Friends of Socialist China, Author at Friends of Socialist China

China-Vietnam relations: Pursuing common development while remembering shared revolutionary traditions

Tran Thanh Man, President of the National Assembly (NA) of Vietnam, visited China from October 11 to 15 at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart Zhao Leji, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and to co-chair the second session of the cooperation committee between the two countries’ legislative bodies together with him.

The Vietnamese newspaper Nhân Dân reported: “This is NA President Man’s first visit to China in his capacity as Vietnam’s top legislator. The visit aims to further implement the foreign policy set out at the 14th National Party Congress, enhance the effectiveness of cooperation between Vietnam’s National Assembly and the National People’s Congress of China, and reaffirm the pivotal role of parliamentary cooperation in the overall Vietnam-China comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.”

Tran Thanh Man met with Zhao Leji on October 12 and held the second session of their cooperation committee together.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, Zhao said that China is ready to work with Vietnam to follow the strategic guidance of the top leaders of the two parties and two countries, and push for deeper and more substantive progress in building the China-Vietnam community with a shared future.

He added that both sides should deepen practical cooperation, advance infrastructure connectivity, expand cooperation in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, the digital economy, clean energy and communications satellites, cement public support, and deepen exchanges in culture, education and sports. He also called for close coordination on multilateral affairs and joint implementation of the four global initiatives proposed by President Xi Jinping.

Tran Thanh Man said Vietnam regards its relationship with China as a strategic choice and a top priority in its foreign policy, and is ready to enhance strategic mutual trust, expand cooperation in such areas as trade, investment, infrastructure and science and technology, and intensify people-to-people and cultural exchanges.

Vietnam’s Nhân Dân newspaper added that Man congratulated China on the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and its major development achievements, including the important contributions of the NPC. He expressed confidence that, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, with General Secretary and President Xi as its core, China would achieve its goal of becoming a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful.

To deepen bilateral ties, the two sides agreed to maintain high-level exchanges and advance strategic trust, creating a firmer political foundation for cooperation. They called for more balanced and sustainable trade, high-quality investment, modern and coordinated railway connectivity, and stronger cooperation in science and technology. They also stressed the need to strengthen local-level cooperation, people-to-people exchanges, and education, culture and tourism collaboration, enhance coordination at multilateral forums, effectively manage the land border, and better control and resolve differences to maintain peace and stability at sea.

Zhao Leji proposed closer strategic coordination in digital and green economies, artificial intelligence, smart border gates and cross-border economic zones. He suggested accelerating the construction and development of railway lines connecting the two countries and linking them to the China–Europe railway network. He welcomed more Vietnamese agricultural products entering the Chinese market and encouraged Vietnam to make effective use of trade fairs hosted by China. He underscored the importance of public support for bilateral ties, calling for stronger cooperation in tourism, culture, media, healthcare and sports, particularly exchanges among young people. China also welcomed more Vietnamese students to study there.

Man met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on the same day.

According to Xinhua, reflecting “camaraderie plus brotherhood,” Li said China is willing to work with Vietnam to continue traditional friendship, enhance unity and mutual trust, expand mutually beneficial cooperation, better benefit the two peoples, and inject positive energy into promoting regional and global stability and prosperity.

Man said Vietnam extends its heartfelt congratulations on China’s new and significant achievements in economic and social development, with its economic growth rate ranking among the top of the world’s major economies and its breakthroughs in scientific and technological innovation leading the world. Vietnam has always regarded China as a top priority and a strategic choice in its foreign relations, firmly adheres to the one-China policy, and will maintain close exchanges with China at all levels in accordance with the important consensus reached by the top leaders of the two parties and two countries. The National Assembly of Vietnam attaches great importance to and highly recognises Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law and is willing to enhance exchanges of experience in governance with China, he noted.

Nhân Dân further reported that Man stressed that developing ties with China is a consistent policy, an objective requirement, a strategic choice, and a top priority in Vietnam’s foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, self-strengthening, multilateralisation and diversification of relations.

The previous day Man had met with Wang Huning, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

According to Nhân Dân, he conveyed congratulations from General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee and President To Lam and other high-ranking Vietnamese leaders on the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1. He also congratulated China on its major theoretical and practical achievements in reform, opening up and national modernisation, including the CPPCC National Committee’s contributions. He voiced confidence that under the CPC Central Committee’s leadership, with General Secretary and President Xi Jinping at its core, China will reach its goal of building a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful, contributing to common development and prosperity in the region and the world.

Wang, for his part, sent greetings to General Secretary and President Lam and other key Vietnamese leaders. He congratulated Vietnam on its major theoretical and practical achievements, which show the vitality and bright prospects of the country’s socialist cause, and affirmed support for Vietnam in achieving its development goals in the new era.

Agreeing with the guest’s proposals, Wang called for coordinated cooperation through all channels and at all levels, and an effective rollout of plans for high-level exchanges. He also urged full use of mechanisms such as the 3+3 strategic dialogue on diplomacy, national defence and security, and the bilateral cooperation steering committee. He suggested more exchanges of theory and experience in party building and national governance, closer alignment of the two countries’ quality development strategies, faster railway connectivity projects, and concrete early progress in trade, investment, smart border gates, cross-border economic cooperation zones, science and technology, artificial intelligence, digital economy and green economy.

The CPPCC values and supports friendly exchanges among people of all walks of life in the two countries, particularly the youth. He urged an effective rollout of people-to-people exchanges such as the Red Journey and the China-Vietnam Year of tourism cooperation, along with expanded cooperation in tourism, education, culture and locality-to-locality exchanges.

The two sides agreed to step up multilateral coordination and support each other in hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings in 2026 and 2027 respectively.

As part of his packed programme of engagements during his stay in Beijing, Man and his delegation visited the Museum of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

After touring the museum and receiving briefings on its exhibition areas, Man said that Vietnam had also commenced construction of the Museum of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) in Hanoi. The project is expected to be inaugurated in early 2030, marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CPV (February 3, 1930–2030). He expressed his hope that the Museum of the CPC will support Vietnam and share experience in structural planning, architectural design and the display of artefacts.

He also toured the Nanmofang township legislative liaison station in Beijing’s Chaoyang district shortly after his arrival in China.

He was briefed on effective and innovative approaches the station uses to collect public feedback on draft legal documents. This gives deputies to people’s congresses at all levels more chances to engage voters and feed public concerns into the drafting, review and adoption of policy documents.

Li Xiuling, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress, praised the visit’s significance, noting that the guest’s first stop on their China visit was at the grassroots to learn about legislative work and voter engagement mechanisms. It is important for the two countries to share experience in building socialist democracy, he said.

Describing China’s “whole-process people’s democracy”, Li said the model spans more than 70 years and covers the people’s congress system, political consultation, multiparty cooperation under the Communist Party of China (CPC) leadership, and regional ethnic autonomy. It runs through the entire cycle of elections, consultation, decision-making, implementation and oversight. He added that the model grew out of integrating Marxist principles with China’s realities and traditional culture.

Praising the model of bringing legislative work closer to grassroots communities, voters and the public in Nanmofang and Beijing at large, Man said Vietnam attaches importance to legislative work in building a socialist rule-of-law state of the people, by the people and for the people. That includes listening to experts, intellectuals, businesses, voters and the general public, especially those directly affected by policies and laws.

Besides Beijing, Man and his party visited Xi’an and Yan’an, in northwest China’s Shaanxi province.

Man met with Zhao Yide, Secretary of the Party Committee of Shaanxi province, in Xi’an on October 13. Nhân Dân noted that the province is the cradle of the Chinese revolution and holds memories of the years when President Ho Chi Minh stood shoulder to shoulder with generations of Chinese leaders in their arduous revolutionary struggle.

Zhao said President Man’s visit reflects the friendship and high regard that the Vietnamese party, state and NA attach to the Vietnam-China comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, and to ties between Vietnamese localities and Shaanxi province in particular.

Briefing the Vietnamese delegation on Shaanxi’s history, revolutionary traditions and achievements across various fields, Zhao noted the province’s deep appreciation for President Ho Chi Minh’s numerous visits to Shaanxi and to Yan’an city.

For his part, Man suggested Shaanxi and Vietnamese localities step up collaboration in the fields of science and technology, energy, hi-tech agriculture, transport infrastructure and logistics, particularly railways, quality workforce training, culture and tourism.

On October 14, Man visited the Yangjialing and Zaoyuan revolutionary sites in Yan’an city.

Nhân Dân noted that the delegation travelled there by high-speed train, adding: “The city is regarded as the cradle of China’s revolution and a symbol of resilience, solidarity and self-reliance. It also bears the imprint of Nguyen Ai Quoc, or President Ho Chi Minh, whose revolutionary activities during his time in China contributed to the Chinese revolution and the international communist movement.

“Zaoyuan lies about 8km northwest of the city centre. Together with Yangjialing, Wangjiaping, Baota Mountain and the Yan’an Revolutionary Memorial Museum, it forms a prominent complex of revolutionary sites from the period when the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was based in the city. Chairman Mao Zedong and other Chinese revolutionary leaders lived and worked there…

“Zaoyuan carries particular significance for Vietnam because President Ho Chi Minh stayed there. According to the CPC history section of China’s People’s Daily, he returned to China from the Soviet Union in the winter of 1938, travelling through Xinjiang and Xi’an before reaching Yan’an, then the CPC’s hub.

“At Zaoyuan, President Ho Chi Minh was hosted by Wang Jiaxiang, Secretary of the CPC Central Committee. He also met Mao and other Chinese leaders to discuss the revolutions in both countries.

“The site is therefore significant to the history of both revolutions, particularly the period before President Ho Chi Minh returned to lead Vietnam’s. It reflects the close ties between the two countries’ leaders and revolutionary movements. President Ho Chi Minh revisited the house in 1959 and had his photos taken there…

“Man also toured Yangjialing, which has been preserved as a venue for teaching the public about CPC history and China’s revolutionary traditions. Yangjialing is linked to a pivotal period when the CPC consolidated its ideological, political and organisational foundations during the war of resistance against Japan, while preparing for the post-war period. It remains a prominent site for political and party history education in China…

“The Vietnamese guest lauded Yan’an’s development and its efforts to preserve its ‘red address’ sites. He called on the city and Vietnamese localities to foster connectivity and people-to-people exchanges, push tourism cooperation, particularly ‘red tourism’ that follows in the footsteps of both countries’ revolutionary leaders, and work together to preserve historical and cultural sites.”

New bridge of friendship links China and DPRK

China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) held a joint ceremony on October 15 to open the new bridge connecting China’s Liaoning Province and North Pyongan Province of the DPRK.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang and DPRK Premier Pak Thae Song addressed the ceremony by video link.

Li called upon the two countries to take the opening of the new China-DPRK Yalu River bridge as an opportunity to continuously optimise port clearance, enhance connectivity, tap the potential for cooperation in border areas, and improve the well-being of the two peoples. [Editor’s Note: The river is known as the Yalu in China and the Amnok in Korea.]

“The bridge is bound to become a new landmark symbolising the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK,” he added.

Noting that the bridge is an important cross-border infrastructure project that General Secretary Xi Jinping and General Secretary Kim Jong Un have jointly cared about and promoted, Li said that China and the DPRK are friendly socialist neighbours linked by mountains and rivers, adding that at present, under the strategic guidance of the top leaders of the two parties and countries, China-DPRK relations are entering a new stage and opening a new chapter.

He went on to say Xi has pointed out that no matter how the international landscape evolves, the firm position of China’s party and government to attach great importance to the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK will remain unchanged; the firm support for Kim in leading the DPRK’s socialist cause will remain unchanged; and the determination to safeguard the common interests of both sides and maintain a favourable strategic environment will remain unchanged.

Premier Pak Thae Song said that the opening ceremony of the bridge serves as a significant occasion of not only connecting the branches of the two countries in a fresh, natural and geographical way but also firmly linking the friendly ties between the peoples of the two countries who have shared life and death for a long time.

It is the consistent stand of the DPRK government to steadily put the DPRK-China friendly and cooperative relations with socialism, the common idea, common banner and the common cause, as the core on a new strategic height in conformity with the interests and desire of the peoples of the two countries, he stressed.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) further noted that speakers from the provincial bodies of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the Communist Party of China said that the opening of the Amnok River Bridge held in October marking the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries and the entry of the Chinese People’s Volunteers into the Korean front is a clear manifestation of the DPRK-China friendly and cooperative relations dynamically developing on a new high stage thanks to the deep personal relations between respected Comrade Kim Jong Un and respected Comrade Xi Jinping and their energetic leadership.

They further expressed the will to boost bilateral exchange and cooperation for the development of the DPRK-China relations, wishing the traditional DPRK-China friendship, the common wealth of the two countries, to be eternal.

In memory of Ambassador Kojo Owusu Gyamadua Amoo-Gottfried, 19 February 1934 – 24 July 2026

Our co-editor Keith Bennett remembers his friend and comrade Kojo Amoo-Gottfried, who passed away peacefully in Ghana on July 24, 2026, at the age of 92.

His Excellency Ambassador Kojo Owusu Gyamadua Amoo-Gottfried, known to one and all simply as Kojo, was a Ghanaian patriot and public servant, a revolutionary Pan-Africanist, a Marxist, a member of the Ashanti royal family, a scientist, an Ambassador to Cuba, China, Switzerland and the United Nations in Geneva, a member of the Friends of Socialist China advisory group, a husband, father, grandfather and to me personally a much-loved friend and comrade.

Although I was aware of the fact that he had been ailing for some time, it still came as a considerable shock when I somewhat belatedly learned of his passing.

On the introduction of a mutual friend, we first met in the 1990s in Beijing, where he was serving as his country’s ambassador. We found ourselves wondering how we had not met before, considering the number of friends we had in common. But we soon made up for lost time, with the years that followed filled with numerous meetings and activities in Beijing during his period of office, in London where he had a family home and still visited regularly until his very last years, and on visits together to Durban and Hanoi.

Ambassador to China, and concurrently non-resident ambassador to Vietnam, Cambodia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, in the late 1990s, was his last job before retiring. But his close relationship with the Chinese revolution long predated this. He would often recall being at boarding school and sharing the excitement with his lifelong best friend Captain Kojo Tsikata at the news of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and their discussing what this meant for the anti-colonial struggle in Africa.

Tings Chak: How Brazil’s election could reshape relations with China

The following article by Tings Chak, Asia Co-Coordinator of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and an editor of the international edition of Wenhua Zongheng: A Journal of Contemporary Chinese Thought, examines what is at stake for China-Brazil relations in Brazil’s presidential runoff on October 25 between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro.

Over the past two decades, Brazil and China have built a political partnership that “has expanded the space for independent action among countries of the Global South”. Under Lula, this cooperation has extended to industrial development, infrastructure, science and technology – and to Brazil’s popular movements, with the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) working with Chinese institutions on agricultural mechanisation, bioinputs and AI tools for agroecology built on Chinese open-source models.

Flávio Bolsonaro, by contrast, has offered Brazil to Washington as the “solution” to its dependence on China for critical minerals, and his campaign has proposed preventing Brazil’s Pix payment system from connecting to non-Western networks. With the Trump administration proclaiming a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, Brazil – Latin America’s largest economy and a founding member of BRICS – has become “a consequential battleground in Washington’s campaign to contain China’s growing relations with the region”.

Tings notes that Chinese analysts anticipate “cold politics, hot economics” under a Flávio presidency, with commodity trade continuing but strategic cooperation deteriorating, as it did under his father. She concludes that the future of China-Brazil cooperation “will depend on the capacity of organised popular forces to build a sovereign national project and turn international cooperation into lasting changes in people’s lives”.

China elevates ties with Botswana and Togo

At the invitation of President Xi Jinping, President of the Republic of Botswana Duma Gideon Boko paid a state visit to China from October 12 to 17.

Xi Jinping held talks with his Botswanan counterpart in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on the afternoon of October 13. The two heads of state made the announcement to elevate their bilateral relationship to a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.

President Xi noted that Botswana voted in support of restoring the People’s Republic of China’s lawful seat in the United Nations in the 1970s, even before the two countries established diplomatic ties. Today, the two countries are marching side by side on the journey toward modernisation, writing a new chapter in bilateral friendship. China-Botswana friendship should shine bright and endure like diamonds. (Botswana ranks second in world diamond production after the Russian Federation.)

Xi further observed that a common direction brings people together on the same road. This year marks the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China and the 60th anniversary of the independence of Botswana. The two governing parties should strengthen cooperation, deepen experience-sharing in state governance, and foster greater convergence of ideas. (President Boko heads the Umbrella for Democratic Change, an alliance of left-wing parties including the Botswana National Front, the Botswana Movement for Democracy, the Botswana People’s Party and the Botswana Congress Party. It achieved a landslide victory in the 2024 elections, forming the first left-wing government in the country’s history.)

China, Xi added, supports Botswana in pursuing a development path suited to its national conditions. The two sides should continue to develop the framework for economic and trade cooperation and seize the new opportunities emerging from China’s zero-tariff treatment for African countries having diplomatic relations with China. China is ready to enhance cooperation with Botswana in areas such as the digital economy, agriculture and the livestock industry and carry out the Smart Education Project to support economic and social development in Botswana.

Xi put forward a four-point proposition on China-Botswana and China-Africa mining cooperation:

First, the starting principle should be African resources belonging to Africa. China stands ready to share its experience and help African countries formulate mining development plans consistent with their national conditions.

Second, the guiding philosophy should be a right approach to friendship and interests and ensuring mutual benefit. China will continue to encourage Chinese companies to enhance their operational capacity, transfer green technologies suited to Africa’s conditions, and promote South-South cooperation in mining development.

In Berlin, Africans were not at the table – in Beijing, we are

In the following speech, delivered at the Socialist China Conference 2026, Myriam Kane of the Black Liberation Alliance reflects on her visit to China in September 2025 as one of more than 70 African delegates to a China-Africa youth festival.

Starting from the 1884 Berlin Conference, where European powers carved up Africa with no African at the table, Myriam asks whether China’s engagement with Africa breaks the old colonial design or repeats it. Drawing on what she saw – from the preservation of China’s cultural heritage in the Forbidden City, to the Xiaomi electric vehicle factory, to the “photovoltaic sheep” of Qinghai’s Talatan desert, where solar power has helped lift hundreds of thousands out of poverty – she argues that development and cultural identity, and development and environmental protection, go hand in hand.

Myriam contrasts the US refusal of visas to Senegal’s women’s basketball team with China’s scholarships for Senegalese athletes preparing for the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games, and points to the projects built through China-Africa cooperation in her own country, alongside China’s extension of zero-tariff access to 53 African countries. Her conclusion is a call to action: “Use our own sun, build our own solar parks and train our own engineers… That is what it means to be anti-imperialist today.”

China’s AI rise – can jobs and education keep pace with the rise of the robots?

In the following article, Chen Jiaqi, a journalist with CGTN, looks at how China is preparing its workforce and education system for the spread of artificial intelligence and robotics. Chinese manufacturers now account for more than 97 percent of global humanoid robot shipments, and the article details the measures being taken to ensure that technology uplifts rather than displaces working people: assessing AI’s impact on jobs, expanding AI training and skills assessment, formally recognising new occupations such as embodied intelligence robot technician, and introducing new interdisciplinary university degrees.

This people-centred approach – summed up in Xi Jinping’s call to “develop AI for the positive and for good”, under human control and in the service of shared prosperity – stands in sharp contrast to that of the United States. Washington’s AI Action Plan, tellingly titled “Winning the Race”, prioritises stripping away “red tape and onerous regulation”, shows minimal concern for the social impact of the technology, and sets the goal of “unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance”. The aim is to “win AI”, so that a handful of US tech giants can extract monopoly rents from the rest of the world.

China, by contrast, treats AI as a tool for development – its own and that of the Global South – and promotes open-source models, international cooperation and global governance of the technology.

China calls out western human rights hypocrisy at UN

Sun Lei, China’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, speaking during the general debate of the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee on October 6, responded firmly to a number of Western countries, urging them to stop fabricating and spreading lies about China and stop using human rights issues for political manipulation.

Sun said that China strongly condemns and is firmly opposed to the groundless accusations and malicious smears of China’s human rights situation made by countries including the UK, Australia, Japan, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Lithuania, in their replies during the general debate of the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly.

He went on to note that these countries consider themselves superior to others and often assume the posture of self-appointed “human rights teachers,” yet they have serious human rights problems of their own, adding that these countries are in no position to lecture others on human rights, let alone make irresponsible remarks about China.

In contrast to China, which has eliminated extreme poverty, poverty has continued to worsen in the UK in recent years, he said, with over 14 million people living below the poverty line, half of whom are in “extreme poverty”.

A 2018 report by Philip Alston, then UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said 14 million people, a fifth of the UK population, lived in poverty, and four million of these were more than 50 percent below the poverty line, and 1.5 million destitute, unable to afford basic essentials.

A study by the British Social Metrics Commission in 2024 found the cost of living crisis had plunged two million more people into severe hardship since 2019, meaning more than 16 million people in total are defined as living in poverty, or 24 percent of the UK population, the highest since comparable records began in 2000.

China’s new Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law aims to promote common prosperity and development among all ethnic groups. However, by contrast, Japan has failed to fulfil its commitments to eliminate racial discrimination and has not treated the Ainu (an indigenous people living in the north of Japan) and Ryukyu (Okinawan) peoples as equal ethnic groups, leaving their survival and development under threat. In the UK, Australia and Ireland, colonialism has caused enduring harm to this day, and these countries are facing serious social problems, including racism and ethnic divisions.

And in contrast to China’s concrete efforts to promote dialogue, cooperation and more equitable global human rights governance, countries such as the UK, Australia, Japan, the Czech Republic and Lithuania frequently invoke morality yet remain indifferent to the unjust treatment suffered by the people of Palestine, Iran and Cuba. They repeatedly use human rights as a pretext to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries and impose unilateral coercive measures, infringing on the interests of developing countries and playing a highly disgraceful role, Sun pointed out.

Brits in revolution: Weaving the struggles of British and Chinese people into a community of shared future

The following is the text of a talk given by our co-editor Keith Bennett on September 23rd to a meeting organised by the Birmingham People’s History Archive and held at its offices housed in the Birmingham and Midland Institute.

With the title of Brits in Revolution, Keith introduces various British people whose lives became entwined with the Chinese revolution in various ways and in its different phases and stages and travels back and forth between Britain and China, between the Chinese revolution and progressive and working class movements in Britain, and between individuals in both countries, illustrating in this way how each influenced and reinforced the other, creating history in the process.

Starting with the first opium war waged by British imperialism against China and the Chartist movement in Britain, the first mass political expression of the modern proletariat, in the early 1840s, Keith takes us through the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the early collaboration between British and Chinese communists in the 1920s, the war of resistance against Japanese aggression, the early days of building New China and the more complicated period of the 1960s.

Inevitably these snapshots omit many great events and many individuals who richly deserve to be remembered, but Keith concludes:

“In this spirit, in going back and forth, I have tried to draw out how the role of British people in supporting and even participating in the Chinese revolution is not simply a matter of something that happened ‘over there’. Rather it represented two mutually reinforcing fronts of ultimately the same fight, a struggle whose commonality was forged through the interweaving of numerous threads in such a way that they could not actually be dissevered. And further that here we can perceive part of the makings of what Xi Jinping now calls a community of shared future for humanity.”

Hangzhou’s two transformations: frontier technology and ecological civilisation

In the following article, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez draws on a recent visit to Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, to examine how the city has become at once a centre of frontier technology – home to DeepSeek, Unitree Robotics and Alibaba – and a testing ground for ecological civilisation.

Carlos traces both transformations back to Zhejiang’s “Eight-Eight Strategy”, launched in 2003 when Xi Jinping was provincial Party secretary, and shows how public institutions have created the conditions for innovation while directing it towards wider developmental goals. He sets out the material record of the green transition – distributed solar overtaking coal, clean rivers and a restored West Lake, a metro network that has grown fivefold in seven years – while also confronting the contradiction at its heart: the AI and cloud-computing industries that make Hangzhou a technology leader are among its fastest-growing sources of electricity demand.

The direction of technological change, he concludes, is a political choice, requiring “long-term planning, public investment and institutions capable of subordinating private profit to the common good”. The article complements Gary Wilson’s recent analysis of the US chip blockade and the discussion on AI and the new quality productive forces at our recent Socialist China Conference.

Socialist China Conference 2026 in pictures

On Saturday 3 October 2026, more than 150 people gathered at the Cypriot Community Centre in Wood Green, north London, for the third annual Socialist China Conference, marking the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Across six and a half hours, an opening rally, three panels – on AI and the new quality productive forces, on China’s foreign policy and the making of a multipolar world, and on resisting the New Cold War – and a closing rally brought together activists, scholars, trade unionists and representatives of the Chinese, Cuban and Laotian embassies.

Here are some images from the day. For a full account, see our report of the conference (or the shorter version in the Morning Star); recordings of all the sessions are available on our YouTube channel.

The US blockade that helped bring down the Soviet Union is failing against China

In the following article, Gary Wilson, writing for the US Marxist newspaper Struggle-La Lucha, examines Washington’s attempt to choke off China’s access to the most advanced computer chips and chipmaking equipment, and compares it with the technology blockade that imperialism waged against the Soviet Union for four decades.

Gary recalls how, from 1949, the CoCom system barred the sale of advanced machinery, electronics and computers to the socialist countries, backed by the threat of nuclear annihilation. Forced into a ruinous arms race, the Soviet Union came late to the computer revolution, and was then pulled into a second race – in computer technology – just as the Reagan military build-up intensified. Rather than using the plan to master the new technology, the Gorbachev leadership abandoned planning altogether, opening the road to capitalist restoration.

China, the article argues, faces the same test under very different conditions. Its Five-Year Plan treats artificial intelligence as a tool of production, putting it to work in factories, hospitals, railways and schools to raise productivity across the economy. And unlike the Soviet Union, China stands deep inside the world market – the source of around one-seventh of global goods exports – so it cannot be cut off without disrupting production worldwide. Each ban slows its access to the newest technology but pushes it harder to develop its own.

Gary also highlights the material foundations of AI – chips, data centres, power grids and nuclear reactors – where China’s planned build-out contrasts sharply with a US in which private monopolies restart old reactors to feed their own data centres. And crucially, China spends less than two percent of its GDP on its military, avoiding the burden that bled the Soviet economy.

The decisive question, he concludes, is who controls the productive forces and for what purpose: private profit or society’s needs. As Gary has argued previously, a class analysis of AI is badly needed on the left.

A tale of two genocides: US congressman says it’s OK for America to sell massive bombs to Israel but not coffee in Xinjiang

On September 29 the Xinhua News Agency reported that: “International coffee chain giant Starbucks on Tuesday opened two stores in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, marking its debut in the region and the latest expansion in China, its second-largest market after the United States.

“The stores are located in Urumqi, the regional capital – one in the iconic Grand Bazaar and the other at Urumqi Tianshan International Airport…

“‘Entering Xinjiang not only marks a further expansion of our store network but also allows us to engage deeply with this vibrant market and build sincere, lasting connections with our customers there,’ Molly Liu, chief executive officer of Starbucks China, said in a written statement.”

Leaving aside that we would personally recommend China’s Luckin coffee over American Starbucks any day, this investment into Xinjiang’s thriving services sector represents one more nail in the coffin of the great ‘Xinjiang genocide’ lie. How many Starbucks franchises are being opened in Gaza or in the occupied West Bank?

Precisely for this reason, this modest investment has prompted a somewhat hysterical reaction in the United States. Responding in his regular column in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, the redoubtable Alex Lo writes:

“‘Morally bankrupt’? Was Michigan Republican John Moolenaar talking about himself? Last week, the chairman of the House Select Committee on China demanded that Starbucks ‘immediately reverse course and close its stores’…

“The way Moolenaar talked about it, you would think Starbucks was committing genocide and crimes against humanity or at least being complicit in them.

“A committee press release said: ‘This week, Starbucks opened stores in Xinjiang, the Chinese region where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is committing genocide against Uygurs and other minorities.’”

In a tone dripping with utterly well-placed and appropriate sarcasm, Alex responds:

“I don’t know, maybe the Uygurs and other minorities might sometimes want to take a break from constant oppression by Han Chinese and buy an American cuppa or a frappuccino? There is a danger, I admit, that they might be compelled to work as baristas under China’s forced labour regime.”

And adds in more serious vein: “While Moolenaar expresses outrage at Starbucks trying to sell a few more cups of coffee, he and the majority of US members of Congress, including most of those on his committee, have gone out of their way to support Israel with massive bombs that vaporised humans during the war in Gaza…

“According to an Al Jazeera investigation, Gaza civil defence teams have documented 2,842 Palestinians who ‘evaporated’ in blasts, leaving almost no remains. Experts and witnesses attribute this to thermal and thermobaric weapons. The investigation links US-made MK-84 and BLU-series munitions to these disappearances. Metal powders have reportedly been added to the explosive mix to push temperatures to 2,500-3,000 degrees Celsius (4,500-5,400 Fahrenheit).”

Seeking truth from facts he continues:

“I strongly recommend the following reports related to Palestine for Moolenaar’s reading pleasure:

Amnesty International (December 2024)
International Criminal Court (November 2024)
Human Rights Watch (December 2024)
B’Tselem (July 2025)
International Association of Genocide Scholars (August 2025)
Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention (December 2023)
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (July 2025)
United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (August 2025)”

And concludes: “The congressman has been a consistent and staunch supporter of Israel. He unfailingly supports military and foreign aid packages to the country and has publicly called for unwavering alignment with it. These include his April 2024 vote in favour of a US$26 billion US aid package designated to support Israel’s military operations.

“So, selling Israel 2,000lb bombs that vaporise women and children is perfectly fine, but selling chocolate mocha and espresso in Xinjiang? Now that’s complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity.”

From Norman Bethune and Dwarakanath Kotnis to Hussam Abu Safiya – medicine in the fight for national liberation

October 7, 2026 marked the third anniversary of the Al Aqsa Flood, when fighters of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas and other militant Palestinian resistance organisations broke out of Gaza, aptly described as the greatest concentration camp in the contemporary world, by air, land and sea, taking the war to the zionist enemy.

It also marks the third anniversary of an ongoing, relentless and pitiless genocide against the Palestinian people, distinguished from nazi barbarism only by its brazenness and boastfulness.

Amongst the myriad of statistics it could have chosen to cite on this occasion, Palestine Chronicle notes a report from Palestine’s education ministry that a total of 20,748 Palestinian students and 1,058 educational and administrative staff were killed in Gaza and the occupied West Bank during the last three years of genocide.

“The overwhelming majority of the deaths occurred in Gaza, where Israeli attacks killed 19,189 school students and 1,386 university students. Another 28,586 school students and 3,082 university students were injured.”

Another report from Gaza’s Ministry of Social Development highlights that 71,846 children have lost one or both parents during three years of Israeli genocide, while the number of widows has reached 64,413.

Hospitals, their patients and their heroic staff have been particular targets of the genocidal onslaught. In his Substack, Journal of International Solidarity, A. Shantha notes that Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was first illegally captured and interned by the Israeli military on December 27, 2024.

He notes that the health of Dr. Abu Safiya, whose dignity, courage and heroism has moved and inspired the world, has severely declined since his internment. “His weight dropped by one-third of what it previously was as he continues to be underfed and is forced to sustain brutal and barbaric physical abuse and medical negligence [at the hands of] his Israeli captors. Dr. Abu Safiya remains in Israeli captivity alongside at least 160 other medical professionals, including 20 doctors.”

In solidarity with Dr. Abu Safiya, Shantha republished on August 19, an article he originally posted on February 12, 2025, just over a month after Dr. Abu Safiya was first illegally captured and interned by the Israeli military on December 27, 2024.

He writes: “I am republishing this article as a modest attempt to join this broader chorus drawing attention to the situation of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. In particular, this article attempts to situate the events of Dr. Abu Safiya’s abduction and internment within the broader context of a protracted anti-colonial national liberation struggle and seeks to address the role played by healthcare workers in resisting the colonial drive to de-develop and genocidally lay waste to indigenous societies. This article looks at the case of Palestine alongside the historical context of China’s national liberation struggle and two doctors – Dr. Norman Bethune (Canada) and Dr. Dwarakanath Kotnis (India) – who were internationalists and sought to contribute to China’s struggle for sovereignty and, ultimately, the Chinese people’s collective right to life.”

This year also marks the 90th anniversary of the victorious conclusion of the Long March and Shantha writes:

“The 1930s were a tumultuous decade in recent Chinese history. The Communist Party of China (CPC) and the movement it led suffered a major strategic setback in the civil war against the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang – KMT), resulting in the need for the Communists to retreat from a base area in the south to another base area up in the north. This retreat became known as the Long March. Freedom fighters literally walked approximately 10,000 km from Jiangxi to Shaanxi while continuing to fend off attacks from the KMT. This year-long… journey started with 100,000 people while only around 8,000 reached Shaanxi – many perished as a result of war, exhaustion, and hunger, while many others discontinued and stayed in villages along the route. The sacrifices made during this year-long ordeal for national liberation are unimaginable.”

He further notes: “One could argue that both Dr. Bethune and Dr. Kotnis would be much less known (if at all) in Canada and India respectively, if it were not for China’s commitment to keeping their memory alive domestically as well as diplomatically. This commitment on the part of the Chinese people indicates an understanding of the immense hardship and sacrifice required to achieve national liberation. There is an understanding that these two individuals – by virtue of their medical expertise – contributed significantly to the Chinese people’s collective struggle for the right to life, in opposition to imperial Japan’s desire to deprive them of that right.

“One would wish that the unfathomable sacrifices made in the Chinese national liberation struggle, and those of the South Asian, West Asian, African, and Caribbean liberation struggles of the mid-20th century remained relegated to that era. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The imperialist force from which these liberation struggles attempted to break has – though weakened – transformed its mechanisms of domination in order to continue its hegemony. [These] kinds of unfathomable sacrifices… continue to be made at the hands of imperialism, most acutely in Palestine today.”

And despite three years of genocide, supported by the most powerful imperialist states, the heroic Palestinian people, of whom Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is an outstanding symbol and representative, remain unbroken, undefeated and unbowed. The zionist entity is unable to secure control over Gaza. And the Israeli regime and its backers have never been more isolated and more hated across an entire world whose peoples stand with Palestine. As the Irish hunger strike martyr Bobby Sands, himself much loved in Palestine, wrote in his Prison Diary:

“If they aren’t able to destroy the desire for freedom, they won’t break you. They won’t break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart.”

Communist Party of Ireland celebrates China’s national day

On 22 September, the Chinese Embassy in Ireland hosted a reception marking the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

In an article published in the October edition of Socialist Voice, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Ireland (CPI), Gearóid Ó Machail reports on the party’s participation in the event, alongside more than 400 guests, and adds:

“The CPI’s engagement with the People’s Republic of China extends well beyond the annual National Day celebrations. In early October, the Party will co-sponsor and send a delegate to the Friends of Socialist China conference in London.”

Gearóid also writes: “Later in October, the CPI will host a high-level delegation from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) at our Party offices… For the Communist Party of Ireland, these engagements reflect our longstanding commitment to international solidarity and to the development of cordial relations between Irish and Chinese communists. The CPI has consistently supported the right of every nation to determine its own path of development, free from external interference, and stands in solidarity with the Chinese people in their remarkable progress in building socialism and modernisation under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.”

The website of the Chinese Embassy in Ireland notes that among the more than 400 attendees at the reception were Minister of State Noel Grealish, Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces Rossa Mulcahy, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, government officials, TDs and Senators, Lord Mayors and Cathaoirleachs, friends from various sectors, and diplomatic envoys to Ireland.

Ambassador Zhao Xiyuan vividly outlined the significant contributions of the Communist Party of China in advancing Chinese modernisation, promoting ethnic unity and progress, and advancing global governance. He emphasised China’s readiness to work with Ireland to foster the healthy and stable development of China-Ireland and China-EU relations, and to join hands in building a community with a shared future for humanity.

Minister of State Grealish shared his experiences from three visits to China, noting the close high-level exchanges and deep people-to-people friendship between China and Ireland, as well as the fruitful cooperation in areas such as the economy, agriculture, and education. He stressed the importance of further deepening practical cooperation between the two countries.

Meanwhile, the October edition of Socialist Voice also carried a letter from Graham Harrington addressing the question of relations between China and Cuba. Graham writes:

“Many seem to believe that China holds the silver bullet for helping the Cuban Revolution, struggling at the moment against the intense and vicious US blockade, and threats of military invasion. This is a simplistic criticism of Beijing that essentially amounts to wanting China to do a deus ex machina and break the blockade at one stroke. Reality is more complex.”

He further notes: “For China to directly break the US blockade in the way people are calling for… would also be directly provoking imperialism to respond by doing similar on China’s Taiwan, possibly causing war… China has indeed stepped up with meaningful political support for Cuba, beyond just rhetoric condemning the blockade, with efforts in transforming Cuba’s energy matrix away from oil, towards solar power, supply of spare parts for the necessary machinery and supply of needed food items.

“The Cuban Revolution and people are putting up a great struggle and need concrete political solidarity, not tokenistic gestures that would make leftists in the imperial core feel better about China. The emphasis should not be put on criticising China’s supposed lack of action, but instead on putting it up to the Irish government, and certain Irish opposition parties, who all claim to be against the blockade but say nothing to their friends in Washington about it, and take no meaningful political action on challenging the blockade.”

China Daily reports on the Socialist China Conference 2026

China Daily has published a report by its London correspondent Xing Yi on our third annual Socialist China Conference, held in London on 3 October to mark the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

The report notes that speakers from left-wing and anti-war organisations, embassies and academia called for China’s peaceful rise, its contribution to the Global South and its vision of a shared future for humanity to be better understood in the West. It summarises the conference’s three panels – on AI and technology, on China’s foreign policy and the making of a multipolar world, and on resisting the New Cold War – and covers the launch of the book China’s Foreign Policy and the Making of a Multipolar World, edited by Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez.

For a fuller account of the day, see our own report of the conference. Recordings of all the sessions are available on our YouTube channel.

DPRK commentary: Taiwan’s return to China is a matter of time

On October 7, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) published a commentary written by Kim Myong Chol, a well-known international affairs analyst in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), accusing the United States of acting rashly over the question of China’s Taiwan.

Noting that the US and its allies constantly speak of “peace and stability” in the Taiwan Strait, Kim notes that in fact the US has “systematically destroyed regional stability and persistently escalated the situation”.

The US sale of fighter jets to the island province is another typical example of the US’ peculiar contribution to “peace and stability” of the Taiwan Strait:

“This is nothing but a shameless act of planting a bomb at the gate of other’s house and asserting that the bomb is for ensuring the security of the house.

“When the People’s Republic of China and the US established their diplomatic relations, the latter recognised the government of the former as the only legitimate government of China and Taiwan as a part of the former. But the US made it its policy and obligation to sell weapons to Taiwan, irrespective of the change of its administration, and has supported the separatist forces pursuing ‘Taiwan’s independence’ and challenging the ‘one-China principle’.”

Pointing out that the Taiwan issue is an internal affair of China, so how to settle it is entirely the affair of the Chinese people, and no outside forces have the right to interfere in it, the commentary adds:

“The US should think twice whether it is ready to stand in frontal confrontation with the powerful national power of the People’s Republic of China for the security of Taiwan and whether it can cope with its consequences. If it is worried about the consequences, it had better think and act rationally.

“Justice is not afraid of confrontation with injustice. No one should question the ability and will of the People’s Republic of China to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity and core interests. China’s effort to retake Taiwan is an indispensable and just sacred cause for making abnormalities normality, making injustice justice and making instability stability… Taiwan’s return to China is a matter of time.”

“We need to see China as it actually is” – China Daily hosts ‘Vision China’ in London

Intended to showcase vibrant and vivid examples of people-to-people links, China Daily organised a ‘Vision China’ event, held at the global headquarters of the Institution of Civil Engineers in central London, on September 17, with the theme, ‘Listen to Each Other, Open New Horizons’.

With opening addresses by Qu Yingpu, publisher and editor-in-chief of China Daily, and Zhao Fei, chargé d’affaires ad interim of the Chinese Embassy in London, the event also heard from renowned British Sinologist Frances Wood, who is also a vice president of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU). For Frances, mutual learning was not just a ‘good-to-have’, but also central to her nearly 35 years of work at the British Library, which involved the conservation and digitisation of some 7,000 complete manuscripts and 6,000 fragments of ancient scrolls from Dunhuang, in northwest China’s Gansu province, dating from the third to the 10th century CE.

Michael Spence, president and provost of University College London (UCL), noted the contributions of the college’s 15,000 Chinese students and its many more Chinese alumni, as well as its role in promoting Chinese language learning in schools across the country. Listing some daunting global challenges – from fighting climate change to governing artificial intelligence – Spence said he does not see any “reasons for pessimism”, because what British and Chinese students, scholars and researchers have already achieved through collaboration is “proof of what is possible”.

Other speakers included Chen Junyan, winner of the second prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2024, Mike Longhurst, a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and Richard Trainor, provost of the Rhodes Trust at the University of Oxford.

Also addressing the event was Ondřej Dostál, a member of the European Parliament from Czechia (Czech Republic), who began by noting with reference to his country’s socialist period: “I was born in Czechoslovakia, which was never a colonial power, but always helped the developing countries across the world with technologies and education.”

Referring to how times are changing, he continued: “When I was eight, we had elections and I remember seeing posters: ‘With the Soviet Union. Forever and never otherwise.’ When I was eleven, the Soviet Union was no more.”

Disillusioning experiences followed with the United States and the European Union, however: “I first visited China in 2008 to attend a conference on health law.

“After I was elected to the European Parliament, I decided to visit China again. I had the honour of being the only Member of the European Parliament present at China’s Victory Day parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the victory over fascism. [On September 3, 2025.] And, just over a month ago, on 15 August, I laid flowers at Chairman Mao’s statue in Shaoshan, and saw, not only in the museum, but also in real life, what China has achieved over a mere three generations.

“I saw the incredible development of China in cities such as Shanghai, Hangzhou, Changsha and Ningbo. I saw how China has become the world’s leader in innovation, patents and high-quality productive forces and in technologies that will shape our future.”

But there is still “an enormous gap between the real China and perceptions of China in the West”.

Dostál thinks there are two reasons for that:

The speed of China’s growth has been extraordinary. For many people in the West, their perceptions have simply failed to keep pace with reality.
But there is also “the purposeful smearing of China in parts of our political discourse and media, designed to prevent our friendship and mutually profitable engagement. And to contain China’s rise. It is the narrative of a ‘China as a threat’.”

He argues: “We need to understand China as it actually is. Its achievements and its contradictions. Its history and its aspirations. Its government and its people.

“Only when we see China as it actually is, can Europe formulate a China policy based on reality rather than projection.”

From coast to coast: China’s national day marked in Canada

In the following article, Arnold August, Canadian author, political activist and an active contributor to the work of Friends of Socialist China, takes the recent celebration of the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China as an occasion to assess the prospects for both enhanced bilateral relations and greater people-to-people friendship.

This year’s anniversary found echoes right across the vast land of Canada, from Prince Edward Island in the Atlantic to British Columbia facing the Pacific. Arnold lays particular emphasis on the role of Canada’s Chinese community, who, often in the face of discrimination and oppression, have, particularly since mass settlement began in the 1850s, made such an important contribution to building and developing their adopted nation and at the same time acting as the sturdy bridge of friendship back to their ancestral homeland.

He also assesses the recent positive developments in the relations between Canada and China, following a somewhat grim period, and especially since Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit in January this year. Ambassador to Canada Wang Di provides a comprehensive survey of the present state of the relationship in an article contributed to a special supplement of The Hill Times. The Ambassador’s article is reproduced in full in the body of the article below.

Finally, Arnold notes: “Should this new situation mean we should still be careful not to overestimate Canada’s current positive role, since there are always pressures to throw a wrench into this present trend? Yes, it is right to be cautious. On the other hand, should one underestimate the Carney government’s role? The answer to this is no.”

Socialist China Conference 2026: another landmark in building friendship and solidarity with China

On Saturday 3 October 2026, Friends of Socialist China held its third annual Socialist China Conference at the Cypriot Community Centre in Wood Green, north London, to mark the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. More than 150 people attended, and a remarkable number stayed for the full six and a half hours.

Alongside the opening and closing rallies, there were three panels: on artificial intelligence and the new quality productive forces; on China’s foreign policy and the making of a multipolar world (launching the new book of that name); and on resisting the New Cold War.

Opening rally

Andreas Grigoriou, Secretary of AKEL (Progressive Party of Working People of Cyprus) in Britain, welcomed everyone on behalf of the Cypriot Community Centre. Chairing the opening rally, Professor Radhika Desai of the University of Manitoba took issue with the currently fashionable description of our moment as a Gramscian interregnum – loosely paraphrased as a ‘time of monsters’, in place of Gramsci’s ‘morbid symptoms’ – in which the old is dying and the new cannot be born. The old North Atlantic world is certainly dying, she said, but the new world is not struggling to be born: it is already being actively constructed, and socialist China is leading that process. China demonstrates in practice what capitalism insists is impossible: that prosperity and justice can be planned at scale, with markets harnessed through regulation rather than left to rule.

Jiang Zhouteng, Minister Counsellor at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the UK, said his country had produced two miracles rarely seen in the world – rapid economic development and long-term social stability – citing fourteen consecutive five-year plans completed and the 15th now begun, and a contribution to global economic growth that exceeded 35 percent in 2025.

Pablo Ginarte Sampedro, First Secretary for Political Affairs of the Cuban Embassy, outlined what is the hardest period in Cuba’s modern history: eight collapses of the national grid this year, and more than 100,000 patients – among them 11,000 children – waiting for surgery delayed by the blockade. He praised the Chinese contribution of 900 megawatts of solar generation, 144 solar parks and 10,000 household photovoltaic systems, all of which has lifted the renewable share of Cuba’s electricity from around three percent to 21 percent in the space of a single year. “The United States cannot blockade the sun”, he remarked. For Cuba, multipolarity is not an abstraction but the difference between being able to survive and being crushed by imperialism.

Mick Wallace, a former MEP (Member of the European Parliament) for Ireland South, asked whether war is inevitable, and answered that it is not: the peoples of Europe and of the Global South do not want war, and neither does China – which matters, because China is the new big player, and the world is a different place both for its rise and for the approach it takes. China has not dropped a bomb on anyone in 47 years. While it now takes more minerals out of Africa than Europe and the US combined, there is no coercion involved, and it invests dramatically in infrastructure: a couple of years ago, in the same month that the US completed its 29th military base on the African continent, the Chinese completed their 29th major infrastructure project. He noted too that China has been consistent in upholding the UN Charter at a time when the West has effectively abandoned it.

By video from Beijing, renowned CGTN journalist Li Jingjing conveyed the atmosphere of the anniversary flag-raising in Tiananmen Square, drawing attention to the second slogan on the rostrum, too often forgotten: “Long live the great unity of the people of the world.”

Czech MEP Ondřej Dostál also sent a video greeting, observing that socialism with Chinese characteristics has carried China in three generations from utmost poverty to today’s success story.