I am a Marxist in China
Orthodox Marxists in the Chinese internet community often view Russia and Iran as weak links in imperialism, rather than as anti-imperialist forces .However, in the view of Chinese Marxists, opposing the global hegemony of the United States takes precedence over opposing secondary imperialisms (Iran, Russia).
The person in the picture is Yang Heping, a US citizen with a Chinese green card, and he is the most popular orthodox Marxist-Leninist-Maoist self-media figure on the Chinese internet (with 3 million followers on Tiktok and 800,000 on Bilibili). Yang Heping advocates that whether it’s Ukraine, Russia, or Iran, “the truth is on the side of the proletariat, not on the side of any government or capitalist.”
In China, those who unconditionally support Iran and Russia are usually nationalists or national leftists.
I wonder if the differences between the left-wing in Europe and America and the left-wing in China are really that significant?
The difference can also come down to the country we’re in. Marxists in China will have a different calculus open to them than Marxists in the United States. For us on the U.S., we tend to embrace revolutionary defeatism as any nation which resists our empire’s aggression is worth supporting even though they’re likely incredibly imperfect. For USians any nation which opposes our imperialist projects represents a progressive force towards dismantling our empire
I can fully understand this; after all, “in a reactionary war, the revolutionary class can only wish for the defeat of its own government. This is not merely an axiom, but a principle that only the lackeys of the bourgeoisie or spineless social-chauvinists would deny.”
Yay I won