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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19526537
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this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2024
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chapotraphouse
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World systems theorists being methodologically nationalist, quelle surprise.
To be clear I'm sure their findings are close to the truth anyway but it just shows the limitations of the data/approach, like in what world is Singapore in the 'global south'. But that's on the data collectors.
But even disregarding that, including China in the 'global south' post 2008 is patently ridiculous. I really want to see what these percentages would say if China was included in the 'global north'.
China did not industrialize on the basis of a colonial empire so putting it in the global south makes sense. You could define the global north/south as a rich/poor division but it isn't super useful in terms of recent historical material dynamics since the south will eventually get richer despite colonialism while the north will struggle because it doesn't know how to develop without colonialism
It didn't industrialize directly from a colonial empire, yes. However the capital that flowed into it certainly was, if China had not opened itself up to foreign capital it would not have industrialized anywhere near as fast as it did.
Until they saturate their markets and start to look outside their borders for new markets.
Colonialism is a product of capitalism, if you got rid of the entire global north but let the global south continue capital accumulation they would recreate colonialism, by necessity. No one knows how to develop without colonialism because no one knows how to develop without capitalism.
They found a strategy to avoid being cold-wared by the global north, that's not something a global north country does by definition
It's not just capitalism in a vacuum, it's a set of specific things that systematically happened in capitalist global north nations because they were dictatorships of the bourgeoisie. The phenomenon includes monopolies, banks and financial markets, three things that China is actively keeping under control.
The first statement is true, but the second statement does not follow from it. The European colonial empires, and the American financial empire all formed under very specific historical circumstances.
The removal of the global north by magic will not only reshape the entire world, but will new colonial empires form in the aftermath? On what basis can we say yes?
The global north citizenry projects its imperialist realism onto all humans.
The dynamics of capital. It's a given, which is why I caveated it with 'if they continue capital accumulation'.
Could they be nicer about? Perhaps, but that would be due to technological development allowing them to carry out their exploitation with less direct violence, not because they are somehow morally superior for having been colonized. Just as the American Empire is/was less brutal than the British.
How is including china in the global south ridiculous? Like, sure, there's an argument to be had, but it exports tons of goods on the "wrong" side of unequal exchange with the west. Does china post-2008 gain more from unequal exchange than it loses?
Their North/South distinction was based on the IMF advanced economies list, which they used to sort countries/regions from the other datasets they combined
I don't agree with them being in with the global North but I can see the utility of taking them out and looking at how everything compares with a North/South/China comparison. I'd expect the global south numbers to get wosre and for China to be sort of a midpoint. To me its like how the results for global poverty numbers change drastically when you take China out of them because China lifted almost a billion people out of poverty at this point. I think separating out China can show how successful they have been as a communist country and without being an imperial power.