Christ the comments here are exactly like the thread about China officially supporting a two-state solution.
“I understand the material reasons why China said what it said but I’m still gonna criticize them for not saying something far more immediately gratifying, even though I understand how it would completely undermine everything they’re working to achieve.”
You’re all smarter than this. You all know who benefits most if China drops the ball to have a little gloat. Their words are lamenting Kissinger’s passing, but their actions are continuing to destroy his legacy.
Look, my brain can realise that China needs to be pragmatic and cautious in a capitalist world, but my heart just wants to see Xi jump into a giant Karl Marx gundam and destroy Washington D.C.
Same, I get mixed up when I see statements like this from China. Like I get what they are doing, but also I don’t get it.
We don’t have to like realpolitiking to understand its historical necessity, nor do we have to demonize China for realpolitiking while recognizing its bastardization of the truth.
The truth is that Kissinger was a genocidal piece of shit. Throwing our hands up and praising the PRC for this would be infantile and opportunistic.
Waiting for the DPRK/KCNA to release a statement. Even facing encirclement, they’ve refused to bow ideologically. They refuse to recognize the settler-project of Israel, they refuse to refrain from speaking truth regarding the ceaseless crimes of transatlantic empire. They still, somehow, maintain one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
It’s all rhetoric, the PRC is doing the smart thing. Whatever. It isn’t like us dissing them for political Ls like this is going to change anything. Pretending like they’re doing the utterly correct thing sans any criticism at all is an entirely different matter.
Undoubtedly, in a just world, Kissinger’s name would be resigned to the dustbin of history, and he would be considered on par with the likes of other genocidal maniacs. He would not be considered an “old friend” by the leader of the largest socialist nation on Earth, publicly nor privately – in a just world. We do not live in a just world. It’s fucking fine to criticize the PRC’s leadership for this.
Criticize the PRC leadership because we don’t live in a just world?
Or… criticize the PRC leadership for being responsible with the consequences of their words?
I believe we may be misunderstanding one another. I do not intend for criticize to equate to condemn.
You do not, in any case, under any circumstances, have to hand it to Kissinger. They could have remained silent. They did not. Their words merit criticism.
Venerating genocidal scum in such a manner because he facilitated the detente between the U.S. and China under the pretext of completely obliterating the only other socialist superpower and siphoning China’s potential wealth to the core, genocidal scum that also facilitated the murder of MILLIONS elsewhere – I just do not understand how criticizing this behavior is worthy of such malice.
Not to be overly dramatic, but the PRC here reads to be abandoning internationalist solidarity with - I repeat - the MILLIONS of people Kissinger is in no small part responsible for murdering going straight up ignored.
Right now, CGTN is running hype pieces for this warmongering filth.
I’m sorry, but if this doesn’t make you seethe, cringe, or vomit, at least a little fucking bit, what kind of socialist are you?
You say that reads as abandoning internationalist solidarity when China is hard carrying the internationalist work of dismantling Kissinger’s legacy; the unipolar US hegemony that he spent his life building with other people’s blood.
It’s literally China telling the US what a wonderful sandcastle artist Kissinger was (and low key saying that the current US artists are not on Kissinger’s level), while kicking over the sandcastles he built. And people are taking umbrage at the praise.
It is important to understand the context within which this is said, and I agree that the PRC writ large has not (quoting myself) totally “abandoned internationalism”.
These statements, though, this praise, taken at face value, reads that way to me, and I’m certain it reads that way to those who were directly affected by Kissinger’s policymaking. It is nationalistic – the only internationalism present here is between the PRC and the U.S. bourgeoisie and MIC. Kissinger did far more harm than good to the international proletariat, to millions of people, and I do take umbrage with this level of praise coming from communists.
The PRC is not immune to criticism, and I am aware that many of us are the rather hypocritical westoleftos levying this criticism against the PRC, but this is a communist forum, no? It is one of our tasks to rectify incorrect ideas and criticize incorrect actions so that we as communists may grow from them.
It’s not like it would have been a great idea to shit on his legacy. But if Chinese leaders genuinely think this will win them any favors with the ever increasingly Sinophobic U.S. ruling class, I think they’re dead wrong. I, and many others, think it’s worse than saying nothing. It is little more than hot air to the people they’re ostensibly trying to placate, and it is downright offensive to those who suffered and died from U.S. imperialism during his tenure.
I have not found any official Vietnamese English-language statements on his death, but this is from SCMP. Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos’s foreign ministries have all, at this point in time, decided to stay silent on the matter.
Describing him as a “war criminal”, Ho Chi Minh City-based student Anh Nguyen, 23, said she hoped “he died with deep regrets about what he did”, reflecting a history shared through the generations by the Vietnamese Communist Party victors.
Condemning the Nobel award, history graduate Bui Khanh Minh of the Fulbright University Vietnam said Kissinger “crippled the country” during the Christmas bombing campaign of 1972 that pushed the Viet Cong to the negotiating table. “As someone from Hanoi … that decision by him and Nixon sparks a particularly personal resentment,” she said.
Will have to wait and see if any more statements are made.
I think it would be better to compare the Chinese government statement to the Vietnam (and other AES nation) government statement(s) (or lack of), and compare comments from the Vietnamese public to comments from the Chinese public. You’ll find no shortage of hatred for Kissinger where words aren’t curated by statesmanship.
Most certainly fair. I would be interested in knowing more about what average Chinese people think of Kissinger. I am hopeful it is generally not quite this level of admiration.
They still, somehow, maintain one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
Where do you get those numbers? I find completely different ones.
To be entirely honest, I’ve been basing that understanding majorly on this now-dead article (totally possible it got removed for being too pro-DPRK by the south Korean government).
Re-reading it, it weighs projected growth vs. actual growth between OECD countries and the DPRK. The DPRK does not currently seem to be reaching those goals, but I will say that five-year plans do take time. Typically five years, lol.
Here is comrade @afellowkid’s translated summary:
The DPRK is only able to take such a principled position because most of their trade is with the PRC. If China didn’t thread the diplomatic needle, DPRK would have no one to trade with.
The DPRK (WPK) maintained principled stances before, during and after having 90% of their infrastructure leveled, 10% of their population killed, and their country brutally occupied and divided by imperial powers from all sides. They maintained their principles during the Sino-Soviet split. The collapse of the USSR. They have survived tragedy after tragedy and remained principled throughout it all.
I am not saying that the PRC does not help the DPRK. I am also not accusing you of being chauvinistic. I, however, think this is a chauvinistic idea, that the DPRK can only survive because of its socialist superpower neighbor(s). The DPRK has survived because of the DPRK.
Because people have emotions, lol. Especially on an online board, anonimously. I would never let emotions control my party work. But I do hope I’m allowed to just yell something when I’m frustrated at thing, to ventilate.
I understand why China does this and to some extent I even agree with it. And the same goes for their two state solution, and I probably shouldn’t have called it weak and disappointing. But sometimes I just want to vent.
Yeah I guess I’m venting too.
This is one of the few anglophone communities on the internet where I usually can get a break from China bashing. Especially the damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don’t kind of bashing. And the ‘CPC is an uncaring monolith’ interpretations of the MFA’s excessively formal (to us) public decorum.
Bruh, they called the man an old friend. Basic human respect is one thing but this man is directly responsible for the deaths of millions.
No one was expecting them to say anything “gratifying”, but friend? Lmao. It’s at worst disrespectful to the lives lost cause the US wanted to preserve the very same hegemony China is fighting against as we speak.
Sue me for feeling disgust over calling a mass murderer an “old friend”.
They kind of had to call kissinger an old friend because he advocated for China’s recognition. I doubt Xi really likes Kissinger, but China definitely owes him more than basic human respect. This is of course not to defend him or anything.
Did they really have to go so far to call him a friend? They could have simply acknowledged what he did. Did they even mention what he did to their neighbors?
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Not surprised, Kissinger was known to have played nice with China. China is sending a clear message to the US : See, it’s easy. Treat us well and we’ll be friends.
This is in continuation to the SWCC survival strategy, give imperialists something to chew on so you can keep your national sovereignty. This is polar opposite to the Krushtchev doctrine that caused the Sino-Soviet split so, again, no surprise.
SWCC
?
socialism with Chinese characteristics
You’ll never hear cringe like this from the DPRK.
So I take it you didn’t see the letter of condolence they sent to the brits when queen Liz died?
Cringe. Expected, but cringe.
Isn’t this because Kissinger pushed the US into allowing the PRC to claim the Nationalist Chinese’s seat on the UN Security Council, and getting the PRC recognized after the Sino-Soviet Split?
Also what do you expect from Putin?
yep, exactly
There is a danger with internet brash who have neither power, nor the responsibility to use it for the benefit of hundreds of millions, a billion humans to exercise it who deign to lecture Xi on this. Who rashly rush to say ‘fuck him’ or as the ultras and succ-dems would do say it proves he’s not really a Marxist, a communist, a comrade.
I suppose they’d prefer he drop his pants, take a shit on a picture of Kissinger and end his video message with a middle finger as if that would be anything but self gratifying behavior. And it is the habit of many in the west to engage in self-gratifying thinking, actions, and even useless self-flagellation because power is nowhere near them. This is the risk, the siren call of ultra-leftism, the divorce of some imagined purity from reality for those so far from being able to engage in practice on the level of an in power party.
It’s natural but it needs to be tempered and controlled by reason.
Kissinger was a mass murderer but he was only so because of the system he had power in incentivized, encouraged, allowed it. I’m not saying he was a good human, he objectively was not and did nothing to try to stop the machine, rather lovingly oiling it. However he also objectively did things that were positive for China’s development from their point of view. Was in some ways more restrained and reasonable with peer powers than many of his students who unfortunately now hold sway. In his latter years he after all thought the Ukraine policy was a mistake, that Russia had real legitimate concerns about NATO encroachment that far east, and continued to act in favor of maintaining openness with China, perhaps only out of vanity because it was seen as his crowning achievement but he did so none-the-less and China would do well, does well to encourage everyone who wants that openness.
Kissinger was an important cog but he was just a cog in a machine. He didn’t seek to change its nature and was criminal of course on that count and on running millions to their deaths as a mass murderer. But in the international business of diplomacy the purview of diplomatic functions is not to engage in ruthless, religious, zealous purity testing but to do what you can with what you have. And when it comes to the stinking barrel of rotting apples that is the US trying to find a good one anywhere near the levers of power is a fool’s errand, all of them have blood on their hands, care not for the proletariat, use human beings as fodder and grist for the machine. Thus those in power in other nations reach for one less rotten in ways that matter to them. At least that’s the Chinese approach and I think we owe it to them to support them as they are still standing and succeeding while the USSR (which was much more confrontational) is not.
History after the revolution will likely judge Kissinger just one of a large handful of rotten, murderous, genocidal imperialists and that perhaps is the greatest slight we can give to him in death, to make him less of this towering power and assign him his reality as a cog. The blood stained hands that killed millions in Vietnam and Cambodia will not be put into the ground in the next month, they are the hands of the US itself and they continue to work. We must remember that for the victims of his and those of the modern State Dept planners.
All top level American executive, diplomatic, intelligence personnel are criminals, are party to genocide, ecocide, mass murder, war crimes, crimes against humanity. To that degree I don’t feel much about this dead man other than a slight pleasure he died fearing his work was unraveling. There are those even more unhinged than him in power. And it is to those, many of them who admire on a personal level this dead monstrous man that many of these statements appeal.
I don’t think anyone here will stop supporting China of Xi over this. And I understand the relations Kissinger had with China.
But on a personal level I am glad this waste of human life died. I just wish it was 60 years earlier. Many of the South American and Asian comrades our party works with saw this man as the devil turned human and for this day I will join them in celebrating his death, however childish it may seem.
I wish I could take joy, please do so in my stead comrade.
He’s definitely in the category of world would have been better off if he’d been hit by a bus at 17.
Cambodia would like a word with those of us who see this and yell “pragmatism! material reality! you’re all ultraleftists for taking issue with this!”
The man was responsible for the deaths of MILLIONS. It is a sad state of affairs when the PRC’s communist leadership is lauding him as a friend, be it genuine or merely a diplomatic ploy. Caveat, caveat, caveat, pragmatism, China’s history, Sino-Soviet split… yes, yes. Regardless. Millions.
One thing about us East and Southeast Asians is that we said what we’re expected to said in a certain event in such a scale that once you heard one, you have heard it all.
Funeral, for example - “The dead is a good person” = I don’t personally know the dead. “The dead is a good friend” = I personally know and deal with the dead. “The dead is a good kid” = The dead is my child/children, or I’m his/her teacher. You get the idea.
So, yeah, I won’t read too much into an official statement on a dead person. As my parents said “Don’t listen to what people said, but watch what they do” .
Please don’t refer to us as “chat”
💀 I didn’t even notice that.
why is that chat
Mr. Xi then added: “Psych! Death to Amerikka! Unlimited genocide on the First World!”
I’m too happy about Kissinger’s death to care about this
TIL the intolerant left hate Kissinger but tankies love him (j)
Xi, baby, whatchu doin’?
Fuck you too Xi
Like I said…can’t agree on everything. This whole thing can go fuck itself. Fuck a pragmatism, this man is responsible for the deaths of millions of people all in the name of preserving the same hegemony that China is fighting against now.
Make it make fucking sense.
Compared to who came before and after Kissinger treated Chinese people much more as people. He opened up relations between the US and China at a time that that wasn’t easy to do. Now, he did this to foster the Sino-Soviet split and kill Communism, but Chinese statesmen still see him as much more pragmatic and rational than the Taiwan-arming brinksmen who are currently propelling us towards World War III, and rightly so. He was someone who you could at least talk to and come to an agreement with.
