Tomorrow_Farewell

Yeah that's just not as exciting as you seem to think it is. Some companies in China do trade with the west and don't want to lose that

So, did the PRC take any action to prevent companies from refusing to trade with Russia because of the sanctions? Or were there no such initiatives and it was all left to the companies to make the decisions based on the profit motive?

That doesn't change the fact that China actively supported Russian war effort

How did the PRC actively support the Russian war effort? There don't seem to have been any initiatives by the PRC to support Russia in the war, only the trade that would have been happening either way (with Russia being forced to find more export deals while being in a weaker position to negotiate in the case of how things have turned out).

Here's an interview with a Russian drone developer who says that China has been quietly allowing mass shipments of drones and supporting tech into Russia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmfNUM2CbbM

I haven't had the time to finish the video, but if we believe the word of this capitalist, then we must also arrive to conclusions like:

• The PRC also supplies the Ukrainian military with drones (mentioned when the interviewee talks about an exploded Ukrainian drone between 9:00 and 10:00, and then mentioned again between 11:00 and 12:00)
• Private companies are better at innovation than state organisations
• Russian soldiers have never heard about UAVs and drones until 2022
• The PRC does not understand what makes a weapon good and make 'toy-like' weapons
• The PRC blocks export of some relevant things into Russia, including engines for drones

It does seem believable that the PRC doesn't restrict trade relevant to the Russian weapon supply much, but the PRC also doesn't seem to do much in terms of these restrictions against NATO, so Russia is not favoured here, and, again, not seeing any war-related initiatives.

I'm not sure what you want me to substantiate here

That the PRC has taken an action to support Russia in this war. Continuing 'business as usual' is not something that I would associate with taking an active part to support Russia.

the numbers speak for themselves https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/01/13/china-russia-trade-hit-record-high-in-2024-a87590

Cool. Now, compare those with PRC-NATO trade numbers and explain what initiatives the PRC took to support Russia.

You can bite back, but you can't seem to produce a coherent argument.

Oh, we are escalating. Cool.

Well, firstly, I wasn't making an argument - not initially, at least, - I was asking a question about what you meant (because what you said seemed - and still does seem - to be just copium), so you need to do something about your reading comprehension and being offended over your inability to explain what you mean and back your claims.
Secondly, you are yet to point to any initiatives that the PRC took to support Russia in this war.

In other words, China is filling the gaps left by the west and ensuring that Russian economy keeps functioning without taking any major hit as a result of sanctions

This is laughable. The PRC gets to receive cheap resources from Russia, with Russia being more disadvantaged now, and the Russian economy still takes significant hits from the sanctions.
This isn't a charity - the PRC benefits from Russia's weaker trading position.

Again, not sure why you think this is some sort of a gotcha.

So, the PRC trading with Russia is magically the PRC actively supporting Russia in the war, but the PRC also trading with NATO in much higher volumes is not the PRC actively supporting NATO?

And I've provided concrete examples of that happening

'Business as usual' is not a 'concrete example' of actively supporting Russia in the war. Hell, the PRC is taking action to keep trading with NATO.

which resulted in trade jumping astronomically between Russia and China throughout the course of the war

'Astronomically' is an obvious overstatement, and this rise is already seemingly dead. This rise in trade has also been just a simple rerouting of resource extraction, Russia becoming even weaker economically than prior to the sanctions, and with the PRC not taking action (that I'm aware of) to help Russia long-term.

I'm honestly not sure what you'd be expecting China to do that would qualify as not standing by in your mind.

For example, providing Russia with personnel and materiel, or joining the war officially, or taking action to restart relevant industries in Russia (which, again, I have mentioned, and I have mentioned that the PRC would never do this while having an economy that features the profit motive), or sanctioning NATO, or just restricting its own trade with NATO (especially when it comes to antimony and rare earths).

That very obviously did not happen

'Oh silly you and everybody else who complains about things like inflation, including inflation of primary-needs goods that came with the sanctions and has been high ever since, none of that happened and it's just a mass hallucination, even when the (lower estimate) stats are easily available online'.

Ah yes, just look at all the suffering from high inflation. The World Bank just reclassified Russia as a high income country

This is extremely silly. You probably also believe that $2 extreme poverty thing. All that the World Bank says there is just that Russia has a high GNI by their estimates, and an apparent major contributor to Russia's rise in that regard is 'military related activity', which doesn't (directly) help reproduce labour and expand an economy.
I suppose, not even that is going to last for long, considering that the government has been speaking about 'cooling down' the economy, with the minister of economic development speaking about a coming recession during the latest St. Petersburg International Economic Forum session.

Meanwhile, the IMF forecasts that Russian economy is set to grow faster than all the western economies

It predicted that for 2024. It is 2025 now.
Additionally, the inflation has not disappeared, the government is speaking about the slowing down of the economy, and we are probably going into a recession soon.

Despite what you might think, Chinese are not imbeciles

I don't. I never claimed that the actions of the PRC were dumb or anything like that. I even explained why I don't expect them to take some of the actions that I mentioned.
The PRC, however, has been taking actions that are beneficial to the PRC first and foremost. The government of the PRC doesn't show any interest in upsetting the status quo of NATO's colonial exploitation of the rest of the world, and the actions that it has been taking have been apparently aimed at keeping the PRC a beneficiary of that.

It's the soviet onion.

Give substantial examples of how China followed western sanctions

Didn't expect to engage in an argument on this matter, so I will need some time to dig up something more serious than stuff like this:

https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2023/05/how-sanctions-have-changed-the-face-of-chinese-companies-in-russia?lang=en

https://www.rbc.ru/business/17/04/2024/661f4a3c9a7947ce48d663ca

This does seem to have been going since at least 2014, as well:

https://tass.com/economy/751008

The fact that you just keep doubling down on this is frankly incredible

Notably, I didn't say anything like this about your inability to substantiate your blindly optimistic claims, but if you want to escalate, sure, I can bite back. Are you sure you want to keep escalating?

Talk to anybody in Russia and you'll see whether they think China helped or not

Well, I would have said that I'm in luck due to where I live, but out of the people in my social vicinity, I'm overwhelmingly likely the most informed one by far (and likely the only socialist). Notably, I first heard about PRC's companies refusing to work with Russia because of sanctions from Russian communists.

Why do you think this might be happening?

The answer(s) to that seem to include things like the following: Russia's bid to join NATO has failed, NATO's attempts at cutting Russia off have been more successful domestically and less successful in the PRC which - due to having nukes and an economy which NATO depends on - is a lot harder for NATO to threaten, Russia has no serious consumer electronics and other relevant industries to speak of (and has no way of developing them without either losing access to relevant goods from the PRC that will be of higher quality, or having to compete with those higher-quality goods from the PRC while at a massive disadvantage) which means that it is highly dependent on the PRC, and so on, and so forth.

Notably, though, the PRC has been trading more with NATO than with Russia, NATO (including Ukraine, to my knowledge) has also not abandoned trade with Russia completely, and the PRC has not ignored the sanctions.

I've explained to you precisely what I meant already multiple times

If it's just trade, then you have to contend with the fact that it was happening either way, and the PRC both trades with NATO much more than with Russia and also refuses to rid NATO of access to important resources. This is rather clearly a case of the PRC standing by.

It's not, and Russia never asked PRC to do this. I'm not sure why you'd even suggest that they should be taking an active part in this war.

You did say that you are confident that the PRC did not just 'stand by' during this war, but aided Russia:

China wasn't engaged in Ukraine directly either, but certainly wouldn't say they just stood by this whole time either

Either the PRC did take Russia's side and took action to aid Russia against NATO, or the PRC did not take any relevant action. If the 'action' in question is just trading, then you have to contend with the fact that the PRC trades more with NATO and refuses to remove NATO's access to relevant resources.

I've already addressed this earlier. PRC provides Russia with technology that it would not be accessible to Russia otherwise. For example, practically all cars are imported from China at this point, and that's just one example

Notably, the PRC also provides NATO with resources and technologies, and relevant trade happens in greater volume there.

Also, Russia being forced to import things because it has no relevant industries to speak of has been the reality for decades now. An actually helpful move would be assisting Russia in developing those industries (which won't happen because that would hurt the PRC's ability to export things).

The whole point of NATO sanctions was to cut Russia off from tech it needs.

The whole point was to hurt Russia's economy. A complete cutting off from relevant technologies wouldn't have ever happened.
In terms of hurting Russia's economy, the sanctions seem to have been (at least partially) successful, as Russia has been suffering from high inflation.

Guaranteed housing has not been a thing since 1998. The end of an era.

On that note, despite all my knowledge saying that planned economies are interested in implementing guaranteed housing, and despite that conclusion/conjecture being supported by every case that I have encountered information on so far, I would like to ask for sources with confirmation of this fact, including ones in Putonghua. Can you point to any such sources.

The hukou system means many are effectively guaranteed housing

Is everybody (barring some individual cases of people falling through the cracks) guaranteed to be provided housing? If not, then that's not it. If yes, then why do there seem to be quite a lot of homeless people, and why is the price of housing a concern at all?

Yeah they very much ignored the sanctions

They didn't, and I'm not sure why you keep claiming this. In particular, PRC's banks are often mentioned as refusing to work with Russia because of the sanctions.

If you genuinely can't see the difference between NATO trade with Russia and China there's really no point continuing this discussion

What I am trying to understand is what you meant when you said that the PRC didn't just sit this one out. So far, you have only mentioned trade that was already happening instead of being some sort of special measure done to support Russia in the war, and which the PRC has also been conducting with NATO (and the PRC seems to have mostly been trading with NATO). This trade also most likely benefits the PRC much more, as Russia is a semi-peripheral state that relies on exporting natural resources (rather than manufacturing and using or exporting finished goods).
If your claim to the PRC supposedly taking an active part in this war was by doing what it was already doing (trading with Russia on better terms than NATO's), then it's fair to conclude that the PRC opted to stand by and let things happen (especially considering that it did let its companies refuse to deal with Russia on the basis of the sanctions). Considering that the PRC trades more with NATO than with Russia, by your logic we could conclude that the PRC has been helping NATO this whole time - including in the context of this war.

The PRC did not ignore the sanctions. Some of the trade did get shut down because of the sanctions.
On the other hand, NATO didn't completely stop trading with Russia. Does that mean that NATO also contributed to the war effort against itself and should be thanked for that?

'But how will they afford college???'

It is curious that the Chinese state is willing to pursue many forms of macroeconomic policy but seems to avoid some of the more basic socialist policies like working rights and wages.
Is this some neoliberal erosion of imagination and class struggle in the CPC or is there some justification from their part? Is that justification one that holds up to scrutiny?

This is a natural consequence of private property and the profit motive's presence in an economy.

Hell, if homes are 'for living, not for speculation', then the PRC should do what the USSR (and, I'm pretty sure, pre-liberalisation PRC) did - provide guaranteed housing. That is, however, not possible unless and until the PRC adopts planned economy again.

They helped stabilize Russian economy, replaced sanctioned goods, and gave access to a lot of tech such as drones and chips that are necessary for modern military production

What special measures did the PRC take in the case of this war? Or are you talking about standard trade between Russia and the PRC that was already taking place?

EDIT: In case you were simply referring to trade, then it can also be said that the PRC contributed to NATO's effort by trading with them.
To my knowledge, the PRC didn't do anything special here, as the PRC didn't even ignore the sanctions.

China wasn't engaged in Ukraine directly either, but certainly wouldn't say they just stood by this whole time either.

How did the PRC contribute?

The RFK meatsuit lost its pilot.