Currently the CPC is anticipating to move into a higher stage of socialism, or becoming a fully socialist country, by 2050. This will obviously change much of China, but how will it effect their foreign policy? China has famously had many bad takes in terms of foreign policy, but their post-Mao non-interventionism is important practically in retaining peaceful and favorable relations with global capital. They know that, even now, funding revolutionaries will only isolate them internationally.

But once China’s productive forces are high enough to allow the socialist transition then they no longer have to remain non-interventionalist for practical reasons. They could still try and justify it, but at that stage it would be hard for China to reject the internationalist principles of Marxism. The USSR could afford, to an extent, to wield hard power in support of revolutions and their governments, and of course without the USSR it could be argued that most socialist states would have collapsed soon after gaining state power. The soviets could do this due to their high level of industrialization, military, and global economic power.

When China is able to realize the same stage of socialism as the USSR they will undoubtedly be the largest and strongest economy in the world. While the west will still have some influence and power with which to threaten and hurt China over supporting international socialism, they ultimately won’t be in the position of power to isolate China then as they did with the USSR. So there could be even less consequences for Chinese interventionism at this stage. Do you believe, then, that China would adopt foreign policy similar to the Soviet Union? And could even create an international version of the Warsaw Pact, that is an economic and military alliance between socialist states?

From my ignorant non-Chinese POV, there appear to be neither a practical or ideological reason for a fully socialist China not to be internationalist.

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    1 year ago

    They’re suppressing Marxist student groups and labor organization. How would they get to ‘higher state of socialism’ and what would that look like?

    The simple explanation is that China after the Mao era decided to cede ground to bourgeoisie and liberalise the economy to attract foreign investment, integrate itself into world economically and diplomatically and in general just develop as a country. It did result in deviation towards the political right which is how the examples you gave came about to be. It is also why western spectators like to call China names like state capitalist and so on.

    It would be problematic if China continued to deviate towards the right because the implication would be that the bourgeoisie have successfully captured the state. But the reality has turned out to be a bit different from that. Quality of life is steadily rising in China and issues like corruption are being dealt with more than they were during the peak of liberalisation.

    I am not sure what socialism looks like to you. There is a huge middle ground between wanting to overthrow the government and “looking at the CCP whimsically and romantically”. Sometimes countries just do okay. I will ask Xi to write a letter to you and apologise for not having established a communist utopia when the foremost military power has 300 plus military bases, has formed the Quad to contain them and imposes strict sanctions whenever Chinese technology comes remotely close to surpassing their Western counterpart.