June 2026 - Friends of Socialist China

Socialist and anti-colonial movements laid groundwork for multipolarity

The following article, by Gregory E. Williams, argues that we can’t understand multipolarity through an international relations or geopolitics lens alone; it is primarily a class question.

The post-1991 “unipolar moment” wasn’t simply the absence of a rival superpower. It was a counter-revolutionary opening for the global capitalist class – Wall Street ascendant, the IMF and World Bank disciplining the Global South, Reagan and Thatcher austerity at home, an unbroken line of attack on the working class running from there down to Musk’s DOGE cuts.

And the multipolar trajectory we witness today has its origins in the revolutions of the twentieth century: the Bolshevik Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the wave of national liberation movements from Algeria to Vietnam, Bandung 1955, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the long resistance in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen. China’s industrial power today is the inheritance of 1949. Iran’s defiance is the inheritance of 1979.

The class character of the two camps isn’t symmetrical. The forces driving towards the defeat of US-led imperialism represent the working class and the oppressed peoples of the Global South.

Brazil’s Lula hails China-developed surgical robot as ‘incredible’

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently performed a simulated surgery from 1,400 kilometres away, using a Chinese-built Toumai MT-1000 surgical robot – the world’s only commercial remote surgery system supporting all major specialties. He remarked: “It is incredible to see up close how innovation can expand access, save lives, and further strengthen Brazil’s Unified Health System.”

Brazil’s Unified Health System is one of the largest free, universal public health systems on the planet. Chinese surgical-robotics technology, developed by Shanghai MicroPort MedBot, is being integrated in the service of a public, free-at-the-point-of-use system. At the cancer hospital Lula visited, annual patient throughput has already risen from around 400 to 680 since the Toumai was installed.

China is now Brazil’s largest trading partner, with two-way trade of around $188 billion in 2024. As Lula has put it, China is Brazil’s “best partner.” This cooperation goes well beyond soybeans and other primary commodities; it includes assisting Brazil’s industrial strategy and working closely on cutting-edge medical technology.

China and DPRK reject Quad moves to stoke tension in the Asia-Pacific

The foreign ministers of the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) met in the Indian capital New Delhi on May 26. This US-led body which also comprises Japan, Australia and India plays a provocative role in US imperialism’s attempts to encircle and contain China as well as other socialist countries and anti-imperialist forces in the Asia-Pacific region.

On May 27, the Xinhua News Agency released a commentary stressing the need to guard against what it called the Quad’s “bloc politics”, noting that its members had “again hyped maritime issues related to the East and South China Seas.”

It added: “In recent years, nearly every joint statement issued after Quad foreign ministers’ meetings has reiterated these themes. Yet such patronising rhetoric about safeguarding so-called ‘freedom of navigation’ cannot obscure the reality that the bloc itself has become a source of turbulence, fueling tensions and deepening confrontation in the region.

“At a time when most Asia-Pacific countries are focused on economic recovery and regional integration, the Quad appears to be moving in the opposite direction by unveiling a raft of new measures — a move widely seen as driven by a Cold War mentality aimed at containing China’s development.”

According to Xinhua: “While the Quad foreign ministers voiced concern over regional peace and stability, few will overlook the irony that the war against Iran launched by Washington is itself undermining supply-chain resilience across the Asia-Pacific.

“Regional economies such as India — also a Quad member — are already bearing the brunt of the resulting turmoil in global energy markets. In the meantime, the still-undecided date for the Quad leaders’ summit offers a glimpse into the grouping’s growing disarray.”

However, it warned that “the world should still stay vigilant against countries like Japan [attempting] to use this bloc as a cover to hype up groundless security concerns in the region for its own militarist agenda… What the region needs is cooperative frameworks that prioritise development, mutual trust and shared prosperity over ideological alignment and geopolitical calculation. The Quad should recognise that Asia’s future lies in cooperation, not confrontation.”

The following day, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported the answers given by a spokesperson for the foreign ministry of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) regarding the meeting.

The spokesperson noted that the joint statement issued by the meeting “not only seriously distorted the immediate and urgent challenges and threats faced by the countries in the Asia-Pacific region but also clearly exposed the hostile intention against specific countries.

“Quad talked about the strengthening of cooperation while expressing ‘concern’ over the situation in the South Sea and East Sea of China. It is aimed at justifying Japan’s moves for rearmament and Australia’s possession of a nuclear submarine, which are arousing concern of the international community.”

They continued: “In particular, the US-led Quad members took issue with the DPRK’s legitimate exercise of sovereign rights, calling for ‘denuclearisation’. This goes to prove that Quad is nothing but a political and diplomatic tool serving the US strategy for unipolar domination… The Foreign Ministry of the DPRK resolutely denounces and rejects the US-led Quad’s hostile stand against the DPRK and other regional countries and strongly demands that it drop its attempt to escalate inter-camp confrontation destroying regional peace and stability.”