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I wonder how much of that's driven by the memory of the USSR's interventionist policies and its collapse following e.g. its failure in Afghanistan.
1000%. Post-1991 China's been laser focused on not repeating the mistakes of the Soviet Union. Xi Jingping is particularly obsessed with this; excerpts from a speech he gave back in 2013 on this very topic:
Per https://chinachange.org/2013/01/26/beijing-observation-xi-jinping-the-man-by-gao-yu/
China is not the USSR. The Chinese economy is fully integrated into the global economy - a very powerful position that the USSR did not have.
Just look at how China used the rare earth cards to get Trump back to the negotiation table. Do not underestimate China’s ability to assert its interests on the international stage. It can threaten the stop of goods flowing and the entire world will fold. It can stop the genocide if it chooses to.
And that’s why the US likes China to play the role it is right now, because in this calculation, China will not use its powerful position to disrupt US interests, so long as it doesn’t infringe the Chinese interests itself.
lmao
Yeah what. The US likes a very specific thing about China, that it doesn't confront them in direct conflict. China, on the other hand, overtaking the US on every stage across the world, which the US fucking hates and is preparing for war to stop.
There is also just a form of geopolitical natural selection at work. There were surely political elements in the PRC that made it more stable against Western imperialism that helped it avoid a USSR-style dissolution, and they continued past the dissolution of the USSR. And they would be drawing from the material base of society as well, an engine that continued to today.
There is struggle in China, in the CPC, between the government and capitalists, between capitalists. Factions rise and fall. Despite this rotation it has only strengthened via its general charted course.