politics

Okay! That's a good place to start. I'm not a China expert, but have been digging into it myself over the last few months because I had similar questions.

Essentially, from the POV of the modern CPC, growth was positive, but unstable towards the end of the Mao era and with the Gang of Four. During the Cultural Revolution, there was a real drive to achieve Communism soon, and this led to some degree of dogmatism over practicality. Deng adjusted, and set up an economy along with Zhou Enlai that would fold in foreign Capital while maintaining absolute supremacy, and leaving key sectors like energy, banking, steel, etc. Completely state owned, or close to it.

All along the way, the PRC watched the Soviet Union. They split, they sort of revonvened, and then the USSR fell. The PRC did not want to follow in the same footsteps, so they adopted a different policy with foreign policy. They shifted, along with Deng, to a more open form of foreign policy based on the concept of "mutual development."

Under Xi, there has been a leftward shift, with the official line being that both Mao and Deng were principled Marxist-Leninists and that a balance of the two is what is correct. This extends to foreign policy, the economy, and more. Under Xi, there has been increasing control over the markets, trapped in a "birdcage model," and BRICS and the BRI serve as driving factors towards destabilizing Imperialism without open conflict with the United States (though, if you ask me, such an event is very likely). They also always stand there for any AES country that comes into existence, so that others will not be alone, though they don't assist with revolution the way the USSR did.

That serves as a massive oversimplification, and maybe didn't even tell you anything new, but hopefully it helped!

Like you'd think that doing things like selling weapons to imperialist forces would be counterproductive to the ends of fighting imperialism, even if it does domestically help build the productive forces... But I suppose the alternative would lead to China becoming isolated or something, right?

Correct. What this achieves is personal investment by the bourgeoisie in the free participation of China in world markets. They lose money if China is disconnected, and thus they as individuals want it to stay connected even if they understand that for the wider interests of their class it is a negative in the longterm. Each individual member of the bourgeoisie still wants personal enrichment and is still driven by the pursuit of capital, since keeping China connected means they can acquire more capital then that's what they want.

In essence the entire strategy is to disincentivise the bourgeoisie from seeking to destroy China, as they did with the USSR, or as they do with Cuba, the DPRK, etc.

What this leads to however is untested. We can only speculate. What they have done with placing branches of the CPC inside every large business however is the infrastructural groundwork for a transition partial/fully socialist economy with a minimum of pushback.

There's a lot to measure there, suppose a border nation is engaging in blatant capitalist style imperialism (kyrgyzstan invades the uzbeks) they need resources to create and build that imperial machine; do you continue to trade raw resources and garner influence as even the rest of the global community begins to draw away from them? Do you try to use that influence to reign in that neighbor, or even try to develop your own productive forces by staking a larger claimin those industries? Do you also draw away from the nation and continue to isolate them, weakening your industry, perhaps putting a target on yourself? Do you use you own miltary forces to put a stop to it? All of these approaches have been tried in some form or another in recent history, the only one which seems to result in anything remotely positive is to be the trading partner. Come hell or high water, non intervention has always proven an effective and politically easy solution, and theres historical precedent for China especially to act in such a way, when it didnt throughout the mid century (this had some to do with the Sino-Soviet split) it lead to insane outcomes like buddying up with the US to beat up Afghanistan and Vietnam, fund Pol Pot, etc. All are actions we can say didnt help China in the long run and are frankly embarrassing.

Yeah, it is odd, but it is as you say, the alternative is isolation. You could argue that selling arms to imperialists is kind of like paying a “don’t kill us” tribute. You could argue that China is not yet self-sufficient enough to pull the rug, or you could argue that they have actually reached that maturity, or you could argue that they are stuck in a trap and will never pull any rug, or that they never even had any intention of it.

There’s another dimension of making the West economically dependent on them. So yes, selling some weapons now, but in the long term, replacing the West’s industrial capacity so that they can’t keep up. But even our ghouls are smart enough to realize this and have specifically prevented offshoring a lot of military production, at a huge cost.

I'm just quoting political theory professors. I agree with you that it probably didn't really originate in Europe. As I stated in my original post. That said, western nations stealing the credit is kind of their M.O.

That's realpolitiks for China. If they see there's a political and financial advantage to donating, they'll do it. But that's super not transparent and anyone saying they know why is lying or would be arrested for leaks.

My theory is Cuba has a lot of fertile land that isn't properly maintained. China wants food, it makes sense to support them to get their export values up for Chinese consumers. Also, China owns habanos sa.

Dunno, most people I've spoken to do not really think about the rest of the world. Though in fairness, you could say the same about US citizens.