• Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    5 days ago

    Imagine bombing a railway China operates, that shit will be back up and running in days, completely fucking pointless.

  • Egonallanon@feddit.uk
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    5 days ago

    Go on China, embargo them. Please? Don’t even have to do war just stop buying their stuff.

  • SovietCollie [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    4 days ago

    Already rebuilt.

    🇮🇷 NEW: Iran has rebuilt Yahyabad railway bridge in Kashan, after it was bombed by Israel on April 7th

    Reconstruction efforts around the country, especially of vital infrastructure, are progressing at a rapid pace.

    Source

  • red_giant [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 days ago

    It’s not just a strike on a Chinese asset. It’s very directly a strike against China by squeezing its access to oil.

    This railway project aims to establish a strategic route for Iranian oil exports directly to China, circumventing traditional maritime passages controlled by the US and its allies. It is expected to significantly enhance the economic and political position of China and Iran in the region by reducing reliance on sea transportation.

    Israel wants to squeeze China in the same way Iran is squeezing the west.

    • invo_rt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 days ago

      Squeezing your second largest trading partner who controls access to a lot of key materials is definitely a decision that can be made

    • ClimateStalin [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 days ago

      Squeeze them for what? China isn’t the one bombing Israel, they’re Israel’s second biggest trade partner, they’re one of the only things keeping Israel afloat.

      Might not be quite “biting the hand that feeds you” but definitely biting the hand of the assistant zookeeper that feeds you on weekends.

      • red_giant [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        4 days ago

        Presumably squeezing them to put pressure on Iran to make a deal, or even just tit-for-tat the closure of the Strait.

        The only thing keeping Israel afloat right now that really matters is the supply of missile interceptors.

      • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
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        4 days ago

        they’re Israel’s second biggest trade partner

        3rd. It goes US, Ireland, China. It’s even more stark if you take the EU as a bloc which then makes it EU, US, China.

        they’re one of the only things keeping Israel afloat.

        No that would be Washington and Brussels and their billions in “aid” and massive diplomatic cover.

        Also:

        • ClimateStalin [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          4 days ago

          “Trade isn’t support” which is why BDS argues against cutting off economic activity with Israel, because that would be unnecessary and trade doesn’t help the entity at all!

          BDS exists because trade is support.

          There are different levels, obviously it’s not the same to buy necessary fuel from an enemy to heat your people’s homes as to buy blood diamonds. But Israel produces no crucial resources, and if China cut off all economic activity with them - Boycott them, divested from their businesses, and implemented sanctions - China wouldn’t even notice while it would hurt Israel significantly.

          3rd. It goes US, Ireland, China. It’s even more stark if you take the EU as a bloc which then makes it EU, US, China.

          Thats my bad, I’ve seen them cited as 2nd many times and haven’t gone and looked at the economics papers myself. Also wtf Ireland.

          Mao quote

          Sometimes Mao was wrong. Mao also famously sided with the United States against the USSR, and supported the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam. His decision making on foreign policy was questionable to say the least.

          • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
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            3 days ago

            China accounts for less than 15% of Israel’s goods imports when Hong Kong is included, and under 8% when HK is excluded which makes sense when analysing Chinese policy given Hong Kong’s ongoing reunification and special status given it’s history. China represents a marginal share of Israel’s external circulation, not a structural pillar.

            The composition confirms this marginality. Chinese exports to Israel are consumer goods, machinery, and electric vehicles. Israeli exports to China are diamonds, optical equipment, and declining semiconductor shipments. None of this touches Israel’s core state capacities: intelligence, cyber warfare, military R&D, financial services. These sectors are integrated into US and EU capital circuits and protected by Washington’s security architecture. Meanwhile China actively undermines Israeli comparative advantages: lab grown diamonds have crashed the natural diamond market that Israel depends on, and Chinese technological advances render Israeli service exports increasingly obsolete.

            Also treating Israel as an autonomous actor ignores its position as a subordinate node in US imperialist command. Any unilateral Chinese rupture would trigger coordinated reprisals from Washington, Brussels, Tokyo. More dangerously, it would likely accelerate imperialist backing for separatist forces targeting China: increased funding for ETIM, intensified DPP militarization, and expanded intelligence sharing with reactionary forces on China’s periphery. This is not speculation; it is the observed pattern of capitalist core discipline against any perceived deviation.

            So long as the West secures Israel militarily and economically, symbolic sanctions have no material meaning. They only serve as a form of catharsis and moral posturing. They confuse form for content. The correct line is to utilize trade to develop productive forces, secure technological channels, and maintain strategic autonomy, while directing material support to the Axis of Resistance through separate circuits. This is not contradiction; it is dialectical coordination. Commercial engagement with a client state is not political endorsement when the broader anti imperialist front advances.

            I await Israel’s historical dissolution and wish China could adopt a more militant posture. But the current approach rests on concrete analysis of concrete conditions, not moral abstraction. Sound strategy proceeds from the balance of forces, not from voluntarist gestures that cede ground to capital.

            Sometimes Mao was wrong. Mao also famously sided with the United States against the USSR, and supported the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam. His decision making on foreign policy was questionable to say the least.

            While true in the broadest sense (70/30 etc etc). This account flattens a highly complex rupture. The Sino-Soviet split did not emerge simply from “Mao being wrong,” but from deep ideological, strategic, and state-to-state contradictions, especially Moscow’s increasingly paternal and subordinating posture toward Beijing, which sharpened tensions into an open break. It also ignores the substantial material and political support China gave Vietnam for years, particularly during the anti-imperialist struggle against the United States, and obscures the fact that some of the harshest and most distorted expressions of the anti-Soviet line in regional policy (such as the 1979 war) were developed and executed later, under Deng-era conditions, not simply under Mao himself. None of that means Mao was infallible, but it does mean the split and its consequences have to be understood as historically conditioned contradictions within the socialist camp, not reduced to an individualized story of irrational foreign-policy error.

            Edit: I forgot to mention I fully support BDS because its material strength lies in severing Israel from the imperial core’s reproduction networks. The movement functions by making institutional cooperation economically and politically untenable within the metropole, where financial integration, military supply chains, and diplomatic cover actually sustain the settler colonial apparatus. Applying that same tactic to China inverts the concrete conditions. Beijing’s commercial ties represent a marginal civilian fraction of Israel’s external circulation. Severing them would be simply performative moral purity while leaving imperialist command structures untouched. It would also most likely trigger coordinated capital redirection and systemic reprisals from Washington and its allied blocs, punishing Chinese strategic autonomy and hardening imperialist discipline. Different positions in the global division of labor require different methods of struggle. Backing mass boycotts in the core while the resistance and its support maintain calibrated trade channels reflects in my eyes a correct reading of where Israel actually draws its lifeblood.

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              3 days ago

              Israel losing 15% of its imports would be catastrophic for the settler project, that’s hardly marginal.

              I think we can acknowledge that trade is support, but also recognize that China is making a hard strategic choice between the costs and benefits of cutting off Israel against the well-being of its people (because, like you said, China would be inviting reprisal on itself if it cut off trade). We don’t need to avoid confronting the ugly material reality of commercial engagement with Israel by just handwaving it as unimportant. Otherwise, if it didn’t matter, why would you wish for China to adopt a more militant posture?

              • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
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                3 days ago

                Otherwise, if it didn’t matter, why would you wish for China to adopt a more militant posture?

                By militant I meant more direct military deployment and open mass arming of the Resistance. I wish it were already possible. I hope it will become possible. Right now it is not. Crossing that threshold guarantees world war three. Wishing for a higher stage of struggle does not justify ignoring the current balance of forces.

                Israel losing 15% of its imports would be catastrophic for the settler project, that’s hardly marginal.

                The share sits under 8 percent when excluding Hong Kong. Hong Kong operates as a separate customs territory under the SAR framework. Mainland commercial policy does not dictate its trade flows, so it falls outside Chinese macroeconomic planning. Even at 15% the shock would likely be easily absorbed. Israel remains structurally embedded in the Euro American bloc. Washington is pushing a defense budget past one trillion dollars alongside direct military transfers. The EU coordinates diplomatic shielding and economic substitution to protect Tel Aviv. Any gap from reduced Chinese goods would likely instantly fill with imperialist capital (not to mind a likely increase in the billions in “aid”). Washington and Brussels would pour billions more into Israel to combat the dastardly commies and insulate the settler state. The regime does not rely on Chinese consumer goods to survive. It relies on Western security and economic guarantees.

                Trade is circulation. It is not political endorsement. Commercial exchange with a client state does not equal support for its colonial project. That does not make the arrangement clean. It is morally ugly. But material analysis requires weighing concrete conditions against abstract morality. China uses these channels to build productive forces and maintain strategic autonomy while material support flows to the Resistance through separate circuits. Symbolic rupture without breaking the imperialist security architecture only weakens the anti hegemonic front. The correct line prioritizes actual disruption of capital accumulation networks over performative boycotts that serve no purpose beyond catharsis and posture.

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                  3 days ago

                  So, you seem to be equating material support for endorsement. Those aren’t the same thing.

                  We can say that China supports Israel with trade relations without actually endorsing them.

          • DonLongSchlong@lemmygrad.ml
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            4 days ago

            Because we are not countries? Consumption is not trade.

            Also, this requires you to believe that China is playing both sides here which nakes no sense considering how important Iran is for China and how unimportant Israel is for them.

            • ClimateStalin [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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              4 days ago

              The “Boycott” part of BDS doesn’t just apply to consumers though, the bigger part is to pressure organizations and the state do boycott all economic activity with the Zionist entity, in the same way that countries cut off economic activity with South Africa.

              The ideal goal isn’t just you the consumer not buying Sabra hummus from your local grocery store, it’s your grocery store not having it to sell you because your government has banned the import of Israeli products.

              Trade IS support, in particular when it’s completely unnecessary. It’s one thing to buy crucial energy supplies or something like that, but Israel doesn’t produce anything important, just weapons. China gains little to nothing by having a relationship with Israel except another (small) market. Israel gains quite a lot by having a relationship with China, they get to purchase goods to improve the lives of their settler population.

              Hell that’s exactly what sanctions are! Cutting off trade! And that’s the biggest goal of BDS!

              I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that China’s relationship with Israel is one of the worst things they do, and in general they are perfectly willing to do business with the worst criminals on earth and refuse to use their economic weight to push for anything except China making more money.

              • DonLongSchlong@lemmygrad.ml
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                3 days ago

                The thing is, boycotts have never really worked. Some companies might agree to the demands, but even then it has a tinge of “this is good for PR” to it.

                Has any government dropped Israel as a trading partner? Would it matter? The US and Germany seem to be supplying the entire arsenal of Israel and they most certainly are not going to stop because of some boycott.

                Sanctions also never really work unless it is american lead against a poor, small nation like Cuba or the DPRK. As soon as the sanctioned country is stronger than that it just doesn’t work. Russia seems to be okay and they had been sanctioned as well and even the DPRK is doing fine-ish thanks to nukes and Russia & China.

                Especially the genocidal, unsinkable aircraft carrier called Israel is obviously going to be okay throughout Chinese sanctions. They just get a blank cheque from the EU and US anyway because Israel is the most important imperial tool they have.

                Additionally, this entire thread has people talking about China doing an american style sanction with pressuring other countries into stopping trade with Israel as well. That will absolutely be considered an act of war by the west and i hope i don’t need to explain why that is a terrible idea.

                Another part is that China is ML and analyses history through diamat and know that an empire that is crashing is extremely volatile, so attacking their most important control element directly would be disastrous.

                Your entire comment hinges on the fact that china is just doing this one random unspeakable evil (in your mind) for…money? It seems like you have not understood China as an anti-imperialist, socialist state yet.

                They mostly help with intel and providing weapons or building their factories, things that can’t easily be marketed as an attack on the west. China is building a world where anti-imperialist action can even take place and the US hegemony is dead. They wouldn’t be able to do that if they were as aggressive as y’all want them to be.

                Has Iran even asked China for this? That’s another thing i dislike about Hexbearians, y’all always try to be some saviour. Maybe let the actual anti-imperialists work together how they want?

                • ClimateStalin [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  3 days ago

                  The thing is, boycotts have never really worked.

                  BDS is modeled on methods that were successful in overthrowing South African apartheid. They worked then.

                  Has any government dropped Israel as a trading partner?

                  Yes, several, none of the large important ones though. Syria, Lebanon, and Iran, even prior to the current conflict, have no trade with Israel. I don’t believe Cuba or the DPRK do either. Most Arab states used to, but over the years were pushed by the Americans into normalizing relations.

                  Would it matter? The US and Germany seem to be supplying the entire arsenal of Israel and they most certainly are not going to stop because of some boycott.

                  The point is to disrupt the settler project. Israelis are the biggest treatlerites on the planet, making Americans look like they’ve contentedly taken a vow of poverty. If you disrupt the treats, it becomes a lot harder to get settlers to stay. If China supplies 8% of consumer goods that’s a large portion of the treats.

                  Sanctions also never really work unless it is american lead against a poor, small nation like Cuba or the DPRK.

                  Israel tiny country! Size of New Jersey!

                  Israel is the most important imperial tool they have.

                  Well I just fundamentally disagree with your analysis here, I think Israel causes the west far more trouble than it’s worth and is not even helpful for our imperial ambitions, along with causing internal collapse in the imperial core. The strait of Hormuz is closed because of Israel. Oil is approaching $200 a barrel because of Israel. Europeans are going to freeze to death this winter, because of Israel.

                  Has Iran even asked China for this? That’s another thing i dislike about Hexbearians, y’all always try to be some saviour. Maybe let the actual anti-imperialists work together how they want?

                  The Palestinians have asked for this. BDS is a Palestinian movement, and this is in fact what they ask for.

          • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            4 days ago

            Well Netanjahu specifically has a strong incentive: as soon as the ceasefire started and the state of emergency ended, the trial against him resumed. He might avoid prison by lighting the world on fire.

            But in general it’s to stablize ruling class power by mitigating crisis tendencies from inherent contradictions in capitalism. Over-accumulation, overproduction, falling rate of profit - war helps with all of that. It helps materially by destroying value without cutting into profits, opening markets, stealing inputs, subjugating people for overexploitation, destroying competing productive capacity and preventing threats to imperial power. It also helps ideologically by legitimizing austerity and inflation, undermining democracy and increasing exploitation at home.

            War is such an important way to temporarily dispell crisis tendencies or push them on someone else, that if US and Israel weren’t doing it, the other imperial core countries (like Europe) would need to do it or risk seeing the end of capitalism.

          • ClimateStalin [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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            5 days ago

            China could certainly cut off trade to Israel in response to this and America couldn’t do shit and wouldn’t even if they could.

            Besides, America needs China 1000x as much as China needs America. We don’t produce jack shit. We’re valuable to China as a market for their production but honestly that’s imaginary, you could produce just as much and consume it domestically or even produce just as much and throw it directly into the sea and it wouldn’t change anything because America doesn’t give anything in return besides Monopoly money.

    • Elysia [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      5 days ago

      Most of the world has come around to the fact that Israel can not exist if you want humanity to have a future, trying to destroy everything is the only endgame they have left

      • Evil_Shrubbery
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        5 days ago

        Even if they have, they are being constantly persuaded to the contrary. Propaganda is relentless.

  • Soot [any]@hexbear.net
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    5 days ago

    I didn’t even know China was building global rail connectivity. Fucking awesome project. Of course Israel + US oppose it.

  • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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    5 days ago

    Usually China gives out strongly worded letters, but surely, attacking a Chinese asset should get China to start pursuing military actions of their own … right?

    I can’t imagine them just letting this go.

    • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      4 days ago

      A part of me wonders if the US government is behind this to see what China would do if poked; they get Israel to do the poking and see how China reacts

      If the American government was behind it, I’m sure China would know, but any reaction against America itself without evidence would just make China look irrational which would only harm their warming relationship with Europe

    • TheSovietOnion [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      4 days ago

      Yeah, this feels significant from a political standpoint. Your nation holding infrastructure for the Belt and Road might put you in the nazi’s target list, so how much is it worth if China isn’t willing to defend it/you when that happens?

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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      4 days ago

      This is far from the first time Chinese Belt and Road assets have been attacked. It’s usually not this directly by a state actor, usually the US uses terrorist proxies to do it, but they have definitely been doing this for years and years. Chinese engineers have been killed and Chinese built infrastructure has been bombed by groups that are very clearly American backed proxies, across Pakistan, Myanmar and more. So China understands the game being played.

    • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      5 days ago

      Itd be great if the full and unredacted epstein investigation including the names of investigators and everyone involved in the numerous clearly-to-cover-up redactions would just fall off the back of a chinese truck