We all know that states are formed by people, but relationships are different between people and states. When a bully shows up to your neighborhood, or you find yourself in a toxic relationship, or someone goes on a racist rant, you act to stop them. You're making a decision that is both moral and expedient. But states do not act this way.
We often try to explain why China doesn't intervene, or why Venezuela didn't fight back as fiercely as Iran is doing now, and we are mistakenly attributing to states what we would do as people. States are not moral actors, they seek expedience. Said another way, states should do what is pragmatic, what is in their interests. Whose interests? ''The people!'', many will exclaim. But what people? And that will give you the answer to whom operates and whom is served by the state. For states like China and Venezuela, their primary concern are their people, because their governments are operated by and serve them. But in the case of every state that adopts bourgeois democracy, the state serves capital, not their people.
When the West (from here meaning every bourgeois democracy) does anything, it thinks about shareholders, the next election cycle, and myopic minutiae, that are expedient to them. Their concerns are not with their people because often times there is no people, only a Thatcherite nightmare of individuals. These eldritch solipsists exist because of capital, and a small fraction of them, which owns the most capital, are the people of those states. That sanctimonious and nauseating phrase, ''We the people'', often expelled by hogs, is not referring to them, but to the pigsty owners. Everyone already knows who wrote that damned constitution that became the basis for many states in the West. That is what enshrines capital and condemns their peoples. Only those closest in proximity to the hallowed halls of capital are people, the rest are expendable and exist to serve them.
With the ''nature'' of Western states out of the way, I'll return to the main topic. When a state's prime directive, to tickle some trekkies in our community (I learned about this concept from the Star Ocean series, the UP3-Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact), is to do what is expedient for its people it may take actions that are questionable. I've seen 2 US secretaries visit Miraflores in Venezuela and the reopening of diplomatic relations after they were invaded, 100+ killed, and their president and his beloved wife, kidnapped. I am still pissed about this at a human level, but the state of Venezuela has to think about 2 things right now: returning Nico and Cilita, which requires diplomatic exchanges, and the continuation of the Bolivarian Republic. This is not what I would have done, nor you, but this is what a state has to do. To go out in flames of kamikaze glory, or save people from further harm. That was the calculus. If somebody broke into our house and kidnapped our loved ones, and then urged us to negotiate in their terms, I think many of us would go postal. The state can take the L's that we can't. It can think in terms of centuries, of battles it can ''lose'', but wars it can win. We don't have the benefit of transcendence that the state does, because we're immanent to it. But that very immanence means that the state continues to exist so long as its people do. That is why the preservation of people is essential to the state and why that decision was made in Venezuela.
In the CPC's case, their main concern is the development of their people. This will supersede superstructural differences that China might have with hellholes like isn'treal and the US. Because at a human level we would not trade nor have diplomatic relations with these assholes. Having said this, I will argue that the exchange lost from breaking relations with openly hostile entities at a state level is doable, if you're a self-reliant state like China. Because it would be both principled and expedient. It will serve humanity to cut ties with the West and allow those states to weaken or collapse as their peoples rise up, and it must be understood that all the oil and resources we sell to the West will be used against us in the Global South. So become self-reliant and unite, that will be our most peaceful form of resistance. I hope many are taking notes from Iran, and their magisterial strategic display. Long live the free peoples of the world.
Venceremos!