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Is China imperialist?
Foreign domination does not have the same gravitational pull on the Chinese economy as on the economies of Britain, the US, Japan and others. CARLOS MARTINEZ examines why
A view of the Beijing skyline

THE slogan “Neither Washington nor Beijing” relies largely on the premise that China is imperialist, and that the new cold war is an inter-imperialist war — a war in which the antagonists are fighting over their share of the spoils from the exploitation of foreign countries. 

If China isn’t imperialist, and if the new cold war isn’t an example of inter-imperialist rivalry, the “third camp” position is simply not viable.

We have to start by attempting to define imperialism. In his classic work Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism — the first serious study of the phenomenon from a Marxist perspective — Lenin states that, reduced to its “briefest possible definition,” imperialism can be considered simply as “the monopoly stage of capitalism.” 

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