The Deprogram

I think it is basically correct that China deviated from a vast majority of ML practical principles since the laze 1970s, including the Nixon deals, the Carter administration collusion, support of the Khmer Rouge, liberalization of the RMB and the commodification of land, et cetera.

I also believe that this did not happen in a vacuum and was instead a result of an ever-rising Sino-Soviet split that went from theoretical disagreements in times of Mao to realpolitik ideological warfare in times of Brezhnev-Deng, and as a result of the seriously isolated PRC on the international stage and an industry that began to lag behind because of trade-imposed limitations that hampered the developmental potentiality of a voucher-based, relatively commodity-free economy.

You are basicall correct when claiming that many detractors of contemporary China also abandon marxist analysis and instead blindly regurgitate western discourse, from the debt trap to surveillance myths.

However, I believe you slip into dogmatism as well when analysing dengist China. China does not necessarily need critical support in its current condition, as it merely presents itself as an ideological fetish if not conducted on a state-level.

What I mean by that is, that, unless you lead a party or even a foreign ministry, critical support changes nothing with regards to China. How we can better ours and other people's understanding of China is through genuine, historical materialist analysis and Marxism.

This requires us to concede the fact that Dengism was a deviation. That is okay. It was a deviation forced by both circumstance and by several political errors of a China that was completely fresh and alone on the international scene.

Errors are to be rectified. Let's give it time. Personally, through studies of Minqi Li, of China's contemporary monetary policy and worrying trends of further liberalization, and through the worrying combination of private investment coupled to SOE investments in the BRI led me to conclude that errors are still being conducted.

So, if you were to remain Maoist on the issue, you would have to admit these errors. China won't fall because of them. Not in the next few years. But they need to be analyzed. And in order to analyze, you cannot be, as you say, dogmatic and just push them under the rug.

This is what it means to confront contradiction. It is messy, and real. And China needs to be analyzed through what it is, not through prisms of rightist deviatonism, western imperialism or liberal constructivism.