I would say it is dishonest to say they have done the bare minimum, I feel the true complaint anyone has is that China hasn’t done what they themselves think they would do if they ran China. Everyone thinks they would escalate war with the US, NATO and Israel if they ran China and so since China isn’t escalating war they aren’t communist enough for people who very likely have never escalated any struggle with any oppressor force in their life at all.

A socialist state is no less beholden to the will of the masses than any other. The complaint here is that they maintain the same level of cooperation with Israel as they do with literally everyone else. It isn’t preferential treatment, and they supply weapons and defensive tools to Israel’s enemies while primarily selling Israel consumer products. Chinese people don’t care enough to fight to stop that, and so the government continues with the policy they have had with pretty much everyone for several decades. Is this disappointing? Sure. Is there any reason to expect anything differently, given the circumstances? Not really.

I see many non-Chinese people hoping China is going to save them and the world, and I would tell them they need to organize in their own place and time for the world they want to see. Glazing China online and not organizing is not much different than criticizing China online and not organizing.

To see a Chinese person criticizing their own country for not doing enough means there is organizing work to be done there as there is everywhere else, and if you only criticize from the sidelines then you aren’t really a principled communist, just a person who likes the idea of communism but wouldn’t work towards it. If you aren’t willing to take risk and struggle, it can hardly be expected of anyone else. I’m glad to hear updates from people’s experience around the world, but I don’t feel like it is too much to ask marxists on the marxist website who seem to care so much about theoretical economics and armchair grand strategy speculation to maybe follow the basic marxist principles of putting in the work of organizing for the things they want other people to get done for them.

China is in the beginning of socialist transition, and the process of building towards communism takes generations of struggle which we can expect would take centuries. A successful revolution doesn’t end the process of struggle within a society, it only guarantees more struggle will be required. Chinese people need to advocate for Palestine if they have a problem with their government’s position. Non-Chinese people need to advocate for Palestine if they have a problem with their own government’s positions. Sorry, posting online doesn’t count.

I would love a China that is emboldened enough to take risks because it knows it cannot be stopped in the way that the US does, but I’m under no illusion that China as it is would think that is something they can and should do. There are a lot of timelines that won’t be met by the time China feels emboldened enough to just do whatever they want. more people will die, more ecosystems will be irreversibly destroyed; even your idealized China isn’t going to be able to stop the ongoing or future atrocities happening even nearer to their country, yet alone any great distance away. When I see the dozens of countries directly enabling the genocide, I don’t think “China needs to do something about this,” I put the responsibility of the people of those nations, which most people criticizing China on this issue are a part of. Yes, it would be great if China can clean up the messes we make for us. It is easy to complain about how China isn’t doing enough to stop the genocide being done for us in our name with our tax money and stolen labor value.

If we assume China is run by an actually committed Communist Party, building socialism in one country is a policy that has been in place since Stalin, and many would argue that the USSR’s over extension in a lot of important liberation movements contributed greatly to its own downfall. That era of global scramble between communist backed groups versus western backed groups was a specific time and place, but if China doing whatever they can to protect their domestic priorities while protecting their overall strategy to fill any vacuum left by the US as soon as they can to continue to push the US towards collapse is their priority, it makes sense to do what they are doing at the pace they are doing it. China is wary of making bold moves, probably because it has the most heat on it from the west and it is dealing with nuclear nations run by religious fanatics who think the apocalypse is a one way ticket to eternal paradise. Maybe China wants to let the US make it’s horrific, violent, criminal acts so it can dig its own grave enough that they can join a chorus on the issue instead of taking the lead. Being a serious and committed communist party with a long term goal of building towards communism means prioritizing the odds of success, and eliminating risk. We all want to imagine ourselves as the cool revolutionary making harrowing decisions, killing the enemy or whatever great man fantasy larp but I think the hard part of the revolution is surviving after for the centuries required to build towards communism, and it seems very unsurprising that China is micromanaging the risk they take on in such a way in order to ensure their centuries long crawl towards communism continues.