• Ok so I think we just started at different reasons for beginning the analyses, because I’m not in disagreement with anything you said basically anywhere. My point from the beginning (that China has determined that it must strategically act as it is) begins already at the assumption that our Chinese comrades are making the analyses that are needed to reach that conclusion. This assumption is not based in any sort of unpenetrable philosophical claim, as you pointed out well. But I think there is enough evidence for it to be worth assuming for strategic purposes. Going into a deep discussion about whether they are correct at the most basic level of analysis is maybe too far for me to try at the moment as a learner of mandarin also, but reading works of Chinese comrades, I have trust that their analysis of their own conditions is better than mine. I don’t disagree about how we should assess that for our own movements, and honestly think we should be skeptical of the support of Israel for exactly those reasons, I just don’t find it fruitful to use it as a “GOTCHA” to China about universal values, because that is most often based in having a distrust which I find as unfounded as blind trust (the distrust that China is off of the socialist path because it trades with reactionaries/settler colonists).

    I was speaking muchhhh more colloquially everywhere than I think you realized, which seems to have added to difficulties. Should do better at that kim-salute

    My point at the beginning about the interests being represented is a sort of philosophical underpinning, though, where we might disagree. I do see the trend of interests of proletarians overtime aligning within a set of conditions and aligning towards socialism. When mistakes are made among the masses, we can be critical, but even those mistakes will be overtaken by advances and fixed by the same process as long as the class’s interests are represented. Here I am making a more philosophical stake in the ground, and I do think that, if the Chinese proles are wanting to trade with everyone and not go to war with anyone, that it might not be the fastest path to communism but it will eventually reach there faster than doing the bidding of the capitalists. (Here I am making an anti-accelerationist claim for places which have already seen a revolution that’s been upheld). Here we may disagree still and I’d enjoy reading your thoughts.