The Communist Party USA held its second International Conference on 29 July 2023. Below is the video and text of the presentation delivered by Carlos Martinez on behalf of Friends of Socialist China. Carlos describes the escalating US-led New Cold War against China and warns of its dangers, concluding: “The struggle against imperialism, against hegemony and against Cold War is not a ‘nice to have’ for our movement; it’s an indispensable component of our work, of our struggle for socialism and a brighter future for humanity.”
The conference also featured contributions by representatives of the governing communist parties of China, Vietnam and Cuba, alongside speeches by numerous other organizations and individuals. The full event is can be viewed on YouTube.
Greetings on behalf of Friends of Socialist China to the CPUSA International Conference 2023. It’s an honour to be invited to participate in this event; to join you in struggle against an imperialist system that’s destroying the planet, whilst spreading war, chaos, poverty, inequality and misery.
As you know well, the United States is leading a multifaceted campaign of containing and encircling China. This escalating Cold War has multiple components: sanctions; a trade war; a propaganda war; the undermining of the One China Policy; the arming of Taiwan province; so-called Freedom of Navigation Assertions in the South China Sea; the formation of AUKUS – a trilateral nuclear pact with Australia and Britain, which is in clear violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty; the encouraging of Japanese re-armament; the attempt to stop China developing advanced semiconductor technology; the attacks on Huawei and TikTok. The list goes on.
It’s a Cold War in the sense that it doesn’t currently involve direct military engagement between the main protagonists, but that may well not permanently be the case, given the levels of recklessness and stupidity prevailing in Washington DC and elsewhere in the imperialist camp.
What’s the purpose of this New Cold War? It’s not only about suppressing China, or rolling back the Chinese Revolution. Just as the original Cold War was fought not exclusively against the Soviet Union but against the very notion that the nations of the world could exercise sovereignty and independence; so is this Second Cold War about preventing humanity’s trajectory towards a multipolar system of international relations, about preserving, defending and consolidating US hegemony – or as Truman called it, “a world environment in which the American system can flourish.”
China is the primary target – because it’s become a major power; because it’s become the economic centre of gravity for the Global South; because it’s become a science and technology powerhouse; because its people live increasingly well; because its extraordinary successes in tackling poverty, improving its people’s living standards, developing green energy systems, fighting the pandemic and more provide material proof that Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” was a mirage, that neoliberal capitalism is not the final stage of human development.
There’s a great deal at stake in today’s epic struggle between the forces of imperialism and the forces of multipolarity and socialism.
Humanity is facing unprecedented crises, some of them existential. If we fail to pool our resources and cooperate in a serious and systematic way, we run the risk of the Earth, our only home, becoming uninhabitable within the space of a few generations.
Meanwhile we’ve just been taught a horrifying lesson about how vulnerable we all are to pandemics – and don’t forget that human activity in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, factory farming and destruction of natural habitats is making pandemics ever more likely.
Anti-microbial resistance threatens to turn back decades of medical advances.
The spectre of nuclear war is ever-present.
All of these problems demand the most profound and urgent global cooperation.
Socialists, communists and anti-war activists in the West have a responsibility to educate and organise around these issues. The Project for a New American Century and the survival of our species are mutually exclusive propositions. The struggle against imperialism, against hegemony and against Cold War is not a “nice to have” for our movement; it’s an indispensable component of our work, of our struggle for socialism and a brighter future for humanity.
Communists and other progressive people in the United States have a long, honourable and often courageous record of solidarity with the Chinese revolution. Chinese communists and progressives, in turn, have also stood in solidarity with the communists, workers and oppressed peoples in the US.
In the late 1930s, your party joined with the Communist Party of Canada to send Dr. Norman Bethune to the frontline in China, where he became the embodiment of internationalism for generation after generation of Chinese people in their hundreds of millions.
On July 29, 1945, Comrade Mao Zedong sent a telegram to Comrade William Z. Foster, hailing the revival of the CPUSA.
Today, your party carries forward and develops that fine tradition in the new era and it is in this context and in this spirit that we are proud to join with you in common struggle and look forward to developing our close and friendly cooperation.
Thank you again for your invitation. We wish your conference every success.
I am from Vancouver,Canada and i wanted to say that the Communist Party of the USA is holding its second International Conference at a critical time when the world is in crisis.The Yankee Problem is known around the world and countries are scrambling to find a way out of Yankee Imperialism.
Fortunately Socialist Parties around the world are meeting to discuss this urgent problem.Progress is been made and more countries are joining forces with BRICS and getting help from China along with Russia to stop US Hegemony. As each year goes by the world is getting closer to a multi-polar world which is very much needed. Hopefully this will continue because Humanity won’t survive without a multi-polar world.