Friends of Socialist China, Author at Friends of Socialist China

Zimbabwe: Learning from China to enhance land reform

Zimbabwe can draw lessons from China on unlocking the economic value of agricultural land through secure, bankable, registrable, and transferable title deeds, thereby consolidating the gains of its land reform programme.

This was stated by Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Minister Mthuli Ncube at a high-level stakeholder meeting on land tenure reform held in the capital Harare on August 27.

“China demonstrates that value can be unlocked even where underlying rural land remains collectively owned,” Ncube said. “By certifying long-term household contract rights and allowing operational rights to be leased, transferred and consolidated, China created room for investment at scale while protecting the underlying rights of rural households.”

Providing secure tenure has the potential to unlock up to 20 billion US dollars currently unaccounted for in the national gross domestic product, he noted, adding: “We must collectively transform the land in the hands of our people into a foundation for increased production, decent jobs, exports, rural industrialisation and sustainable national prosperity.”

New book: China’s Foreign Policy and the Making of a Multipolar World

Friends of Socialist China is delighted to announce the publication of China’s Foreign Policy and the Making of a Multipolar World: Changes unseen in a century, edited by Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez and published by Praxis Press. The book is available now in paperback and as an ePub.

The volume aims to set out the broad contours, historical background and theoretical underpinnings that shape and guide China’s practice on the global stage. What are the historical roots of China’s foreign policy? What are its theoretical foundations? How has it been applied in practice, across radically different historical circumstances? Is China an imperialist power? Is its foreign policy “good enough”? And what does China’s rise mean for the rest of humanity – for the Global South, for peace, and for the struggle to build a just world order?

The ten essays collected here approach these questions from a range of angles, but they share a common premise: that China’s emergence as a global power, far from being a threat to humanity, offers the best hope for a peaceful, multipolar and ultimately socialist future.

Alongside the editors, the contributors are Ken Hammond, Andrew Murray, Jenny Clegg, Danny Haiphong, Cheng Enfu, Torkil Lauesen and Michael Dunford, with a foreword by João Pedro Stédile, founding member of the national leadership of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST).

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Edgar Snow and George Hatem – Friendship beyond borders

As part of its series of articles celebrating the 90^th anniversary of the successful conclusion of the Long March, China Today recently wrote about how two young Americans, Edgar Snow and George Hatem (Ma Haide) witnessed the Long March spirit up close and shared it with the world, demonstrating the enduring power of international friendship transcending borders.

After the Central Red Army had arrived in northern Shaanxi in October 1935, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai wrote to Soong Ching-ling, the widow of Chinese revolutionary leader Dr. Sun Yat-sen and a prominent revolutionary fighter herself, seeking her recommendation for an impartial foreign journalist and a highly skilled foreign doctor to visit the liberated area, conduct on-the-ground investigations, and present the truth to the world. Soong immediately recommended Edgar Snow, an American journalist, and George Hatem, an American doctor of Lebanese descent.

In June 1936, arranged by underground Communist Party of China (CPC) agents, Snow and Hatem broke through the blockades of the Kuomintang military and police, arriving in Bao’an (today’s Zhidan County of Yan’an City, Shaanxi Province), the capital of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia revolutionary base, in mid-July. Mao Zedong received them, and Zhou Enlai drew up an itinerary of approximately three months for their investigation and interviews.

Snow thus became the first foreign journalist to provide a complete account of the Long March to the outside world, while Hatem became the first foreign doctor to join the Red Army and participate in the Chinese revolution.

During his nearly four months in Bao’an, Snow lived in a cave dwelling and conducted dozens of long conversations with Mao Zedong. He returned to Beiping (present-day Beijing) in October 1936. One year later, Red Star Over China was published in London and immediately caused a sensation. As the US historian and Harvard professor John King (JK) Fairbank said, the book opened a new window for the West to understand China. Then US President Franklin D. Roosevelt was also moved by the book and invited Snow to the White House.

Hatem had originally intended only to conduct a medical survey. However, while reviewing medical records at the Red Army’s field hospital and conducting clinics for chronically ill soldiers and civilians, he saw many Long March survivors left permanently disabled due to the lack of medicine and medical care. Deeply moved, he told Snow, “They need doctors here so badly. I’m not leaving.”

In August 1936, Hatem accompanied Snow to Yuwangbu in Ningxia (today’s Tongxin County), where he guided rescue efforts at a frontline field hospital and treated local Muslim residents of the Hui ethnic group. He observed the equality between officers and soldiers, their shared hardships, and their close bonds with the people.

Entrusted by Mao Zedong, Hatem spent more than a month surveying the needs of the Red Army’s medical teams. On submitting his survey report to Mao Zedong, he applied to stay and join the Red Army. Mao praised the report, welcomed him into the Red Army, and appointed him as an advisor to the Health Department of the Central Military Commission.

Because of his Lebanese ancestry and his basic knowledge of Arabic, Hatem was deeply respected by the Hui people. Noticing that most local Hui people had the surname Ma, he adopted the Chinese name “Ma Haide” to better connect with the local people. In February 1937, he was admitted into membership of the CPC, becoming the first foreigner to join the party.

Ma Haide devoted the rest of his life to the Chinese revolution as a member of the Communist Party of China and a citizen of the People’s Republic of China. He died in Beijing on October 3, 1988, at the age of 78 and is buried at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.

We reproduce the article below. Previous articles from the series can be read here and here.

China at UN: Resolution of Palestine question is long overdue

Speaking at a UN Security Council Briefing on the Palestine-Israel Issue held on August 26, Chinese Ambassador Fu Cong said that: “Recently, the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory has continued to escalate, with a sharp increase in violence, repeated trampling of fairness and justice, and repeated breaches of the moral bottom line, casting an even darker shadow over the prospects for resolving the Palestinian question. The Palestinian people have endured immense suffering, with generations waiting for historical injustices to be redressed.”

He made three points:

No effort should be spared to uphold the ceasefire in Gaza and restore peace and stability at an early date. Recently, the Board of Peace announced progress on the arrangements for the second phase of the ceasefire agreement. Israel not only openly rejected them but went even further by escalating its deadly attacks on Gaza, undermining the fragile situation there. The facts have made it abundantly clear that the fundamental reason why lasting peace has yet to be achieved in Gaza is the lack of political will for peace, and that the biggest obstacle is the dangerous attempt to deliberately prolong the hostilities.
Acts of violence and annexation must be stopped and tensions in the West Bank eased. The security situation in the West Bank is becoming increasingly precarious and acts of violence against Palestinian civilians are appalling. In recent days, settlers in the West Bank have besieged Palestinian residents for days in an attempt to drive them out and seize their homes. China strongly condemns such acts. Any attempt at the de facto annexation of the West Bank is unacceptable. All settlement activities violate international law and Security Council resolutions and must cease immediately.
International fairness and justice must be upheld and the implementation of the two-State solution advanced. Palestine is the homeland of all Palestinians. Governance of the West Bank and post-war reconstruction in Gaza should be advanced in accordance with the principle of Palestinians governing Palestine. The international community should act on the basis of international law, with the aim of addressing both the symptoms and root causes and through practical actions, support the just cause of the Palestinian people in pursuing their legitimate national rights… The legitimate right of Palestinian leaders to attend the general debate of the United Nations General Assembly should be safeguarded.

In his conclusion, Fu Cong noted: “The Palestine question has been on the United Nations agenda for more than 70 years. Its resolution is long overdue.”

China and India make progress on boundary issue

The 25th Round of Talks Between the Special Representatives of China and India on the Boundary Question was held in Beijing on August 25, making significant progress towards resolving the key outstanding issue between Asia’s two biggest developing countries.

The talks were headed by China’s Special Representative, Foreign Minister Wang Yi and India’s Special Representative and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. They were described as comprehensive, in-depth, friendly and candid, and besides the boundary question included bilateral relations as well as other issues.

Wang Yi noted that China and India are important neighbours to each other, and both are major developing countries and representatives of emerging economies. A sound and steady development of China-India relations serves the fundamental interests of the two peoples, meets the common aspiration of Global South countries, and conforms to the trend of the times. The China-India relationship has gone beyond the bilateral scope and bears global and strategic significance. In recent years, President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi held two meetings in Kazan and Tianjin [at the 2024 and 2025 summit meetings of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) respectively], reaching a series of important common understandings that charted the course for the improvement and development of bilateral relations. The two sides should draw lessons from history, place the boundary question in an appropriate position in bilateral relations, keep moving forward without stagnation, regression or deviation, and gradually foster a positive narrative on China-India boundary affairs, making dialogue, peace, consultation and cooperation the mainstream, so as to inject positive factors into the sound and steady development of bilateral relations.

Ajit Doval said that India and China are both ancient civilisations, populous countries and major economies, and are cooperative partners rather than competitors. A stable, predictable and forward-looking India-China relationship serves the common interests of the two peoples and is of great significance to Asia and the world at large. India is ready to work with China to further intensify strategic communication, expand mutually beneficial cooperation, deepen multilateral coordination, effectively manage the border areas, explore solutions to the boundary question, and promote faster improvement and development of India-China relations.

The two sides agreed the Eight Points of Outcomes and Consensus for the 25th Round of Talks Between Special Representatives of China and India on the Boundary Question.

Ajit Doval also met with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng on the same day.

Han said that China and India should view and handle bilateral relations from a strategic and long-term perspective, and work together to implement the important consensus reached by their leaders. The two sides should enhance strategic mutual trust, tap the potential for cooperation, maintain close multilateral coordination, properly manage differences, and promote the sustained and stable development of China-India relations.

Doval said that as the world’s two most populous and fastest-growing major economies, India and China have a historic opportunity for cooperation, adding that India stands ready to work with China to deepen mutually beneficial cooperation, properly address the boundary question and make new progress in bilateral relations.

Xi Jinping puts forward four-point proposal to help resolve Palestinian issue

King Abdullah II of Jordan paid a state visit to China from August 18 to 24 at the invitation of President Xi Jinping.

Xi met with the Jordanian monarch on the afternoon of August 24. During the meeting, the Chinese president said that the Palestinian question is the core of the Middle East issue, and efforts to resolve it should be guided by four principles:

We must uphold political settlement, adhere to the two-State solution as the right direction, work for the resumption of peace talks between Palestine and Israel, and realise the early establishment of an independent State of Palestine.

We must uphold the principle of Palestinians governing Palestine. Palestine is the homeland of all Palestinians. The principle of Palestinians governing Palestine should be followed in advancing the governance of the West Bank and postwar reconstruction of Gaza.

We must uphold humanitarianism. The international community, particularly the UN Security Council, should truly take up the responsibility to keep civilians safe, ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and put an end to humanitarian disasters.

We must uphold fairness and justice. We should act on the basis of international rule of law, aim at addressing both the symptoms and root causes, and take practical actions to realise a comprehensive, just and lasting resolution of the Palestinian question at an early date.

Meanwhile, it has been announced that Xi Jinping will pay a state visit to Egypt, his first in ten years. Between August 30 to September 3, Xi will attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2026 in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek and pay a state visit to Kyrgyzstan and Egypt. His visit to Egypt will mark the 70th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two nations. Under the leadership of Gamal Abdul Nasser, Egypt was the first Arab and African country to establish diplomatic relations with China. This followed the meeting between Nasser and Chinese premier Zhou Enlai at the Africa Asia Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia the previous year.

Michael Roberts: WAPE 2026 – Adam Smith, imperialism and financialisation

The following report by the Marxist economist Michael Roberts covers the 19th Congress of the World Association of Political Economy (WAPE), held at the University of Greenwich in London – a Chinese-initiated academic body that brings together Marxist economists from across the world.

This year’s theme was Adam Smith, 250 years after the publication of The Wealth of Nations. WAPE chair Cheng Enfu of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences argued that Smith has been badly misrepresented by the free-marketeers who claim him: he explained modern economies not through markets alone but through the social division of labour, moral norms and the role of the state. Several papers were devoted to rescuing Smith from neoliberalism. But as Cheng also noted, Smith’s labour theory of value was contradictory – he held that labour creates value while also reverting to a theory based on “factors of production”, and it is the latter that modern mainstream economics kept and the former that it discarded.

Roberts’s own paper, on imperialist exploitation, concludes that under imperialism the poor countries of the world will never close the gap with the Global North – with one exception. On present trends, no BRICS country will reach the current high-income level within twenty years except China, which he projects will get there by 2041 and match the projected rich-country level by 2046. His explanation is that value is persistently transferred from South to North, and that profitability across the Global South is falling faster than productivity is rising, choking off investment. China is the exception because its investment growth is less determined by profitability than that of any other major Global South economy – which is to say, because it is a socialist country with a planned core.

Roberts was also presented with a WAPE award for his significant contribution to Marxian economics.

Brazil’s election is the next front line in Washington’s war against a multipolar world

Brazil goes to the polls on 4 October, and Washington is treating a sovereign election as its own affair – Magnitsky sanctions on the Supreme Court judge who jailed Bolsonaro for attempting a coup, a 50 percent tariff whose removal was openly tied to his release, and a terrorism designation that Brazil’s own Foreign Ministry has warned could be used to justify US military action on Brazilian soil.

The following article by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez and the Brazilian journalist Sara Vivacqua sets out that campaign of interference. Of particular interest to readers here is what makes Brazil, in their phrase, a hard nut for Washington to crack – and much of the answer lies in its relationship with China.

Brazil now trades more with China than with the United States, and is challenging US tariffs at the World Trade Organisation with Beijing joining the case. China buys more than a quarter of everything Brazil exports. The two countries increasingly settle accounts directly in reais and yuan, backed by a central bank swap line of 190 billion yuan – around $28 billion – cleared outside New York. Chinese investment committed to Brazil reached $6.1 billion in 2025, and BYD now assembles electric vehicles at Camaçari, on the site Ford abandoned in 2021. When the July duties took effect, Xi Jinping telephoned Lula to pledge Beijing’s support for Brazilian sovereignty against “external interference”, and the year set a fresh bilateral trade record.

The authors conclude that the more of the relationship that sits beyond the dollar, the less a hostile US Treasury can squeeze. We recently published a related article by Sara Vivacqua on the same theme.

Responding to left criticisms of China’s foreign policy

In this discussion with Radhika Desai, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez confronts the charge, common even on parts of the left, that Beijing does far too little for Palestine, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.

The conversation traces China’s foreign policy from the internationalism of Bandung and the Non-Aligned Movement, through its rapprochement with Washington and entry into the world economy, to its pursuit of a Global Community of Shared Future. Carlos argues that the criticisms rest on a misreading of what China is and what it can do – that a country still in the primary stage of socialism, subject to sanctions, encirclement and technology blockade, is being held to a standard never applied to any other state, and judged against an imagined capacity it does not possess.

He also addresses what China actually does: its consistent votes and vetoes at the United Nations, its material and diplomatic support for Cuba and Venezuela under blockade, its position on Palestinian statehood and the Beijing Declaration on Palestinian unity, and its insistence that unilateral sanctions have no basis in international law.

The video is embedded below, followed by a full transcript.

Transcript

Radhika Desai: Hello, viewers and listeners. Welcome to the Geopolitical Economy interview, a series in which I speak with prominent intellectuals, scholars, politicians, journalists, activists and public figures to illuminate the fast-changing political economy and geopolitical economy of our times.

I’m Radhika Desai and you’re watching Radhika Desai, Geopolitical Economist. Today’s topic is China’s foreign policy towards the United States and the West on the one hand, and the oppressed — and I should say oppressed and embattled — nations such as Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran on the other, in the broader context of rising multipolarity. How should the left make sense of it, particularly given that sections of the left have criticised China for not doing enough for precisely these countries?

I can think of few people better qualified to address this question than Carlos Martinez, who joins me today. Welcome, Carlos.

Carlos Martinez: Hi, Radhika. Lovely to see you. Good to be with you.

Radhika Desai: It’s really great to have you today, Carlos. Let me tell our audience that you are an independent scholar and researcher, co-editor of the increasingly important and influential Friends of Socialist China website, and author and editor of many books on China and on socialism — including the one on China, which is called The East Is Still Red, and the wonderfully titled book on the demise of the USSR, The End of the Beginning. You meant, of course, that this was just the end of the beginning of world socialism.

CPC International Department in solidarity with Laos, Cuba, Brazil and Mexico

Laos

Sun Haiyan, Vice-minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee (IDCPC), went to the Lao Embassy in China on August 11 to mourn the passing of Xaysomphone Phomvihane, Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) and President of the Lao National Assembly.

Sun conveyed the profound condolences of IDCPC Minister Liu Haixing on the passing of Comrade Xaysomphone Phomvihane to Somphone Sichaleune, Lao Ambassador to China. She said that Comrade Xaysomphone was an outstanding leader of the LPRP and Laos, having made important contributions to the cause of reform and socialist construction in Laos, and having long been actively promoting the development of relations between the two Parties and the two countries.

Somphone expressed sincere gratitude to Sun for coming to pay condolences, stressing that the Lao side is ready to work with the Chinese side to carry forward and promote the traditional friendship between Laos and China.

Cuba

On August 13, Ma Hui, Vice-minister of the IDCPC, attended and addressed an event held by the Cuban Embassy in China to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the leader of the Cuban revolution Fidel Castro.

Ma highly praised Fidel Castro’s historic contributions to the Cuban revolution and socialist construction, as well as to the friendship between China and Cuba. He emphasised that General Secretary Xi Jinping sent a letter to Cuban leaders on the 100th anniversary of Fidel Castro’s birth, and IDCPC Minister Liu Haixing recently led a CPC delegation to visit Cuba and attend the International Colloquium “Fidel, Legacy and Future.” These demonstrate the profound friendship between China and Cuba who stand together through thick and thin and jointly overcome difficulties. China is willing to work with the international community, including Cuba, to jointly uphold international fairness and justice and oppose hegemony and power politics.

Alberto Blanco Silva, Cuban Ambassador to China, offered a comprehensive review of Fidel Castro’s glorious and revolutionary life, particularly his profound friendship towards China and the CPC. The Cuban side will carry forward Fidel Castro’s legacy and actively advance the building of a Cuba-China community with a shared future.

Brazil

Earlier, on August 6, Ma Hui met with a delegation led by Monica Valente, Member of the National Executive Committee of Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT) and Executive Secretary of the São Paulo Forum. The São Paulo Forum groups most of the major left and progressive political parties and organisations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Ma said the Chinese side looks forward to working hand in hand with the Brazilian side to further deepen exchanges and cooperation between the two Parties, boost party building, national development and progress of each side, and contribute to building a China-Brazil community with a shared future.

Valente said, the PT has long followed closely the theoretical and practical development of the CPC. The PT is ready to strengthen exchanges on the CPC’s experience in party governance and state administration, and push Brazil-China relations towards greater progress through inter-party channels.

Mexico

Meanwhile, on July 10 Minister Liu Haixing met with a delegation of the Labour Party (PT) of Mexico led by party president Alberto Anaya.

Liu noted that in 2024, President Xi Jinping and President Claudia Sheinbaum held a meeting and reached important consensus, charting the course for the development of China-Mexico relations. The CPC and the PT of Mexico share similar ideas and have maintained friendly exchanges ever since the establishment of inter-party relations. The Chinese side is ready to further strengthen institutionalised exchanges between the two Parties, deepen the exchange and mutual learning of experience on such topics as party building and social governance, and use the “political party+” channel to deepen cooperation in such fields as economy and trade, people-to-people and cultural engagement, science and technology, youth, and sub-national exchanges, so as to promote the sustained and steady development of China-Mexico relations.

Anaya said that under the leadership of the CPC, China has achieved great accomplishments in economic and social development, notably in poverty alleviation, environmental protection, and scientific and technological innovation, and has become an advanced country and an important force in the world, providing tremendous encouragement to developing countries including Mexico. The PT of Mexico and the CPC share a profound friendship and similar ideas.

A new McCarthyism on both sides of the Atlantic

Two stories eight days apart, both from London newspapers, both pushing a McCarthyite agenda – one aimed at Britain, one at the United States. The Telegraph announced that “China is funding pro-Palestine marches in UK”. The Times reported that members of the Democratic Socialists of America had signed a public statement of support for Chinese socialism and, worse, had travelled to China.

Neither story alleges a crime. Neither produces a document showing a payment from the Chinese state or an instruction from the Communist Party of China. Both rest on the same syllogism: people hold anti-war positions that are also held in Beijing; therefore they hold them because of Beijing; therefore anti-war campaigners are not citizens exercising their rights but instruments of a foreign power.

The following article takes the two chains apart – four degrees of hedged separation in the British case, and in the American one the discovery that socialists are interested in socialism – and sets them against how Washington and London actually operate, from AIPAC’s congressional junkets and the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program to the pro-Israel lobbyists who have donated to half of Keir Starmer’s cabinet.

It then places the episode in its proper lineage. Ellen Schrecker’s segregationists blamed “outside agitators”; the NAACP was investigated for communist infiltration; Paul Robeson lost his passport for eight years; W.E.B. Du Bois was indicted as an unregistered foreign agent in his eighties. The purpose was never to prove foreign control, but to deny that the people protesting had minds of their own.

And it examines the machinery now being assembled: 3,061 terrorism-related arrests in Britain in the year to March 2026, 92 percent of them relating to Palestine Action; the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme and the campaign to add China to its enhanced tier; and, in the United States, presidential memorandum NSPM-7, which lists “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” among the indicators federal agencies are to investigate.

The following article by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez is an expanded version of a piece that first appeared in the Morning Star.

Two stories, eight days apart, both from London newspapers, pushing a McCarthyite agenda in two different countries. The Telegraph announced that “China is funding pro-Palestine marches in UK”. The Times reported that members of the Democratic Socialists of America – “the left-wing group behind Zohran Mamdani’s rise” – had signed a public statement of support for Chinese socialism and, worse, had travelled to China.

Neither story alleges a crime. Neither produces a document showing a payment from the Chinese state, an instruction from the Communist Party of China, or any kind of broken law. Both rest on the same syllogism: people hold anti-war positions that are also held in Beijing; therefore these positions are taken up because of Beijing; therefore anti-war campaigners are not citizens exercising their basic democratic rights, but instruments of a foreign power.

Britain: four degrees of separation

Take the evidence as presented by the Telegraph. US congressional investigators are examining £250,000 in “alleged” payments to a company “linked to” CodePink in the UK, from firms “connected to” Neville Roy Singham, a US businessman “accused of” financing pro-China content.

Four degrees of separation, with every link in the chain a substantial hedge, from which emerges a headline asserting that the People’s Republic of China is funding the mass movement in Britain against genocide in Gaza. Singham is a US citizen who made his money building a software consultancy and now spends it on causes he believes in. What the allegations amount to, at most, is a US businessman with left-wing opinions funding a US peace group that has a British affiliate.

And what are the recipients of this money charged with doing? Organising protests against Britain’s involvement in genocide. Campaigning for peace with Iran. Calling for the removal of British military bases in Cyprus. Visiting China and saying that it is not our enemy. Every one of those is a lawful (and obviously principled and correct) political position, and several of them are held by most of the British public. Polling by YouGov in July found that 50 percent of Britons believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza against 17 percent who believe it is not, and that 55 percent think Britain should no longer treat Israel as an ally.

Also, consider the sums under discussion. A quarter of a million pounds would barely cover the placards at London’s anti-genocide demonstrations, let alone the portaloos. Spread across the half of the country that has reached the conclusion Beijing supposedly paid for, it comes to less than a penny a head. If that is the price of British public opinion, the Chinese state has driven a remarkable bargain.

The US: socialists found to be interested in socialism

The US version of the story is, remarkably, even thinner. The Times has made the extraordinary discovery that socialists are interested in socialism.

Thirteen members of the DSA, it reports, have signed the Friends of Socialist China statement, declaring that they aim to support the People’s Republic and to promote understanding of Chinese socialism. This is a public statement, published on a public website, which anyone may sign and which has attracted just shy of 1,000 signatories to date from dozens of countries. Thirteen of them turn out to belong to a US socialist organisation. Many readers may struggle to identify a scandal.

Then comes the evidence of sinister coordination: some DSA members went to China. A provincial foreign affairs office in Guizhou helped arrange an itinerary. They attended the parade marking 80 years since the victory over Japanese fascism. According to one of them, they were – gasp – treated well.

From this, the anti-China campaigner Alexander Reid Ross concludes that the trips “exhibit fingerprints of extraordinarily high-level co-ordination by the People’s Republic of China”, and speculates that these individuals’ standing within the DSA “has been improved precisely through the efforts of foreign parties”, raising the question of “who they’re working for”. No offence is alleged and no evidence is offered.

It is probably not a coincidence that the story has surfaced just as Washington is making a concerted effort to revive its Xinjiang campaign. One of the DSA members had visited Xinjiang and reported that he found nothing to support Western accusations of forced labour. To go to Xinjiang and decline to repeat the slanders is evidently the graver offence. Better by far to be one of those who have built entire careers on Xinjiang atrocity claims and who have, for the most part, never set foot in the place.

Set this against how Washington and London actually work

The double standard is easily identified. AIPAC’s affiliate flies members of Congress to Israel as a matter of routine. The State Department’s own International Visitor Leadership Program has hosted more than 230,000 foreign leaders since 1940, over 500 of whom went on to become heads of state or government – a rate of return on hospitality that Guizhou could barely dream of. The National Endowment for Democracy funds journalists, opposition parties and NGOs across the planet and publishes the grant lists in its annual reports.

Meanwhile in London, pro-Israel lobbyists have donated to half of Keir Starmer’s cabinet, a sum considerably higher than the £250,000 that so alarmed the Telegraph.

None of that is considered “foreign interference”, but a Chinese provincial foreign affairs office booking a few hotel rooms is a matter of national security.

The New Red Scare

None of this is new.

The historian Ellen Schrecker describes how segregationists in the American South always insisted that the region’s black population was perfectly content with its subordinate status, and that demands for change were “the product of ‘outside agitators’”. Linking those agitators to the Communist Party, she writes, gave the segregationists “new allies as well as a more modern rationale” for their campaign against the civil rights movement. The same device had served US employers for decades before that: strikes were never the product of legitimate grievance but the work of outside agitators, “usually foreign-born”.

The purpose was never to prove foreign control. It was to deny that the people doing the protesting had minds and interests of their own.

So the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1909 and considered the US’ oldest civil rights group), by then a decidedly moderate organisation, was investigated for communist infiltration and became, as Gerald Horne records in Black and Red, among the first targets of the red scare. Paul Robeson had his passport confiscated for eight years and was systematically denied concert venues, the object being, in Horne’s phrase, to make him “radioactive”. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was wiretapped and briefed against, with J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI formally designating him “the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism”.

And the world-famous scholar Dr. WEB Du Bois, co-founder of the NAACP, then in his eighties, was indicted as an unregistered foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The damage was not confined to the individuals named. Schrecker’s verdict is that opposition to the Cold War became so completely identified with communism that “it was no longer possible to challenge the basic assumptions of American foreign policy without incurring suspicions of disloyalty”. That is the actual purpose of an exercise like this one: not primarily to convict any particular individual, but to make a set of opinions – against war, against racism, against genocide, against the encirclement of China – too expensive and too dangerous to hold.

The machinery now being built

In Britain, Palestine Action has been proscribed under terrorism legislation, and the consequences show up in the government’s own figures. In the year ending March 2026 there were 3,061 terrorism-related arrests, an increase of 1,186 percent on the previous year, and 2,819 of them – 92 percent – related to alleged support for Palestine Action. Quite an upsurge in “terrorism” – without a single fatality or even injury. Charges under section 12 of the Terrorism Act, which covers support for a proscribed organisation, had run at around five a year between 2019 and 2023; in 2024 there were 17. A counter-terrorism apparatus built to deal with bombers now focuses nine-tenths of its arrests on a protest movement, perhaps a majority of whom are pensioners, and only a small fraction of those arrested are ever charged.

As Sara Vivacqua documents in the Canary, the same powers have been turned on journalists covering the genocide. Asa Winstanley of The Electronic Intifada had his home raided in October 2024 and his devices seized, containing material capable of identifying sources in Palestine, and has never been charged. Kit Klarenberg was stopped at Luton Airport under Schedule 3 of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act, and says the questioning made plain that the object was his journalism rather than terrorism.

The Foreign Influence Registration Scheme went live last year; its enhanced tier, which makes it a criminal offence to act at the direction of a specified foreign power, in areas beyond just political influence, without declaring it, currently applies to Russia and Iran, and there is a sustained campaign to add China to the list. Put that together with a year of newspaper stories linking the Palestine movement to Beijing, and the state acquires a mechanism for treating anti-war protest as a hostile foreign operation.

In the United States the equivalent already exists, and it is the same statute. Presidential memorandum NSPM-7, signed in September 2025, directs federal agencies to investigate nonprofits, activists and their donors, listing “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” among the indicators to be looked for, and assigning Joint Terrorism Task Forces to pursue violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. An organisation whose members are on record supporting Chinese socialism, and who may have accepted a hotel booking from a Chinese provincial government, is precisely the kind of thing that memorandum was drafted to capture.

What is actually being defended

Ordinary British people did not need the Communist Party of China to make them angry about Gaza. Nearly three years of televised mass killing, British-made components in the aircraft, RAF surveillance flights out of Akrotiri feeding information to an army facing genocide proceedings at the International Court of Justice: millions of people in Britain concluded that their government was complicit and reaching that conclusion required no assistance whatsoever from Beijing. Nor do young Americans need instructions from Guizhou to notice that they cannot afford rent, and that a country which has eliminated extreme poverty and become the world’s first green energy superpower might be worth studying.

Which is what the accusation is for. Not to show that anyone took Chinese money – nobody has shown that anyone did – but to disqualify a position rather than answer it. An argument traced back to a foreign capital need never be met on its merits. So the Times assembles a chain running from rent control in New York through the DSA and a Guizhou hotel booking to Beijing, and the Telegraph assembles one running from a march against genocide through CodePink and a US software millionaire to the same destination. And it has to be China at the end of both chains, because China is the country doing most to prove that socialism works and that a better world is possible.

It’s essential that we see through this cynical manoeuvre, defend those being targeted, and resist the creeping authoritarianism that is being normalised in the name of “security”. The people marching for Palestine are not instruments of a foreign power. They are ordinary human beings who are disgusted with their own government’s complicity in genocide. And on this issue at least they represent the views of the majority.

From organising in the US to teaching in China: the Long March spirit lives on

In the following article, which was originally published by China Today, Mark Levine, a veteran US socialist living and working in China, reflects on the enduring legacy and relevance of the Long March spirit, both in China and universally.

He recalls that: “I first heard of the Long March in the 1960s, as a college student in the United States… By 1976, I had earned my Ph.D. in sociology. Yet instead of pursuing an academic career, I spent the next three decades as a full-time volunteer labour organiser in impoverished American communities. It was during that period that I read Snow’s vivid account of the Long March [‘Red Star over China’ by Edgar Snow], which left a lasting impression on me… Today, after more than two decades living in China, observing the country’s dramatic transformations, speaking with people from remote villages to modern cities, and visiting revolutionary sites such as Zunyi in Guizhou Province and Xibaipo in Hebei Province, I have developed a far richer and more personal understanding of that Long March spirit.”

Mark recalls: “The original Long March (1934-1936), undertaken by the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army and led by the Communist Party of China (CPC), was a journey of survival and hope. Facing harsh natural environments, rugged terrain, and constant military suppression, China’s revolutionary leaders chose faith over despair, unity over division, and the common good over personal gain. As Chairman Mao Zedong wrote in his 1938 treatise On Protracted War, victory would not come quickly, but it would surely come.”

He invokes the contemporary Long March spirit by detailing how villages, “once isolated by treacherous terrain and entrenched poverty are being rejuvenated, not by dramatic interventions, but by the persistent, grinding work of local people. Village teachers crossing rivers to reach a handful of students. Engineers building roads through mountains one metre at a time. Healthcare workers carrying medicine to communities that have never seen a doctor. There are no grand battles or dramatic heroics here, but there is the same perseverance and selflessness that carried the Red Army across China 90 years ago.

“I have also seen this spirit in China’s response to difficult times: the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, the devastating winter storms of that same year, and the COVID-19 pandemic. I wrote songs about each of these events because I was watching a society respond to catastrophes not with panic, but with coordinated resolve.”

This spirit has relevance, too, to China’s ethnic policies: “For nearly two decades, I have taught at Minzu [Nationalities] University of China in Beijing, an institution dedicated to ethnic unity and educational equity. My students mainly come from the high plateau, deep mountains, and borderlands of western and southwestern China. Many are from ethnic minority communities in regions that were, not long ago, as isolated and underdeveloped as the terrain the Long March once crossed… They study not merely to escape their circumstances, but to return home as teachers, doctors, engineers, and cultural stewards. They talk about revitalising their villages, preserving their languages, and building bridges between their traditions and the modern world…

“My own work has been shaped by this same ethos. As a songwriter, author, and chief expert of the ‘Telling China Stories’ Workshop, I have worked to break Western stereotypes that often reduce China’s development to superficial headlines and biased political narratives.”

The Long March spirit, Mark concludes, “is not China’s alone. It belongs to anyone who has ever faced an impossible journey and kept moving forward.”

Vietnam mourns former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam has expressed condolences to China on the death on August 12 of former Premier Zhu Rongji, acclaiming his contributions to China’s socialist cause and to the friendship between the two countries.

The top Vietnamese leaders sent messages of condolence to their Chinese counterparts on August 14.

The messages described Zhu as an outstanding leader who made important contributions to China’s reform and opening up and its integration into the global economy. The Party, State and people of Vietnam always value the former Chinese leader’s significant contributions to the development of Vietnam–China relations in the early years of the 21st century, the messages added.

The key Vietnamese leaders further expressed their belief that under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee with General Secretary and President Xi Jinping at its core, the Chinese people will turn grief into strength and continue to score even greater accomplishments in building China into a modern, strong, prosperous, democratic, civilised, harmonious and beautiful socialist country.

On the morning of August 18, Prime Minister Le Minh Hung led a delegation representing the Party and State as well as the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) to the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi to sign the book of condolences.

General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee and President To Lam, National Assembly President Tran Thanh Man and Permanent member of the CPV Central Committee’s Secretariat Tran Cam Tu sent condolence wreaths.

At the ceremony, Prime Minister Hung conveyed deep condolences from Party General Secretary and President Lam, National Assembly President Man, Permanent member of the CPV Central Committee’s Secretariat Tu, and other high-ranking Vietnamese officials to General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee and President Xi Jinping, other Chinese leaders and Zhu’s family. He affirmed that the Vietnamese Party, State and people highly value Zhu’s dedication and remarkable contributions to ties between the two countries’ Parties, States and peoples.

Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam He Wei said the Chinese Party, State and people attach great importance and give priority to relations with Vietnam and stand ready to further deepen the two countries’ friendship and comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, and the Vietnam-China Community with a shared future that carries strategic significance.

Affirming Vietnam’s consistent policy of attaching importance and giving top priority to relations with China, Hung stressed that the attention and practical contributions of generations of leaders from both sides have laid an important foundation for Vietnam and China to continue preserving and advancing their ties towards stable, sustainable development.

Meanwhile, on August 20, Secretary of the CPV Central Committee and Deputy Prime Minister Pham Thi Thanh Tra met with the Chinese Ambassador and said that Vietnam considers strengthening relations with China a top priority in its overall foreign policy.

Highlighting the long-standing friendship between the two countries’ Parties, States and people, she noted that amid complex, rapid and unpredictable developments in the regional and international situation, the two sides should effectively implement important common perceptions reached by their top leaders, and continuously consolidate and develop bilateral ties, especially in areas of substantive cooperation.

Congratulating China on its development achievements under the leadership of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, with General Secretary and President Xi Jinping at its core, the Deputy Prime Minister spoke highly of the country’s development experience. She expressed her hope that the two sides will increase exchanges and share experience in areas such as apparatus organisation, high-quality human resources development, talent attraction and utilisation, tourism, cultural industries, health care, particularly traditional medicine, and other social fields.

For his part, He affirmed that relations between the two Parties and countries are enjoying a period of strong development. He congratulated Vietnam on its development achievements, especially its strong reforms in numerous fields under the leadership of the CPV Central Committee headed by General Secretary and President To Lam. He affirmed that China stands ready to work with Vietnam to strengthen exchanges and share experience, jointly advance the cause of socialist development in each country, and deliver tangible benefits to their peoples.

Webinar: China’s national unity vs US social hierarchy (30 August)

📆 Sunday 30 August 2026, 4pm Britain, 11am US Eastern, 8am US Pacific, 11pm China

Getting to the truth about China’s new Ethnic Unity Law, and answering the hysterical reactions of Western media and politicians.

China’s Ethnic Unity Law has been the occasion for a fresh wave of misrepresentation in the Western press, in which it is presented as the erasure of minority languages and cultures. In fact the law explicitly reaffirms the right of all peoples to use and develop their own spoken and written languages, and prohibits discrimination against any ethnic group – as we have recently discussed.

This international webinar brings together speakers from China, the United States, Canada and Britain to explain what the law actually says, to compare the treatment of national minorities in China and the United States, and to hear eye-witness accounts from Xinjiang and Xizang (Tibet). Hear how all China’s people get free education, health care, housing and equal rights.

Speakers

Chen Weihua (EU Bureau Chief, China Daily)
Carlos Martinez (Co-editor, Friends of Socialist China)
Jason Smith (China talk show host and long-time US resident in China, specialising in Xinjiang and Xizang/Tibet)
Jacqueline Luqman (Black Alliance for Peace) – a comparison of “minority” policies in the US and China
Arnold August – eye-witness account from Xizang/Tibet
Sara Flounders (Secretary, Friends of Socialist China US) – eye-witness account from Xinjiang

For background on the Western attacks on the law, see China’s Ethnic Unity Law: What Western Media Leaves Out in LA Progressive.

The event is being organised by Friends of Socialist China US Committee, the United National Antiwar Coalition and the International Manifesto Group.

Jean-Pierre Page: Socialism works, and China is living proof of it

Jean-Pierre Page is a veteran of the French labour movement: a former Air France worker, a member of the Confederal Executive Committee of the CGT (General Confederation of Labour) and head of its international department. He co-authored Masters of the World on the war in Yugoslavia with Samir Amin, Noam Chomsky and Georges Labica, and China Without Blinders with Maxime Vivas, and has edited the journal La Pensée Libre since 2004.

In this wide-ranging interview conducted by Xinhua, Page discusses the Communist Party of China’s conception of “self-revolution”, and what it means for communist parties elsewhere. A communist party, he argues, is a living, militant body rather than an electoral machine, and criticism and self-criticism are fundamental practices for every communist regardless of rank – so self-revolution amounts to the requirement that every member hold themselves accountable and make their daily conduct exemplary.

He is blunt about the contrast with Europe. Bureaucratisation, careerism, the professionalisation of political and trade union life, and a drift from the concerns of working people have afflicted communist parties too, and in most European countries their decline – through strategic errors and the abandonment of communist principles – has deprived the people of the means to defend their interests. He notes “a very alarming level of mediocrity and political illiteracy” among politicians, a symptom of capitalism’s systemic crisis, and observes that in France barely half the population now votes, with many of the rest turning to the far right.

On corruption, Page draws a pointed historical lesson: the abuses of the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe estranged those parties from the people and were “not unrelated to the collapse of the Soviet Union” – while under capitalism the same tendencies have worsened, sustained by a culture of impunity, two-tier justice and more than a thousand lobby groups operating at European level alone.

He also addresses China’s National Action Plan on Human Rights 2026–2030 and the Forum on Global Human Rights Governance held in Beijing, arguing that human rights are inseparable from the right to development: there is little point discussing rights with people deprived of an income, a job or a roof over their heads. Against the Western claim to define human rights universally, he sets China’s record on poverty eradication, and concludes that while China may not be a model, it is an example. “Socialism works, and China is living proof of it.”

Webinar: Mao Zedong 50 years on – the revolution that continues to change the world (6 September)

📆 Sunday 6 September 2026, 3pm Britain, 10am US Eastern, 10pm China

Fifty years after his death, Mao Zedong’s portrait still looks out over Tiananmen Square, his face is on every Chinese banknote, and Mao Zedong Thought remains written into both the country’s constitution as well as that of the world’s largest communist party. Ordinary Chinese people travel in their millions every year to Shaoshan, the village in Hunan where he was born.

This webinar asks why Mao is still revered in China, and what were the achievements of China and the Communist Party of China (CPC) under his leadership.

In 1949 China was among the poorest countries on earth: life expectancy of around 35 years, adult literacy below 20 percent, a population stagnant at four to five hundred million for a century, and a hundred years of treaty ports, extraterritoriality and foreign concessions. By 1976 life expectancy had reached around 67 – a gain of more than three decades in less than three decades, the fastest improvement ever recorded by any country in human history. Illiteracy had fallen to a third. Land was redistributed, famine ended, women emancipated, the country unified, and a complete industrial base built from a near-zero baseline.

That is the China the reform era inherited – not the backwater of Western myth. As Samir Amin put it, the take-off after 1978 “would not have been possible without the economic, political and social foundations that had been built up in the preceding period”. It is also how the CPC understands its own history, in Xi Jinping’s formulation that the post-1978 reform era cannot be used to invalidate the Mao era, nor can the Mao era be used to invalidate the reform era.

Mao’s China changed the world beyond its borders too – inspiring millions and standing with Vietnam, with Korea, with the liberation movements of Africa and with Palestine.

Join us to discuss what Mao achieved, how China’s present successes rest on those foundations, why he is still revered in China, and how the socialist project has held its course after his death, through half a century of twists and turns.

This webinar is organised by Friends of Socialist China and the International Manifesto Group.

Confirmed speakers

Senator Mushahid Hussain (Chairman, Pakistan-China Institute)
Ken Hammond (Professor of History, New Mexico State University)
Keith Bennett (Co-editor, Friends of Socialist China)
Jenny Clegg (Author and peace campaigner)
Tings Chak (Asia coordinator, Tricontinental Institute)
Ding Xiaoqin (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
Moderator: Radhika Desai (Convenor, International Manifesto Group)

The antibiotics crisis and the case for socialism

Ara Darzi – surgeon, Labour peer and author of the 2024 review of the NHS – has written in the Financial Times that the West has handed China “the keys to the medicine cabinet”, warning of the “peacetime weaponisation” of pharmaceutical supply chains. China supplies around 94 percent of the key raw materials for amoxicillin and nearly half of global antibiotic ingredient exports.

The following article by Carlos Martinez takes the sinophobic framing apart. China has never withheld medicine from anyone, while the United States is currently obstructing medical supplies to Cuba, Iran and Venezuela, and held up ventilator and PPE shipments during a pandemic. However, what Darzi concedes along the way is of interest.

Darzi’s own diagnosis is that antibiotics are a permanent market failure: a drug whose value rises the less it is used cannot recoup its research costs, so Novartis, AstraZeneca and Sanofi have all quit the field, and the company that brought a new antibiotic to market in 2018 was bankrupt within a year. As former British Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies put it, a medicine that cures you in a week is a worse business proposition than one you must take for life. Meanwhile some 4.71 million deaths were associated with antibacterial resistance in 2021, with the heaviest burden falling on South and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa – precisely where the market is least likely to step in.

Darzi’s conclusion is that antibiotics should be treated not as a commodity but as critical infrastructure, planned and publicly supported. The article agrees, and observes that when China applies exactly that logic – to antibiotics, solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, high-speed rail or semiconductors – it is denounced as overcapacity and distortion, and met with tariffs. Darzi has written a very persuasive argument for socialism, and appears not to have noticed.

Xi Jinping’s speech at the gathering commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Comrade Jiang Zemin

On the morning of August 17, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, the State Council, the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and the Central Military Commission held a grand gathering at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great Marxist, proletarian revolutionary, politician, military strategist, diplomat, and outstanding leader of the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, Comrade Jiang Zemin. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, President of the country, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, attended the conference and delivered an important speech.

The following is the full text of the speech. It was published in Chinese by the Xinhua News Agency and has been machine translated and then sub-edited by us.

Comrades and friends,

Today, we gather solemnly to commemorate the centenary of Comrade Jiang Zemin’s birth, deeply commemorate his great achievements, deeply study his noble character, and inspire the entire Party and people of all ethnic groups across the country to continuously advance the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Comrade Jiang Zemin is an outstanding leader recognised by the entire Party, the military, and people of all ethnic groups nationwide, enjoying high prestige and outstanding leadership, a great Marxist, a great proletarian revolutionary, politician, military strategist, diplomat, a long-tested communist fighter, an outstanding leader in the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the core of the Party’s third generation central leadership collective, and the main founder of the important thinking of the ‘Three Represents’.

A hundred years ago today, Comrade Jiang Zemin was born into a patriotic intellectual family in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province. From his youth, he was determined to pursue truth and actively participated in patriotic and progressive student movements. In April 1946, he joined the Communist Party of China, dedicating his life to the cause of the Party and the people.

After the founding of New China, Comrade Jiang Zemin worked successively in enterprises, research institutes, and national ministries, fulfilling his duties and working diligently in every position, dedicating his passionate years to the cause of socialist revolution and construction. In the early days of reform and opening up, Comrade Jiang Zemin served as Deputy Director and Secretary-General of the State Administration of Import and Export and the State Foreign Investment Administration Commission, and later as First Vice Minister and Minister of the Ministry of Electronics Industry, making extensive pioneering work in reform and opening up. At the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party, he was elected as a member of the Central Committee.

In 1985, Comrade Jiang Zemin was appointed Deputy Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and Mayor. In 1987, at the First Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee, he was elected as a member of the Central Political Bureau and served as Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee. During this period, Comrade Jiang Zemin led the broad masses of cadres and people in Shanghai to boost morale and courageously explore, led the formulation of Shanghai’s economic development and urban construction plans, promoted Pudong’s development and opening up, and made outstanding contributions to advancing Shanghai’s reform, opening up, and socialist modernisation. At the turn of spring and summer in 1989, China experienced serious political turmoil. Comrade Jiang Zemin resolutely supported and implemented the correct decisions of the Party Central Committee, effectively maintaining stability in Shanghai.

In June 1989, at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee, Jiang Zemin was elected as a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and General Secretary of the Central Committee. In November of the same year, the Fifth Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee decided to make him Chairman of the Central Military Commission, forming the third generation of the Party’s central leadership with Jiang Zemin at its core.

Brazil’s election is a test case for the Global South

The following article by Sara Vivacqua, a Brazilian lawyer and investigative journalist, examines the campaign of legal, diplomatic, economic and military pressure being waged by the Trump administration against Brazil ahead of the presidential election on 4 October. With Venezuela under military assault, Cuba under siege, new US bases in Argentina and Paraguay and marines deployed in Ecuador and Bolivia, Brazil stands as one of the very few remaining obstacles to Washington completing its sphere of influence across the hemisphere.

Of particular interest is the article’s account of China’s role. On 27 July, the day after Lula responded to a fresh 25 percent tariff with an op-ed in the Washington Post, Xi Jinping telephoned him to say that China highly values Brazil’s international status and influence and supports Brazil in safeguarding its sovereignty and independence and opposing external interference. Wang Yi reaffirmed that support once the tariff took effect.

The support goes well beyond communiqués. China is now the destination for 28.7 percent of everything Brazil exports and supplies just over a quarter of its imports. Chinese investment reached $6.1 billion in 2025, a 45 percent rise that made Brazil the single largest destination for Chinese outbound investment. BYD assembles vehicles at Camaçari, in Bahia, on the site Ford abandoned in 2021; Brazilian purchases of Chinese cars rose 147 percent year on year in the first five months of 2026, taking Brazil from sixth place in the world to first. The Salvador–Itaparica bridge, which will be Latin America’s largest cable-stayed cross-sea bridge, is being built by Chinese companies.

Most consequential of all is the monetary architecture. Brazil and China now settle trade directly between the real and the yuan, backed by a central bank swap line of 190 billion yuan, clearing the next working day through China’s own cross-border payment system. Transactions that once had to pass through correspondent banks in New York no longer need to – which, as Sara puts it, is the quiet reason the tariffs bite less than they once did. The more of the relationship that sits outside the dollar system, the less leverage a hostile US Treasury has.

None of this is lost on Washington. The article notes that the “Shield of the Americas”, an 18-member hemispheric intelligence-sharing coalition ostensibly aimed at transnational crime, is widely understood to be directed at China – whose trade with Latin America has risen from $12 billion in 2000 to over $500 billion in 2024. Latin America, the author concludes, has become a priority in the US campaign of encirclement against China and its war on multipolarity, and Brazil’s election now sits at the epicentre of that project.

New Zealand foreign minister’s racist outburst damages relations with China

A July 29 racist incident in the New Zealand parliament has served to further sour the country’s once cordial relations with China.

That day Green Party MP Dr. Lawrence Xu-Nan heckled Foreign Minister Winston Peters about his vaccination status during a parliamentary debate. Peters responded by shouting: “I know you just came here five minutes ago. Go back where you come from, you loud mouth!”

Writing in his Solidarity blog, Eugene Doyle notes: “For the record Xu-Nan, born in Tianjin, China, arrived in New Zealand as a child in the 1990s. He is the Green Party’s first Chinese MP and says he ‘hopes to create bridges across various tauiwi [ethnically diverse] communities and bring together the collective wisdom of these communities to find solutions to the bigger challenges facing Aotearoa [New Zealand].”

In contrast, he continues, “in the space of 30 seconds, the undiplomatic foreign minister racially insulted a fellow MP, derided the Chinese government, cast slurs on immigrants and rehearsed talking points better suited to a MAGA rally in Eastern Kentucky than the New Zealand Parliament.”

He adds that “his insult to the ambassador and the Chinese system of government is gratuitous and will not be welcome in Beijing where New Zealand’s share price has been dropping sharply since the [Christopher] Luxon government ramped up both anti-China rhetoric and moved rapidly to more deeply integrate with the US military. Ludicrously, the PM simultaneously says he wants to double trade with China!”

Bianca Ranson of Anti-War Aotearoa, which advocates for a more respectful engagement with China, said Peter’s comments were deliberately insulting to China and the Chinese people. “He’s not fit to be foreign minister. At a time when tensions are heightened around immigrants and racism, we have Winston Peters reaching for the far-right playbook, emboldening racists and giving them an example of how to treat others. New Zealand’s support for Israel has already damaged our standing in the world and this just underlines that something has gone seriously wrong.”

New Zealand has long had good political and thriving economic relations with China, especially when the New Zealand Labour Party was in office, but these have deteriorated sharply since Labour lost the November 2023 general election.

China’s public response to Peters’ outburst was extremely measured. A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy, referring to him only as “a certain politician”, “urged the New Zealand side to value the equal and mutually beneficial relationship between China and New Zealand and to do more things conducive to bilateral relations rather than the other way around,” adding that the, “absolute majority… of the Chinese community in New Zealand abide by local laws, actively integrate into the mainstream society, and have made important contributions to New Zealand’s economic and social development, and therefore deserve to be recognised and respected.”

However, China was less restrained when, shortly after, Peters unsuccessfully attempted to cajole the countries of the South Pacific, meeting at the Pacific Islands Forum Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in the Fijian capital Suva, into condemning a recent missile launch by China.

An article carried on the embassy website said that Peters had turned the meeting, “into a stage for his own political performance, pushing hard for the forum to issue a joint statement on China’s test launch of a strategic missile by a submarine last month. Before the meeting, Peters had accused Pacific Island countries of ‘missing an opportunity’ by failing to collectively criticise China… However, the outcome delivered Peters a resounding slap in the face. Pacific Island countries clearly showed little interest in the agenda he promoted, and no joint statement was adopted…

“In recent years, New Zealand has echoed Australia in hyping up the so-called ‘China security threat’, treating the South Pacific as its own sphere of influence and repeatedly pointing fingers at Pacific Island countries’ diplomatic choices. Whenever a country carries out normal economic, trade or security cooperation with China, it is immediately stigmatised as being ‘influenced by those outside the region’.

“As a close follower of the US and Australian camp, New Zealand, despite knowing that the majority of Pacific Island countries hold different views, still attempted to force through a statement targeting China, even at the cost of creating divisions among regional countries. At its core, this was an attempt to consolidate its regional discourse power by aligning with the geopolitical strategies of external powers and seeking to become the ‘regional decision-maker’.”

A third statement by the embassy, issued on August 14, responded to the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) release of its report entitled ‘New Zealand’s Security Threat Environment 2026’. It stated:

“Steeped in Cold War mentality, the report once again fabricates and hypes the so-called ‘China interference’ and ‘China threat’ narratives. Its false allegations against China either smear normal exchanges and cooperation as so-called espionage or interference or are entirely groundless and fabricated out of thin air. We firmly oppose this and will never accept it.”

It added that it formed “part of a new wave of attacks, slander and vilification against China orchestrated by certain international forces and may well itself be a product of foreign interference.

“It also reflects the reluctance of certain forces, both within and outside New Zealand, to see the sound development of China-New Zealand relations. By resorting to every possible means to fabricate disinformation, they seek to drive a wedge between our two peoples, create a chilling effect on the public including the Chinese community, undermine bilateral mutual trust, and obstruct the growth of the relationship — all in service of their own geopolitical agendas and the narrow, short-sighted political interests of a few…

“Our message to those forces and individuals attempting political machinations is this: do not sacrifice the hard-won, mutually beneficial China-New Zealand relationship for selfish gain, and do not act against the interests of New Zealand and its people. Serving as a pawn for anti-China forces will ultimately backfire. Manufacturing distractions in foreign relations will not solve New Zealand’s own problems — it will only prove counterproductive. We urge these forces and individuals not to quench their thirst with poison, and not to lift a rock only to drop it on their own feet.

“China values its relationship with New Zealand. We stand ready to work with the New Zealand side, on the basis of the consensus reached between the leaders of our two countries, to advance exchanges and cooperation across the fields of political mutual trust, practical cooperation and people-to-people ties, for the greater benefit of both peoples.

“That said, the development of China-New Zealand relations is not up to China’s efforts alone. We hope the New Zealand side will work in the same direction as China, rather than the opposite. Should it fail to do so, the responsibility for any consequences that may arise will not rest with the Chinese side.”