Author: Friends of Socialist China

Xi Jinping: Building a China-Vietnam Community with a Shared Future

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s December 12-13 state visit to Vietnam has been an historic one, not only in terms of promoting good neighbourly and friendly bilateral relations, but especially in stressing the two countries’ common adherence to socialism, strengthening the unity and solidarity of the socialist countries and hence the position of socialism in the world.

To coincide with his arrival in Vietnam, President Xi contributed an article to Nhan Dan, the daily newspaper of the Communist Party of Vietnam. In opening, the Chinese leader notes:

“It will be my third visit to this beautiful country since I became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and President of the People’s Republic of China. I feel that I am already immersed in the warmth that people would only have when visiting relatives and neighbours.”

He continues: “China and Vietnam are connected by mountains and rivers. We enjoy cultural proximity, cherish the same ideals, and have a shared future ahead of us. Inspired by common visions, convictions and empathy, Comrade Mao Zedong, Comrade Ho Chi Minh and other older-generation leaders of our two parties and countries jointly cultivated the China-Vietnam traditional friendship featuring ‘camaraderie plus brotherhood.’ We stood together wholeheartedly and supported each other in pursuing national independence and liberation. In advancing socialism, we shared our experience and expanded our cooperation, writing together a historic chapter of China-Vietnam friendship.”

Noting that 2023 marks the 15th anniversary of the China-Vietnam comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, Xi writes: “No matter how the global environment has changed, our two parties and countries have worked together to uphold peace and tranquility, pursue development and cooperation, and promote prosperity and progress. We have found a promising path of jointly building a community with a shared future for humanity.” He adds that “leaders of our two parties and countries have visited each other frequently like relatives.”

Drawing attention to their common interests and mutually beneficial cooperation, Xi points out that: “China has long been Vietnam’s largest trading partner, and Vietnam is China’s biggest trading partner in ASEAN and the fourth largest globally.” Giving a specific example, he writes: “Vietnam’s first urban light rail project, the Cat Linh-Ha Dong metro line, which was built by a Chinese company, has served nearly 20 million passenger trips so far, making travels in Hanoi more convenient.”

Having observed that “building a community with a shared future for humanity should start from Asia,”, Xi continues: “Vietnam’s friendship with China featuring ‘camaraderie plus brotherhood’ is profound indeed. The CPC and the Chinese government always take it as a priority in our neighbourhood diplomacy to develop relations with Vietnam. We sincerely hope that our two nations will always hold dear to the hearts our traditional friendship, always keep in mind our shared visions and missions, advance together along the socialist path, and steadily promote the building of a community with a shared future that carries strategic significance… It is important that we keep strategic communication at high levels to ensure that the ship of China-Vietnam relations can break waves and keep making steady progress. We should firmly support each other in pursuing the socialist path suited to our respective national realities… We need to deepen exchanges on the theory and practices of socialist development, fend off external risks and challenges together, and ensure steady and sustained progress in our socialist endeavours.”

Stressing the need to properly manage differences, Xi writes that: “Both sides need to act on the common understandings reached by the leaders of our two parties and countries, properly manage differences on maritime issues, and jointly look for mutually acceptable solutions. Both should bear in mind the long-term well-being of our peoples, and stay committed to striving for mutual benefit and win-win cooperation.”

The following is the full text of President Xi’s article. It was originally published on the website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

I will soon pay a state visit to the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam at the invitation of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) Nguyen Phu Trong and President Vo Van Thuong. It will be my third visit to this beautiful country since I became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and President of the People’s Republic of China. I feel that I am already immersed in the warmth that people would only have when visiting relatives and neighbors.

China and Viet Nam are connected by mountains and rivers. We enjoy cultural proximity, cherish the same ideals, and have a shared future ahead of us. Inspired by common visions, convictions and empathy, Comrade Mao Zedong, Comrade Ho Chi Minh and other older-generation leaders of our two parties and countries jointly cultivated the China-Viet Nam traditional friendship featuring “camaraderie plus brotherhood.” We stood together wholeheartedly and supported each other in pursuing national independence and liberation. In advancing socialism, we shared our experience and expanded our cooperation, writing together a historic chapter of China-Viet Nam friendship.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the China-Viet Nam comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership. No matter how the global environment has changed, our two parties and countries have worked together to uphold peace and tranquility, pursue development and cooperation, and promote prosperity and progress. We have found a promising path of jointly building a community with a shared future for mankind.

We have conducted exchanges with mutual trust. Leaders of our two parties and countries have visited each other frequently like relatives. I had close interactions with General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong through the year. We jointly drew up a blueprint for China-Viet Nam relations in the new era from a strategic and long-term perspective, adding new dimensions to the relationship and raising it up to a new stage. I met with President Vo Van Thuong, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, and permanent member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPV Truong Thi Mai, who came to China for bilateral visits or international conferences. The two sides held the session of the steering committee for bilateral cooperation, the party-to-party theoretical symposium, the conference on crime control between the two public security ministries, and other meetings under bilateral mechanisms. Interagency and subnational cooperation was getting ever closer.

Continue reading Xi Jinping: Building a China-Vietnam Community with a Shared Future

Marxian Ecology, East and West: Joseph Needham and a non-Eurocentric view of the origins of China’s ecological civilisation

We are pleased to reproduce the below article by John Bellamy Foster, editor of the prestigious socialist journal, Monthly Review, who is also professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, concerning the contributions of the late Dr. Joseph Needham (1900-1995) to the understanding of the deep roots of China’s views on an ecological civilisation in particular and the dialectical nature of much of traditional Chinese philosophy and culture more generally. The article is especially important in that, whilst the contribution of Needham, who, at the time of his death was described by Britain’s Independent newspaper as “possibly the greatest scholar since Erasmus”, to the understanding of science and civilisation in China, the title of his monumental, multi-volume, lifelong work, remains known in some relevant academic circles, for example through the work of the Needham Research Institute, and somewhat more generally through a popular biography by Simon Winchester, his lifelong Marxism, and his significant contributions to Marxist theory, have been all but forgotten.

Bellamy Foster begins by posing the question as to why the most developed version of ecological Marxism is to be found today in China and argues:

“The answer is that there is a much more complex dialectical relation between East and West with respect to materialist dialectics and critical ecology than has been generally supposed, one that stretches back over millennia.”

He further explains that:

“Materialist and dialectical conceptions of nature and history do not start with Karl Marx. The roots of ‘organic naturalism’ and ‘scientific humanism,’ according to the great British Marxist scientist and Sinologist Joseph Needham (李約瑟), author of Science and Civilisation in China, can be traced to the sixth to third centuries BCE both in ancient Greece, beginning with the pre-Socratics and extending to the Hellenistic philosophers, and in ancient China, with the emergence of Daoist and Confucian philosophers during the Warring States Period of the Zhou Dynasty.”

In ‘Within the Four Seas: The Dialogue of East and West’, a 1969 book by Needham, the author noted “the absolute alacrity with which ‘dialectical materialism’ was taken up in China during the Chinese Revolution… The Marxian materialist dialectic, with its deep-seated ecological critique rooted in ancient Epicurean materialism, was in Needham’s view, so closely akin to Chinese Daoist and Confucian philosophies as to create a strong acceptance of Marxian philosophical views in China, particularly since China’s own perennial philosophy was in this roundabout way integrated with modern science. If Daoism was a naturalist philosophy, Confucianism was associated, Needham wrote, with ‘a passion for social justice.'”

Bellamy Foster further notes that: “The Needham thesis, as presented here, can also throw light on the spurious proposition, recently put forward by cultural theorist Jeremy Lent, author of The Patterning Instinct, that the Chinese conception of ecological civilisation is derived entirely from China’s own traditional philosophy, rather than being influenced by Marxism. Lent’s argument fails to acknowledge that ecological civilisation as a critical category was first introduced by Marxist environmentalists in the Soviet Union in its closing decades, and immediately adopted by Chinese thinkers, who were to develop it more fully.”

He acknowledges that, “of course, the Needham thesis may seem obscure at first from the usual standpoint of the Western left”, one reason being a “deep Eurocentrism characteristic of contemporary Marxism in the West, associated with the systematic downplaying of colonialism and imperialism.”

But, also citing the work of the late Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin, Bellamy Foster quotes Needham as explaining that “the basic fallacy of Europocentrism is therefore the tacit assumption that because modern science and technology, which grew up indeed in post-Renaissance Europe, are universal, everything else European is universal also.” However, Bellamy Foster continues:

“Marxist thought and socialism in general have always been radically opposed to Eurocentrism, understood as the ideology of Western colonialism. This is as true of Marx and Frederick Engels, particularly in their later years, as it was of V.I. Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. In the twentieth century, moreover, the impetus for revolution shifted to the Global South and its struggle against imperialism, generating in the process new Marxist analyses in the works of figures as distinct as Mao Zedong, Amílcar Cabral, and Che Guevara, all of whom insisted on the need for a world revolution.”

Whilst it is possible to point to traces of European ethnocentrism in some of Marx’s early work, Bellamy Foster notes that, by the late 1850s, he had “become increasingly focused on the critique of colonialism, actively supporting anti-colonial rebellions, and progressively more concerned with analysing the material and cultural conditions of non-Western societies.” This was “further facilitated by the ‘revolution in ethnological time’ with the discovery of prehistory and the rise of anthropological studies, occurring in tandem with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.” In this regard, Bellamy Foster draws a line of demarcation with the recent influential work, ‘Marx in the Anthropocene‘ by the Japanese Marxist Kohei Saito.

Bellamy Foster draws out the connection between Needham’s pioneering work and Xi Jinping’s thoughts on this issue, citing Chinese scholar Huang Chengliang explaining that “the theoretical origins of Xi Jinping’s thought on Ecological Civilisation can be traced to five sources: (1) Marxist philosophy, integrating “the three fundamental theories of ‘dialectics of history, dialectical materialism and dialectics of nature’”; (2) traditional Chinese ecological wisdom on “[human]-nature unity and the law of nature”; (3) the actual historical context of ecological governance in China in response to the ecological crisis; (4) struggles to develop a progressive and ecological model of sustainable development; and (5) the articulation of ecological civilisation as the governing principle of the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

He concludes:

“In Xi’s analysis, the traditional Chinese emphasis on the harmony of humanity and nature, or the view that ‘the human and heaven are united in one,’ is wedded to Marxian ecological views with a seamlessness that can only be explained in terms of Needham’s thesis of the correlative development of organic materialism in both the East and West, with Marxism as the connecting link. From this perspective, the Chinese notion of ecological civilisation, due to its overall theoretical coherence and coupled with China’s rise in general, is likely to play an increasingly prominent role in the development of ecological Marxism worldwide. As Needham wrote: ‘China has in her time learnt much from the rest of the world; now perhaps it is time for the nations and the continents to learn again from her.’”

This article, first published in Monthly Review, is based on a talk presented online to the School of Marxism, Shandong University, in Jinan, in March 2023 and was revised and expanded from an original published version, printed in International Critical Thought, a journal of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Ecological materialism, of which ecological Marxism is the most developed version, is often seen as having its origins exclusively within Western thought. But if that is so, how do we explain the fact that ecological Marxism has been embraced as readily (or indeed, more readily) in the East as in the West, leaping over cultural, historical, and linguistic barriers and leading to the current concept of ecological civilization in China? The answer is that there is a much more complex dialectical relation between East and West with respect to materialist dialectics and critical ecology than has been generally supposed, one that stretches back over millennia.

Materialist and dialectical conceptions of nature and history do not start with Karl Marx. The roots of “organic naturalism” and “scientific humanism,” according to the great British Marxist scientist and Sinologist Joseph Needham (李約瑟), author of Science and Civilization in China, can be traced to the sixth to third centuries BCE both in ancient Greece, beginning with the pre-Socratics and extending to the Hellenistic philosophers, and in ancient China, with the emergence of Daoist and Confucian philosophers during the Warring States Period of the Zhou Dynasty.1 As Samir Amin indicated in his Eurocentrism, the “philosophy of nature [as opposed to metaphysics] is essentially materialist” and constituted a “key breakthrough” in tributary modes of production, both East and West, beginning in the fifth century BCE.2

In Within the Four Seas: The Dialogue of East and West in 1969, Needham noted the absolute alacrity with which “dialectical materialism” was taken up in China during the Chinese Revolution and how this was treated as a great mystery in the West. Nevertheless, the sense of mystery, he contended, did not extend in the same way to the East itself. He wrote: “I can almost imagine Chinese scholars,” confronted with Marxian materialist dialectics, “saying to themselves ‘How astonishing: this is very like our own philosophia perennis integrated with modern science at last come home to us.’”3 The Marxian materialist dialectic, with its deep-seated ecological critique rooted in ancient Epicurean materialism, was in Needham’s view, so closely akin to Chinese Daoist and Confucian philosophies as to create a strong acceptance of Marxian philosophical views in China, particularly since China’s own perennial philosophy was in this roundabout way integrated with modern science. If Daoism was a naturalist philosophy, Confucianism was associated, Needham wrote, with “a passion for social justice.”4

The Needham convergence thesis—or simply the Needham thesis, as I am calling it here—was thus that Marxist materialist dialectics had a special affinity with Chinese organic naturalism as represented especially by Daoism, which was similar to the ancient Epicureanism that lay at the foundations of Marx’s own materialist conception of nature. Like other Marxist scientists and cultural figures associated with what has been called the “second foundation of Marxism,” centered in Britain in the mid-twentieth century, Needham saw Epicureanism as providing many of the initial theoretical principles on which Marxism, as a critical-materialist philosophy, was based.5 It was the similar evolution of organic materialism East and West—but which, in the case of Marxism, was integrated with modern science—that explained dialectical materialism’s profound impact in China.6

Continue reading Marxian Ecology, East and West: Joseph Needham and a non-Eurocentric view of the origins of China’s ecological civilisation

British and US hypocrisy over Chagos Islands exposes the true nature of their ‘values-based alliance’

The following article, which originally appeared in the Global Times on 9 December 2023, exposes the utter hypocrisy of the US and Britain in relation to their supposed ‘values-based alliance’ and its role in upholding a ‘rules-based international order’.

The article discusses the recent press conference by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, at which Cameron refused to say whether Britain would return its Chagos Islands colony to Mauritius – as required by international law – and Blinken said that Washington “recognises UK sovereignty” over the territory. As the author points out: “The Chagos Islands do not belong to the UK; they belong to Mauritius. This has been formally determined by a UN resolution and a ruling of the International Court of Justice. It is also the general consensus of the international community and there is no dispute about it.”

Britain split the Chagos archipelago from Mauritius in 1965 in advance of the latter’s independence, essentially so that it could fulfil a promise to lease Diego Garcia – the largest of the islands – to the US as an airbase. Incidentally, this thoroughly unscrupulous act was carried out by Harold Wilson’s Labour government. The approximately 2,000 indigenous inhabitants of the islands were forcibly relocated to Mauritius and the Seychelles.

Mauritius has long fought for the return of Chagos to its sovereignty, and the Chagossian people have long fought for the right to return to their homeland. In 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled that Britain’s separation of the Chagos Islands from Mauritius was illegal, and ordered the UK to return the territory to Mauritius as soon as possible. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution by large majority calling for the same (the only six countries to vote against the resolution were Britain, the US, Australia, Israel, Hungary, and the Maldives).

The author notes that Diego Garcia has become an “‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ for the US military in the Indian Ocean. It has been used for bombing missions in Afghanistan and Iraq and plays a crucial role in the later-introduced ‘Indo-Pacific strategy'”. Meanwhile, bizarrely, Britain and the US “argue that the island is crucial for the US, so it cannot be returned, and are even suggesting that returning it might benefit China.”

It is clear that these upholders of ‘democratic values’ are only too happy to flout international law in the pursuit of hegemony. As the article rightly concludes, “these new and old Anglo-Saxon empires still persist in attempting to apply imperialistic practices in many international affairs in 2023, treating their self-interest as international norms.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and visiting British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said on Thursday local time in a joint press conference that they had discussed the “vital” US-UK Indian Ocean air base at Diego Garcia. Cameron did not give a specific response when asked if the UK was dropping plans to return the Chagos Islands, of which Diego Garcia is the largest member, to Mauritius, while Blinken said that Washington “recognizes UK sovereignty over British Indian Ocean Territory.”

The word “recognize” here is full of darkness, injustice and irony. This immediately makes people think of the past and ongoing political deals between the UK and the US on the issue of the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands. The deals are extremely dirty and shameful. This is why Blinken and Cameron dare not speak clearly or elaborate.

The Chagos Islands do not belong to the UK; they belong to Mauritius. This has been formally determined by a UN resolution and a ruling of the International Court of Justice. It is also the general consensus of the international community and there is no dispute about it. As early as 2019, a UN resolution required the UK to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius within six months, but the UK has delayed it until today, and it obviously wants to delay it further. In November last year, the UK and Mauritius decided to start negotiations, giving Mauritius some hope, but now various signs indicate that the UK is likely to change its mind again, and the negotiations are turning into a deception.

The Chagos Islands were Britain’s last colony in Africa and seen as the final “holdout” of colonialism. Britain occupied the Chagos Islands for over 200 years, during which illegal and inhumane acts of violence, plundering, and deception against the indigenous Chagossians were rampant. As the outcome of a war between colonial empires, the islands first came under British rule in 1814 after a British-led coalition defeated Napoleon, taking possession of Mauritius, including the Chagos Islands, as colonies. When Mauritius gained independence, Britain attempted to deceive Mauritius into relinquishing its sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, but this ploy was unsuccessful. It was at this point that the US entered the picture.

In 1965, the UK forcefully “acquired” the Chagos Islands. The following year, it transferred the largest island in the Chagos, Diego Garcia, as a “gift” to the US, leading to a grave humanitarian tragedy. In order to meet US military demands to “clear” the islands, the British authorities created an artificial famine by cutting off water and food supplies, prohibiting ships carrying food from reaching the island, and other measures. This forced over 2,000 indigenous people on the island to leave their ancestral homes, fleeing to Mauritius and Seychelles thousands of miles away. Many islanders resorted to suicide. Over the years, the Chagos Islanders and the Mauritius government have continuously sought justice through various avenues, including the British High Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and relevant courts and institutions in United Nations. They have achieved almost every legal victory, including the 2019 UN resolution, but remained limited to this.

After the US established the military base, the situation became even more complex. Diego Garcia Island became an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” for the US military in the Indian Ocean. It has been used for bombing missions in Afghanistan and Iraq and plays a crucial role in the later-introduced “Indo-Pacific strategy.” Some US media outlets even refer to Diego Garcia Island as “one of the most strategically important and secretive US military installations outside the US,” a description that may not be an exaggeration.

Therefore, whether the UK will return the Chagos Islands depends on the US attitude. If the US does not agree, the UK, even if willing, may not dare to return them. However, the reasons given by the UK and the US for refusing to return the islands are peculiar. They argue that the island is crucial for the US, so it cannot be returned, and are even suggesting that returning it might benefit China. This is akin to stealing someone’s belongings and then claiming it’s essential, so the stolen objects cannot be returned. What logic and reasoning is that? In the Chagos Islands issue, both the UK and the US have trampled on human rights, international norms, morality, and international law, subjects that they always talk about.

The US and the UK have one foot in the 21st century while the other remains planted in the 19th century, revealing the true nature of their “values alliance.” These new and old Anglo-Saxon empires still persist in attempting to apply imperialistic practices in many international affairs in 2023, treating their self-interest as international norms. However, they are not dealing with a “weak” Mauritius, but countless awakening developing nations. Fairness and justice are no longer dictated solely by powers like the US and the UK.

Dee Knight: Eyewitness Xinjiang

We are pleased to republish below the second of Dee Knight’s reports from his recent visit to China (we posted the first instalment last week).

This article focuses specifically on the trips to Xinjiang’s two largest cities – Urumqi and Kashgar – where the group aimed to deepen their understanding of the region, particularly in light of the slanderous accusations routinely hurled by the Western media about putative human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslim population.

Describing the group’s trip to Urumqi’s main bazaar, Dee observes that Uyghurs and Han Chinese can be seen “mixing, mingling and melding nonchalantly while shopping and doing business.” Meanwhile, contrary to the claims of cultural genocide, “street signs and advertisements typically appeared in both Chinese characters and Uyghur script.”

Dee addresses the claim that the Chinese government uses ‘concentration camps’ to indoctrinate Uyghurs and to destroy their cultural identity. He explains: “Such facilities were set up by the government to provide under-employed Uyghurs with vocational skills, recreational activities, medical services and other benefits. Most have included dormitories, where people who lived far from the center could stay during the week, and return home on weekends.” He describes meeting a 21-year-old Uyghur woman “who spoke near-perfect English” which she had learned precisely in one of these supposed ‘concentration camps’. “The training gave her the skill she needs to earn a living in the bazaar, where other members of her family also work.”

The author further discusses China’s policy in relation to minorities and religion, and notes that none of the accusations levelled at China about suppression of religious freedoms in Xinjiang are borne out by either statistics or observation. The Uyghur birth rate has been steadily rising at a far faster rate than that of Han Chinese; Uyghur life expectancy has increased from 31 years in 1949 to 72 currently; Xinjiang, like the rest of China, enjoys near-100 percent literacy; and there are a huge number of mosques in Xinjiang, which are very well maintained.

Dee concludes:

More westerners need to come and see for themselves. That may be the best way to disprove the official government and media slanders. It could also help to build people-to-people friendship. We found nothing but friendliness everywhere we visited. People were pleased when we tried to communicate in Chinese, and also pleasant and patient to communicate with us however possible. The Chinese people are definitely not our enemy, and their government is doing a very good job serving and protecting them. It really is time for the US government to try harder to make friends with China, and help forge common prosperity and a shared future.

Dee Knight is a veteran of the US peace and socialist movements, and is a member of the International Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and of the Friends of Socialist China advisory group.

This article was first published in LA Progressive on 19 November 2023.

As US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping prepare to meet this week at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in San Francisco, the question arises whether Biden will pull back from spurious claims of “genocide” and “forced labor” against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, China’s economically dynamic far western province.

Xinjiang, China’s far western province, has borders with Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. It is China’s Belt and Road portal to all these countries.

On a ten-day visit to China in early November with the theme that “China Is Not Our Enemy,” I had an opportunity to visit Xinjiang’s two major cities – Urumqi and Kashgar – hoping to see the situation up close. There have been horrific claims by US officials and the mainstream media of severe repression of Xinjiang’s Muslim Uyghur population. While these claims have recently been “walked back,” or reduced to claims of “cultural genocide” according to a YouTube report by Cyrus Janssen, our delegation wanted to see for ourselves. (The “cultural genocide” claim relates to the fact that Mandarin Chinese is a required subject in Xinjiang’s schools, while the Uyghur language is an elective.)

Xinjiang’s Surprises

No matter what you might expect from Xinjiang, it’s full of surprises – mostly very pleasant. After a five-hour flight from Beijing, Urumqi, the capital, appears like a valley oasis emerging as the rugged and craggy (and very high) Tianshan mountains loom nearby. This city of 4 million (of whom over half are Uyghurs and smaller percentages are Hui and Khazak), is a market center serving as a portal to Central Asia on the western edge of China’s famous Belt and Road. It buzzes with activity, especially near the wholesale markets where traders come to order all kinds of consumer products from everywhere, but mainly either from local artisans or from China’s manufacturing centers in the east and southeast of the country. We took advantage of wholesale prices to get a coat and hat suitable for the chilly autumn weather, and an extra piece of luggage to manage our tourist acquisitions.

China’s State Council on October 31 announced a plan to build a Xinjiang Free Trade Zone, including the regional capital of Urumqi, Kashgar prefecture and Horgos. It is the first such zone in China’s northwest border region and the 22nd pilot Free Trade Zone in China.

While shopping for beautiful silk scarves in the main bazaar, we were served by a 21-year-old Uyghur woman who spoke near-perfect English. She told us she learned it in a 10-month course in a government-sponsored training center. The training gave her the skill she needs to earn a living in the bazaar, where other members of her family also work.

Continue reading Dee Knight: Eyewitness Xinjiang

South Korean president visits Europe to promote US-led war drive against China

South Korea’s hard right President Yoon Suk-yeol toured a number of European countries, including Britain and France, in late November. 

Following talks with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the two issued the Downing Street Accord, which stated in part: “Peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is an indispensable element in the security and prosperity of the international community. Given the serious nature of the situation in the East and South China Seas, we strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the region.”

This drew a sharp reaction from China. At a November 24 regular press conference, spokesperson Mao Ning urged the two countries to stop making irresponsible comments on issues bearing on China’s core and major concerns.

Noting that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory, Mao emphasised that the Taiwan question is purely China’s internal affair and brooks no interference by any external forces.

She added: “China urges relevant parties to stop making irresponsible comments on issues bearing on China’s core and major concerns and be very prudent about what they say or do.”

In a November 28 article published by the World Socialist Website (WSWS), Ben McGrath writes that the Downing Street Accord “specifically denounces North Korea and Russia as well as Hamas, while all but ignoring the genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza. However, as with all such agreements being adopted today, whether with the US or between Washington’s allies, the chief target is China.

“The ‘international order’ is that established by Washington in the post-World War II period and which is threatened by China’s economic growth. Yoon and Sunak’s claims that they are defending ‘stability’ or the ‘rule of law’ is to uphold an international order dominated by the US in which it set the rules and under which London and Seoul have pursued their own national interests.”

He further notes:

“Over the last decade, the US has responded to China’s economic rise by drastically ramping up the militarisation of the Indo-Pacific to encircle and undermine the world’s second-largest economy. British imperialism has signed up to this war drive as a means of reestablishing a military presence and expand their own influence in Asia…  

“For all their talk of the ‘rule of law’ and ‘human rights,’ both London and Seoul have demonstrated they have no concern for either in their defence of Israel and its genocidal war against the oppressed Palestinian people.”

Noting the reference to Taiwan, McGrath explains that it “is not an innocent remark, but specifically meant to challenge the ‘One China’ policy under which the vast majority of countries including the US recognise Beijing as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan.”

“The focus on Taiwan represents the most open and provocative attempt by Washington and its allies to goad China into a war, given that Beijing will not allow Taiwan to become a military base for imperialism or to set a precedent for carving up Chinese territory.”

He adds that: “Specific measures in the accord call for London and Seoul to prepare a Memorandum of Understanding on closer military cooperation, increasing bilateral military exercises between the two and conducting joint patrols, supposedly targeting North Korea’s attempts to avoid sanctions. This can only raise tensions in the Indo-Pacific, where patrols and military exercises on Beijing’s doorstep have become an almost daily occurrence and heighten the danger of military conflict…

“South Korea’s increased cooperation with Britain also means increased cooperation with AUKUS, the military pact that includes Australia and the US. Notably, a UK [parliamentary] Foreign Affairs Committee recommended in August that South Korea as well as Japan be invited to join parts of AUKUS, specifically the technological defence cooperation agreement, or Pillar Two of the pact. US military officials and those close to the military have similarly argued for an ‘AUKUS+2’ deal. The inclusion of South Korea or Japan in any aspect of AUKUS would be highly provocative.”

The following articles were originally published by the Xinhua News Agency and the World Socialist Website.

China tells ROK, Britain to stop making irresponsible comments on issues concerning China’s core interests

BEIJING, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) — China on Friday urged the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Britain to stop making irresponsible comments on issues bearing on China’s core and major concerns.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning made the remarks at a press briefing when asked to comment on contents in the Downing Street Accord signed by ROK President Yoon Suk-yeol and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak concerning China’s Taiwan region and the South and East China Seas.

Noting Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory, Mao emphasized that the Taiwan question is purely China’s internal affair and brooks no interference by any external forces.

As for issues related to the South and East China Seas, neither the ROK nor the UK is a party concerned, and there has never been any problem with regard to the “freedom of navigation and overflight,” she said.

“China urges relevant parties to stop making irresponsible comments on issues bearing on China’s core and major concerns and be very prudent about what they say or do,” Mao said. 

South Korean president visits Europe to promote US-led war drive against China

Nov. 28 (wsws.org) — South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol completed a trip to Europe last Sunday with stops in the United Kingdom and France. The tour was closely bound up with the development of military alliances throughout the Indo-Pacific region and with European powers as part of the US-led war drive aimed at China.

Continue reading South Korean president visits Europe to promote US-led war drive against China

Friendly relations between China and Mexico further consolidated

Following the first meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Mexican counterpart, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, popularly known as Amlo, held in the margins of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit on November 16, friendly relations between China and Mexico have been further consolidated with a visit to Beijing by Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena. 

In a November 6 meeting, Chinese Vice President Han Zheng told Barcena that bilateral relations had become increasingly strategic, complementary, and mutually beneficial. Expressing sympathies over the recent hurricane disaster that hit Mexico’s Pacific coast, Han said China will provide support and assistance to the post-disaster reconstruction.

Barcena thanked China for always providing timely assistance to Mexico when it encountered difficulties.

The previous day, Barcena had met with her Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who said that China is willing to view and develop relations with Mexico from a strategic and long-term perspective, adding that his country stands ready to work with Mexico to uphold mutual respect and equal treatment, and bring bilateral relations to a new level.

Commenting on the meetings, the Mexican Foreign Ministry affirmed that “both parties agreed that the recent engagement between the presidents has strengthened bilateral ties, reaffirmed the friendship between Mexico and China, and achieved significant agreements.”

The following articles were originally published by the Xinhua News Agency and Telesur.

Chinese VP meets Mexican foreign minister

BEIJING, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) — Chinese Vice President Han Zheng met with Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena in Beijing on Wednesday.

Han said that under the strategic guidance of the two heads of state, China-Mexico relations have maintained a high level of operation, becoming increasingly strategic, complementary and mutually beneficial.

Noting that this year marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of China-Mexico comprehensive strategic partnership, Han said the two sides should implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, consolidate political mutual trust, firmly support each other, deepen practical cooperation, and enhance people-to-people understanding.

He said China welcomes Mexico to integrate its development strategy with China’s major concepts and initiatives to elevate bilateral relations to a new level.

Expressing sympathies over the recent hurricane disaster that hit Mexico’s Pacific coast, Han said China will provide support and assistance in the post-disaster reconstruction.

Barcena thanked China for always providing timely assistance to Mexico when it encountered difficulties.

Barcena said the Mexican side highly appreciates the major concepts and initiatives put forward by the Chinese head of state and is willing to implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, deepen bilateral and multilateral coordination and cooperation, and promote the continuous development of bilateral relations. 

Chinese FM meets with Mexican counterpart

BEIJING, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena on Tuesday in Beijing.

Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that the recent meeting between the two heads of state in San Francisco, the United States, has provided important strategic guidance for the development of bilateral relations and drawn a blueprint for bilateral cooperation.

China is willing to view and develop relations with Mexico from a strategic and long-term perspective, Wang said, adding that China stands ready to work with Mexico to uphold mutual respect and equal treatment, and bring bilateral relations to a new level.

Barcena said that Mexico attaches great importance to relations with China, and is willing to work with China to implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state to promote the greater development of bilateral ties. 

Foreign Ministers of Mexico and China Strengthen Relations

Dec. 7 (Telesur) — On Wednesday, Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena met with her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, with the aim of “deepening the bilateral relationship” during her first official visit to the Asian country.

The Mexican Foreign Affairs Ministry affirmed that “both parties agreed that the recent engagement between the presidents has strengthened bilateral ties, reaffirmed the friendship between Mexico and China, and achieved significant agreements.”

Barcena’s visit to Beijing follows the meeting between Presidents Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Xi Jinping on November 16 during the Asia-Pacific Cooperation Forum (APEC) summit in San Francisco, USA.

Both foreign ministers agreed to “hold the Seventh Session of the Permanent Bilateral Commission next year, actively resuming bilateral cooperation after the pandemic.”

Additionally, they emphasized the need for the “establishment of a working group between Mexico and China” to combat the “trafficking of chemical precursors that can be used in the production of synthetic drugs and fentanyl, as well as to monitor the production chain accurately and exchange information to combat the illegal use of these substances.”

Barcena highlighted the importance of China strengthening its ties with Latin America through the enhancement of the CELAC-China forum under the Pro Tempore Presidency of Honduras.

A tale of two Chinas: Rhetoric on foreign domination and domestic instability

The following original article, submitted to Friends of Socialist China by Nolan Long (a Canadian undergraduate student studying politics at the University of Saskatchewan), shines a light on the absurdly contradictory Western media coverage of China. “First, China is described as a global superpower in terms of its supposedly dominating and exploitative foreign policy; on the other hand, China is represented as an unstable, backward, underdeveloped country, bound to inevitably collapse due to the failures of socialism.”

This portrayal and the various popular narratives associated with it – that China is engaged in “debt trap diplomacy”, or that the Belt and Road Initiative is a form of colonialism, or that the Chinese economy is on the verge of collapse – are promoted as part of an ongoing propaganda war, itself a crucial component of an escalating effort to contain and encircle the People’s Republic. These various claims “exist at the heart of the West’s insecurity about its decreasing relevancy and power in the twenty-first century.”

The falsity of this anti-China hysteria is amply exposed by its contradictory nature; and yet it is unlikely to go away any time soon. As Nolan concludes: “The tale of two Chinas presents a picture of Western insecurity and modern Chinese power, a theme that will increasingly come to the fore as China continues to develop on its own and on the world stage.”

Contemporary rhetoric on the People’s Republic of China, as disseminated by Western corporate media, is made up of contradictory claims about Chinese domination and Chinese instability. It is simple enough to find intentionally missing information or context, exaggerations, and even outright lies in the muniments of most corporate media. But a deeper analysis reveals two competing narratives, both of which have become increasingly (and paradoxically) common over the last few years.

First, China is described as a global superpower in terms of its supposedly dominating and exploitative foreign policy; on the other hand, China is represented as an unstable, backward, underdeveloped country, bound to inevitably collapse due to the failures of socialism.

Notably, the first typified China is used in Western capitalist media to generate fears about China’s development efforts in the Global South, which have largely been at the expense of Western hegemony and financial interests. Despite the positive results of the Belt and Road Initiative, capitalist media portrays China as a rapacious villain running rampant across the globe.

Here, China is described as an economic powerhouse. But when discussing Chinese domestic affairs, Western journalists suddenly think China is a poor, underdeveloped state, sometimes on the brink of complete collapse. These two conceptions of China cannot coexist, and go a long way in demonstrating the irrationality and lack of scholarship among anti-communists and defenders of American hegemony.

Continue reading A tale of two Chinas: Rhetoric on foreign domination and domestic instability

Wang Yi: The tree of China-Vietnam friendship will surely flourish

Chinese President Xi Jinping is to pay a state visit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, December 12-13, at the invitation of his Vietnamese counterparts, Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and President Vo Van Thuong. This will be Xi’s third state visit to China’s socialist neighbour, his previous trips being in 2015 and 2017.

Preparatory to the state visit, China’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited the Vietnamese capital Hanoi at the beginning of December, where he co-chaired the 15th meeting of the China-Vietnam Steering Committee for Bilateral Cooperation together with Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang on December 1. 

Wang Yi said, this year is of special significance to both China and Vietnam. The socialist causes of both countries have entered a crucial stage and the two sides have reached important common understandings on upgrading the positioning of bilateral relations, which will usher in a new stage of bilateral relations. 

Facing a world with changes and turmoil and the complicated situation, China and Vietnam should stay true to their original aspirations, remain united, firmly follow the path of peace, cooperation and development, and view the relations between the two parties and between the two countries from the strategic perspective of promoting human progress and boosting the strength of socialism.

Wang Yi further said that the two countries should manage differences through friendly consultation, actively advance maritime cooperation, and safeguard the hard-won peace and stability in the South China Sea.

Tran Luu Quang said as a “comrade and brother”, Vietnam supports China’s development and strength and supports China in playing an increasingly important role in safeguarding regional and world peace and stability.

Also, on December 1, Wang Yi met with General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong. 

The Chinese Foreign Minister first conveyed General Secretary Xi Jinping’s most sincere greetings to General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong. Wang Yi said that under the strong leadership of the CPV Central Committee headed by General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam has achieved political and social harmony and stability, vigorous economic development and the continuous improvement of its international status, expressing confidence in Vietnam to achieve its set strategic goals. The top leaders of the two parties of China and Vietnam have established solid political mutual trust and profound comradeship, steering the course of bilateral relations and providing important strategic guidance. He added that sharing the same ideals and a shared future are the most salient features of China-Vietnam relations.

Nguyen Phu Trong asked Wang Yi to convey his warmest greetings to General Secretary Xi Jinping. He said that Vietnam and China are linked by mountains and rivers. The “comradely and brotherly” friendship between Vietnam and China is particularly unique in the world. The Vietnamese leader said that after he took office as General Secretary of the CPV Central Committee for the third time, the first country he paid a visit to was China, and he had very good exchanges with General Secretary Xi Jinping, of which he has a fresh memory. Nguyen Phu Trong said that not long ago, he travelled to the Youyi Pass, or Friendship Pass, on the Vietnam-China border to plant a friendship tree. The border port between Vietnam and China, which is the only one named after friendship among neighbours, fully highlighted the traditional friendship between the two countries cherished by Vietnam.

Wang Yi responded that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s deep feelings toward China are very touching, and expressed the belief that the tree of China-Vietnam friendship will surely flourish and be fruitful.

On the same day, Wang Yi also met with President of Vietnam Vo Van Thuong. He said that Comrade President attended the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in October upon invitation, making important contributions to the success of the Forum. General Secretary Xi Jinping and President Vo Van Thuong reached important common understandings on consolidating China-Vietnam friendship and advancing high-quality cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative and the “Two Corridors and One Economic Circle” plan, charting the course for deepening China-Vietnam comprehensive strategic cooperation. 

Vo Van Thuong said that both Vietnam and China are at a critical stage of development, and strengthening cooperation is conducive to their respective revitalisation. Vietnam is ready to make joint efforts with China to continuously consolidate and deepen the Vietnam-China comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership. The two sides should make thoughtful preparations for the important political agenda in the next stage and put into real action the common understandings reached by the top leaders of the two parties. 

Meeting with Vietnamese Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son, also on December 1,Wang Yi said that sharing the same ideals and a shared future are the salient features of China-Vietnam relations. The two parties and two countries have seen close high-level exchanges and frequent contacts like visiting relatives, which fully demonstrates the high level and special nature of China-Vietnam relations. China and Vietnam have the same social system and shared ideals and beliefs, and bilateral relations should be at the forefront compared to other countries. Defining a new positioning and setting new goals for bilateral relations will not only open up new prospects for the development of the relations between the two parties and the two countries, but also make new contributions of China and Viet Nam to the cause of peace and progress of humanity. 

Bui Thanh Son said the party, state and people of Vietnam have special feelings for China, and the friendship between Vietnam and China is deeply rooted in people’s hearts. Vietnam regards the development of relations with China as a strategic choice and top priority, and hopes to promote the sound, stable and lasting development of relations between the two parties and between the two countries, and elevate bilateral relations to new heights.

Finally, on December 2, Wang Yi met with Member of the CPV Central Committee Secretariat and Head of the CPV Central Committee’s Commission for External Relations Le Hoai Trung.

Wang Yi said that sharing the same ideals and a shared future are the most salient features of China-Vietnam relations, and the “comradely and brotherly” friendship between China and Vietnam is the most vivid illustration of their relations. The top leaders of the two parties have established solid mutual trust and deep friendship, which is the most important political safeguard for the steady development of relations between the two countries. China regards Vietnam as a priority in its neighbourhood diplomacy, and stands ready to work with Vietnam to follow through on the high-level common understandings, make good preparations for the important political agenda between the two countries, and join hands in advancing the building of a China-Vietnam community with a shared future. 

Le Hoai Trung said that Vietnam, the CPV and the Vietnamese people have deep feelings toward China, and developing Vietnam-China relations is a strategic choice and top priority of Vietnam’s foreign policy. The Vietnamese side is satisfied with the sound and positive development momentum of bilateral relations. Vietnam and China are both socialist countries at the crucial stage of national development. Facing the complex and changing world situation, the Vietnamese side looks forward to closer high-level exchanges between the two sides to bring bilateral relations to a new stage of more in-depth, more solid, more comprehensive and more effective development, so as to lay a more sound and solid foundation for the future of Vietnam-China relations.

The following reports were first published on the websites of the Xinhua News Agency and the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

Xi to pay state visit to Vietnam

BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) — Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Chinese president, will pay a state visit to Vietnam from Dec. 12 to 13, foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying announced on Thursday.

Xi’s visit is at the invitation of General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong and State President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Vo Van Thuong, Hua said.

Continue reading Wang Yi: The tree of China-Vietnam friendship will surely flourish

Chinese, Belarusian presidents pledge to enhance ties

The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko paid a working visit to China from December 3-4. Indicating the particularly close and friendly relations between the two countries, this was Lukashenko’s second visit to China this year, following his February 28-March 2 state visit.

Meeting his Belarus counterpart on December 4, President Xi Jinping pointed out that he and Lukashenko reached important consensus on promoting the high-level development of China-Belarus relations during Lukashenko’s visit earlier this year. The two countries have strengthened political mutual trust and international coordination since then.

China always views its relations with Belarus from a strategic and long-term perspective, firmly supports Belarus in pursuing a development path suited to its national conditions and opposes external interference in Belarus’ internal affairs.

Having addressed the question of cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Xi added that both countries should also expand cooperation in education, health, sports and tourism, support exchanges and cooperation between the youth, and enhance understanding and friendship between the two peoples. 

Lukashenko said under the leadership of President Xi, China has made great achievements in its development and over 1.4 billion Chinese people live a happy life, making an important contribution to the world.

Belarus sincerely hopes that China will grow stronger, which is conducive to peace and progress in the world, Lukashenko added. Belarus has always been a reliable partner for China and will remain so.

Significantly, Lukashenko added that the development of comprehensive and all-weather strategic cooperation between Belarus and China is “determined by the similarity of our ideologies and the very logic of international events.”

Belarus not only maintains an independent, anti-imperialist stand in international relations, it has also refused to engage in full-scale capitalist restoration, maintaining the leading position of the publicly owned sector in the national economy, along with many of the traditions and values of the USSR. It is, for example, the only former Soviet republic to continue observing and honouring the anniversary of the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution. 

Lukashenko also noted that: “Belarus has been a reliable partner for China and will remain so. I don’t think anyone in China needs to be convinced of this… We decided a long time ago that we would cooperate and live in friendship with China. As I said, this friendship is more than 30 years old. We have never turned from this path either to the left or to the right.” 

Regarding BRI, Lukashenko said: “No one can find even a trifle to criticise. The most important thing is that you have defined the common destiny for humankind as the goal. Unlike Western countries that are trying to tear everything apart, you have set the single goal for all. Who can argue with that? No one. The world will be grateful to Great China for this… We would like to see China a powerful country. We would like to see it grow. This is not only our interest. It is the interest of the whole planet.”

The following articles were originally published by the Xinhua News Agency and the Belarus Telegraph Agency (Belta).

Chinese, Belarusian presidents pledge to enhance ties

BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Beijing on Monday.

Xi pointed out that he and Lukashenko reached important consensus on promoting the high-level development of China-Belarus relations during Lukashenko’s state visit to China earlier this year. The two countries have strengthened political mutual trust and international coordination since then.

China always views its relations with Belarus from a strategic and long-term perspective, firmly supports Belarus in pursuing a development path suited to its national conditions, and opposes external interference in Belarus’ internal affairs, Xi said.

“China is willing to continue to strengthen strategic coordination with Belarus, firmly support each other, promote practical cooperation and deepen bilateral relations,” Xi said.

Xi stressed that more than 150 countries have signed Belt and Road Initiative cooperation documents a decade after he proposed the initiative, adding that he announced not long ago eight major steps China would take to support the joint pursuit of high-quality Belt and Road cooperation. “China welcomes Belarus to continue its active participation and gain more tangible development opportunities from it.”

Xi called on the two sides to implement projects such as the China-Belarus Industrial Park, push for more results in industrial cooperation, and further facilitate cross-border transport to promote trade and personnel exchanges.

He said both sides should expand cooperation in education, health, sports and tourism, support exchanges and cooperation between the youth, and enhance understanding and friendship between the two peoples.

Noting that China and Belarus are important forces in the reform and development of the global governance system, Xi said China is willing to strengthen coordination and cooperation with Belarus within multilateral mechanisms such as the United Nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, promote the implementation of the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative, and advance the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.

Lukashenko said under the leadership of President Xi, China has made great achievements in its development and over 1.4 billion Chinese people live a happy life, making an important contribution to the world.

Belarus sincerely hopes that China will grow stronger, which is conducive to peace and progress in the world, Lukashenko added.

Belarus is committed to developing friendly relations with China and is willing to keep close high-level exchanges with China, firmly support each other, deepen mutually beneficial cooperation, strengthen international and multilateral strategic coordination, and push for greater development of the all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership, Lukashenko said.

He said Belarus firmly believes that the initiatives proposed by President Xi truly muster international consensus and cooperation, and Belarus will continue to actively participate in them.

The two heads of state also exchanged views on the Ukraine crisis.

Senior Chinese officials Cai Qi and Wang Yi attended the event. 

Lukashenko at talks with Xi: Belarus is a reliable partner for China

MINSK, 4 December (BelTA) – Belarus has always been a reliable partner for China and will remain so, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said during talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, BelTA has learned.

“I am glad to have this opportunity and discuss topical issues of cooperation with you in a friendly atmosphere and express our points of view on various problems of international relations, as it has always been the case between us. The development of comprehensive and all-weather strategic cooperation between Belarus and China is determined by the similarity of our ideologies and the very logic of international events and processes that are taking place today,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said. “Our meeting on 1 March [2023] was in many ways pivotal and set the momentum for the whole year. Since March, more than 120 mutual visits have been carried out. Those are various visits. What is most pleasing is that the visits are related to cooperation in the manufacturing sector, trade and economy.”

The Belarusian head of state stressed that the historic rise in relations had given a powerful impetus to the deepening of cooperation in traditional areas and launched new vectors and mechanisms of cooperation.

“Belarus has been a reliable partner for China and will remain so. I don’t think anyone in China needs to be convinced of this. All this has happened before my eyes for the last 30 years, and even way back. I came to China for the first time as a member of parliament,” the Belarusian leader said.

Aleksandr Lukashenko also noted his long-term acquaintance with Xi Jinping and joint work to advance bilateral relations.

“We have a lot of experience. We know what our countries need. We have done a lot in this regard,” the Belarusian president said.

“We decided a long time ago that we would cooperate and live in friendship with China. As I said, this friendship is more than 30 years old. We have never turned from this path either to the left or to the right,” the president emphasized.

Aleksandr Lukashenko thanked Xi Jinping for the meeting, noting that the Chinese leader has recently had a very busy schedule: a huge number of international meetings, not to mention domestic policy events in China itself.

“Upon reflecting on this, I can say: well, this is the burden of one of the world leaders,” the head of state said. “Therefore, I am very grateful to you for this meeting, for the responsiveness.”

Lukashenko: Belarus supports China’s idea of building community with shared future for mankind

MINSK, 4 December (BelTA) – Belarus supports the concept of building a community with a shared future for mankind put forward earlier by the Chinese leader, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said during talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, BelTA has learned.

“You just mentioned the Belt and Road. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that the Belt and Road Initiative is, as you said, no longer a concept today. It is already a practice. In progress. No one can argue with this today, and no one can find even a trifle to criticize. The most important thing is that you have defined the common destiny for humankind as the goal. Unlike Western countries that are trying to tear everything apart, you have set the single goal for all. Who can argue with that? No one. The world will be grateful to Great China for this,” the head of state said.

“We would like to see China a powerful country. We would like to see it grow. This is not only our interest. It is the interest of the whole planet, because a huge number of talented hardworking people live here [in China],” Aleksandr Lukashenko added.

George Galloway: The West sucks the blood of Africans, while China transfuses hope

In this short, three-minute film for Chinese broadcaster CGTN, George Galloway, former Member of Parliament, and leader of the Workers’ Party of Britain, refutes western propaganda regarding China’s role in Africa and makes a stark contrast between the western record with regard to the African continent and that of China. The West, George insists, sucks the blood of Africans, while China transfuses hope.

The United States has 29 military bases in Africa. China has one – in Djibouti, where the US also has a base. Yet it is China that is accused of interference. China is building the infrastructure that the colonial powers never did and promoting the post-independence economic development that the West did everything to try to strangle at birth. 

Unlike the West, George notes, China did not enslave anybody in Africa. It occupied nowhere – unlike the imperialist scramble for every last square inch of the continent. Again, unlike the west, China murdered no African leaders, carried out no coups, did not “buy” uranium from Niger at grotesquely undervalued prices and nor did it support apartheid in South Africa or the former Rhodesia – rather it supported the freedom struggle. 

Under the Belt and Road Initiative, George notes, China is building road, rail and air transportation networks across the continent, along with schools, hospitals, universities and kindergartens.

This succinct and poweful video is embedded below.

The BRICS and China: towards an International New Democracy

We are very pleased to publish this important discussion article by Dr Jenny Clegg on the interrelationship between the development of the BRICS cooperation mechanism and multipolarity, anti-imperialism and socialism. 

Jenny looks carefully at the contrasting positions of those she dubs BRICS optimists and BRICS pessimists, as well as those occupying a political and analytical space between these two poles. Whilst there is a certain consensus that multipolarity is on the rise, there is a wide divergence of views as to how this relates to anti-imperialism let alone socialism. However, for Jenny, “the challenge for the left is to understand the interconnections: to fail to grasp the threats and opportunities at this momentous international juncture would be to fail spectacularly.”

Having discussed the political standpoint of the BRICS, assessed the prospects for their replacing dollar hegemony, and outlined the anti-imperialist framework of President Xi Jinping’s various global initiatives, Jenny draws attention to Mao Zedong’s and the Communist Party of China’s development of the concept of new democracy during the war of resistance to Japanese aggression, arguing forcefully for its applicability to the international terrain in the current period:

“As China now directs its efforts towards encouraging an international anti-imperialist movement among states of the Global South, with the BRICS as a significant group, the concept of New Democracy can shed light on the thinking behind this. There are three key points to highlight: an understanding that world revolution develops through stages; an analysis of the national bourgeoisie which recognises their potential to resist imperialist subordination and take part in independent development; and the assessment of the overall international situation given the existence of a major socialist state.”

In her conclusion, Jenny writes that: 

“Anti-imperialism and socialism are… not the same but they are inter-related: in the ebb and flow of the international situation the BRICS may swing this way and that, but what does make a difference to the anti-imperialist struggle in its international dimension is the solidity of China’s socialism.

“As a socialist country China is the most firm in its anti-imperialist stance: it has the strength, unity and manoeuvrability to stand up to and resist US pressure; it has its past experience to draw lessons from, failures as well as successes; it can stabilise the vacillations of the BRICS members to foster the group’s collective focus; it has the commitment and the sense of direction for the future to open the way ahead for the wider Global South in its struggle against imperialism.

“Through its own development, China is able to offer an enabling environment for other developing countries to remove those obstacles still constraining their national development.” 

Jenny’s article, which is based on her presentation to a conference hosted by the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics in September, represents a profound and original contribution to a vital debate and deserves the widest possible readership and discussion.

A member of our advisory group, Jenny is a retired academic and an activist in the anti-nuclear, peace and friendship movements. She is the author of China’s Global Strategy Towards a Multipolar World, published by Pluto Press.

Introduction

Over the last year or so the world has undergone a transition: from the all out drive by the US to assert its dominance through the New Cold War on China and Russia, it is now agreed across the international political spectrum – and widely acknowledged in the mainstream press – that a multipolar era has arrived.

When Biden, visiting Latin America, the Middle East, and then Southeast Asia through the summer months of 2022, failed to rally support for Ukraine and for isolating Russia economically, it became clear that the multipolar surge was cresting.  2023 then brought numbers of proposals for peace and offers of mediation from across the Global South – China, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the African peace delegation.  Meanwhile, squeezed ever further as Western banks jacked up interest rates, developing countries began to come forward with their own proposals to change the system of debt financing.[1]

The BRICS summit in August was seen to mark the watershed moment with its expanded membership now looking to eclipse the G7 as leaders agreed to explore ways to sidestep the dollar.

With US hegemony fraying and numbers of countries starting to break free from its dominance, what is the left to make of this? What kind of a group is the BRICS with its mix of capitalist countries together with socialist China? 

Reactions to the summit exposed divisions amongst the left.  On the one hand, there are those who welcome unequivocally the rise of BRICS in the multipolar terrain as an advance for anti-imperialism.  Hailing the summit as a ‘giant step for multipolarity’, Pepe Escobar, well-known leftist geopolitical analyst and contributor to the Asia Times, reported its calling to ‘abandon the US dollar,’ whilst Fiona Edwards of No Cold War offered unalloyed support with the summit presenting a new high in the rise of the Global South and the priorities of economic co-operation and peace.[2]  Meanwhile, Ben Norton of the Geopolitical Economy Report website is constantly positive about the BRICS as, with the financial architecture of the world fracturing, the group works ‘to develop a fairer system of monetary exchange’.[3]

At the other end of the spectrum, political economist Patrick Bond has emphasised the ‘sub-imperialist and neo-imperialist tendencies of powerful BRICS members’, claiming this renders them ‘helpless to enact any substantive changes’.[4]  In similar vein, in a recent piece entitled Multipolarity: false hope for the Left, Zoltan Zigedy, a US-based communist, launches an uncompromising critique of left-wing intellectuals and academics who ‘cheer any force that attempts to diminish US power’: warning against the confusion of multipolarisation with anti-imperialism, he claims these analysts have just ‘become observers of a chess game between capitalist governments’.  What he asks, has this got to do with socialism?[5]

Between these BRICS pessimists and BRICS optimists are numbers who bridge both sides of the argument, including Vijay Prashad of the Tricontinental Institute who, seeing the development of the BRICS as part of a long history of struggle against colonialism and imperialism, hails the summit ‘for peace and development’ whilst pointing to a certain neo-liberal influence, as well as Andrew Murray and the editors of the Morning Star for whom BRICS is necessary but ultimately, lacking political cohesion, not enough.[6]

Continue reading The BRICS and China: towards an International New Democracy

Chinese modernisation is the modernisation of harmony between humanity and nature

In the following article, which was originally published in the English language July/August 2023 edition of Qiushi, the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Wang Guanghua, the Minister and Secretary of the CPC Leadership Group of China’s Ministry of Natural Resources, introduces the thesis put forward at the CPC’s 20th National Congress regarding “the need to advance the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts via a Chinese path to modernisation and pointing out that Chinese modernisation is the modernisation of harmony between humanity and nature.”

Noting that “Marxism states that ‘man lives on nature’ and humanity lives, produces, and develops by continuously interacting with nature,” Wang argues that: “President Xi’s innovation explains the interdependence between humans and the natural world, as well as their mutually reinforcing dialectical unity, and it is a succinct expression of contemporary Marxism in China as well as 21st century Marxism in the area of ecological conservation. The ecological wisdom embodied in China’s traditional culture constitutes the national soil and cultural roots of the theory of harmony between humanity and nature in Chinese modernisation.” Xi Jinping, he continues, has “integrated the essence of Marxist thought with the best of China’s traditional culture and with the common values that our people intuitively apply in their everyday lives, thus infusing modernisation theory with distinctive Chinese features.”

The CPC has led the Chinese people in exploring how to achieve the country’s modernisation since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. This has included, “theoretical and practical investigations of how to approach the relationship between humanity and nature. Mao Zedong pointed out that the CPC’s task is to focus on building modernised industry, agriculture, science and culture, and national defence. He also called for conservation of mountains and rivers as well as afforestation.”

After detailing a number of the practical steps that China has taken, Wang continues:

“China has an enormous population that exceeds the total population of the world’s developed countries. Nevertheless, our per capita resources and factors of production are below the global average levels, and we have limited and unevenly distributed land suitable for living and working as well as a lack of focus on ecological protection and restoration in the past. We also face new challenges, such as global climate change and frequent extreme weather events. Our population has peaked, and we are experiencing population aging, declining fertility, and varying regional trends of population growth and decline, all of which are having a profound impact on our management of territorial space. We must improve our awareness of the issues we face and approach problems, make decisions, and act based on our national conditions. We must fully consider resource and environmental carrying capacities and endowments and keep developing new thinking, new approaches, and new ways to effectively resolve problems.”

And he draws a clear line of demarcation with the modernisation paradigm followed under capitalism:

“In the modern era, the modernisation of Western countries has largely been at the expense of resources and the environment. In addition to creating substantial material wealth, it has led to issues including environmental pollution and resource depletion, which have created tension between humans and the natural environment and seen nature take merciless revenge at times. To promote modernisation of harmony between humanity and nature, we must strive to avoid the environmental issues that have arisen in the course of Western capitalist modernisation and renounce the old approach of ‘pollute first, clean up later.’ We must stay committed to green, low-carbon development and adhere to the basic requirement of pursuing protection amidst development and development amidst protection. We must also allocate resources equitably and rationally within and between generations, so that the present generation and those to come can enjoy abundant material wealth while also being able to enjoy stars in the night sky, lush mountains, and fresh flowers.”

“The fundamental objective of the modernisation of the harmony between humanity and nature,” the Minister insists, “is to serve and benefit the people.”

The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held in October 2022 expounded the theory of Chinese modernization, emphasizing the need to advance the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts via a Chinese path to modernization and pointing out that Chinese modernization is the modernization of harmony between humanity and nature. The congress also stressed the need to uphold and act on the principle that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets and to maintain harmony between humanity and nature when planning development. This represents an important innovation in modernization theory, the latest theoretical innovation of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Conservation, and a practical requirement for advancing ecological conservation.

I. The logic of the modernization of harmony between humanity and nature

Since its 18th National Congress, the CPC has built on existing foundations to make innovative breakthroughs in theory and practice that have successfully advanced and expanded Chinese modernization. 

From a theoretical perspective, the theory of harmony between humanity and nature in Chinese modernization is the crystallization of the wisdom of Marxism adapted to the Chinese context and the needs of our times 

The cornerstone of this theory is Marxist thought on the relationship between humanity and nature. Marxism states that “man lives on nature” and humanity lives, produces, and develops by continuously interacting with nature. Chinese President Xi Jinping inherited and developed this Marxist thought, which he has combined with the specific realities of ecological conservation in China to propose the modernization of harmony between humanity and nature. President Xi’s innovation explains the interdependence between humans and the natural world, as well as their mutually reinforcing dialectical unity, and it is a succinct expression of contemporary Marxism in China as well as 21st century Marxism in the area of ecological conservation. The ecological wisdom embodied in China’s traditional culture constitutes the national soil and cultural roots of the theory of harmony between humanity and nature in Chinese modernization. Always respecting and loving nature, the Chinese people have cultivated rich ecological elements in the culture during more than 5,000 years of Chinese civilization. President Xi has developed philosophical concepts from traditional Chinese culture, such as the unity of humanity and nature and “The Dao follows what is natural,” and integrated the essence of Marxist thought with the best of China’s traditional culture and with the common values that our people intuitively apply in their everyday lives, thus infusing modernization theory with distinctive Chinese features and adding original contemporary elements to traditional Chinese culture.

Continue reading Chinese modernisation is the modernisation of harmony between humanity and nature

Senator Mushahid Hussain: Two visions, two destinies

In this short commentary for CGTN Reality Check, Senator Mushahid Hussain – Chairman of the Senate Defence Committee of Pakistan, Chairman of the Pakistan-China Institute, and member of the Friends of Socialist China advisory group – compares and contrasts two of this year’s anniversaries: the 10th anniversary of China advancing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. 

Mushahid describes the BRI as “probably the most important diplomatic and developmental initiative launched in the 21st century… about connectivity, about cooperation, about reviving the ancient Silk Road, which 2,000 years ago was probably the first instance of globalisation linking China’s Silk Road with Central Asia, with the Middle East, with even Europe.”

In contrast he notes that the US-led invasion of Iraq was “a war that was unjust, a war that was illegal, a war that was immoral, because it had no sanction of the United Nations, no sanctions of legality behind it.”

And while China is talking about connectivity and cooperation, “the West, led by the United States, is obsessed with the militarisation of international relations, igniting a new Cold War, talking of containing China, building a new pattern of military alliances.”  In this regard, Mushahid draws attention to the moves to create an ‘Asian NATO’, along with AUKUS, the Quad, and the tripartite alliance agreed between the United States, Japan and South Korea at their Camp David meeting. The senator concludes:

“These two contrasting visions show that the world is headed in a manner of confrontation sparked by the West, while what the world needs today in the post-pandemic world is to have a common approach, to face common challenges in a collective manner. And that is what China is doing and that is what the Global South would like – to build a better tomorrow without overlords and without underdogs.”

We reprint the article and embed the video below.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative – BRI, which is probably the most important diplomatic and developmental initiative launched in the 21st century. And it was done by President Xi Jinping of China when he spoke at Astana in Kazakhstan, about connectivity, about cooperation, about reviving the ancient Silk Road, which 2000 years ago was probably the first instance of globalization linking China’s Silk Road with Central Asia, with the Middle East, with even Europe. Connectivity through commerce and culture among countries and continents.

And this year on March 16, and I was present then, when President Xi Jinping launched the Global Civilization Initiative at the World Political Parties High-level Dialogue. Dialogue among civilizations, respect among civilizations, cooperation among civilizations, learning from each other. A civilizational cooperation in contrast to the vision that had been once presented and very popular in the West about the clash of civilizations.

But 2023 also marks another anniversary, and if I may say so, a dark anniversary, a sad anniversary. Twenty years ago, the United States launched unilaterally a war in Iraq. A war that was unjust, a war that was illegal, a war that was immoral, because it had no sanction of the United Nations, no sanctions of legality behind it. It was an attempt to bully and browbeat a country for ideological and geopolitical reasons. 

And these two anniversaries also present humankind today two contrasting visions. I would say that we are perhaps at an inflection point when the global center of gravity is shifting, when we are facing turbulence and transformation.

China is talking of connectivity and cooperation. The West is talking of containment, conflict, confrontation. China is talking of modernization, of being more inclusive, of diversity, of equality in international relations. The West, led by the United States, is obsessed with the militarization of international relations, igniting a new Cold War, talking of containing China, building a new pattern of alliances, military alliances.

NATO is now becoming an “Asian NATO.” NATO was talking of a threat from China while China is not part of the North Atlantic. China is thousands of miles away from the North Atlantic.

They are talking of AUKUS, Australia, UK, U.S., a new military organization. They are talking of Quad, which is again a military alliance, and recently U.S. President Biden hosted the leaders of South Korea and Japan at Camp David to forge yet another alliance, yet another pact ostensibly to contain China.

So, these contrasting visions are reflected in the pattern of contemporary international relations. China is building bridges, and a great example of that bridge building has been the China-brokered rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, who were at loggerheads for the last three-four decades, which destabilized the Middle East. And thanks to China’s efforts, there’s been normalization, there’s been rapprochement, and there’s been the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Conversely, we see the United States, the Western countries, building barriers based on protectionism, tariffs and trying to isolate China. These two contrasting visions show that the world is headed in a manner of confrontation sparked by the West, while what the world needs today in the post-pandemic world is to have a common approach, to face common challenges in a collective manner. And that is what China is doing and that is what the Global South would like – to build a better tomorrow without overlords and without underdogs.

Dee Knight: Traveling to prove China is not our enemy

This fascinating article by Dee Knight describes a recent peace tour to China by a small group of activists from the US, and includes Dee’s reflections on his visit and a number of topics related to China and the New Cold War.

The report includes mention of the group’s brief stopover in Taipei, and Dee briefly discusses the US’s recent undermining of the One China policy:

“Visiting Taiwan enroute to mainland China reveals something nearly everyone agrees on: Taiwan is very much part of China. Both Chinese governments agree, and the US government has shared this view since at least 1972, when US President Nixon and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping signed a treaty to that effect. It makes you wonder why the US is pushing for Taiwan to be ‘independent’ of the mainland, spending billions to arm it to the teeth, and sending war ships through the Taiwan Strait, thus violating China’s territorial waters, at the risk of triggering a flareup to war at any moment.”

Describing the group’s trip to Shanghai, Dee contrasts the relative affluence and modernity of the city today with the poverty and backwardness imposed upon it in the early part of the 20th century, when it was a playground for Western imperialists – a time when “the colonial powers forced China’s weak government to cede control of trade in both Shanghai and Beijing” and the streets of Shanghai’s ‘International Settlement’ concessions “had signs saying ‘No Chinese or Dogs Allowed.'”

Comparing Shanghai’s transport infrastructure with that of the US, Dee writes:

Underground, the metro hums along: more than 20 lines rival the extent of New York’s MTA, and humble it for cleanliness, courteous service and safety. All the stations I saw have escalators, elevators, and super-clean floors. They also have moving barriers between the passenger platforms and incoming trains, to protect riders.

On China’s network of high-speed rail, Dee observes: “These bullet trains now connect all of China’s major cities, following the gigantic infrastructure projects of recent decades. The US has no bullet trains, and can’t seem to find the financing for them, especially since the profit potential in military production is so much higher.”

Dee also includes some reflections on China’s system of governance, describing the mechanics of its whole-process people’s democracy and countering the Western media’s tropes about China as an authoritarian tyranny and police state.

We didn’t see homeless people anywhere in China. We also didn’t see any signs of repression or oppression anywhere – including Xinjiang. The Chinese people we encountered seemed both calm and content. Tension, conflict and stress are low.

Dee writes powerfully that “visiting China made me believe peace is possible”, that the Chinese people very much do not want war or confrontation with the US, and opining that the US’s policy of trade war and military brinkmanship is a dead-end for humanity.

Cooperation, common prosperity and a shared future make much more sense. That formula has found warm welcomes across the globe. It even includes major initiatives in green development, where again China is leading the way. It has more solar and wind energy generation than the rest of the world combined. And while it still uses more fossil fuel for energy than non-polluting sources, Xi Jinping has pledged that by mid-century fossil fuels will be phased out. That would be an accomplishment worth emulating. It’s much better to save the world from burning up than continue with the current US craze of military brinksmanship!

Dee Knight is a veteran of the US peace and socialist movements, and is a member of the International Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and of the Friends of Socialist China advisory group.

“China Is Not Our Enemy” was the theme of a ten-day visit to China in early November. The visit was designed to find and highlight a path to common prosperity and a shared future between China, the United States, and the rest of the world. Visiting China made me believe peace is possible.

We flew from JFK to Taipei to Shanghai. Then we took a “bullet train” to Beijing. From there we flew to Urumqi and Kashgar, Xinjiang. Then back to Urumqi to Changsha, Hunan, and from Changsha to Shanghai. Then back to Taipei and from there to JFK.

1. Taiwan is part of China.

Getting to China from the USA is easier now than it was centuries ago for Marco Polo when he traveled from Venice by camel over the old Silk Road. We boarded a jumbo jet at 1am November 1 at Kennedy Airport in New York – actually 1pm in Taiwan and China, which are 12 hours ahead of New York. The flight was a mere 17 hours, so we landed at about 6am November 2. We flew nonstop through northern Canada, then down past Japan and Korea to reach Taiwan. Service on the China Airlines jumbo jet was impeccable – two main meals, enjoyable movies, and plentiful snacks with beverage service.

Visiting Taiwan enroute to mainland China reveals something nearly everyone agrees on: Taiwan is very much part of China. Both Chinese governments agree, and the US government has shared this view since at least 1979, when US President Nixon and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping signed a treaty to that effect. It makes you wonder why the US is pushing for Taiwan to be “independent” of the mainland, spending billions to arm it to the teeth, and sending war ships through the Taiwan Strait, thus violating China’s territorial waters, at the risk of triggering a flareup to war at any moment.

Before landing in Taipei we spoke with a Chinese couple who were part of the original post-WW2 migration from the Mainland to Taiwan after the Red Army defeated Chiang Kai Shek’s Kuomintang (KMT). Chiang transferred what was left of his army, plus thousands of camp followers and businesspeople across the strait, and took over the Taiwan government with US backing. There was no pretense of democracy – Chiang staged a military takeover and set up a dictatorship that lasted till his death in 1975, always with lavish US support. It was much the same in the southern half of Korea following Japan’s surrender at the end of WW2. There the US backed one dictator after another until the 1990s, when massive popular protests led to brief periods of democratic government – in each case ultimately suppressed by military takeovers backed by the US. Recently Biden held a summit with the leaders of Japan and South Korea to forge an alliance against China and North Korea.

Continue reading Dee Knight: Traveling to prove China is not our enemy

China’s vision of jointly building a community with a shared future among neighbouring countries

On October 24, the Chinese government published an important policy paper on its foreign policy regarding neighbouring countries. Clearly, policy towards one’s neighbours forms a significant part of any country’s foreign policy, but recently China has been attaching ever greater significance to this and theorising it as a specific area of diplomacy in its own right.

The document is “based on the assessment and overview of the current situation and future trends in Asia, comprehensively outlines the achievements, policies, visions and objectives of China’s neighbourhood diplomacy, and declares China’s commitment to the path of peaceful development, to promoting development of the neighbourhood through its own development, to working with regional countries to advance modernisation, to jointly building a community with a shared future among neighbouring countries and to realising the vision of a peaceful, secure, prosperous, beautiful, amicable and harmonious Asia in the new era.”

It notes that Asia has doubled its share of the world economy, made the leap from a region of low income to one of middle income, and formed a momentum of cooperation, development and rapid rise, in a short span of 40 years. In recent years, it adds, Asia, as an important engine driving global economic recovery, has contributed more than 50 percent to global growth.

However, at the same time, “global governance is in dysfunction; Cold War mentality is resurfacing; unilateralism, protectionism and hegemonism run rampant; multiple risks in such fields as energy, food, finance, industrial and supply chains, and climate change are having greater impact on Asia.”

Hence:

“There are two opposite propositions and trends concerning the future of Asia. One advocates open regionalism, true multilateralism, a development-first approach, mutually beneficial cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, integrated development, and pursuit of common development in harmony. The other represents a relapse into the Cold War mentality and exclusive clubs, and attempts to draw lines based on values, politicise economic issues, divide the region into different security blocs, and stoke division and confrontation. Good principles keep abreast of the times. The right choice for Asia should be openness, solidarity, cooperation, justice and harmony rather than isolation, division, confrontation, hegemony and zero-sum approach.”

In terms of historical background, the paper recalls that China and fellow Asian countries jointly advanced the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and have carried forward the Bandung Spirit of solidarity, friendship and cooperation, continously advancing good-neighbourliness and mutually beneficial cooperation.

In the present period, political mutual trust has been growing. Among the various examples it cites are that China has established diverse and substantive partnerships, cooperative relations and strategic relations of mutual benefit with 28 neighbouring countries as well as with ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations). And the country has resolved historical boundary issues with 12 neighbours on land through negotiations and signed treaties of good-neighbourliness and friendly cooperation with nine neighbouring countries. Meanwhile, on the economic front, China is the largest trading partner of 18 neighbouring countries.

“The remarkable progress made in Asia is attributable to the joint efforts of China and neighbouring countries and needs to be cherished. China’s development would not be possible without a peaceful and stable neighbouring environment.”

In terms of the principles underlining its policy positions, the document reaffirms that China upholds equality between countries regardless of their size, promotes the unity and cooperation of the Global South, upholds the common interests of developing countries, and works to raise the representation and voice of emerging markets and developing countries in global affairs. 

“China rejects the Cold War mentality, unilateralism, group politics and bloc confrontation. China attaches importance to the legitimate security concerns of all countries, upholds the principle of indivisible security, seeks to build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture, and follows a new path to security that features dialogue over confrontation, partnership over alliance, and win-win over zero-sum together with regional countries.”

It underlines the importance of common but differentiated responsibilities in the fight against climate change and for green development, stating:

“China stands ready to work with regional countries to pursue green development and a green growth model, drive economic growth with innovation, transform and upgrade economic, energy and industrial structures, and strike a fine balance between emission reduction and economic growth, in a bid to build an Asian home enjoying the concerted progress of economic growth and environmental progress.”

The document also deals with a wide range of other topics and policies connected to neighbourhood diplomacy. We reprint the full text below. It was originally published by the Xinhua News Agency.

Preface

China and its neighboring countries enjoy geographical proximity, cultural affinity and integrated interests with a shared future. The millennium-old friendly exchanges between the two sides are a vivid history of exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations. Such friendly bonds are best captured by the Chinese saying: “true friendship weathers the changing seasons without fading away and is made even stronger by hardships.”

The neighborhood is where China survives and thrives and the foundation of its development and prosperity. As a member of the Asian family and a responsible major country, China attaches great importance to neighborhood diplomacy, always prioritizes the neighborhood on its diplomatic agenda, and remains committed to promoting regional peace, stability, development and prosperity.

Outlook on China’s Foreign Policy on Its Neighborhood in the New Era, based on the assessment and overview of the current situation and future trends in Asia, comprehensively outlines the achievements, policies, visions and objectives of China’s neighborhood diplomacy, and declares China’s commitment to the path of peaceful development, to promoting development of the neighborhood through its own development, to working with regional countries to advance modernization, to jointly building a community with a shared future among neighboring countries and to realizing the vision of a peaceful, secure, prosperous, beautiful, amicable and harmonious Asia in the new era.

I. Asia Faces New Opportunities and Challenges

In the Report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee and Chinese President, pointed out that changes of our world, our times, and of historical significance are unfolding in ways like never before. The world has once again reached a crossroads in history. Asia, amidst the changes unseen in a century, stands at a new starting point towards development and revitalization and faces unprecedented opportunities and challenges.

Asia, with its vast land and abundant resources, is home to a large population with diverse cultures and development. It has remained generally stable in the past few decades. Regional countries have enjoyed growing political mutual trust and ever deepening cooperation and exchanges. As a result, Asia has doubled its share of the world economy, made the leap from a region of low income to one of middle income, and formed a momentum of cooperation, development and rapid rise in a short span of 40 years. In recent years, Asia, as an important engine driving global economic recovery and growth, has contributed more than 50 percent to global growth. Asia is the most dynamic region with the biggest development potential in the world and will remain a promising land for global development and prosperity.

Meanwhile, global governance is in dysfunction; Cold War mentality is resurfacing; unilateralism, protectionism and hegemonism run rampant; multiple risks in such fields as energy, food, finance, industrial and supply chains and climate change are having greater impact on Asia. Asia also faces challenges such as uneven economic growth, and pronounced security and governance issues. Some countries have intensified efforts to build regional military alliances; the Korean Peninsula issue remains complicated and intractable; Afghanistan faces numerous challenges in its reconstruction; terrorism, natural disasters and other non-traditional security threats persist.

There are two opposite propositions and trends concerning the future of Asia. One advocates open regionalism, true multilateralism, a development-first approach, mutually beneficial cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, integrated development, and pursuit of common development in harmony. The other represents a relapse into the Cold War mentality and exclusive clubs, and attempts to draw lines based on values, politicize economic issues, divide the region into different security blocs, and stoke division and confrontation.

Good principles keep abreast of the times. The right choice for Asia should be openness, solidarity, cooperation, justice and harmony rather than isolation, division, confrontation, hegemony and zero-sum approach. This not only hinges on the future prospects of countries in the region, but will also have a fundamental and far-reaching bearing on the future of Asia and the world. Building a community with a shared future for mankind is the sure path to a prosperous and better Asia and the world.

Continue reading China’s vision of jointly building a community with a shared future among neighbouring countries

China and the US: who’s really in a ‘vulnerable negotiating position’?

In the following article, originally published in the Morning Star, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Keith Bennett argues that, contrary to the Western media consensus that China is in a “vulnerable negotiating position” vis-a-vis the US-China relationship, it’s actually the US which is struggling economically and which is increasingly isolated on the global stage.

Keith observes that the deterioration in the relationship over the last decade was not instigated or encouraged by China. “As a socialist country still engaged in a quest for modernisation and development, China is committed to peace and has no interest in war.” The US has been steadily undermining the One China Principle, surrounding China with military bases, and “rigged up a string of alliances aimed at containing China, be it the Quad with India, Japan and Australia, Aukus with Australia and Britain, or this summer’s Camp David deal with Japan and South Korea.”

However, while the US has continued to escalate its aggression towards China, it has comprehensively failed to achieve its objectives, and China’s weight in the global economy and standing in the international community have been steadily rising. Keith points out that, for example, more than 40 countries have now expressed interest in joining BRICS.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the recent Belt and Road Forum – which included representatives from more than 150 countries, including some 23 heads of state and government and the secretary-general of the UN – Xi Jinping set out in simple but powerful terms China’s vision of development and peaceful cooperation:

We have learned that humankind is a community with a shared future. China can only do well when the world is doing well. When China does well, the world will get even better.

This is a message that resonates with people around the world, and which stands in stark contrast to the US’s increasingly aggressive and belligerent stance. As Keith notes, “it is little wonder that this is a more appealing message to the majority of countries in the world, that wish to develop their economies while maintaining their independence.”

Meanwhile the US finds itself increasingly isolated on the world stage, for example with the vast majority of countries opposing its brutal embargo against Cuba and its pro-genocide stance in relation to the Gaza war.

The recent Apec summit in San Francisco was largely overshadowed by the meeting between US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that immediately preceded it.

The two men met for four hours on November 16, in a mansion once better known for the US soap opera Dallas having been filmed there. For what was almost certainly the most important diplomatic encounter of 2023 its actual results appear rather modest.

They featured an agreement on Artificial Intelligence, counternarcotics co-operation, the resumption of military-to-military communications, the expansion of direct flights, and the promotion of a range of bilateral exchanges, including a high-level dialogue on tourism and streamlining visa application procedures.

An agreement to co-operate on climate change was announced just before the summit. US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Change John Kerry has been one of just a handful of US politicians to have retained a rational approach to China.

But what was actually significant about the meeting was that it took place at all — and in so doing, as a number of commentators have noted, established a floor under bilateral relations.

That this should rightly be regarded as a not inconsiderable achievement is in itself testimony to just how far the world’s most important diplomatic relationship has deteriorated in the last decade under the successive presidencies of Obama, Trump and Biden.

From the Chinese point of view, Xi’s visit was above all a voyage for peace. As the Chinese leader told a subsequent business dinner: “I often say that what the Chinese people oppose is war, what they want is stability, and what they hope for is enduring world peace.”

Continue reading China and the US: who’s really in a ‘vulnerable negotiating position’?

China’s position paper calls for comprehensive ceasefire in Gaza

On Thursday 30 November, China released a position paper on resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The paper reiterates China’s longstanding position of support for the national rights of the Palestinian people, and sets out realistic proposals for a peaceful and durable solution to the crisis in Gaza and its underlying factors.

In sharp contrast to the statements made by the Western powers, which have largely given a carte blanche to Israel in its brutal assault on Gaza, China’s position paper calls for a comprehensive and immediate ceasefire, and for an end to the forced transfer of Palestinians – which by any reasonable definition must be considered as ethnic cleansing.

The position paper states that there will be no lasting peace without the “restoration of the legitimate national rights of Palestine, and the establishment of an independent State of Palestine that enjoys full sovereignty based on the 1967 borders and with east Jerusalem as its capital.”

It is worth noting that China is a longstanding friend of the Palestinian people and supporter of Palestinian national rights. In a letter to Ahmad al-Shukeiri, president of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), dated 6 June 1967, Premier Zhou Enlai wrote: “The Chinese people will forever remain comrades-in-arms of the Palestinian people and the people of the Arab countries in the struggle against imperialism.”

This was four years before the People’s Republic of China’s rightful seat at the United Nations was restored. Since taking up its position in the UN General Assembly and Security Council, China has been a loud and consistent voice on the international stage in favour of justice for the Palestinian people.

China sent its first aid to the Palestinian people in 1960, and when the PLO was founded in 1964, China became the first non-Arab country to recognise it. It was also one of the first countries to recognise the State of Palestine – on 20 November 1988. Indeed Yasser Arafat – historic leader of the Palestinian resistance and Chairman of the PLO from 1969 to 2004 – stated in 1970 that “China is the biggest influence in supporting our revolution and strengthening its perseverance.”

In May 2013, just two months after his election as president, Xi Jinping put forward a four-point proposal for the settlement of the Palestinian question, highlighting his personal commitment to the cause. This proposal was pragmatic and realistic, and centred around the demand for an independent, viable Palestinian state enjoying full sovereignty on the basis of the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital. Xi reiterated this demand in a new three-point proposal for settlement of the Palestinian question, put forward during discussions with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Beijing in June this year.

In response to the current crisis raging in Gaza, Xi has commented that “the right of the Palestinian people to statehood, their right to existence, and their right of return have long been ignored.” China’s often-repeated demand – for a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital and with the right of return for Palestinian refugees – reflects the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people, and is consistent with the position of the PLO and the Arab League, and furthermore with UN General Assembly Resolution 3236, adopted in 1974, which affirms the Palestinians’ right to national independence and sovereignty.

With Israel committing war crimes on a vast scale in Gaza – targeting hospitals, schools, residential buildings, refugee camps and mosques, and killing civilians in their thousands – China has persistently called for a ceasefire, a position supported by the vast majority of the world’s countries, although unfortunately not the US and Britain.

Addressing an extraordinary joint meeting of the leaders of the BRICS countries last week, President Xi called for the convening of an international peace conference to build international consensus and to create a path towards Palestinian statehood. He stated: “The only viable way to break the cycle of Palestinian-Israeli conflict lies in the two-state solution, in the restoration of the legitimate national rights of Palestine, and in the establishment of an independent State of Palestine.”

With its facilitation of a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia earlier this year, China has shown that it has a valuable role to play in helping to resolve conflicts in the Middle East region. This is why, earlier this month, a delegation of foreign ministers from Arab and Islamic countries seeking to find a solution to the Gaza crisis chose China as the first destination of their ministerial tour.

It is increasingly clear to the peoples of the world that while the imperialist powers cling on to their old habits of war, aggression, unilateralism and coercion, China is working determinedly and resolutely for peace, development, multipolarity and common prosperity.

The full text of the position paper is republished below, along with a report from the Chinese Foreign Ministry of President Xi Jinping’s message of congratulations to the 30 November UN meeting marking the International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian People.

Position Paper of the People’s Republic of China on Resolving the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

The current Palestinian-Israeli conflict has caused heavy civilian casualties and a serious humanitarian disaster. It is a grave concern of the international community. President Xi Jinping stated China’s principled position on the current Palestinian-Israeli situation on a number of occasions. He stressed the need for an immediate ceasefire and ending the fighting, ensuring that the humanitarian corridors are safe and unimpeded, and preventing the expansion of the conflict. He pointed out that the fundamental way out of this lies in the two-state solution, building international consensus for peace, and working toward a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement of the Palestinian question at an early date.

Pursuant to the Charter of the United Nations, the Security Council shoulders primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and should thus play an active and constructive role on the question of Palestine. In this connection, China offers the following proposals:

Continue reading China’s position paper calls for comprehensive ceasefire in Gaza

The West is not living up to its responsibilities on climate change

The following article by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez – a slightly expanded version of an opinion piece written for the Global Times – discusses the controversies and difficulties setting up the loss and damage fund agreed at last year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP27).

Noting that the fund is an application of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR), which principle lies at the core of international environmental law, the article points out that the rich countries have consistently failed to meet their clear legal and moral responsibility to provide the technology and finance to ensure the Global South can continue to develop, industrialise and modernise without causing significant environmental harm. The best-known example of this is the rich nations’ failure to meet their commitment, made in 2009, to channel $100 billion per year to developing countries to help them adapt to climate change and transition to clean energy systems.

The imperialist powers have developed the bad habit of blaming China for everything that goes wrong. In terms of environmental questions, Western politicians and journalists deflect criticism of their own slow progress on green energy by essentially assigning China culpability for the climate crisis. Carlos points out that, firstly, China is a developing country and thus has different responsibilities under the framework of CBDR; secondly, China has emerged as the pre-eminent force in renewable energy, electric transport, biodiversity protection, afforestation and pollution reduction. Furthermore it’s working with other countries of the Global South on their energy transitions.

The article concludes by calling on the wealthy countries to stop blaming China and to focus instead on meeting their own responsibilities.

The most significant outcome of last year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) was an agreement to set up a “loss and damage” fund to help climate-vulnerable countries pay for the damage caused by the escalating extreme weather events linked to climate change, such as wildfires, heatwaves, desertification, rising sea levels and crop failures. It is widely estimated that the level of funding needed for this purpose will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

Simon Stiell, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, warmly applauded this agreement, for which the developing countries – including China – had fought long and hard. “We have determined a way forward on a decades-long conversation on funding for loss and damage – deliberating over how we address the impacts on communities whose lives and livelihoods have been ruined by the very worst impacts of climate change.”

The fund is an application of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR), agreed at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change of Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Under this principle, the developed countries have a duty to support developing countries in climate change adaptation and mitigation. All countries have a “common responsibility” to save the planet, but they vary in their historical culpability, level of development and availability of resources, and thus have “differentiated responsibilities”.

CBDR lies at the core of international environmental law, and is a key demand of those campaigning for climate justice. It recognises that development is a human right, and that the countries of North America, Europe, Japan and Australia fuelled their own development with coal and oil; they got rich while colonising the atmospheric commons. The US and Europe alone are responsible for just over half the world’s cumulative carbon dioxide emissions since 1850, although representing just 13 percent of the global population.

Therefore the primary moral, historical and legal responsibility is on the developed countries to provide the technology and the finance such that the Global South can continue to develop, industrialise and modernise without causing significant environmental harm.

Unfortunately, in the year since COP27, precious little progress has been made in terms of setting up the loss and damage fund. There have been numerous disagreements about which countries will contribute and which will benefit, and the US and other advanced countries have been firmly resisting the idea that contributions should be mandatory. Meanwhile the developing countries have had to accept the fund being hosted by the World Bank – which is seen as being essentially a policy instrument of the United States.

This is a familiar story. At the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, the rich nations pledged to channel 100 billion US dollars per year year to developing countries to help them adapt to climate change and transition to clean energy systems. Respected environmental journalist Jocelyn Timperley wrote that, “compared with the investment required to avoid dangerous levels of climate change, the 100 billion dollar pledge is minuscule”; and yet the promise has never been kept. The US spends upwards of 800 billion dollars a year on its military, but seems to be almost entirely unresponsive to the demands of the Global South for climate justice.

‘Blaming China’ has of course become the go-to option for Western politicians seeking to escape accountability and divert attention from their own failures. Various representatives from the wealthy countries have suggested that China – as the world’s second-largest economy and highest overall emitter of greenhouse gases – should contribute to the loss and damage fund in order for it to be fair and viable. Wopke Hoekstra, EU commissioner for climate action, recently commented: “I’m saying to China and others that have experienced significant economic growth and truly higher wealth than 30 years ago, that with this comes responsibility.”

The notion that China has the same duties as North America and Western Europe means turning the principle of CBDR on its head. China is a developing country, with a per-capita income a quarter of that of the US. It is still undergoing the process of modernisation and industrialisation.

Meanwhile, although it is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, its per capita carbon emissions are half those of the US, in spite of the US having exported the bulk of its emissions via industrial offshoring. Chinese emissions are certainly not caused by luxury consumption like in the West – average household energy consumption in the US and Canada is nine times higher than in China.

Furthermore, according to the World Food Programme, China is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, with up to 200 million people exposed to the effects of droughts and floods.

From the very beginning of the international discussions around managing climate change, China has stood together with, and taken up the cause of, the developing countries. Indeed, China was one of the countries arguing vociferously for the loss and damage fund to be created.

China has nevertheless emerged as a global leader in the struggle against climate breakdown. According to an analysis by Carbon Brief, China’s carbon dioxide emissions are expected to peak next year, six years ahead of schedule. Given China’s extraordinary investment in renewable energy – its current renewable capacity is equivalent to around half the global total, and is rising fast – there’s every likelihood that it will reach its goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 or sooner.

Meanwhile China is making a profound contribution to assisting other countries of the Global South with their energy transitions. Nigerian journalist Otiato Opali writes: “From the Sakai photovoltaic power station in the Central African Republic and the Garissa solar plant in Kenya, to the Aysha wind power project in Ethiopia and the Kafue Gorge hydroelectric station in Zambia, China has implemented hundreds of clean energy, green development projects in Africa, supporting the continent’s efforts to tackle climate change.”

While politicians and journalists in the West tend to ignore China’s successes in renewable energy, they loudly decry its construction of new coal plants. However, a recent Telegraph article provided an exception to this rule, noting that the approval of new coal plants “does not mean what many in the West think it means. China is adding one GW of coal power on average as backup for every six GW of new renewable power. The two go hand in hand.” That is, coal plants are being installed to compensate for the intermittency problems of renewable energy, and will therefore be idle for most of the time.

The US, Canada, Britain, the EU and Australia are all making insufficient progress on renewable energy, and are failing to meet their commitment to supporting energy transition in the Global South. By sanctioning Chinese solar materials and imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, they are actively impeding global progress. Their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine has led to a dramatic expansion in the production and transport of fracked shale gas, at tremendous environmental cost.

These countries should stop pointing the finger at China and start taking their own responsibilities seriously. Let us hope we see some evidence of this at COP28.

UK white paper smears China’s growing role in world development

In the following article, which was originally published by Global Times, Deng Xiaoci responds to the British government’s latest White Paper on overseas aid, which said that the UK would resist the alleged risks China “poses to open societies and good governments.” The article notes that Chinese analysts see the report as an example of “blunt smearing and desperate effort by the former colonial power to maintain its global influence and tackle its own internal social and political divisions.”

According to Li Guanjie, a research fellow at Shanghai International Studies University, the hostile tone is, “not surprising at all, as it marks simply a continuation of the China policy that the current Conservative government of the UK adopts.” He added that such hostile remarks against China are desperate attempts to tackle its own crisis, showing that the previous colonial empire is deeply troubled by its waning global influence and has met problems in positioning itself in the current world, especially after the turmoil of Brexit. 

Despite the recent appointment of David Cameron, “famous for his pragmatic China approach”, as Foreign Secretary, Britain still lacks the will to return its relations with China to the right track. The government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Li notes, is in dire need of “establishing an external stimulus to unite…  the Conservative Party, which is riven by internal divisions, as well as create headlines to boost public support in order to win the next general election.”

Polling in early November showed the Conservatives trailing the Labour Party by 23% to 47%, the paper notes.

According to Li Haidong, Professor at the China Foreign Affairs University: “The goal of this white paper from the British government is to ensure that Anglo-Saxon nations continue to play a dominant role in the global development pattern, with intolerance toward any non-Anglo-Saxon nation assuming a leading position in the development pattern.”

Asked to what extent Britain’s White Paper could impact third parties around the world, Chinese experts said that most would keep their distance from such a malicious defamation of China’s role in global development, especially those who have participated in and benefit from the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative.

The British government’s latest white paper on aid has explicitly raised the so-called concerns over China’s growing role in international development, while promising that the UK will resist the risks China “poses to open societies and good governments.” Such a move to characterize China as a “challenge” with profound prejudice is a blunt smearing and desperate effort by the former colonial power to maintain its global influence and tackle its own internal social and political divisions, Chinese analysts said on Tuesday. 

The white paper smeared the Chinese development model with accusations on its drawbacks including “lower standards and limited transparency,” while underscoring the necessity for the UK to robustly challenge China, especially when British interests are endangered by China’s significant financial role, according to the Guardian’s report on the white paper, a brainchild of British development minister Andrew Mitchell,. 

The white paper, published on Monday UK local time, claims that “between 2008 and 2021, China made $498 billion in loan commitments, equivalent to 83 percent of World Bank sovereign lending during the same period,” adding that “its increased assertiveness in seeking to shape the international order makes it essential for us to navigate the challenges that come with its evolving development role.”

Li Guanjie, a research fellow with the Shanghai Academy of Global Governance and Area Studies under the Shanghai International Studies University, found the hostile tone in the text “not surprising at all, as it marks simply a continuation of the China policy that the current conservative government of the UK adopts.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described China as the “biggest challenge of our age to global security and prosperity,” after the Group of Seven (G7) summit in May. And before that, Sunak made similar remarks, calling China “the biggest state threat” and “a systemic challenge for the world order,” during an NBC Interview in March.

Li Guangjie told the Global Times on Tuesday that such hostile remarks against China are desperate attempts to tackle its own crisis, showing that the previous colonial empire is deeply troubled by its waning global influence and has met problems in positioning itself in the current world, especially after the turmoil of Brexit. 

The white paper indicates that the Sunak administration, with the recent appointment as foreign secretary of former British prime minister David Cameron, famous for his pragmatic China approach, still lacks determination to drive China-UK relations on the right track and dig them out of the current low tide, observers said.

It also suggested that the Sunak administration is in dire need of establishing an external stimulus to unite domestic forces and the Conservative Party, which is riven by internal divisions, as well as create headlines to boost public support in order to win the next general election, Li Guangjie noted. 

Recent polling showed that as of early November, 47 percent of British adults would vote for the Labour Party in a general election, compared with 23 percent who would vote for the ruling Conservative Party.

“The goal of this white paper from the British government is to ensure that Anglo-Saxon nations continue to play a dominant role in the global development pattern, with intolerance toward any non-Anglo-Saxon nation assuming a leading position in the development pattern. Fundamentally, it’s a matter of leadership in world affairs. The UK finds itself unable to accept China playing a leading role in world affairs,” Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Tuesday. 

Opposing such an obsolete imperialist mentality, Zhang Jun, China’s permanent representative to the UN, called on Monday for expanding the voice of developing countries in global governance, at an open debate on promoting sustainable peace through common development at the UN headquarters in New York City. 

Peace, development and human rights are the three pillars of the United Nations, among which development is the master key to solving all problems and the foundation for promoting peace and safeguarding human rights, the Chinese envoy said. 

Luo Zhaohui, chairman of the China International Development Cooperation Agency, said in his address to the 2023 Tongzhou Global Development Forum on Saturday that “I can proudly say that China is the developing country that has implemented the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) the fastest. We have eliminated absolute poverty, achieved the SDG’s poverty reduction target 10 years ahead of schedule, and fully built a moderately prosperous society.” 

“As the world’s largest developing country, China’s rapid economic development is in itself a major contribution to global development. At the same time, it has accumulated valuable experience for other countries in implementing the SDGs, providing a feasible and replicable practical reference for the world to achieve modernization,” Luo remarked.

The UK might also intend to use the white paper as a reminder for the US, as relations between China and the US have significantly warmed after the leaders of two countries held a summit in San Francisco last week, observers said. 

As the UK considers that its foreign policy and views on global landscape are more advanced that those of the US, the UK may tend to release a white paper like this to remind the US that Beijing is still a threat or competitor, so as to lead or mislead the US, amid warming ties between Washington and Beijing, Li Guanjie said.

Also the “limited coordination through the multilateral system, especially of bilateral instruments like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI),” is also mentioned in the white paper among listed drawbacks of China’s growing role in global development. 

When asked to what extent the white paper could impact third parties around the globe, Chinese observers noted that most would keep their distance from such a malicious defamation of China’s role in global development, especially those who have participated in and benefit from the China-proposed BRI.

Vladimir Putin: US exceptionalism is an extension of the colonial mindset

In this edition of the CGTN series Leaders Talk, Wang Guan travels to Moscow to interview Vladimir Putin, shortly before the Russian President left for Beijing to attend the Third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. 

President Putin notes that, in building their relations, Russia and China have “always tried to reach a compromise, even on complicated issues inherited from the old days. Our relations have always been driven by goodwill. It helped us solve the border delimitation issues that had remained outstanding for 40 years.”

Wang Guan gives his impression of the thriving economic relations between the two countries, saying that on this visit to Moscow, he “saw that the streets and stores, including online trading platforms, were increasingly filled with Chinese brands. At the same time, Russian gas is supplied to the homes of Chinese consumers and Russian meat and dairy products, for example, are becoming more and more common in Chinese stores.”

President Putin agrees that his country and China are well on the way to meeting their joint target for two-way trade to reach 200 billion US dollars by 2024.

Turning to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Russian leader commented that: “Yes, we see that some people consider it an attempt by the People’s Republic of China to put someone under its thumb, but we see otherwise, we just see desire for cooperation. Our own ideas on the development of the Eurasian Economic Union, for example, on the construction of a Greater Eurasia, fully coincide with the Chinese ideas proposed within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.”

Thanks to the BRI, the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) have already secured $24 billion dollars’ worth of investments, Putin says, and continues:

“It seems to me that the main advantage of the concept of cooperation proposed by the Chinese side is that nobody imposes anything on anybody in the framework of this work. Everything is done within the framework of finding not only acceptable solutions, but such projects and such ways of achieving a common goal that are acceptable to all. This is what makes China today, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, unique in building relations with others: no one imposes anything on anyone; no one forces anything on anyone, but only gives them opportunity. And, as I said, if there are difficulties, compromises are sought and always found. In my view, this is what distinguishes the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by the Chinese President from many others that countries with a heavy colonial legacy are trying to implement in the world.”

Reflecting his well-known interest, President Putin refers several times to sports, especially the martial arts and ice hockey, and to his hope to increase cooperation with China in this field, and, citing the importance of sports in his own life, states:

“Everyone knows and it’s not a secret that I come from a simple working-class family, and in the past, I had a lot of time to spend in the yard. I don’t know how my life would have turned out if I hadn’t taken an interest in sports. It doesn’t really matter what kind of sports I did, it’s important that I paid a lot of attention to it.”

Following up on what he said recently at the annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, President Putin excoriated the Western verbiage about a “rules-based order”:

“Have you ever seen those rules? No, you haven’t, because no one has agreed on them with anyone. So how can one talk about order based on rules that no one has ever seen? In terms of common sense, it’s nonsense. But it is beneficial to those who promote this approach. Because if no one has seen the rules, it only means that those who talk about them are making them up themselves from time to time to their own advantage. That is the colonial approach.

“Because colonial countries have always believed that they are first-rated people. After all, they have always talked about bringing enlightenment to their colonies, that they are civilized people who bring the benefits of civilization to other nations, whom they consider second-rate people. No surprise today’s political elite, say, in the United States, talks about its exceptionalism. This is the extension of this colonial mindset, meaning that when they consider themselves exceptional in the United States, it means that other people, all the people in fact, are just some second-rate people. How else could one understand it? Those are mere vestiges of colonial thinking, nothing else.

“Our approach is quite different. We proceed from the fact that all people are equal, all people have the same rights; the rights and freedoms of one country and one nation end where the rights and freedoms of another person, of an entire state, appear. This is the way in which a multipolar world should be evolving gradually. This is exactly what we are striving for, and this is the basis of our interaction with China on the international stage.”

He also speaks about the BRICS cooperation mechanism and its recent expansion from five to 11 members, saying that “all those who have joined BRICS support the idea and concept of forming a multipolar world. No one wants to play second fiddle to some sovereign, everyone wants equal rights. And when they join BRICS, they see that we can achieve this goal by joining efforts within the framework of expansion and strengthening of such a format.”

President Putin also discusses the conflict in Ukraine and the Chinese proposal for a political solution:

“We are thankful to our Chinese friends for trying to think about ways to end this crisis. However, I would like to remind you that hostilities in Ukraine did not start with our special military operation, but way before – in 2014, when the Western countries, after having volunteered as guarantors of the agreements between President Yanukovich and the opposition, forgot about those guarantees in a matter of days and – worse still – supported a coup d’état. United States Administration officials even acknowledged spending big money on it…

“Therefore, the start of the special military operation was not the start of a war, but an attempt to end it.”

Referring to the negotiations held in the Turkish city of Istanbul, shortly after the start of the special military operation, Putin notes that agreement was almost reached, however, “as soon as we pulled our troops back from the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, the Ukrainian side committed all the arrangements to flames.” Therefore:

“Of course, we know the proposals of our Chinese friends. We highly value those proposals. I think they are absolutely realistic and could lay the foundation for peace arrangements. But, unfortunately, the opposing side does not want to enter into any negotiations. In fact, the President of Ukraine has even issued a decree prohibiting everyone – including himself – to conduct any negotiations with us. How can we conduct negotiations if they are not willing to and even issued a regulation prohibiting such negotiations?”

Asked if there is any possibility to make progress based on the Chinese standpoint of building shared, common, and indivisible security, Putin says:

“Yes, we have always said that, too… In this context, it is extremely important for us that Ukraine stays outside any blocs. We were told as far back as 1991 – by the then US Administration – that NATO would not expand further east. Since then, there have been five waves of NATO expansion, and every time we expressed our concerns. Every time we were told: yes, we promised you not to expand NATO eastwards, but those were verbal promises – is there any paper with our signature on it? No paper? Good-bye.

“You see, it is very difficult to engage in a dialogue with people like that. I have already cited the example of the Iranian nuclear programme. The negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme were very, very lengthy. An agreement was reached, a compromise found, and documents signed. Then came a new Administration and threw everything in the trash, as if those arrangements never existed. How can we agree on anything if every new Administration starts from scratch – begin each time from the centre of the playing field?”

The CGTN interview with President Putin is embedded below. We also reproduce the full text of the interview as published by the Russian President’s website. The quotations above are taken from the latter version.

Continue reading Vladimir Putin: US exceptionalism is an extension of the colonial mindset