Its a term derived from the Hoxhaist perspective during the cold war ie that the soviet union is doing "socialist" imperialism and that they must be reprimanded and fought against. There were many US organizations that even took the next logical extension of the position that the soviet union os a greater imperialist threat than the US and NATO and therefore nato must be supported at all costs to fend off soviet union imperialism.

Obviously a bad take, but it rests in a weak understanding of dialectics first and imperialism second. Ultimately the issue is that in the age of imperialism, where tje primary contradiction is imperialism, the contradiction between capitalisms need to expand and export and the self determination of oppressed countries is directly at odds w each other. The correct resolution here is that self determination means and must mean whatever strikes the largest blow against imperialism first and foremost as imperialism is the most direct and all encompassing threat to self determination.

This is why stalin supported the struggle of the emir of Afghanistan even if it was a monarchist one as the enemy was imperialism, and any blow that weakens imperialism will in any case aid the self determination of the oppressed nations.

The other contradiction here is within revolutionary nationalism, as all nationalist struggles are a unity of classes of an oppressed nation. This means that there is a highly contradictory character of these revolutionary movements and for instance a possible melding of anti communist and anti imperialist ideologies. The reason we as communists support the struggle of oppressed nations is because we do not believe in nations, and thus understand that the only way the contradiction of nations can be resolved is in a geoolitical climate where there are no oppressor and oppressed nations, and we can move to the next stage of struggle

It means that the person saying it is deeply unserious.

It's just someone whose analysis is still stuck in the 80s. And it's not particularly good either. I also think it's not reconcilable with neocolonialism as a historic phase of imperialism.

The understanding of neocolonialism as a historic phase of imperialism is that the former European colonies in Africa were converted into neocolonies with the same colonial masters. But if you're claiming that China is colonizing Africa, you're basically saying that China was somehow able to wrestle colonial control away from European colonial masters and set themselves up as the new colonial masters. Did the French and British just quietly hand over their neocolonies to China just because? It makes no fucking sense.

Notice that actual imperialists continue to fight over territory as well, but since the historic phase of imperialism is neocolonialism, they (mostly) use proxies and puppets instead of actual colonial troops. When Lumumba was assassinated, the DRC had a civil war with one side being led by a US neocolonial puppet and another side by a Belgian neocolonial puppet. Eventually, the US neocolonial puppet won, and the DRC was turned into a US neocolony.

Social democracy or other center left ideologies are sometimes called social imperialism by their critics because they socializes the gains from imperialism. Critics of China that consider China to be participating in imperialism (especially when raising the examples of the B&R and BRICS vis a vis the IMF and World Bank) could call China Social Imperialist because they are socializing the benefits of their form of imperialism.

IMO, that criticism falls flat, because while Chinese finance capital has captured control over industrial capital and exported production overseas, a definining feature of imperialism, their financial policy is fundamentally different from the Western imperialist financial institutions'. They cancel debts, offer far more generous interest rates, and often just donates capital to improve the situation abroad like when they build hospitals and clinics for free. This is evidence that China is actually pursuing an internationalist approach of mutual prosperity rather than an imperialist approach of unequal exchange and extraction.

However, that doesn't take away from the fact that Chinese firms operating overseas are still participating in capitalist exploitation, so the point still stands in some way.

just tell them that china gets exported more capital than it exports itself and link them minqi li

and then when they show their whole ass by saying that any export of capital is imperialist call them infantile idealists and tell them to shut the fuck up

li's analysis iirc was mostly first order as in he didn't take into account how much of the exported chinese capital rois came back vs stayed domestic. idk if anyone's established a framework for analyzing these higher order movements but would be cool to see.

China is actual state capitalist red fascist imperialist. Get your facts right wumao

china balls out harder than we do