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?
As I understand it, Lenin’s definition of imperialism was not based on a capital surplus, but rather on the proportion of monopoly capital or finance capital within a country. If one looks at the balance of capital inflows, Tsarist Russia—long a net importer of capital from Britain and France—certainly would not qualify as an imperialist power; yet, aside from Lenin, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone else in the world who was more intent on destroying Tsarist Russia.