Friends of Socialist China held its second annual Christmas dinner at the Hiba Express Palestinian restaurant in central London’s Holborn district on Sunday, December 15. Just over 60 people attended, including senior representatives of the embassies of China, Laos and Cuba, members of the Chinese media corps in London, the London representative of Sinn Féin, comrades from Malaysia, Holland and Luxembourg, and activists from a broad range of progressive organisations with whom we have been working over the past year.
Speaking before dinner, our co-editor Keith Bennett reviewed our work over the last 12 months and reiterated our solidarity with the people of Palestine.
Responding, Minister Zhao Fei from the Chinese Embassy said:
Over the past three years, the Friends of Socialist China have done incredible work in helping more people learn about and understand China.
As 2024 draws to a close, China has calmly navigated the changing domestic and international environment with comprehensive strategies. Our economy continues to grow steadily, and we have made significant progress across many areas. The upcoming year, 2025, marks the final year of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan. It is also a pivotal year as China begins its march towards the second Centenary Goal of building a modern socialist country by building on the success of building a moderately well-off society. A host of major strategies, reforms, and projects will be implemented, injecting fresh vitality and momentum into Chinese society. The future of socialist China will surely be even brighter and will bring more opportunities for global development.
We also took the opportunity to honour Comrade Kamal Majid, a lifelong communist of Iraqi origin, retired professor and member of our Advisory Group, on his upcoming 95th birthday. His birthday cake was suitably decorated with red flag and hammer and sickle icing.
The following is the main body of Keith’s speech.
On behalf of Friends of Socialist China, thank you all for coming this evening. This is a time of year when there are many calls on people’s time. The fact that you have chosen to spend this evening with us is, I think, a real testimony to our friendship, based on our shared belief that a better world is both possible and necessary.
Allow me to welcome, in particular, Minister Zhao Fei from the Chinese Embassy and his colleague Comrade Zhen Sitong.
Along with the Ambassador of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and his First Secretary; and the First Secretary of the Cuban Embassy and his colleague.
It’s almost exactly one year since we gathered here on December 17, 2023, for our first end of year social.
On that occasion, I said that “We look forward to stepping up our work and doing better in 2024.”
Whilst we know that what we have been able to do remains but a drop in the ocean of what needs to be done, I can say that we have managed to keep that promise.
On social media we now have just under 40,000 followers on X, still widely known as Twitter.
Just under 6,000 followers on Facebook.
11,700 subscribers to our YouTube channel.
And over 2,000 subscribers to our weekly news bulletin.
On our website, we have published 446 articles so far this year – a modest increase from 425 last year!
We have held an excellent series of events, often in conjunction with other progressive organisations.
Our first webinar in 2024 was on the theme – ‘Peace delegates report back from China: Building solidarity and opposing the New Cold War’.
It followed the successful visit to China of a delegation from the US Peace Council and brought together many strands of the progressive movement in the United States.
Our first in person meeting was held at the Marx Memorial Library on the theme of ‘Africa, China and the Rise of the Global South’.
We were honoured to host our Comrade Booker Ngesa Omole, National Vice-Chairperson of the Communist Party of Kenya, recently elected to the post of General Secretary at his party’s second national congress, which we were invited to attend and to which we sent our greetings.
Our next webinar, organised together with the International Manifesto Group, took as its theme, ‘Black Liberation and People’s China: Rediscovering a History of Transcontinental Solidarity’.
Marking the 65th anniversary of the historic visit to China by the great African-American scholar and revolutionary, Dr. WEB DuBois, when he celebrated his 91st birthday, it saw presentations by several of the world’s leading scholars in this field.
Following the visit of our own first delegation to China, we held a webinar with the title, ‘China proves that a new world is possible! Delegates report back from China’, at which delegates from Britain, Ireland and the United States gave their impressions.
Of course, this year has seen the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. We marked this auspicious anniversary, this landmark in the struggle for human liberation, and celebrated the great achievements of the Chinese people, led by the Communist Party of China with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, with by far our most ambitious and successful public activities to date.
On Saturday September 28, thanks to the warm support of our comrades from the Venezuelan Embassy, and in conjunction with the Communist Party of Britain and other organisations, we held our London conference at the historic Bolivar Hall. Attended by around 110 people, it was the first event of its kind in this country for decades and featured nearly 30 speakers from numerous countries and from a diverse range of progressive organisations and struggles.
A special edition of the Morning Star, with a 12-page supplement edited by Friends of Socialist China, was distributed to every participant and, of course, throughout the country.
The next day, Sunday September 29, we held a similar conference in New York City, this time in conjunction with the Workers World Party and other progressive organisations in the US. Also held in a very historic venue, the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, ‘China at 75 – Changes Unseen in a Century’ again featured around 30 speakers and drew more than 100 people.
This was followed shortly after with another public event in New York City, hosted at the premises of the International Action Center, for a book launch of ‘People’s China at 75 – The Flag Stays Red’, along with Domenico Losurdo’s book on Western Marxism.
And we held a final public meeting of the year, back at the Marx Memorial Library, for a ‘Report back from Xinjiang: A first-hand account of innovation and diversity’, in which, speaking from their first-hand experiences as participants in two delegations, a number of our comrades presented vivid refutations of the lies presented in the imperialist countries regarding the situation in this autonomous region of northwest China. Lies that are all the more despicable when viewed against the backdrop of the all too real and undeniable genocide taking place with the active connivance of the governments of the United States, Britain and a handful of other countries, in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere in historic Palestine.
Just now I mentioned the book, ‘People’s China at 75 – The Flag Stays Red’. This was another landmark for our work in 2024. Jointly edited by me and Carlos, and published by Praxis Press, it was released on September 28 to coincide with our London conference. In 12 chapters, it brings together some of the best activist scholars on China from around the world to explore the past, present and future of the Chinese revolution and its impact on the world.
However, all that I’ve just said notwithstanding, surely our most memorable activity in this last year was the first exclusive Friends of Socialist China delegation to the People’s Republic of China, to which I briefly referred a little earlier, and which took place from 14 to 24 April on the kind invitation of the China NGO Network for International Exchanges. 14 comrades from Britain, Ireland and the United States visited Beijing; Hangzhou and Jiaxing in Zhejiang province; and Changchun and Siping in Jilin province. A packed and exhilarating 10-day program, which saw all of us who participated learn more about China’s modernisation, its revolutionary history and its global vision of a shared future for humanity. We were especially pleased that we were able to field a diverse delegation with a considerable number of young comrades and first-time visitors to the country.
Besides this, we were able to participate in other delegations to China – to Xinjiang, as I’ve mentioned, to the World Socialism Forum in Beijing, and to Guiyang in the southwest of the country. In fact, this weekend, a comrade from our committee is attending an international seminar, again in Xinjiang.
So, this, in summary, was our main work of the last year. But it’s by no means a complete account. We have, for example, spoken at the public meetings, educationals, webinars, congresses and social events of friendly organisations, including the commemorations of Karl Marx and Claudia Jones at Highgate Cemetery; been interviewed on podcasts; given interviews to and written articles for the media; and so on.
Unfortunately, it’s not possible to mention here the hundreds of people and numerous organisations on every continent who have supported, cooperated and worked with us. But we are very grateful to all of them.
Finally, in the days we are living through, I feel it is not possible to conclude without saying something about Palestine.
When I spoke here a year ago, I said that “at this time what can only be at the forefront of our minds… is the genocidal war being waged against the Palestinian people.”
Nobody should have expected that the Palestinian people’s liberation struggle would not be long, complex, painful and protracted. But could we, even in our worst nightmares, have imagined that, a full year later, this wicked, bestial genocide would still be raging with unmitigated ferocity and cruelty.
I am sure that for those of us here, and for countless numbers of people, so long as we have breath in our bodies, we will continue to make the cause of a Free Palestine our own. Today, around the world, on the streets, on campuses, in workplaces and communities, in every language, the cry “In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians” speaks to the basic human instincts of compassion and solidarity, and to the highest interests of humanity as expressed in the quest for a community of shared future.
Thank you all and we look forward to continuing to work together in our common cause in 2025.
