China is imperialist too¶

I am certainly not a "China is imperialist too!" type, or a "China isn't socialist" type, but they are absolutely failing to do enough to oppose the US empire, and especially failing on the most visible anti-imperialist struggle going on right. I have predicably angered both Team China-is-Evil and Team-China-Can-Do-No-Wrong. If you're looking for a debate, you guys can go digging through the quotes and comments to find each other. Their approach to countering US hegemony continues the same way it has for decades: growing their productive power, using that power to act as the central pillar propping up a global economic system that is increasingly divested from the imperial one, and then... what? The entire point of that plan -- which has certainly been yielding results -- is to create the conditions for the oppressed peoples of the world to liberate themselves. Well guess what? Those oppressed peoples ARE liberating themselves. The conditions are here, right now. China itself already has a larger economy than the US proper, and simply crushes it in productive capacity. The US-centered imperial apparatus is still more powerful than the parts of the world economy outside its grasp, but that's not really relevant to the goal of liberation. If individual liberation struggles could rely on free-flowing Chinese support, every single one would be likely to succeed. It takes a LOT less productive power to liberate than it does to oppress: every revolution in history has demonstrated that. With every successful struggle, the power of the empire gets chipped away, and a new economy enters the growing opposition bloc. This is happening regardless of "free-flowing Chinese support," but it is being paid for with the blood of countless victims of imperial repression. The issue, obviously, is that China can't simply provide free-flowing support because of the particular way it has been able to build that vast economic power. Call it "a deal with the devil," call it "tricking the capitalists," the result is the same: Capital controls a huge portion of the Chinese economy, as well as the broader economies of those nations that have begun divesting themselves from western capital. China has to constantly work around this powerful countervailing force, which seeks to maintain world capitalism. In recent years, China has been moving to weaken the influence of their own capitalists, but it is a slow process, and has not kept pace with the acceleration of both global liberation struggles and the imperial repression against them. Short of an unprecedented campaign to immediately expropriate all capitalist-held wealth in China, all at once -- which would immediately trigger destructive backlash by the US-led world order -- China feels it cannot simply operate independently of those capitalists. Even with all that in mind, there is a lot more it could be doing to support the axis of resistance. I don't think it's ludicrous to suggest that it could get away with being much bolder and riskier. It's justifiable to say their approach goes beyond "caution" and into cowardice. They're scared of upsetting the balance they have been working to build to countervail US hegemony, putting them into a weaker position on the world stage. They're scared of capital flight, military reprisal, and counter-revolution within China. That fear is justified. But there's a difference between being aware of the risks of a given action and allowing those risks to keep you from action altogether. You anticipate the reaction and you plan around it -- not surrender at the mere threat of reprisal. China should know intimately by now that the empire is a paper tiger. The time for action has clearly arrived. To delay any further is a betrayal.