Some Background:

This project has been produced with the financial assistance of the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW), The Australian National University; the European Union Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No 654852; and the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University.

The Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) 中华全球研究中心, in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, is funded by the Australian Commonwealth Government...In 2017 [an External] Review called for CIW to ‘reimagine’ its role as ANU’s China hub, fostering cross-campus, national and international research collaborations that are organically linked to the intellectual agendas of scholars across the university.

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Here's his tweet thread:

I've been trying to read 'more sophisticated' forms of leftist China apologisim, and basically the main argument seems to boil down to: 'The CCP has disciplined capital better than other places'. And while this may be true, it really misses the point.

What point does it miss? Shouldn't the next question be "how CCP has disciplined capital" and what others should learn from that?

Crucially, it does not change the fact that contemporary Chinese society is dominated by exploitative capitalist relations. Most dramatically, today's China is built on the backs of exploited internal migrants—with their subjugation to capital violently enforced by the state. But beyond this, it is highly unequal capitalist relations—not socialist ones—that pervade Chinese society at all levels, in both rural and urban areas. This is generally obvious to anyone who has done empirical research on Chinese development, labour, etc. And that is before we even get to the extractive, brutal, internal settler colonialism and forced labour in the interest of serving domestic and international markets...

Sure. Capitalism sucks. Everyone knows that. No one's saying that China has "socialist production relations", not even the CCP. What strawman are you arguing against here? The question should be "is there truth to the idea that China is building the conditions necessary for socialism?" which, in my view, it is.

So, if it is undeniable that contemporary China is an extremely unequal society, dominated by exploitative capitalist relations, which are enforced by state violence: how can leftists imagine it as a place with socialist potential and the vanguard of anti-imperialist struggle?

...because we see how China is better today than it was a decade ago? And that this change has happened directly because of the actions of the CCP?

First, I think that many (if not most) of the people producing this kind of analysis have not spent time doing empirically grounded research in China. In fact, many have not even been to China. As such, their imagined version of China is an abstraction, and one often built on prior abstractions, which reflects preconceived notions and theoretical frames. In short, these people should go spend a long time in a Chinese factory, construction site, village, etc.

...So many things wrong here. Firstly, China's fucking huge. Do you think someone who's been to Beijing for vacation or to Shanghai for business has "been to China"? But more importantly most of us, Mr. Academic Man, don't have the fucking money to just "go to China for a long time to do research." I've no doubt that if we could, most of us would love to go to a Chinese factory or construction site or village and see the conditions there in person. In fact, we would love to go there and ask them whether they're better off today than they were ten years ago, how much of a difference the Poverty Alleviation Scheme has made etc. And you know what we'd do then? We'd go to other exploited nations and see the situations there. Whether the lives of Chinese workers and villagers are better than the comparable workers and villagers in other parts of Asia and Africa and Latin America. That's how you measure progress.

Second, China apologism always seems to rest on an analysis of China in comparison, where China is depicted as better than or at least not as bad as other places. This is both whataboutist and classically orientalist in that China is defined by what it is not.

???

Just because other places in the Global South have suffered more severe forms of exploitation and extraction from global capitalism does not negate the pervasive existence of hyper-exploitative capitalism in China.

What??? No one's saying that China doesn't have capitalism? Who the fuck claims that? What the fuck are you on about? Goddammit.

And the fact that "other places in the Global South" that don't have a communist party in charge of their government "have suffered more severe forms of exploitation and extraction from global capitalism" is the fucking whole point you smug elitist bastard. You know the best thing you could do for all the oppressed factory workers and farmers and miners of the world? Make your country, Sweden, socialist. If there is no capitalism in the West, there will be no capitalism in the Global South.

And just because China has been a victim of imperialism and colonialism itself does not negate its current settler colonial practices in Xinjiang in the interest of securing and extracting resources, and ensuring unimpeded market expansion.

I don't know enough about Xinjiang to comment on it here. I think China made a mistake in being too "heavy-handed" in its approach to combat terrorism but the idea that Westerners can criticize China for that is too ludicrous for me to even engage with it. If anything, this is a further point to how the CCP has managed to "discipline capital" so that it doesn't end up invading a dozen countries and killing a million people. Xinjiang, for example, is in a much better position than Kashmir or Gaza, but I don't see the latter two being used to call for the end of capitalist exploitation in India and Israel.

Ultimately, even the most sophisticated attempts from leftists to create theoretical apologist frameworks to depict China as either being socialist or having socialist potential completely fail to reckon with the very basic and obvious realities on the ground.

Sure man, whatever.

These are imagined abstractions of China that reflect a deeply engrained Euro/US-centrism and the desperate desire to see in China the potential for a different/better world. Sadly, they are simply objectively inaccurate.

Yeah, of course, China sucks. Better things are not possible. West is Best.