Conveniently starts in the 80s, after they supported the Khmer Rouge and invaded Vietnam. I think this is important to remember, especially since it shows that China was at their worst when they were on the same side as the US
Yeah also, adding to this, supporting the Pakistan military during the Bangladesh liberation war and threatening India with invasion if they entered east pakistan to stop the genocide. Like, lotta awful foreign policy choices during the cold war as a function of the sino-soviet split which only matter less now because there’s no soviet side anymore.
Honestly, the invasion of Vietnam and support of Khmer Rouge should be included… along with America’s support for the same. It then shows China’s self-crit and divergence in policy from the US.
I think the “L” needs to be taken since if nothing else it really shows the superiority of China’s FP – they haven’t bungled like that since the end of the Soviet Union.
It then shows China’s self-crit and divergence in policy from the US.
Did they self-crit? I know there’s an interview where deng, regarding supporting pol pot, said something like “well we didn’t know what was going on there but we had to fight vietnamese (soviet) hegemony throughout southeast asia”, but idk if the at the time or current chinese foreign ministry would say they did anything wrong or would do anything different regarding the broader sino-soviet proxy-wars because, to them, their most threatening enemy was the USSR (right next to them) not the US and their strategy worked. Though obviously they behave much differently nowadays
They’ve diverged from US policy in part because their common enemy defeated itself before china really re-approached it in a internationalist manner (that is in taking joint action with the ussr), and now china itself is the enemy.
Totally fair I might be being too generous here. It might just be material conditions changed. I would hope they’d disavow that shit, but I’ll admit I’m not read on Chinese perspectives on these choices.
The 80’s was 40 years ago; if it conveniently started like five or ten years ago you’d have a point, but 40 years is a gigantic period of time to have no wars. How long of a period do you require? 100?
The reason we can criticize our own leadership is because we never stopped; we can’t seriously claim we’re not making the mistakes of the past while continuing to do them non-stop up to the present day. Even if the person who made the pic included China’s Vietnam war era, the picture would still be a damning indictment for that gigantic gap of no wars.
True! I think the overall point made by the OP meme remains valid, even with the invasion of vietnam. In the US at least, we have a huge problem that most people know absolutely nothing about Chinese history (the average hexbear knows way more). For that reason, I think broadening discussion of chinese history is almost always a good thing to do. I’m still largely ignorant, too so it’s a good way for me to learn. It’s also a good way to hone agitprop and be prepared for retorts
Starting it in the 1970s would show one war at the beginning for the Chinese heads of state and then nothing. In a way that would be more of a contrast, because it wouldn’t just look like a different category where “they just don’t have wars there”.
China didn’t have a president during the 1979 invasion of Vietnam. The office was unoccupied between 1975 and 1982.
I guess a better image would show how China often doesn’t care about who they sell guns and equipment to. They’ve armed both sides of the Kashmir conflict and have sold guns to Israel for decades. Not great. But they haven’t had any formal military conflicts other than occasional intelligence gathering/trading since the 1970s.
Yeah, the other problem with the graphic is that the president of China isn’t 1:1 with the president of the US. Like, the president isn’t necessarily the commander in chief of the PLA. Not that I’ll pretend to know the ins and outs of who was chairman of the party, president, chairman of the military commision, and who had what de jure power and who had what de facto power for each period in PRC history. (but I’ll definitely listen if someone has knowledge to drop!) I know there’s the model of looking at the different generations of leadership that can be useful. Excuse the wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_of_Chinese_leadership
China didn’t have a president during the 1979 invasion of Vietnam
Yeah but Deng was running the show so the L is his, he was the one who contacted Jimmy Carter to tell him he was gonna do it too, Carter advised him not to but said the US wouldn’t raise a stink.
I remember reading how he made it so the position he occupied had a bunch of powers concentrated in it so that he was for all intents and purposes the leader of the CPC.
Conveniently starts in the 80s, after they supported the Khmer Rouge and invaded Vietnam. I think this is important to remember, especially since it shows that China was at their worst when they were on the same side as the US
Yeah also, adding to this, supporting the Pakistan military during the Bangladesh liberation war and threatening India with invasion if they entered east pakistan to stop the genocide. Like, lotta awful foreign policy choices during the cold war as a function of the sino-soviet split which only matter less now because there’s no soviet side anymore.
Honestly, the invasion of Vietnam and support of Khmer Rouge should be included… along with America’s support for the same. It then shows China’s self-crit and divergence in policy from the US.
I think the “L” needs to be taken since if nothing else it really shows the superiority of China’s FP – they haven’t bungled like that since the end of the Soviet Union.
Did they self-crit? I know there’s an interview where deng, regarding supporting pol pot, said something like “well we didn’t know what was going on there but we had to fight vietnamese (soviet) hegemony throughout southeast asia”, but idk if the at the time or current chinese foreign ministry would say they did anything wrong or would do anything different regarding the broader sino-soviet proxy-wars because, to them, their most threatening enemy was the USSR (right next to them) not the US and their strategy worked. Though obviously they behave much differently nowadays
They’ve diverged from US policy in part because their common enemy defeated itself before china really re-approached it in a internationalist manner (that is in taking joint action with the ussr), and now china itself is the enemy.
Totally fair I might be being too generous here. It might just be material conditions changed. I would hope they’d disavow that shit, but I’ll admit I’m not read on Chinese perspectives on these choices.
The 80’s was 40 years ago; if it conveniently started like five or ten years ago you’d have a point, but 40 years is a gigantic period of time to have no wars. How long of a period do you require? 100?
The reason we can criticize our own leadership is because we never stopped; we can’t seriously claim we’re not making the mistakes of the past while continuing to do them non-stop up to the present day. Even if the person who made the pic included China’s Vietnam war era, the picture would still be a damning indictment for that gigantic gap of no wars.
True! I think the overall point made by the OP meme remains valid, even with the invasion of vietnam. In the US at least, we have a huge problem that most people know absolutely nothing about Chinese history (the average hexbear knows way more). For that reason, I think broadening discussion of chinese history is almost always a good thing to do. I’m still largely ignorant, too so it’s a good way for me to learn. It’s also a good way to hone agitprop and be prepared for retorts
Starting it in the 1970s would show one war at the beginning for the Chinese heads of state and then nothing. In a way that would be more of a contrast, because it wouldn’t just look like a different category where “they just don’t have wars there”.
China didn’t have a president during the 1979 invasion of Vietnam. The office was unoccupied between 1975 and 1982.
I guess a better image would show how China often doesn’t care about who they sell guns and equipment to. They’ve armed both sides of the Kashmir conflict and have sold guns to Israel for decades. Not great. But they haven’t had any formal military conflicts other than occasional intelligence gathering/trading since the 1970s.
The PLA didn’t fully pull out of Vietnam until the 90s
Yeah, the other problem with the graphic is that the president of China isn’t 1:1 with the president of the US. Like, the president isn’t necessarily the commander in chief of the PLA. Not that I’ll pretend to know the ins and outs of who was chairman of the party, president, chairman of the military commision, and who had what de jure power and who had what de facto power for each period in PRC history. (but I’ll definitely listen if someone has knowledge to drop!) I know there’s the model of looking at the different generations of leadership that can be useful. Excuse the wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_of_Chinese_leadership
Yeah but Deng was running the show so the L is his, he was the one who contacted Jimmy Carter to tell him he was gonna do it too, Carter advised him not to but said the US wouldn’t raise a stink.
I remember reading how he made it so the position he occupied had a bunch of powers concentrated in it so that he was for all intents and purposes the leader of the CPC.
also its ignoring a few border skirmishers between china and india and a few against vietnam