If your priority during an imperialist war is to put down the biggest anti-imperialist country there is in the world for not being militarily anti-imperialist in exactly the way that you want, you just come out sounding like an imperialist with extra steps. The superficial level appearance is like you’re on the side of anti-imperialism, but the character of the action is attacking supposed allies. This is what the imperialists want. Divide and conquer is one of their favorite tactics.
If your priority during an imperialist war is to put down the biggest anti-imperialist country there is in the world for not being militarily anti-imperialist in exactly the way that you want, you just come out sounding like an imperialist with extra steps
There is a difference doing this in a communist-majority space like hexbear or lemmygrad, where people can make valid criticism and not just “China bad”, and doing this towards the general public. It’s good to have inwards critique constantly, even if it’s not good to let this get into the propaganda war. Seeing as this is a post with 80 upvotes on a minor instance, it’s not the latter but the former.
China’s “do-nothing” approach has been extremely positive since 1991 for their international prospects, but in 2026 the world needs soviet-style interventionism in geopolitics: intelligence and covert missions, usage of soft and hard power, and even military intervention.
Even within a communist space, it’s still important for self crit to be principled, not sloppy finger-pointing. What I find repeatedly is that the people who show up as the most critical of China for “not doing enough” also don’t have a clear picture of what China has been doing in the first place. It would appear that the absence of shared headlines like “China sends troops to X country” leads some to believe that all they are doing internationally is profiting off of trade deals and enjoying the benefits of that or something.
I’ve yet to see a discussion about China here that digs into what all they are doing in detail and then tries to critique from the standpoint of being grounded in that detail.
I get what some people want. Desire for “military intervention” is the “can be seen from space” part of it that keeps popping up. So far, from the people who express desire for it, I can’t recall seeing an explanation of why it would make logistical sense for China to do so in a blatant and overt way, and how it would be overall more beneficial for the international struggle in the current state of things than them specifically not doing it. In other words, is there an argument that it is the superior strategic choice to meet the moment or is it pure moralizing and a desire to see China flex to defend the victims of imperialism? Simply saying it’s what the world needs is not such an argument alone. The world needed powerful international liberation forces a long time ago. The need did not magic them into being.
This is an internet forum. There are effortposts about the topic, but not all critique of policy of socialist projects must be a 20-paragraph in a forum format.
If China had provided, say, radars and interceptors to the Iranian military, Iranian lives could have been saved. I’m not even asking for offensive equipment as in “give nukes and dongfengs to Iran”, because of the associated escalation from the west in the economic and diplomatic war against China.
Principled communists in this community often critically support Russia’s military efforts against Ukraine with the main reasons being the net weakening of the currently-dominating western imperialism. Can this analysis not be expanded to China?
Additional well-informed criticism, such as that of Chinese comrade Xiaohongshu, points to the effect of US rapid strikes on anti-imperialist nations in which China economically invests: since Chinese investment is guided by market relations, even comparably small western military action (see 12 day war) can have tremendous effects on Chinese investment in the region due to perceived insecurity by investors.
Cool copy-pasta, I appreciate the resource. I did not say China is doing nothing, though, I specifically talked of using soft and especially hard power, and I gave good arguments for it. Wanna address that?
If China had provided, say, radars and interceptors to the Iranian military, Iranian lives could have been saved. I’m not even asking for offensive equipment as in “give nukes and dongfengs to Iran”, because of the associated escalation from the west in the economic and diplomatic war against China.
from the post I linked:
Iran – Primary buyer of sanctioned oil; infrastructure investment; 25-year cooperation framework; diplomatic resistance to U.S. isolation. Military aid and intelligence assistance.
It really just proves the point where I said:
What I find repeatedly is that the people who show up as the most critical of China for “not doing enough” also don’t have a clear picture of what China has been doing in the first place.
Odds are it’s not going to be fully public knowledge what all they have helped with for security reasons, but if you’re willing to believe that list, it directly addresses what you were talking about.
Just to expand on this slightly: Iran has received YLC-8B anti-stealth radars, access to BeiDou’s secure navigation/messaging satellite network, and dual-use inputs like perchlorate solid-rocket oxidizers, drone guidance modules, and SAM battery components. The radar and satellite integration directly support strike accuracy; the chemical and electronic supplies are harder to trace but show up in US Treasury sanctions designations and OSINT export records.
On complete systems like the CM-302 missile or HQ-9B air defense: multiple reports exist, but Beijing denies them as “disinformation.” The lack of acknowledgment doesn’t rule out transfer; it may just be the cost of maintaining plausible deniability but this is much more conspiracy/speculation than the well documented and also extremely useful aid in the previous paragraph.
Regarding the particular systems: can you provide numerical data on the amount of radars and SAM battery components? Russia provided SU-35s but AFAIK Iran has 2, which is absolutely insufficient (Russia has other limitations such as being itself at war and not being the industrial powerhouse of the world anymore).
My obvious point is that the extent of military aid is insufficient. I don’t know why you need to treat this as disinformed within a primarily communist community. I’m not accusing you of lack of awareness about the extent of aid by China, I’m just criticizing the scope of China’s aid to Iran, not as a left-punching weapon but as genuine will of increase in the scope of aid to anti-imperialist struggle.
I don’t know why you need to treat this as disinformed within a primarily communist community.
Being a communist space doesn’t mean we don’t have standards for rigor of narrative and information. If anything, we need to have higher standards than normal, especially with how much disinformation there is out there. And being here doesn’t automatically mean one is informed on an issue. We have to be able to correct each other (respectfully) and develop stances out of rigorous assessment of a situation. Otherwise, we’re just going off of ideological dogma and losing sight of the scientific part of scientific socialism (aka: dialectical and historical materialism).
What I said wasn’t meant as a personal dig (though I will admit I had some frustration behind it), but as an observation of correlation between lacking knowledge about China and vaguely placed / shifting goalposts criticisms of it.
China is not above criticism, but the CPC is also not reading lemmygrad and deciding what to do for international policy based on what we complain about. What China “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing is less important than what they are doing. What they “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing is less important than what they are capable of doing. What they “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing is less important than what is strategically beneficial both for them domestically and for the international struggle as a whole, when looked at in totality, not just as one war. Our job as communists is to understand contradictions and motives, not just shoulds and shouldn’ts.
So when considering a question like “is the extent of military aid insufficient”, it’s not even really about that question alone. Weightier questions are, “Can they logistically offer more military aid than they are already doing so and if so, why are they choosing not to? If they can’t, what is preventing it?” Trying to understand the answers to questions like these seems far more informative than simply repeating like an adage that they should be doing more. “Why are they not doing more?” is what it naturally leads to, but if people handle this implication in a sloppy way, it can lead them down a misleading ultra-left road of accusing China of being revisionist, corrupted, or otherwise incapable of rising to the moment as a revolutionary vanguard. Which weakens international working class solidarity instead of strengthening ties. Which nurtures a sense of superiority from people who may not even be part of a vanguard party of their own in the first place.
This is only 5 paragraphs, but I probably could summon up 20 on how important it is to ensure we are not throwing AES states under the bus in the naive pursuit of purist moralizing expectations. We can’t take it for granted that people will view it as self crit just because we’re in a communist space. And the CPC is not a group of devs in a video game who read our feedback and maybe listen to it sometimes. It is a complicated project of over a billion people that is trying to exercise, in real-time, the practice of marxism-leninism, and of dialectical and historical materialism. Those who are observing it from the outside could use a little more humility sometimes in engaging with how complicated the judgment calls are going to get and a little more effort to try to understand why it is that China is taking the path it is before assuming they’ve missed something that an outsider can casually see and also just to understand what the path even entails in detail.
China’s “do-nothing” approach has been extremely positive since 1991 for their international prospects, but in 2026 the world needs soviet-style interventionism in geopolitics: intelligence and covert missions, usage of soft and hard power, and even military intervention.
Well, you will be happy to hear that in many cases China is doing almost all of those things, then?
If your priority during an imperialist war is to put down the biggest anti-imperialist country there is in the world for not being militarily anti-imperialist in exactly the way that you want, you just come out sounding like an imperialist with extra steps. The superficial level appearance is like you’re on the side of anti-imperialism, but the character of the action is attacking supposed allies. This is what the imperialists want. Divide and conquer is one of their favorite tactics.
There is a difference doing this in a communist-majority space like hexbear or lemmygrad, where people can make valid criticism and not just “China bad”, and doing this towards the general public. It’s good to have inwards critique constantly, even if it’s not good to let this get into the propaganda war. Seeing as this is a post with 80 upvotes on a minor instance, it’s not the latter but the former.
China’s “do-nothing” approach has been extremely positive since 1991 for their international prospects, but in 2026 the world needs soviet-style interventionism in geopolitics: intelligence and covert missions, usage of soft and hard power, and even military intervention.
Even within a communist space, it’s still important for self crit to be principled, not sloppy finger-pointing. What I find repeatedly is that the people who show up as the most critical of China for “not doing enough” also don’t have a clear picture of what China has been doing in the first place. It would appear that the absence of shared headlines like “China sends troops to X country” leads some to believe that all they are doing internationally is profiting off of trade deals and enjoying the benefits of that or something.
I’ve yet to see a discussion about China here that digs into what all they are doing in detail and then tries to critique from the standpoint of being grounded in that detail.
I get what some people want. Desire for “military intervention” is the “can be seen from space” part of it that keeps popping up. So far, from the people who express desire for it, I can’t recall seeing an explanation of why it would make logistical sense for China to do so in a blatant and overt way, and how it would be overall more beneficial for the international struggle in the current state of things than them specifically not doing it. In other words, is there an argument that it is the superior strategic choice to meet the moment or is it pure moralizing and a desire to see China flex to defend the victims of imperialism? Simply saying it’s what the world needs is not such an argument alone. The world needed powerful international liberation forces a long time ago. The need did not magic them into being.
This is an internet forum. There are effortposts about the topic, but not all critique of policy of socialist projects must be a 20-paragraph in a forum format.
If China had provided, say, radars and interceptors to the Iranian military, Iranian lives could have been saved. I’m not even asking for offensive equipment as in “give nukes and dongfengs to Iran”, because of the associated escalation from the west in the economic and diplomatic war against China.
Principled communists in this community often critically support Russia’s military efforts against Ukraine with the main reasons being the net weakening of the currently-dominating western imperialism. Can this analysis not be expanded to China?
Additional well-informed criticism, such as that of Chinese comrade Xiaohongshu, points to the effect of US rapid strikes on anti-imperialist nations in which China economically invests: since Chinese investment is guided by market relations, even comparably small western military action (see 12 day war) can have tremendous effects on Chinese investment in the region due to perceived insecurity by investors.
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10742177/7766919
Cool copy-pasta, I appreciate the resource. I did not say China is doing nothing, though, I specifically talked of using soft and especially hard power, and I gave good arguments for it. Wanna address that?
I did…
from the post I linked:
It really just proves the point where I said:
Odds are it’s not going to be fully public knowledge what all they have helped with for security reasons, but if you’re willing to believe that list, it directly addresses what you were talking about.
Just to expand on this slightly: Iran has received YLC-8B anti-stealth radars, access to BeiDou’s secure navigation/messaging satellite network, and dual-use inputs like perchlorate solid-rocket oxidizers, drone guidance modules, and SAM battery components. The radar and satellite integration directly support strike accuracy; the chemical and electronic supplies are harder to trace but show up in US Treasury sanctions designations and OSINT export records.
On complete systems like the CM-302 missile or HQ-9B air defense: multiple reports exist, but Beijing denies them as “disinformation.” The lack of acknowledgment doesn’t rule out transfer; it may just be the cost of maintaining plausible deniability but this is much more conspiracy/speculation than the well documented and also extremely useful aid in the previous paragraph.
Interesting, thanks for providing further context on it.
Regarding the particular systems: can you provide numerical data on the amount of radars and SAM battery components? Russia provided SU-35s but AFAIK Iran has 2, which is absolutely insufficient (Russia has other limitations such as being itself at war and not being the industrial powerhouse of the world anymore).
My obvious point is that the extent of military aid is insufficient. I don’t know why you need to treat this as disinformed within a primarily communist community. I’m not accusing you of lack of awareness about the extent of aid by China, I’m just criticizing the scope of China’s aid to Iran, not as a left-punching weapon but as genuine will of increase in the scope of aid to anti-imperialist struggle.
Being a communist space doesn’t mean we don’t have standards for rigor of narrative and information. If anything, we need to have higher standards than normal, especially with how much disinformation there is out there. And being here doesn’t automatically mean one is informed on an issue. We have to be able to correct each other (respectfully) and develop stances out of rigorous assessment of a situation. Otherwise, we’re just going off of ideological dogma and losing sight of the scientific part of scientific socialism (aka: dialectical and historical materialism).
What I said wasn’t meant as a personal dig (though I will admit I had some frustration behind it), but as an observation of correlation between lacking knowledge about China and vaguely placed / shifting goalposts criticisms of it.
China is not above criticism, but the CPC is also not reading lemmygrad and deciding what to do for international policy based on what we complain about. What China “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing is less important than what they are doing. What they “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing is less important than what they are capable of doing. What they “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing is less important than what is strategically beneficial both for them domestically and for the international struggle as a whole, when looked at in totality, not just as one war. Our job as communists is to understand contradictions and motives, not just shoulds and shouldn’ts.
So when considering a question like “is the extent of military aid insufficient”, it’s not even really about that question alone. Weightier questions are, “Can they logistically offer more military aid than they are already doing so and if so, why are they choosing not to? If they can’t, what is preventing it?” Trying to understand the answers to questions like these seems far more informative than simply repeating like an adage that they should be doing more. “Why are they not doing more?” is what it naturally leads to, but if people handle this implication in a sloppy way, it can lead them down a misleading ultra-left road of accusing China of being revisionist, corrupted, or otherwise incapable of rising to the moment as a revolutionary vanguard. Which weakens international working class solidarity instead of strengthening ties. Which nurtures a sense of superiority from people who may not even be part of a vanguard party of their own in the first place.
This is only 5 paragraphs, but I probably could summon up 20 on how important it is to ensure we are not throwing AES states under the bus in the naive pursuit of purist moralizing expectations. We can’t take it for granted that people will view it as self crit just because we’re in a communist space. And the CPC is not a group of devs in a video game who read our feedback and maybe listen to it sometimes. It is a complicated project of over a billion people that is trying to exercise, in real-time, the practice of marxism-leninism, and of dialectical and historical materialism. Those who are observing it from the outside could use a little more humility sometimes in engaging with how complicated the judgment calls are going to get and a little more effort to try to understand why it is that China is taking the path it is before assuming they’ve missed something that an outsider can casually see and also just to understand what the path even entails in detail.
Well, you will be happy to hear that in many cases China is doing almost all of those things, then?