer the same fate as the Spartacus league and that's the decent outcome, which just honestly really sucks even if it's inevitable and nothing can be done. Damn nato and everything they stand for.
Yeah, and that is also why recent Chinese history is a huge part of the education system from a very young age.
People need to be allowed to make their own mistakes and experience first hand why those are mistakes. Just like China had to first experiment with the bourgeois model during the Republican period before understanding that only the socialist path could lead to liberation, sovereignty and prosperity.
I may have to reflect on this more, but I'll still try to write something out and see if that clarifies where my head's at. I think this is something that gets more complicated than it might first look, especially when we factor in places that are historically colonized/imperialized vs. not.
In particular, a place that has been exploited by imperialism, it may be all the more imperative that they have a strong native liberation movement, in order to properly shake off the effects of imperialism.
Then there's weird shit like the US. It can technically have a strong working class movement without having a strong decolonial, liberation movement. It won't last that way in the long-term because it's failing to address the contradictions properly, but it can happen and I believe has in certain ways in the past - where white working class got concessions enough for what they wanted and threw non-white under the bus to do it. With how embedded fascism is in its makeup, and how warmongering it is, it may require intervention at some point to purge it of fascists if local efforts aren't successful in doing so, if nothing else to keep its neighbors safe from its terrorism and bullying.
I'm also just not sure the concept of sovereignty works the same way for a country that is founded on settler-colonialism. Indigenous nations need their sovereignty recognized, but the people of the US, that seems more complicated. On the one hand, it's not like 300+ million people can just up and leave and go back to the countries their ancestors came from. On the other hand, any alternative to the US in the region has to be purged/reeducated of chauvinist, colonial tendencies. There has to be a reckoning with the fundamental asymmetry of being the descendants of settlers on land occupied through genocide, who now greatly outnumber the natives.
The other thing I think of is like, Palestine for example has liberation forces of its own. Its people have been fighting for decades. It isn't a question of them being unprepared to fight for, or govern, themselves. They are more than capable of that. The problem is that the occupier has military power that they don't have and is willing to use it against them in the most ruthless and disgusting ways. This is a scenario where, if there were unified, global liberation forces, they could step in and make the difference, and push out the occupier. It's kind of a no-brainer if the organized military power was there and it would sound absurd to argue that doing so would be messing up some kind of struggle process for the Palestinian people.
On the other hand, if the world had such forces and they looked at an imperialized country that is being run by capitalists and struggling to build a socialist movement and said, "We're going to come in and start shooting", that I think more fits what we're talking about in terms of being paternal rather than working in solidarity.
Last thought is I think it's worth noting that China did successfully militarily intervene under Mao, when it helped Korean liberation forces push back US forces (whose forces asked for help, it's also worth noting), and it's possible that if they hadn't, the US would have occupied all of Korea and leveraged the positioning to war directly with China. And even if the US had stopped in its hot war there, it still would have been a much worse situation for the Korean people.
So I would say there is a dramatic difference between allying with existing liberation forces in a country vs. coming in and trying to quickly force development in a paternalistic way. China and its allies could become more equipped to do the first one militarily, but my read (which I think we are more or less in agreement on) is they are trying to minimize the need for it (and the resulting loss of life involved in such direct struggle) by first shifting the balance of power away from imperialism. Edit: And are also trying to ensure that any such effort would not be some over-extending effort they get mired in with no end in sight and undermines their socialist project at home.
With how embedded fascism is in its makeup, and how warmongering it is, it may require intervention at some point to purge it of fascists if local efforts aren’t successful in doing so, if nothing else to keep its neighbors safe from its terrorism and bullying.
This is my thought, but perhaps I need more faith in the US working class.
I guess how I kinda see it is: act like it's possible to overcome and organize for it, but also spend some time and energy thinking about what to do if things get even worse and what kind of options are going to be available. Kinda like how sovereign nations spend time on building and improving things, but also spend time on defensive and offensive tools, protocols, and training, and what they do if directly attacked. I don't think we need to have faith that things will work out, but we do need to have enough belief in the possibility that we're willing to try. One of the important factors here, I think, is keeping "quantitative changes lead to qualitative" in view. Broadly, it can be easy to look at the big picture, not see the desired progress, and adopt a demoralized view. But every bit of progress is changing something, which can lead to other changes, and we need to know better what is going on in the details so that we can move those details further along. Otherwise, we can wind up more as spectators, as in the "weeks where decades happen" feel where the shift to qualitative takes us by surprise.
Well said.
So I would say there is a dramatic difference between allying with existing liberation forces in a country vs. coming in and trying to quickly force development in a paternalistic way.
Indeed. And I think that what we have seen is that China is willing to offer help to liberation forces that have already become the dominant force in their country, like what happened in the AES (Sahel) states. But it would be damaging to the struggle if China were to throw their support behind groups that are still in the minority. That would make those groups look like proxies of an outside power, which would undermine their legitimacy.
The situation in Palestine is complicated because the officially recognized representative of the Palestinians is the Palestinian Authority. Moreover, China, just like Russia, cannot give help that has not been asked for. Did for example Iran request direct Chinese help beyond economic engagement? Did Venezuela? China does have military deals with Pakistan and an alliance with the DPRK.
And of course their direct involvement in Korea was absolutely correct. Not only was it in their own immediate security interest, but more importantly it was in aid of the officially recognized government of the DPRK and completely in accordance with what the majority of the people there wanted.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: