The following text and video are from a pre-recorded contribution by Paweł Wargan at the London conference organised by Friends of Socialist China to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Paweł’s contribution was very moving, coming from a Polish organiser who is well versed in the history of that country. Being able to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the PRC “feels miraculous to me, because I come from a country that abandoned its socialist path. Knowing what was lost in Poland — in Eastern Europe as a whole — sharpens the appreciation for what has persisted in China.”
Paweł observes that when Poland abandoned the socialist path, “we sold off our public institutions, we joined NATO, and we helped destroy Iraq”. Socialist Poland had built a foreign policy based on solidarity and internationalism, but after 1989, “we lost our solidarity, and we lost a sizeable chunk of our humanity”.
Addressing the standard critique of China as having turned its back on socialism, Paweł poses the question of what China would really look like today if it truly had abandoned the socialist project:
Without socialism, would China build the world’s largest network of high-speed rail? Would China lift 850 million people out of poverty? Would China achieve its climate targets six years ahead of schedule? Without socialism, would China come to lead the global green transition, dramatically cutting the costs of renewable energy for everyone? Would China export its development expertise to countries that for centuries had been denied the right to modernise on their own terms? Would China remain peaceful?
The speech concludes by urging listeners to take inspiration from China’s continuing successes:
China’s peaceful rise points to the promise of a socialist future on our horizon… In a period in history dominated by the merciless violence we see committed daily against the Palestinian and now Lebanese people by what is a relic of the past — a European colonial project that had no right to survive the era of decolonisation — we can take great hope from the knowledge that there exists somewhere a project of the future.
Paweł Wargan is an activist, researcher and organiser. He serves as Political Coordinator at the Progressive International, an international coalition of over 100 popular movements, political parties, and unions.
In some ways, it feels miraculous to be celebrating the continuation of a socialist project in 2024. And I think that we have to insist on these words: celebration, socialism. Even in the ranks of the left, too many dismiss the seriousness of China’s socialist process, and the idea that there is anything left to celebrate.
This celebration feels miraculous to me, because I come from a country that abandoned its socialist path. Knowing what was lost in Poland — in Eastern Europe as a whole — sharpens the appreciation for what has persisted in China.
Just last week, on 24 September, an anniversary passed by that is scarcely remembered in my country. 65 years ago, before the rubble from the Second World War had been fully cleared, Władyslaw Gomułka, the leader of the socialist Polish People’s Republic, announced that Poland would build 1,000 schools — one for every year of our country’s existence.
The war had devastated Poland’s social infrastructure. In 1961, there were 74 children for every classroom, and 700,000 children were born every year between 1949 and 1959. By the end of the 1000 Schools for the Millennium program, the state had built over 1,400 schools and 6,349 homes for Polish teachers — an achievement that it would never repeat in its history. We still go to these schools today.
The experiences gained in our post-war reconstruction were not confined to Poland. Polish architects and builders travelled around the world, helping countries emerging from the ravages of colonialism build their own schools, houses, concert halls, universities, and other public buildings. One of the companies involved in this process, Budimex, helped design a master plan for the city of Baghdad in Iraq, which charted a path for its development until the year 2000.
Then our socialist project collapsed, we sold off our public institutions, we joined NATO, we helped destroy Iraq, and just a couple of years ago Budimex finished work a border wall to stop the victims of US wars in West Asia from crossing into the European Union through Belarus. This is what the collapse of socialism has meant for Poland’s role in the world. We lost our ambition, we lost our solidarity, and we lost a sizeable chunk of our humanity.
When some on the left expect China to conjure up — as if out of thin air — the socialism imagined in the bedrooms or university halls of Britain or the United States, they ignore not only the continuing achievements of Chinese socialism, won through the arduous effort and tremendous creativity of the Chinese people and the leadership of the Communist Party of China. They also ignore the counterfactual. What would have been lost had China abandoned the path of socialist construction?
Without socialism, would China build the world’s largest network of high-speed rail? Would China lift 850 million people out of poverty? Would China achieve its climate targets six years ahead of schedule? Without socialism, would China come to lead the global green transition, dramatically cutting the costs of renewable energy for everyone? Would China export its development expertise to countries that for centuries had been denied the right to modernize on their own terms? Would China remain peaceful?
We find the answers to these questions in the many tragedies that have gripped the former socialist bloc in Eastern Europe. Fraternal nations have been torn apart by the scourge of ethno-nationism — carefully cultivated by the Atlanticist bloc — and entire regions were consumed by war. The social safety net was pulled from under people’s feet, and seven million died early deaths as a result. The very horizon of the future has disappeared.
That is why we now celebrate the People’s Republic.
In China, we have proof that the socialist era is not behind us — that we have not, as too many of us insist, been defeated. To the contrary, China’s peaceful rise points to the promise of a socialist future on our horizon. China built on the legacies of the October Revolution, found ways to navigate the contradictions of a global economy captured by imperialism, and has set itself the goal of building an advanced socialist society within our lifetimes.
In a period in history dominated by the merciless violence we see committed daily against the Palestinian and now Lebanese people by what is a relic of the past — a European colonial project that had no right to survive the era of decolonization — we can take great hope from the knowledge that there exists somewhere a project of the future.
