China Archives - Invent the Future

China’s remarkable transformation marks 75 years of socialist progress

The following short article, written for the Morning Star, provides a whirlwind tour of the extraordinary progress made by the People’s Republic of China since its founding on 1 October 1949.

October 1 2024 will mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, when Mao Zedong declared that “the Chinese people have stood up.”

In the intervening period, China has undergone an extraordinary transformation.

Life expectancy has increased from around 35 to over 78 years, surpassing that of the US. Universal literacy has been achieved. Extreme poverty and malnutrition have been eliminated. Famines are a thing of the past.

In the years immediately following the founding of People’s China, feudalism was dismantled and warlord rule was ended. New China won and defended its sovereignty.

Education and healthcare were rolled out to the countryside for the first time.

The social and economic position of women has improved beyond recognition — one example being that, before the revolution, the vast majority of women received no formal education whatsoever, whereas now a majority of students in higher education institutions are female.

China was one of the poorest countries in the world and languished in a situation of extreme technological backwardness.

Now it’s one of the world’s leading innovators in science and technology — particularly in renewable energy, space exploration, digital networking, quantum computing, nanotechnology and advanced manufacturing. It has displaced the US as the world leader in both scientific research publication and patent grants.

Crucially, China has emerged as the pre-eminent world leader in tackling climate change. Its investment in wind and solar power has brought costs down globally by as much as 90 per cent.

Indeed a recent Financial Times editorial admitted that “when it comes to climate change, Beijing’s green advances should be seen as positive for China, and for the world.”

Although it’s described in the Western media as a malevolent and aggressive power, China’s record is remarkably peaceful. It hasn’t been at war in over 40 years.

And unlike the US, China doesn’t have a global infrastructure of hegemony — foreign bases, troops and weapons stationed in other countries, and so on.

Nor does China engage in economic hegemonism. While much is made of China’s economic power, its loans and investment throughout Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and elsewhere are generally speaking welcome, because they come with a low rate of interest, there are no conditions of austerity, and they’re used to fund crucial infrastructure projects that are allowing countries to break out of underdevelopment after centuries of colonial and neocolonial exploitation.

For example, with Chinese finance and support, Ethiopia opened the first metro system in sub-Saharan Africa a few years ago. Again with Chinese finance and support, Bolivia has launched a telecoms satellite that provides connectivity to the whole country — the poorest country in South America.

Indeed just a couple of days ago, President Xi Jinping announced at the opening ceremony of the Forum on China–Africa co-operation in Beijing that China would unilaterally give all least developing countries (LDCs) zero-tariff market access for all products, making China the first major economy to take such a step. “This will help turn China’s big market into Africa’s big opportunity.”

China plays a helpful role on the diplomatic stage, its contributions oriented towards peace and co-operation. A case in point is the tragic situation in Gaza. While the US and Britain continue to provide the weaponry of genocide, along with financial and diplomatic cover, China has been a loud and consistent voice demanding an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.

China always reiterates the necessity of respecting the fundamental national rights of the Palestinian people, and — significantly — it recently mediated an agreement between 14 Palestinian resistance movements, with the rationale that Palestinians need the maximum level of unity if they’re going to win their rights.

While of course there are problems and contradictions, just as there are in all countries, Chinese people live better than they ever have done, and China plays a positive role in the world.

Research by the Harvard Kennedy School shows that the Chinese government enjoys the support of more than 90 per cent of the population — not something that can be said of Keir Starmer and his neoliberal friends.

And yet people in the West often have a negative impression of China. China is presented by politicians and journalists as being an aggressive, expansionist power; an authoritarian dystopia engaged in myriad human rights abuses; a climate criminal; and so on.

The anti-China propaganda has not moved on much from the days of Fu Manchu — these inscrutable Chinese hate our democracy and they want to take over the world.

Faced with imperial decline and the inevitable emergence of a multipolar world, the US ruling class is waging a fightback in order to keep the Project for a New US Century train on the rails. This includes a propaganda component which is essentially aimed at generating public support for a reckless new cold war.

Ordinary people in the West must not allow their consent to be manufactured for confrontation with China, which does not serve their interests.

Humanity faces serious existential threats in the form of climate breakdown, pandemics, antimicrobial resistance, and the possibility of nuclear war. To face up to these threats, we need to work collectively and within a framework of multipolarity, the UN charter, and international law.

As such, we must build bonds of friendship and co-operation with China, and we should seek to understand China better.

On Saturday September 28, from 10am to 4.30pm, at Bolivar Hall, London W1T 5DL, Friends of Socialist China and the Communist Party of Britain, supported by a number of other organisations, are holding a conference to mark the 75th anniversary of the PRC’s founding.

There will be panel discussions on: China, multipolarity and the rise of the global South; China’s road to socialism; and Standing up against the new cold war.

Speakers include Felix Plasencia (Venezuelan ambassador to Britain), Minister Zhao Fei from the Chinese embassy, George Galloway, Robert Griffiths, Alex Gordon, Jenny Clegg, Zhang Weiwei, Victor Gao, Radhika Desai, Ben Chacko, Andrew Murray, Roger McKenzie and many more. Register at www.bit.ly/china-75.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/celebrate-the-75th-anniversary-of-the-founding-of-peoples-china-tickets-1005591129137

Build global mass opposition to the New Cold War

The following is the text of a speech given by Carlos Martinez at an online meeting of the Scottish Trade Union Peace Network on 22 August 2024.

Many thanks for inviting me to join you.

I’m going to focus my remarks on China’s foreign policy, comparing that with the US and Britain’s foreign policy, and then discussing the dangers of this escalating New Cold War, which could all too easily end up as a hot war.

China aggressive?

China of course is framed in the Western media as an “aggressive” and “expansionist” power which is hell-bent on subverting the “rules-based international order”.

According to the NATO Heads of State summit in Washington last month, “China’s stated ambitions and coercive policies continue to challenge our interests, security and values”.

What’s the basis for this characterisation? I’m going to talk about some of common themes:

First, Taiwan. China is accused of undermining democracy in Taiwan and threatening imminent invasion.

The funny thing is that China’s position on the Taiwan question has not meaningfully changed in the last seven decades, and it’s entirely consistent with international law and numerous United Nations resolutions – not to mention the various joint agreements between the US and China.

Taiwan is a part of China. It was seized by Japan in 1895 and returned to Chinese control in 1945, at the end of World War 2, as agreed by Britain, the US, the Soviet Union and China at the Potsdam Conference.

In 1949, having lost in the Chinese Civil War, Chang Kai-shek and his people fled to Taiwan and set up a renegade administration, and the US positioned its Navy – the Seventh Fleet – in the Taiwan Strait to prevent the communist government from reuniting the country. But even then, Taiwan never claimed to be a separate country – the Kuomintang simply said that Taiwan was the real China and that the People’s Republic was the renegade. Indeed that idea is still part of Taiwan’s constitution.

So China’s very consistent position is that Taiwan is part of China. This position – the One China Principle – is accepted by more than 90 percent of the world’s countries, including the US and Britain. China has always said that it seeks peaceful reunification but that it reserves the right to use force in case of outside interference or a unilateral declaration of independence. Furthermore it makes the very reasonable point that the Taiwan issue is an internal matter for Chinese people on both sides of the Strait to resolve.

There is nothing particularly bellicose or unusual about such a position. Frankly, if you’ll excuse the slight provocation, China’s historic claim to Taiwan is far stronger than Britain’s historic claim to Scotland, but does anyone think Westminster would avoid the use of force if Scotland, backed and armed by Russia, say, were to unilaterally declare independence.

So nothing has changed with respect to China’s position on the Taiwan question. What’s changed is that the US and its allies, seeking to provoke conflict and undermine China, are increasing their support for separatist elements, are increasing their supply of weapons to the administration in Taipei, and are steadily rowing back on the One China Principle.

Biden has said multiple times that the US would intervene militarily if Beijing were to attempt to change the status quo by force – which goes directly against what was agreed by the US and China back in the 1970s when relations were re-established. It is essentially a way of signalling: we are building towards war against China, and Taiwan will likely be the flashpoint. And the way we plan to win public support for that war is by presenting it as a war to protect democracy in Taiwan.

Another popular accusation about China’s “aggression” is that it’s engaged in expansionism in the South China Sea, because it patrols its own waters, and because it has a number of complicated territorial disputes over control of an array of tiny uninhabited islands.

China at the forefront of the green energy revolution

The following article by Carlos Martinez, written for the journal Communist Review, describes China’s progress in the field of environmental protection and sustainable development.

It is by now almost universally understood that humans need to transition away from fossil fuels and adopt renewable energy if we are to avoid catastrophic levels of climate change. As Hannah Ritchie, Deputy Editor and Lead Researcher at Our World in Data, says:

“Global temperatures are rising. Sea levels are rising; ice sheets are melting; and other species are struggling to adapt to a changing climate. Humans face an avalanche of problems from flooding and drought to wildfires and fatal heatwaves. Farmers are at risk of crop failures. Cities are at risk of being submerged. There’s one main cause: human emissions of greenhouse gases.^{^[1]}

The science is clear and widely accepted: human activity, most importantly the burning of fossil fuels, has increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to an unprecedented level. This has led to more heat being trapped within the Earth’s atmosphere (that is, less heat is being radiated back into space), resulting in a global heating effect, which leads to more frequent and severe weather events, rising sea levels, and shifts in ecosystems.

Data from the ice core record, going back around 800,000 years, shows that carbon dioxide concentration has fluctuated quite widely, between around 170 and 280 parts per million (ppm), with a previous peak at 300 ppm around 320,000 years ago. CO₂ levels have been stable at around 270 ppm for the last ten thousand years, until a significant upward curve starting in the early 1800s and accelerating sharply from the 1950s onwards.^[2] At the time of writing (June 2024), carbon dioxide concentration is 424 ppm.

Greenhouse gas concentration will continue to increase, and the corresponding ecological problems will get significantly worse, unless we either reduce our consumption of energy to an extraordinary degree or we switch to non-emitting forms of energy. The idea of reducing humanity’s overall energy consumption is not plausible. For the majority of the world’s population, low energy consumption correlates to poverty; to low standards of living. Clearly, socialists hope that most people in the developing world, over the course of the coming decades, will increase rather than decrease their consumption of energy, and will experience a corresponding improvement in quality of life. As such, the only realistic option for preventing climate breakdown whilst continuing to pursue development is to undertake a massive global transition to green energy: to meet humanity’s energy needs without releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and without causing permanent damage to the environment.

Hugo Chávez, Xi Jinping, and a global community of shared future

The following is the text of the presentation delivered by Carlos Martinez at a round-table discussion on Venezuela’s foreign policy in a changing world, held on 20 February 2024 at Bolivar Hall in London. The event was organised by the Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the UK in coordination with the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign.

The speech discusses Hugo Chávez’s vision of a multipolar world, and explores how that vision overlaps with China’s strategy of pursuing a global community of shared future.

Other speakers at the event included Her Excellency Rocío Maneiro, Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the UK; Francisco Domínguez, Secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign; Calvin Tucker, Campaigns Manager of the Morning Star; and Radhika Desai, Convenor of the International Manifesto Group.

Dear friends and comrades, thanks so much for inviting me to today’s important event.

And thank you in particular to Her Excellency compañera-embajadora Rocío Maneiro, who continues to do such a wonderful job representing her country and standing in solidarity with the progressive movement here in Britain and with the working class and oppressed peoples of the world.

Thanks also to the indefatigable comrade Francisco Domínguez for his hard work putting this event together.

I’m going to focus these brief remarks on the connection between Venezuela’s foreign policy and that of China.

As you’re all no doubt aware, Hugo Chávez had an extremely far-sighted worldview. While the Bolivarian Revolution has always aimed to have good relations with the US, its foreign policy has nonetheless been informed by the identification of that country as the principal enemy to sovereignty and to socialism, not just in Venezuela but throughout the world.

And of course the US’s consistently aggressive stance in relation to Venezuela – its campaign of sanctions, of coercion, of destabilisation – has only confirmed what Chávez and his comrades already knew.

Chávez saw Venezuela as part of a global movement challenging half a millennium of colonialism, imperialism and racism; a global movement that included the growing leftist and pro-sovereignty trend in Latin America and the Caribbean, but also China, Cuba, Russia, Libya (until NATO’s war of regime change in 2011), Syria, South Africa, Vietnam, Iran, the DPRK, Belarus and others.

This global movement seeks to put an end to the unipolar era of US hegemony, and to create a multipolar – or as Chávez called it, pluripolar – world, with multiple centres of power, in which countries and regions all have their role in global politics and in which no one power can impose its will on others.

Under the guidance of Hugo Chávez and then Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has become one of the most prominent voices in support of this multipolar project.

Indeed, one of the slogans of Chávez’s 2012 presidential election campaign was: “to develop a new international geopolitics forming a multicentric and pluripolar world to achieve equilibrium in the universe and guarantee planetary peace.”

Global Times interview with Carlos Martinez

What follows below is the full text of a written interview with Carlos Martinez, conducted by the Global Times.

The interview deals with a wide range of issues, including the New Cold War on China, the nature of Chinese socialism, the Belt and Road Initiative, capitalist versus socialist democracy, and anti-China propaganda in the Western media.

An abridged version was published in the Global Times on 31 August 2023.

Could you please briefly introduce yourself to us? When did you start to study China? And what made you start to be interested in the country?

I’m an author and campaigner from London, Britain, with a longstanding interest in the socialist countries and global anti-imperialism. My first book, released in 2019, was about the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union. I was involved in setting up the No Cold War campaign in 2020, and the Friends of Socialist China platform in 2021.

There were two main motivations for me to start studying China. The first comes from being a Marxist and wanting to understand how socialism is constructed in the real world. The second comes from being anti-imperialist and anti-war, and wanting to understand China’s role in the development of a peaceful and multipolar world.

The more I study China, the more I realise how poorly it’s understood in the West. In recent years, the anti-China propaganda in the media has been increasingly intense, corresponding to the rise of the US-led New Cold War. Many people have this absurd idea of China as some sort of authoritarian dystopia that’s intent on taking over the world. Many people believe the media’s disgraceful slanders about the suppression of human rights in Xinjiang, and so on.

China is misunderstood even on the left: lots of people believe that, because China uses market mechanisms, or because there are some very rich people in China, that it can’t be socialist any more. But then how do we explain China’s achievements? China has raised living standards beyond recognition; it’s become the world leader in renewable energy; it’s gone from being a poor and backward country to being a science and technology powerhouse; it’s leading the global shift to multipolarity; its life expectancy now exceeds that of the US. All this is historic and unprecedented progress, on a scale which has never been achieved by any capitalist country. Why on earth would the left want to attribute these successes to capitalism rather than socialism?

Campaigning against the New Cold War is crucial for all who value peace and justice

This is the text and video of a presentation made by Carlos Martinez at a 28 June webinar of the United National Anti-War Coalition, on the theme of US anti-China propaganda, a prelude to war. Carlos exposes the extraordinary hypocrisy and falsehood of the propaganda war that the Western powers are waging against China, and highlights how it is being leveraged to shift public opinion in favour of anti-China hostility.

He points out that the escalating campaign of China encirclement and containment is threatening to derail global progress on key issues, noting that “the future of humanity actually hinges on global cooperation to address our collective problems.” As such, Carlos calls on all progressive and peace-loving people to make campaigning against the New Cold War a core part of their work.

Other speakers at the event included Lee Siu Hin of the China-US Solidarity Network, Sara Flounders of the International Action Center, and Arjae Red of Workers World Party. The full webinar can be viewed on YouTube.

Dear friends, thank you so much for inviting me to speak at this important event. I’m very sorry not to be able to join you in person, as I’m currently in Guiyang, China, on a delegation.

The theme of today’s event, “Anti-Chinese propaganda, a prelude to war”, is closely connected to the rationale for writing my book, “The East is Still Red: Chinese socialism in the 21st century.”

I had two key aims in mind with the book.

One was to talk about socialism, about how China is a socialist country. So many people think that China used to be a socialist country and then became capitalist with the introduction of market reforms. I wanted to show that China remains a socialist country and that socialism provides the framework for its incredible successes in poverty alleviation, development, renewable energy, and so on.

And I wanted to say to the Western left – which tends to be a bit unsure about China – look, China’s achieved all these things, it’s raised living standards beyond recognition, it’s gone from being a technologically backward and oppressed country to being a science and tech powerhouse, it’s leading the global shift to multipolarity; why on earth would we want to ascribe these successes to capitalism rather than socialism? Let’s celebrate socialist victories, let’s uphold the history and politics of the global working class.

Hence ‘The East is Still Red’.

The second key aim in writing the book was to stand up to the propaganda war, which is part of a wider New Cold War against China, and that’s the focus of my talk today.

This work of standing up to the propaganda war is urgent. It needs to be a major focus for socialists, communists, progressives, for anti-war campaigners worldwide; really for anyone that doesn’t think “better dead than red” is a viable slogan for the 21st century.

Because the propaganda war is war propaganda.

It seeks to build the broadest possible public support for a New Cold War, for a campaign of containment and encirclement, and ultimately very possibly for a hot war.

Let’s get something straight. This New Cold War, this anti-China campaign, has absolutely nothing to do with human rights.

When the West throws disgraceful slanders at China over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang, does anybody seriously think they’re manifesting a hitherto secret fondness and respect for Muslim people and their religion?

Where was that sentiment when they killed over a million people in Iraq?

Where was that sentiment when they destroyed Afghanistan, turning a quarter of its population into refugees and imposing brutal poverty on the rest?

Where was that sentiment when they bombed Libya into the Stone Age?

Where’s that sentiment today as they wage a disastrous proxy war against Iran in Yemen, creating the most severe humanitarian crisis in the world?

If they’re concerned about Muslims being placed in prison camps and denied their human rights, the first place they need to look is their illegally occupied corner of Cuba, that is, Guantanamo Bay.

When the West spreads outright lies about the suppression of Tibetan or Inner Mongolian language and culture, does anyone seriously think they’re standing up for the rights of indigenous peoples and for the preservation of precious human history?

How many indigenous languages are taught in US schools? To what extent is indigenous culture – and righteous resistance against colonialism – celebrated in US society? When was the last time native rights were upheld over drilling rights? Why does the US Congress seem more concerned with preserving Tibetan heritage than shutting down the Dakota Access pipeline?

These anti-China stories – all of which can be and have been comprehensively debunked – have nothing to do with upholding the principles of freedom, democracy and justice.

Those are the principles that are invoked. Those are the sentiments that are manipulated. Do you support freedom for Tibetan people? Do you oppose genocide and cultural genocide? Do you oppose debt traps in Africa and Latin America? If so, you should be anti-China, that’s the message; that’s the way of manufacturing consent, of persuading people to take a reactionary pro-imperialist position whilst feeling like they’re standing on the side of justice.

But it’s not the side of justice. It’s a campaign of demonisation, forming part of a hybrid war against socialism, against sovereignty, and against multipolarity.

It’s part of the New Cold War, part of the Project for a New American Century. There’s nothing progressive about it. It’s the politics of Donald Trump, of Joe Biden, of Mike Pompeo, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld.

It’s the politics of a decaying US-led empire doing everything it can to prevent that decay, to maintain its hegemony, to prevent the emergence of a different kind of world.

In that sense, the New Cold War actually has a lot in common with the original Cold War.

What was the Cold War about? Historians sometimes talk about it in grandiose terms, as a “clash of civilisations”; an ideological battle between capitalism and communism, ending with the triumph of so-called liberal democracy and the end of history.

The reality is very different. It was a long-term campaign engineered by the US and its close allies to contain and roll back socialism; to contain and roll back decolonisation; to contain and roll back the economic emergence and political sovereignty of the Global South.

The Soviets certainly never wanted a Cold War, never wanted an arms race, never wanted a system of entrenched hostility.

They wanted and called for peaceful coexistence. Having heroically defeated the Nazis and liberated Europe from the yoke of fascism, they wanted and needed breathing space to rebuild. But the imperialists wouldn’t give them that breathing space. Instead they did whatever they could to suffocate the country that had sacrificed 27 million lives in the fight against the Hitlerite war machine.

Similarly the Chinese never wanted a Cold War and hoped for peaceful coexistence with the West. The Chinese also sacrificed millions of lives in World War 2, fighting against a horrifyingly brutal Japanese invasion and occupation. But the US made it clear from the start that it would never accept Chinese socialism.

And by the way the Cold War wasn’t all that cold. It wasn’t cold for the 3 million people that lost their lives in Korea between 1950 and 1953 – a war fought exclusively in the interests of US geopolitical advantage, so the US could have a military foothold in the region from which to permanently threaten China and the Soviet Union with nuclear annihilation.

The Cold War wasn’t cold for the 4 million people that lost their lives in Vietnam between 1965 and 1975 – another war fought exclusively in the interests of US geopolitical advantage, so the US could encircle China and prevent the peoples of Southeast Asia from choosing a socialist development path.

Millions more lost their lives in coups, proxy wars and invasions from Indonesia to Brazil, from Chile to Angola, from Nicaragua to Iran. The US, the CIA, the State Department, had a hand in all of this. Sacrificing millions for the sake of preserving what is bizarrely referred to as the rules-based world order.

That’s the same rules-based world order that Biden and Blinken talk incessantly about today.

What they don’t say is that these rules are written in Washington DC; they’re rules that protect the interests of the US capitalist class. These rules are enforced by the US military and the mechanisms of economic coercion. They’re enforced with the help of dollar hegemony, as well as 800 overseas military bases, a military budget of around a trillion dollars a year, 5,500 nuclear warheads, a total commitment to the military-industrial complex.

This rules-based order is about protecting profits. Protecting access to the resources, markets, land and cheap labour of the Global South.

Really nothing to do with freedom, democracy, justice and human rights.

So today, when they wage a trade war on China, when they impose sanctions on Chinese solar energy materials, when they try to cut China out of advanced semiconductors, when they try to ban Huawei and TikTok, when they kidnap Huawei’s CFO, none of this is done in support of human rights; it’s done in support of imperialism, of domination, of profit.

When they construct a nuclear pact – AUKUS – between Britain, the US and Australia; when they provide military aid and diplomatic support to Taiwanese separatists; when they build a new military base in North Australia; when they place nuclear-enabled warplanes in the region; when they conduct their RIMPAC military exercises; when they place missile defence systems in Guam and South Korea; when they try to turn the Quad into a sort of Pacific NATO; when they encourage Japanese re-armament; none of this is done in support of peace; it’s done in support of hegemony and bullying.

And it’s increasingly clear that there are elements in the US ruling class that recognise that Cold War tactics aren’t working, that it’s too late to prevent China’s rise, that it’s too late to prevent the emergence of a multipolar, multilateral world – and that are therefore preparing for a full, armed confrontation – most likely with Taiwan as the trigger.

So this is what we’re up against. This is why we have to reject and oppose the propaganda war. This is why we have to debunk anti-China slanders.

The immediate dangers are serious enough. The future of humanity actually hinges on global cooperation to address our collective problems. Climate change is a global issue that can only be solved on a global basis. The same goes for pandemics. The New Cold War gets in the way of the cooperation we desperately need, and as such presents a serious – even existential – threat.

Only slightly less immediate is the danger of a full-scale war between nuclear powers, the potential consequences of which are terrifying.

This is what’s at stake. It’s urgent we make campaigning against the New Cold War, against the propaganda war, against the escalating campaign of China encirclement, a core part of our work, as people who love peace, as people who love justice, as people who want humanity to prosper.

New book: The East is Still Red – Chinese socialism in the 21st century

We are pleased to announce that the new book by Invent the Future editor Carlos Martinez, The East is Still Red – Chinese socialism in the 21st century, has been published by Praxis Press. It is currently available to buy on the Praxis Press website in paperback and ePub forms, and will be available more widely from early June.

Description

China provides a powerful living example of what can be achieved under a socialist system; by a Marxist-led government firmly grounded among the people. The East is Still Red explains the escalating hostility by the imperialist powers towards China and clears up various popular misconceptions.

All available evidence indicates that not only is the Communist Party of China committed to Marxism, but it is a leading force for the development and enhancement of Marxism in the 21st century.

If the first century of human experience of building socialism teaches us anything, it is that the road from capitalism to socialism is a long and complicated one, and that ‘actually existing socialism’ varies enormously according to time, place and circumstances. China is building a form of socialism that suits its conditions, using the means it has at its disposal, in the extraordinarily challenging circumstances of global imperialist hegemony.

Carlos Martinez provides a concise, deeply researched and well argued account that China’s remarkable rise can only be understood by acknowledging its socialist past, present and future.

China is building an ecological civilisation

This is an expanded and update version of the 2019 article China leads the way in tackling climate breakdown. A concise summary of the current version was carried by the Morning Star on 19 November 2022.

We must strike a balance between economic growth and environmental protection. We will be more conscientious in promoting green, circular, and low-carbon development. We will never again seek economic growth at the cost of the environment. (Xi Jinping)^{^[1]}

The cost of development

Few events in human history have resonated throughout the world as profoundly as the Chinese Revolution. Standing in Tiananmen Square on 1 October 1949, pronouncing the birth of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong said “the Chinese people have stood up”. In standing up, in building a modern socialist society and throwing off the shackles of feudalism, colonialism, backwardness, illiteracy and grinding poverty, China has blazed a trail for the entire Global South. Lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty has been described even by ardent capitalists as “the greatest leap to overcome poverty in history”.^[2] The UN Development Programme (UNDP) describes China’s development as having produced “the most rapid decline in absolute poverty ever witnessed”.^[3] It is an extraordinary accomplishment that all Chinese people now have secure access to food, housing, clothing, clean water, modern energy, education and healthcare.

"Socialism doesn't work" pic.twitter.com/5O544OrVLZ
— Friends of Socialist China (@socialist_china) October 18, 2022

In environmental terms, however, this progress has come at a cost. Just as economic development in Europe and the Americas was fuelled by the voracious burning of fossil fuels, China’s development has been built to a significant degree on ‘Old King Coal’, the most polluting and emissions-intensive of the fossil fuels. Two decades ago, coal made up around 80 percent of China’s energy mix. Environmental law expert Barbara Finamore notes that “coal, plentiful and cheap, was the energy source of choice, not just for power plants, but also for direct combustion by heavy industry and for heating and cooking in people’s homes.”^[4]

Video interview with Carlos Martinez: The Soviet Union, Socialist China, and the New Cold War

Carlos Martinez talks to Midwestern Marx about the conflict in Ukraine, NATO’s ongoing war against Russia, cultural development in the Soviet Union, the Soviet collapse, China’s role in combatting climate breakdown, the nature of China’s reform and opening up, the 20th National Congress of the CPC, and possibilities for the future of working class internationalism.

Manufacturing consent for the containment and encirclement of China

If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. (Malcolm X)

The Western media is waging a systematic and ferocious propaganda war against China. In the court of Western public opinion, China stands accused of an array of terrifying crimes: conducting a genocide against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang; wiping out democracy in Hong Kong; militarising the South China Sea; attempting to impose colonial control over Taiwan; carrying out a land grab in Africa; preventing Tibetans and Inner Mongolians from speaking their languages; spying on the good peoples of the democratic world; and more.

Australian scholar Roland Boer has characterised these accusations as “atrocity propaganda – an old anti-communist and indeed anti-anyone-who-does-not-toe-the-Western-line approach that tries to manufacture a certain image for popular consumption.” Boer observes that this propaganda serves to create an impression of China as a brutal authoritarian dystopia which “can only be a fiction for anyone who actually spends some time in China, let alone lives there.”^[1]

It’s not difficult to understand why China would be subjected to this sort of elaborate disinformation campaign. This media offensive is part of the imperialist world’s ongoing attempts to reverse the Chinese Revolution, to subvert Chinese socialism, to weaken China, to diminish its role in international affairs and, as a result, to undermine the global trajectory towards multipolarity and a future free from hegemonism. As journalist Chen Weihua has pointed out, “the reasons for the intensifying US propaganda war are obvious: Washington views a fast-rising China as a challenge to its primacy around the world.” Furthermore, “the success of a country with a different political system is unacceptable to politicians in Washington.”^[2]