Seriously, why couldn’t they have put a picture of Nasser up instead?

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Neither do i, for the record. But we have to acknowledge that we are not in their position, we don’t have all the facts available, we don’t have all the data they do, we are not privy to their internal discussions, and so we shouldn’t think that we know better than them how they should run their country. If we did that, would we be any better than the western chauvinists who want to dictate that every country should adopt our liberal model?

We can only judge by looking at the results, and so far, looking at where China is now vs where it was 40 years ago, the results are not just good, they are amazing. This doesn’t mean there aren’t significant problems and contradictions within China, partly as a result of the very same policies which got them to where they are today. Sooner or later these contradictions will have to be resolved. How, i don’t know. That’s for them to figure out.

The simple answer is: because it’s working. Why would they abandon a policy that has been and continues to be incredibly successful? That’s not to say there haven’t been issues that have come up along the way, such as the massive corruption problem in the 90s and early 2000s, or the real estate bubble, or the out-of-control private tutoring industry.

Whenever such an issue appears which starts to seriously threaten social stability and negatively affect the positive trajectory that China is on, it is addressed and dealt with, as the aforementioned issues were. Other more minor issues are handled in a less top-down way and left to local governments to experiment and find the best solutions. China’s approach is less ideological than maybe we would like and more practical, result-focused.

In addition to the general trend beginning in the late 1980s of decentralizing and delegating responsibilities to local governments, higher education in particular is a field where China has experienced a real revolution over the past 30-40 years, with an explosive growth in the number of students each year, and that can be hard for a government to deal with in a country as big as China while still maintaining high academic standards that let them compete internationally. For comparison:

China produces more STEM graduates each year than the entire Western world combined, and currently graduates about 12 million people each year in total, and yet its per capita GDP, even adjusted for PPP, is still lower than that of most European countries. So there is a huge amount of competition for a still not that high number of higher education spots considering the immense population size.

The way they currently deal with this challenge is by providing a lot of grants and scholarship programs for citizens from lower socio-economic or ethnic minority backgrounds, while letting those who can afford it pay their own tuition. Also, compared with other tuition systems it is still relatively cheap, because universities also receive extensive public subsidies, and because the vast majority of the system is essentially state run.

Here’s a 2018 research paper on how financing of higher education in China has changed over the years: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325171750_Higher_Education_Financing_in_China

As with everything in China if the current system starts to no longer be fit for purpose they will adapt and change. I can definitely foresee them going toward a tuition free model like some of the European countries if the current model begins to cause social issues, or impedes their technological and scientific advancement. I am definitely all for it, but China tends to be very conservative when it comes to making major changes when there is not a pressing need for them.

Decolonize your mind!

I’m pretty indifferent to this type of US domestic drama, but i think a day or two of discussion is fine, we can allow our comrades from the US that much as a treat. But yeah, after that the news cycle needs to move on, there are much more important things happening in the world.

It’s worth noting that just last year Nepal officially signed on to the Belt and Road Initiative, and had made an infrastructure deal with China for a cross-border railway that would have greatly improved connectivity for this region. It would have benefited India too.

From Global Times: China-Nepal railway to be a game changer, transform Nepal from landlocked to landlinked

On the other hand, Arnaud Bertrand makes the following counter-arguments to the color revolution theory:

https://xcancel.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1965663406729633903

Basically the idea is that there is little to nothing to gain from orchestrating a color revolution in Nepal because Nepal is too geopolitically irrelevant, borderline ungovernable, and entirely at the mercy of India anyway.

What’s funny is that his sources usually just consist of going on the web sites of these groups and clicking on the sponsors and partners section. Most of them don’t bother to hide it so you can easily do this kind of digging yourself if you are ever sus about some group.

Doesn’t seem that grassroots to me, given that the protests and much of the branding and slogans behind the protests were apparently organized by an NGO with connections to Western corporations and CIA funded organizations:

https://xcancel.com/BrianJBerletic/status/1965536046781006297

The more we learn, the more US fingerprints we find. And with imagery that just coincidentally happens to have popped up in some also very suspicious events in Indonesia this same month:

https://xcancel.com/BrianJBerletic/status/1965372702849728922

This is starting to feel more and more like a common playbook similar to what we saw during the Arab Spring events.

For those too young to remember the Arab Spring, i’ll remind you that what happened then was highly engineered by the NED and its NGOs, having trained activists in using social media to organize and propagandize, brainwashing the local youth into acting as footsoldiers for toppling regimes.

This time the trial run for the new playbook for the region seems to have been what took place in Bangladesh last year.

In any case, this comment gives a good summary of the recent history and politics in Nepal: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/6962091

Hard to say whether any of that will still be relevant going forward, everything may change now, but at the same time there is the possibility that if these were genuinely spontaneous events without much organization behind them, that the status quo will find a way to reassert itself just with different faces and slightly different branding.

Since we did not see a longer period of organized struggle nor any kind of publicly visible vanguard organization driving the protests that could focus the masses in a purposeful direction and have a plan for how to take over and establish a new government, that basically only leaves two possibilities here:

One is that this was planned and orchestrated in advance, almost certainly with heavy involvement by outside forces (English language signs at protests in non-English speaking countries are usually a big red flag) and that behind the scenes deals have already been made about the transition and the new regime, most likely with the collaboration of segments of the army and/or security forces.

The other is that these were spontaneous riots giving vent to longer pent up social frustrations (which for sure exist and have legitimate grievances) that got out of hand and found the government to be much more fragile than many would have expected. These now risk being co-opted by more nefarious actors.

Either way, the fact that the spark that set this off was the government’s ban of western social media due to their non-compliance with the local laws is a huge warning sign to all global south countries. If your young generations can become so addicted and so dependent on foreign social media that the mere threat of having these “treats” turned off can lead to them rioting to the point of overthrowing a government, you have critically failed in protecting your country’s sovereignty.

Once again this underscores the need for all sovereign states to develop domestic alternatives to western controlled social media, tech services, etc., or at the very least borrow them from countries such as China which do not have a history of leveraging their control over these domains for interference in the affairs of other countries.

Too early to say but it has all the fingerprints of a color revolution.

Happens in Eastern Europe with Orthodox crosses too.

Saw Nezha 2 in the theater with subtitles back when it first came out. If the dub is good i’d love to go see it again (provided i can find a cinema showing it… last time i had to travel to a different country to see it), i’m sure i missed some things the first time with how fast some of the dialogue was.

很可爱

I get not a lot of people will disagree with me here

Yeah, i think you’re preaching to the choir here. At least for my part, i completely agree with you on this.

I just wanted to say that because occasionally I get accused of being one of those “Japan [as a whole] is a victim” people

Japan’s own incredibly horrific crimes don’t change the fact that the US dropping the nuclear bombs was a terrorist act and a crime against humanity. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Today Banderite Nazis are regularly shelling Russian civilians purely to inflict terror. Russia still doesn’t respond in kind, because no crime justifies committing atrocities against civilians.

President Xi Jinping’s opening speech:

“With huge national sacrifice, the Chinese people made major contributions to saving human civilization and safeguarding world peace.”

"The Chinese nation is a great nation that is never intimidated by any bullies, and always values independence and forges ahead.

Today, humanity again has to choose between peace and war, dialogue and confrontation, win-win cooperation and zero-sum game."

“The Chinese people firmly stand on the right side of history and the progress of human civilization. We will remain committed to the path of peaceful development and join hands with all peoples around the world.”

He also told the PLA to “speed up the building of a world-class military.”

"Under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, follow a Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought—Deng Xiaoping theory.

The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is irresistible; the noble cause of peace and development of humanity will prevail!"

没有共产党就没有新中国

Good post. I’m not going to get into the accelerationism debate because you addressed that part well and quite extensively, but i have to say this about unions:

You can’t have a communist revolution without first building class consciousness and an organized working class. If you just have rapidly worsening conditions but no class consciousness and no organized working class, all you are likely to get is fascism, as there are reactionary forces that are already organized and ready to exploit the false consciousness of the masses.

Unions are a way of getting the working class used to engaging in collective struggle. They build awareness in the working class of itself as a class, teaching it how to work democratically and how to organize itself, as well as boosting the confidence of the working class in itself as a proactive actor and driver of history instead of a passive bystander waiting for a “great man” or putting misguided hope in some electoral process.

Of course not all unions are the same, some unions are indeed reactionary and collaborationist with capital and empire, and many are reformist. Unions in the imperial core suffer from many of the same problems (e.g. chauvinism) that the broader left has here. Only few are truly revolutionary and it is those which are connected to a larger militant labor movement. They are by no means a replacement for a vanguard party, but they should also not be written off entirely.

There are many reasons why communists should be involved in the labor struggle, from using it as an opportunity to educate, agitate and organize, to cadres rapidly gaining experience in leading workers in collective struggle, but one of the most important ones is that it is a way to earn the trust of the masses. You cannot appoint yourself the vanguard of the revolution, it only the masses that can do it.

None of what i am saying is a novel concept, in fact if BE had read Lenin, he would understand all of this already because Lenin said very much these same things. And he didn’t just say it, he did it. Before his exile he and his comrades were frequently involved with the struggles of the factory workers, and they recognized the nascent labor movements in the factories as fertile ground for education, agitation and organization.

Recommended reading for the day: Should Revolutionaries Work in Reactionary Trade Unions? from “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder by V.I. Lenin

(BE apparently suffers from the above mentioned infantile disorder)

The same reason why unions are an important and powerful tool for the working class under capitalism (provided they are not co-opted and neutered by a collaborationist leadership) is also the reason why their independence is unnecessary and dangerous under socialism: independent unions represent a form of dual power. They are alternative organizational structures that compete with and undermine the state’s authority. But if the socialist state already represents and advances the interests of the working class, then whose class interests will those independent unions inevitably serve when they position themselves as a force separate from and in opposition to the socialist state?

Trade unions are also by their nature parochial and typically short sighted due to their narrow focus on the interests of one specific group of workers, sometimes at the expense of other workers. That is why they are easily co-opted under capitalism, bribed with concessions and devolving from genuine tools of class struggle into a mere interface between capital and labor unless they are part of a larger militant labor movement, and why it is necessary under socialism to subordinate them to a higher form of working class organization that can balance out narrow sub-group interests with the broader interests of the entire society.

A pity other socialist states didn’t look to the Cuban and Korean people for strength and resilience […] I really have it in my mind to dig into the juche philosophy at some point.

Same. That is one of the things i really admire about Juche, the emphasis on resilience, unwavering vigilence, discipline and dedication. It is like a vaccine against the naivety and nihilism that brought down the eastern bloc.