Author: Friends of Socialist China

Xi Jinping holds talks with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari

President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari paid a state visit to China from February 4-8, 2025, at the invitation of President Xi Jinping. During his stay in China, he also attended the Opening Ceremony of the Ninth Asian Winter Games in Harbin.

Presidents Xi and Zardari held talks on the afternoon of February 5.

Xi Jinping pointed out that China and Pakistan are ironclad friends and all-weather strategic cooperative partners. The enduring traditional friendship between China and Pakistan, forged by the elder generation of leaders of the two countries, is the invaluable treasure of the two countries and two peoples. In recent years, the two countries have provided firm political support for each other, maintained close high-level exchanges, and deeply advanced the development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and cooperation in various fields, setting a good example of state-to-state relations. China is ready to work hand in hand with Pakistan on each other’s path to modernization and to speed up efforts to build an even closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future in the new era, bring more benefits to the two peoples, and make greater contributions to regional peace, stability and prosperity.

 Xi Jinping stressed that China always views its relations with Pakistan from a strategic perspective, maintains a high degree of stability and continuity in its friendly policy toward Pakistan, and is committed to a friendly policy toward all Pakistani people. China will, as always, firmly support Pakistan in safeguarding its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, countering terrorism, and following a development path suited to its national conditions.

Noting that next year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Pakistan, the Chinese leader called on the two sides to deepen exchange and cooperation on culture, education and the media, so as to pass on the China-Pakistan friendship from generation to generation. China appreciates Pakistan’s active support for the three global initiatives and its participation in relevant cooperation, and is ready to work with Pakistan to uphold the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, resist unilateralism and hegemonic practices, strengthen multilateral coordination, and safeguard the common interests of developing countries.

Asif Ali Zardari said that Pakistan and China are close neighbours and all-weather good friends and partners. The friendship between Pakistan and China has weathered changing circumstances, and the hearts of the two peoples have always remained closely connected. Pakistan will stand steadfastly with China no matter how the situation changes. The Pakistani side appreciates China’s selfless assistance for Pakistan’s economic and social development. Pakistan is willing to learn from China’s successful experience and advance the high-quality development of the CPEC and cooperation in various fields, so as to help the country realise its industrialisation and modernisation. Under the wise leadership of President Xi Jinping, China has played an ever-growing leadership role in international affairs and has become an increasingly important force for safeguarding world peace, stability and prosperity. Pakistan is willing to work closely with China to uphold multilateralism, safeguard free trade, and promote the common interests of the two countries and the vast number of developing countries.

On February 6, Zardari met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang. 

Li said that China stands ready to work with Pakistan to implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, maintain close high-level exchanges, continue to carry forward the traditional friendship, firmly support each other on issues concerning core interests and major concerns, push forward the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership between China and Pakistan, and make the building of a China-Pakistan community with a shared future more beneficial to the two peoples.

He also noted that China is ready to forge synergy between the development strategies of the two countries, jointly promote high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, advance the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, push forward construction of major projects concerning roads, railways and ports in an orderly manner, deepen cooperation in terms of agriculture, mining, new energy information technology and artificial intelligence, expand sub-national cooperation and people-to-people exchanges, and better promote the common development of the two countries.

Zardari said that Pakistan and China have always supported and helped each other in the changing international situation, adding that mutual trust and friendship between the two countries have been passed down from generation to generation. Pakistan cherishes the bilateral friendship with China and is ready to join hands to further deepen exchanges and cooperation in trade, investment and other fields, and to achieve common prosperity.

Zaradari also met with Zhao Leji, Chairman of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, on February 5.

China and Pakistan issued a comprehensive 24-point joint statement on the occasion of Zardari’s state visit.

The two sides agreed that the China-Pakistan All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership is a choice by history and by the people and enjoys broad support from all walks of life in both countries. Having withstood the test of changing international circumstances, the enduring partnership and iron-clad friendship between China and Pakistan transcends geopolitical interests and is an important positive factor for regional peace, stability and development.

The two sides noted that while the transformation not seen in a century is accelerating, the China-Pakistan relationship remains of strategic significance, and any attempt to disrupt or undermine it is bound to fail. The Chinese side reiterated that the China-Pakistan relationship is a priority in its foreign relations and of special significance in China’s foreign policy. The Pakistani side underscored that the Pakistan-China relationship is the cornerstone of its foreign policy.

The Pakistani side spoke highly of the great development achievements made by Chinese people under the guidance of the Communist Party of China and expressed firm support for the Chinese side in advancing the great cause of building a great modern socialist country in all respects and realising the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation through Chinese modernisation.

The two sides reiterated their commitment to combating terrorism in all its forms and manifestations with a zero-tolerance attitude and agreed to further strengthen bilateral and multilateral cooperation on counter-terrorism. The Pakistani side will continue to make all efforts to investigate into the terrorist attacks involving Chinese personnel and bring the perpetrators to justice.

The two sides welcomed the official inauguration of the new Gwadar International Airport, reaffirmed their commitment to promoting the comprehensive development and operation of the Gwadar Port to further leverage its role as a multimodal logistics hub to boost local economic growth through industrial development. Recognising the significance of the Gwadar Port, both sides agreed to optimally utilise its potential as a key hub of connectivity and trade.

The two sides emphasised that the China-Pakistan cooperation opens to all regions in Pakistan and aims to benefit all Pakistani people. They agreed to continue to carry out cooperation on people’s livelihood in areas such as healthcare, agriculture, education, climate response, and disaster prevention and alleviation, and to deliver more ‘small and beautiful’ projects beneficial for the people.

Continue reading Xi Jinping holds talks with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari

China opposes forced displacement of the people of Gaza

China has promptly joined the widespread international condemnation of US President Trump’s threats to expel the Palestinian people from Gaza and take control of the territory.

At the foreign ministry press conference on February 6, spokesperson Guo Jiakun said that Gaza belongs to the Palestinian people. It is an inalienable part of the territory of Palestine, not a bargaining chip for political games, still less a prey of the strong.

“China firmly supports the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people, believes that ‘the Palestinians governing Palestine’ is an important principle that must be upheld in the post-conflict governance of Gaza, and opposes the forced displacement of the people of Gaza.”

The following article was originally published by the Xinhua News Agency.

BEIJING, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) — Gaza is an inalienable part of the territory of Palestine, and China opposes the forced displacement of the people of Gaza, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Thursday.

Spokesperson Guo Jiakun made the remarks at a regular press briefing when asked to comment on U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to “clear out” and take over Gaza.

Guo said that Gaza belongs to the Palestinian people. It is an inalienable part of the territory of Palestine, not a bargaining chip for political games, still less a prey of the strong.

The war has already left Gaza in devastation and suffering. The international community, major countries in particular, should join hands to make Gaza better, rather than worse, by providing humanitarian assistance and helping with its reconstruction, he said.

“China firmly supports the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people, believes that ‘the Palestinians governing Palestine’ is an important principle that must be upheld in the post-conflict governance of Gaza, and opposes the forced displacement of the people of Gaza,” he said.

China stands ready to work with the rest of the world for the realization of the two-state solution as the fundamental way forward, and for an early, just political settlement of the Palestinian question, namely, the establishment of an independent State of Palestine that enjoys full sovereignty based on the 1967 border and with east Jerusalem as its capital, Guo added. 

From Xizang to Appalachia and Altadena: A tale of opposite disaster responses

In the following article, originally published in Struggle/La Lucha, Sharon Black compares and contrasts responses to recent natural disasters in China and the United States.

When Hurricane Helene struck, entire villages in Appalachia were wiped out. And of the 230 victims the hurricane claimed, 105 lived in North Carolina.

“More than four months after Hurricane Helene struck, many residents in western North Carolina remain essentially homeless. They are temporarily housed in hotels and face eviction during a freezing winter. More than 1,600 families lost access to Transitional Sheltering Assistance because FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] was unable to contact them digitally.”

In California, fires raged for nearly a month and the danger of landslides remains. Health consequences in the region have not yet been fully measured, especially for young children, infants, and older people, whose lungs are more at risk of disease from inhaling poisonous air. The Los Angeles-based Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice has called on the government to convert military production from bombs and guns to manufacturing air purifiers and personal protective equipment (PPE).

While Trump demagogically attacked Los Angeles’s Black Mayor, Karen Bass, he did not condemn price-gouging landlords, multi-million–dollar insurance companies, or profit-hungry utility companies such as Southern California Edison. Residents in Altadena, where 75% of African Americans living there own their homes, have charged the company with negligence and greed.

While such disasters swept the USA, a 6.8 -magnitude earthquake struck a remote region of China’s Xizang Autonomous Region (generally known as Tibet). The contrast in the response was stark.

China’s President Xi Jinping ordered all-out rescue efforts to save lives. He called for top priority to be given to treating the injured, meeting the basic needs of those affected, and speeding post-disaster recovery.

The earthquake struck at 9 a.m. Village representatives from the local government and the Communist Party of China immediately alerted the central government and went door to door to begin rescue efforts – even before specialised teams arrived. Military aircraft from the Western Theatre Command took off early that day to set up a command station in Dingri County. Disaster teams, medical personnel, and supplies – including members of the People’s Liberation Army  – were already on their way. Sharon notes:

“What’s remarkable is that these efforts took place at high altitudes, in freezing temperatures, and with limited daylight. Pictures show Chinese rescue teams using drones to light up the area and working around the clock.”

She notes the similarity in response on the part of working people in both countries, concluding:

From China to Los Angeles and Appalachia, ordinary people have shown an incredible capacity for sacrifice and altruism and the ability to work together. Such cooperation and solidarity are key to human survival. What is missing in Los Angeles, North Carolina, and the United States as a whole is a system that matches our natural ability to cooperate, protect one another, and act heroically when needed – a system that puts people’s needs before profits. China’s President Xi Jinping summed it up best: ‘Saving lives is the most important thing.’ It should always come before capitalist profits and imperialist war.

President Donald Trump recently visited two U.S. climate disaster sites — Asheville, North Carolina, and Los Angeles. In addition to racist rants against immigrants and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) hires, he also targeted the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Trump said his goal was to shut down the already underfunded agency and pass the problem of disaster relief to the states and local politicians to avoid federal responsibility.

Western North Carolina, particularly Buncombe County, suffered the worst damage and loss of life from Hurricane Helene. Entire villages in Appalachia were wiped out, and 105 of the 230 Helene victims lived in North Carolina. Some residents went weeks without water or power.

People in Appalachia remain cold and homeless

More than four months after Hurricane Helene struck, many residents in western North Carolina remain essentially homeless. They are temporarily housed in hotels and face eviction during a freezing winter. More than 1,600 families lost access to Transitional Sheltering Assistance because FEMA was unable to contact them digitally.

Continue reading From Xizang to Appalachia and Altadena: A tale of opposite disaster responses

Portland event answers questions and debunks propaganda about People’s China

On Sunday 26 January, the Friends of Socialist China US commmittee held a hybrid public meeting (live in Portland and online via Zoom) on the theme of defending Socialist China. The event brought together speakers from a range of different organisations and backgrounds, covering several important themes related to Chinese socialism and the struggle against imperialism and war.

We republish below a report of the event that appeared in Workers World. Beneath the report, we embed the video of the full event as well as the individual contributions.

The Friends of Socialist China – U.S. Chapter, a coalition of anti-imperialist forces, held an incisive hybrid event on Jan. 26, to clarify the international role and domestic policies of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) — to dispel the myriad of misconceptions that pervade the West due to the onslaught of false propaganda that we are forced to consume on a daily basis.

The event was held in person before a packed audience at the Portland, Oregon Central Library.  More than 600 people registered for the Zoom webinar hosted by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). Others watched by FaceBook stream and hundreds more are viewing the program on UNAC and Friends of Socialist China YouTube channels. 

The analysis of the seven presentations, each taking up a different topic, was striking in its breadth and depth. Especially notable was the vast number of established facts about modern China that would have been news even to someone familiar with the political, economic and social organization of the PRC. Some of those facts follow.

Material conditions in People’s China 

During the tenure of Mao Zedong as Chairman of the Communist Party of China (CPC), life expectancy in China grew by one year, every year.  The PRC went from practically the poorest country on Earth to solving the basic problems of feeding, clothing, housing, educating (the vast majority were made literate) and caring for the health of their nearly quarter of the world’s population; the role and social position of women were dramatically improved.

The PRC had about 19% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024, while the U.S. GDP declined to about 14%. From industries like automobiles and ship-building (about 50 times the capacity of the United States) to steel and green technologies, the PRC is leaving the United States behind.

The PRC is one of only four formerly colonized countries or regions to achieve “developed” status. It accomplished this without slavery, without colonization, without war and without invading foreign countries.

China has the longest post-retirement life expectancy — between 18 to 28 years. Blue=collar women workers can retire at age 50 and men at 55. Others retire between the ages of 60 and 63.

Some 70% of Chinese millennials own their own homes. This is twice the rate of the U.S. Between 90% and 96% of Chinese households own their own homes, usually without any debt.

Continue reading Portland event answers questions and debunks propaganda about People’s China

Remembering Cha Cha Jiménez

A historic leader of the multinational US proletariat, and student of Mao Zedong, José Jiménez, popularly known as Cha Cha, passed away in Chicago on January 10, 2025. He was 75 according to the Freedom Road Socialist Organisation (FRSO) and 76 according to the New York Times.

Jiménez was the Chairman of the Young Lords Organisation, a youth organisation of the Puerto Rican national minority in the United States, who took up revolutionary organising and the study of Marxism-Leninism and who supported and forged links with socialist China.

Extending condolences to his family, friends and comrades, FRSO wrote:

All those who knew him appreciated Jiménez’s determination and his ability to motivate others to action, all the while teaching about the need for revolution and socialism. A revolutionary to the end, he often quoted Mao Zedong on the united front strategy, ‘Unite the many to defeat the few!’

The Young Lords Organisation was founded… in 1968 in the Lincoln Park neighbourhood of Chicago. Puerto Ricans and other working people were being forced out of the now wealthy neighbourhood by big financiers and real estate firms working with Mayor Richard Daley’s Democrat political machine.

At that time, Jiménez turned a street gang into one of the most successful political movements of its day, resisting community displacement and opposing the US war in Vietnam. Their militant tactics attracted masses of people to protest for better housing, education, childcare and health care in Chicago. The Young Lords spread to New York and many other cities, inspiring Puerto Rican people who were forced to move from the island by US domination and exploitation.

FRSO’s article, published on January 17, also details how the Young Lords under Jiménez’s leadership, forged links with and learned from the Black Panther Party, especially Fred Hampton, as well as a number of other organisations, particularly the Brown Berets, who were fighting for Chicano self-determination, and the Young Patriots, a youth group of poor whites from Appalachia. Together they formed the original Rainbow Coalition.

A July 2019 interview with Jiménez’s conducted by FRSO’s Fight Back News! is full of fascinating and important details of those times, which remain rich in lessons for revolutionary and progressive struggles in the United States and elsewhere. Towards the end he manages to conflate two of Mao Zedong’s most famous and important sayings into a single short sentence:

“We must be clear on who are our enemies and who are our friends so that we can unite with the many to defeat the few.”

And added: “Ours is not about individuals but a people’s struggle led by the common folk. Ours is a protracted struggle that will take years and we must prepare ourselves for the long run via structured community programs specific to the revolution. We stand for Puerto Rico, all Latin American nations and oppressed nations of the world, against colonialisms and for self-determination and neighbourhood empowerment.”

The New York Times published a detailed obituary of Jiménez on January 22, which even quoted from the FRSO interview.

We reprint below the obituary from FRSO as well as their 2019 interview.

Among various books on the subject, The Young Lords – A Radical History by Johanna Fernández, published by the University of North Carolina Press, is a sympathetic but critical history.

The Young Lords Speak: From the Streets of Chicago to Revolutionary Organization – Edited by Jacqueline Lazú and with a foreword by José Jiménez, written just before his passing, is due to be published by Haymarket in August.

The Young Lords: A Reader is another title that allows its members to speak in their own voice as does Palante: Young Lords Party.

FRSO: Remembering Cha Cha Jiménez

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization shares its condolences with the family, friends and comrades of Jose “Cha Cha” Jimenez, chairman of the Young Lords Organization. He died on January 10, 2025, at the age of 75 in Chicago.

All those who knew him appreciated Jimenez’s determination and his ability to motivate others to action, all the while teaching about the need for revolution and socialism. A revolutionary to the end, he often quoted Mao Tse Tung on the united front strategy, “Unite the many to defeat the few!”

Continue reading Remembering Cha Cha Jiménez

Webinar: DeepSeek and the challenge to US technological hegemony

📆 Sunday 16 February 2025, 4pm Britain, 11am US Eastern, 8am US Pacific

register on eventbrite

In January, the Chinese tech startup DeepSeek stunned the world with the release of its R1 artificial intelligence model, which outperforms its major US-based competitors, at a fraction of the cost of development, requiring orders of magnitude less energy, and not relying on the latest and greatest semiconductors. The model is fully open source, and has been made available for free worldwide.

The release of DeepSeek R1 led to an unprecedented drop in share price for several US tech giants, most notably chip-maker Nvidia, which has been attracting enormous investment on the premise that the future of AI relies on faster and better semiconductors.

Just a few weeks earlier, the Chinese mobile app RedNote (Xiaohongshu / Little Red Book) unexpectedly gained a substantial user base in the US in the days running up to the Biden administration’s TikTok ban (which has since been suspended by Trump). The sudden appearance of millions of US users on RedNote led to an unprecedented cultural exchange between particularly young people in China and the US – in spite of the best efforts of the US government to prevent such exchanges.

In this rapidly-changing technology landscape, our webinar addresses questions such as:

  • Is the release of DeepSeek’s R1 model a “Sputnik moment”, as it has been described?
  • Are we witnessing the decline of US technological hegemony?
  • Why has DeepSeek had such a profound impact on the US tech market?
  • Has Biden’s “chip war” with China been a failure?
  • Can AI be a public good, or is it destined simply to generate profits for Big Tech?
  • Is China’s socialist market economy outperforming Western neoliberalism?
  • In what way is China’s approach to AI different to that of the US?
  • What is China’s Global AI Initiative?
  • How are Chinese technologies such as RedNote and DeepSeek impacting perceptions of China?

Confirmed speakers

  • Ben Norton (China-based broadcaster and geopolitical analyst)
  • Li Jingjing (Journalist and broadcaster, CGTN)
  • KJ Noh (Journalist, political analyst and peace activist)
  • Michael Roberts (Marxist economist and blogger)
  • Alan Freeman (Economist, co-director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group)
  • Gary Wilson (Author, War and Lenin in the 21st Century)
  • Ali Al-Assam (Managing Director of the NewsSocial Cooperative)
  • Radhika Desai (Convenor, International Manifesto Group)

This event is co-organised by Friends of Socialist China and the International Manifesto Group.

register on eventbrite

Socialist education: what can we learn from the Chinese example?

We are pleased to republish this article by Logan Williams, which was originally published by the Morning Star. It provides a broad overview of educational policies and attainments in the different phases of the long Chinese revolution and points to the need for the education sector in Britain to engage with the Chinese experience.

Noting that the British government has launched a Curriculum and Assessment Review, Logan argues that it is “vital that educators and trade unionists across Britain seek to examine and apply lessons from alternative forms of education across the globe for post-Covid British education – most notably through an examination of progressive forms of education, such as the Chinese approach.”

Having briefly reviewed early Chinese attempts at modernisation, he states that the first genuine attempts at pursuing mass education in China emerged in the rural soviets set up by the Communist Party of China (CPC) under the leadership of Mao Zedong in Jiangxi in the early 1930s. Priorities included three key focuses for education namely “the right of all workers, peasants and other working people to education; the introduction of free schools for all children to be embarked upon immediately; educational establishments to be run by the people with support from the party.”

The success of such policies was recorded by the progressive American writer and journalist Edgar Snow when he visited the liberated areas in Yan’an in 1936, but despite these successes, “there were immense problems still to overcome in the liberated regions with 95 per cent of the population still illiterate, no pre-existing school buildings, virtually no books and very few teaching materials. But the experiences gained in the liberated areas would prove vital in the shaping of China’s new education system following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.”

The early years of the People’s Republic saw a massive expansion of schooling and alongside this, there was simultaneously a mass literacy campaign in the factories and the fields with lessons taking place in lunch breaks or in evening classes. These efforts worked together to achieve the colossal task of reducing illiteracy to below 10 per cent in many areas by 1958.

As the People’s Republic of China entered the second phase of its development, known as “reform and opening up” from the end of 1978, the gains made for Chinese education under Mao’s leadership were expanded and deepened during the leadership of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin.

Following the massive achievements in the reform period, not least the targeted pursuit of progress in key STEM subjects, which laid the groundwork for the new era of Chinese development in the 21st century, it is now possible to see the fruits of China’s policies, with the country supporting the world’s largest education sector with 270 million students enrolled in 514,000 educational institutions.

Moreover, the national student nutrition programme has supported 37 million students across rural China to access education through the provision of high-quality meals daily. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, China has also focused on tackling the growing mental health crisis faced by students through the successful passage of the ‘double reduction’ policy which looks to restrict the amount of homework and additional tutoring that has hitherto burdened students.

Logan concludes that it is therefore logical for British educators, progressives, socialists and trade unionists to seek to learn lessons from the Chinese education system, considering its role in defeating illiteracy and its vital contribution to the transformation of China’s economy into the industrial and scientific powerhouse it is today.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the issue of education within Britain came to the forefront of the British consciousness from the issue of examinations and assessment to lockdown learning and the role of education as a vital tool to overcome child poverty as highlighted by the work of the National Education Union, among others.

The emergence of these issues has led the British government to launch the Curriculum and Assessment Review to explore the reforms needed to begin to solve the problems rooted deeply within the British education system.

It is therefore vital that educators and trade unionists across Britain seek to examine and apply lessons from alternative forms of education across the globe for post-Covid British education — most notably through an examination of progressive forms of education, such as the Chinese approach, if we are to forge an education system ready to face the challenges on the horizon.

Continue reading Socialist education: what can we learn from the Chinese example?

Panama: Trump’s testing ground for his new Monroe Doctrine

In the opinion piece below, Yuan Sha, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, reports on Donald Trump’s outlandish threat to “take back” the Panama Canal. She notes that the threat “reveals Trump’s hidden agenda to resurrect the infamous Monroe Doctrine” and that, “eying the geostrategic importance of the canal, Trump wants to renege on the agreements and regain US control of the canal”.

Trump and his cronies have justified their increasingly aggressive comments by claiming that China is “operating the canal” and that this compromises US national security. While China is the second largest user of the canal, Yuan Sha points out that “China does not participate in the management and operation of the canal and has never interfered in its affairs”.

Wielding the threat to “take back” the canal – that is, to invade a sovereign country – is a clear violation of international law. Unfortunately it seems this threat has already extracted a concession from the Panamanian government, which has announced its intention to withdraw from the Belt and Road Initiative.

As the author notes, “Trump’s bullying rhetoric on Panama has sent shockwaves across the world, revealing the administration’s penchant to revive the Monroe Doctrine which once provided the pretext for prolonged U.S. military, diplomatic and economic interventions. This is bound to cause more tensions in the region and beyond, eventually disrupting the international order.”

Since returning to the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to “take back” the Panama Canal, alleging – falsely – that it is operated by China. The outlandish threat actually reveals Trump’s hidden agenda to resurrect the infamous Monroe Doctrine, articulated in 1823 to curb Europe’s expansion and promote America’s commercial and security interests, as a pathway to achieve the “Golden Age of America.”

As the new U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio begins his first official trip abroad to Central America, including a stop in Panama, there is worldwide concern about Trump’s end goal, what coercive tactics he might use, and whether he would succeed in bullying the region into giving him what he wants. These questions are critical in assessing the nature of Trump 2.0 foreign policy and its challenges to the international order.

Trump’s outlandish claims

The Panama Canal is a key strategic waterway in Central America linking the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Up to 14,000 ships pass through the canal each year, accounting for around five percent of global maritime trade.

The U.S. used to control the canal from the early 20th century until the end of 1999, after which it handed over control of the canal to the Panama government in accordance with the treaties signed between the Carter administration and Panama in the 1970s. But now, eying the geostrategic importance of the canal, Trump wants to renege on the agreements and regain U.S. control of the canal. 

To justify this, he has lambasted the canal being “foolishly given to Panama,” accusing Panama of charging U.S. ships “exorbitant” fees to use the waterway. He is also falsely claiming that China is “operating the canal,” and cites national security as the necessity for an American takeover.

Trump’s assertion to “take back” the Panama Canal is effectively an infringement on Panama’s sovereignty and goes against international law. Panama has owned and administered the canal since 1999. Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino has rejected Trump’s claim as “nonsense,” saying the canal “was not a gift” from the U.S.

Trump’s claim about China is also outright disinformation. China undoubtedly is the second largest user of the canal, following the U.S., and a major investor in infrastructure in Panama as Panama is the first Latin American country to join the Belt and Road Initiative. But as the Panama government and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs have clarified, China does not participate in the management and operation of the canal and has never interfered in its affairs.

Trump’s outlandish claims actually reflect his heightened concern over China’s growing investment in Panama. As the Trump 2.0 administration is ready to escalate the “great power competition” with China around the globe, the Panama Canal, not surprisingly, has become a new flashpoint.

What could Trump do?

The question is how serious Trump’s bombastic rhetoric to regain control of the canal is and what he might do to achieve that end.

Trump has hinted at taking it back by force. He could cite the 1977 Neutrality Treaty with Panama which stipulates that the U.S. shall remain permanently neutral, but it reserves the right to defend any threat to the canal’s neutrality by using military force. This outright threat to use military force is regarded as bluff to exact concessions from Panama.

Trump is also likely to use tariffs as a coercive tool. He might repeat the successful maneuver in pressuring Colombia to accept the flights carrying Colombians deported from the U.S. by threatening to impose 25 percent tariff. Trump’s goal is to force the Panama government to curb its engagements with China as well as regain U.S. control over Panama.

Trump has the support of the Republican-controlled Congress. Republican senators recently introduced a resolution, calling on the government of Panama to cut its political and economic ties with China and Chinese businesses. Republican representatives have also introduced a bill in the House to authorize the president to enter into negotiations to acquire the canal from Panama. These legislative moves will further empower Trump’s brazen actions on this matter.

Trump’s new Monroe Doctrine

Trump’s bullying rhetoric on Panama has sent shockwaves across the world, revealing the administration’s penchant to revive the Monroe Doctrine which once provided the pretext for prolonged U.S. military, diplomatic and economic interventions.

In fact, Trump wanted to resuscitate the doctrine in his first administration itself. In September 2018, he declared in the United Nations General Assembly, “It has been the formal policy of our country since President Monroe that we reject the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere and in our own affairs.” He also expressed his admiration for President Theodore Roosevelt, who seized the Panama Canal and added the famous “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, stating that the U.S. had the right to intervene in Latin American domestic affairs.

The Trump 2.0 administration seems to be all out to revive this doctrine, along with the bluster to force Denmark to sell Greenland to the U.S., make Canada the 51st state of the U.S., and change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.” Trump has also made startling proclamations in his inaugural address such as the U.S. needs to “expand our territory” and “carry our flag into new and beautiful horizons.” He has made no secret of his intention to reinstate U.S. control over the Western Hemisphere.

However, the Monroe Doctrine is dead and anachronistic and Trump’s bullying has already triggered pushbacks. Panama has made a formal complaint to the United Nations, emphasizing that the UN Charter precludes “the threat or use of force” against territorial integrity. Denmark, Canada and Mexico have also rejected Trump’s outrageous claims.

But it is disconcerting that with a unified Congress, a loyal cabinet and the strong Make America Great Again movement, as well as the obsession with competition with China, Trump might face little constraint in practicing an expansionist foreign policy agenda. This is bound to cause more tensions in the region and beyond, eventually disrupting the international order.

China and Vietnam marching together on the journey of socialist modernisation

The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) recently celebrated its 95th founding anniversary. Founded as the Communist Party of Indochina (CPI) on February 3, 1930 in Hong Kong, the CPI may also be considered as the root of the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) and Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).

Greeting the anniversary, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) wrote to its Vietnamese counterpart that: “In the past 95 years, the CPV has united and led the Vietnamese people in successfully realising national unification and liberation with remarkable achievements in the cause of the country’s socialist construction and transformation.

“The CPC and the CPV share a long-standing revolutionary friendship and amicable partnership. Under the personal guidance and careful nurturing of the leaders of previous generations including Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, the two peoples have supported each other in revolutionary struggles, marching together in socialist construction, in the drive of reform and opening up and on the journey of socialist modernisation.

“The CPC is willing to work with the CPV to implement the important consensus reached by the top leaders of the two parties, uphold the 16-word guideline of ‘long-term stability, future orientation, good-neighbourly friendship and comprehensive cooperation’ and the spirit of ‘good neighbours, good friends, good comrades and good partners,’… and push for more progress in building a China-Vietnam community with a shared future to bring greater benefits to both peoples and contribute further to the cause of peace and progress for humanity.”

At time of writing, the CPV newspaper Nhân Dân is continuing to publish a series of articles highlighting the greetings received from fraternal and friendly parties on the anniversary. The first such article was devoted to those parties with which the CPV maintains historic special relations and, besides that from the CPC, reported greetings from the Central Committee of the LPRP, President of the CPP Hun Sen, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez and Leader of the Cuban Revolution General Raúl Castro Ruz, and General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea Kim Jong Un.

The message from the LPRP Central Committee underlined that over the past 95 years, the CPV, founded and led by President Ho Chi Minh, with its sound, skilful and creative policies has led the Vietnamese people to many glorious victories in the struggle for national liberation and reunification.

“We firmly believe that by upholding its glorious revolutionary tradition and building upon these great and comprehensive achievements, the Party, State, and people of Vietnam will continue to reap new and even greater successes in implementing the Resolution of the 13th National Congress of the CPV and preparing for the upcoming Party congresses at all levels, leading to the successful organisation of the 14th National Congress of the CPV, ” the message read.

On this occasion, the LPRP would like to express its profound gratitude for the Party, State, and people of Vietnam for their invaluable, effective, and timely support for the revolutionary cause of Laos over the years. The Party, State, and people of Laos will continue to stand side by side with the Party, State, and people of Vietnam to do their utmost to preserve and promote the rare and cherished relationship for the common interests of both nations, contributing to peace, stability, cooperation, and development in the region and the world.

The message from the Cuban leaders reaffirmed Cuba’s commitment to deepening the friendship, solidarity and cooperation between the two nations, based on the legacy of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, and beloved President Ho Chi Minh.

Kim Jong Un wrote that he was delighted to see that under the leadership of the CPV, the Vietnamese people have made remarkable progress in developing a prosperous and strong nation. He expressed his belief that the traditional friendship between the two Parties will continue to grow in the common struggle to safeguard and preserve the socialist cause.

Nhân Dân also reported that Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko wrote that the CPV members are always examples of true patriots who have pioneered in the political and socio-economic development of the fatherland to build a strong sovereign country. Today, the CPV is continuing the cause of socialism building and promoting Vietnam’s role and prestige in the region and the world. He added that Belarus and Vietnam have been faithful friends and responsible partners whose relationship is based on the principle of mutual respect and assistance.

At a meeting of Sri Lankan political parties in the capital Colombo, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Employment Arun Hemachandra, on behalf of the People’s Liberation Front (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna – JVP), highlighted Vietnam’s development achievements under the CPV’s leadership in recent years. He emphasised that the CPV’s steadfast and sound leadership is a crucial factor in the struggle for national liberation and reunification of Vietnam, as well as in its current economic development and poverty reduction efforts.

Continue reading China and Vietnam marching together on the journey of socialist modernisation

President Dissanayake: Learning from China’s development model is essential for Sri Lanka

Anura Kumara Dissanayake, (popularly known as AKD), who was elected President of Sri Lanka in September 2024, and whose party, the National People’s Power (NPP), whose main component is the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP or People’s Liberation Front), Sri Lanka’s largest Marxist party, and of which AKD is also the leader, and who then went on to win a supermajority in November 2024 parliamentary elections, paid a state visit to China from January 14-17 at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

During his visit, Sri Lanka’s head of state gave a customarily wide-ranging interview to He Yanke for the CGTN program Leaders Talk.

Asked about his talks with President Xi Jinping, which had been held earlier that day, President Dissanayake said that Xi had emphasised  that China’s achievements today are not just the result of the last two decades but also the outcome of the blood, toil, sweat and hard work of the Chinese people. This had made a deep impression on him.

On the relations between China and Sri Lanka, he said that whenever China draws up plans or programs, it always puts the people first. Similarly, the current Sri Lankan government is committed to the principle of serving the people in everything it does. As a result, the friendship between China and Sri Lanka, which has deep historical roots stretching back 1,000 years, will now enter a new stage.

China’s victory over poverty, the Sri Lankan leader continued, is inseparable from President Xi’s unwavering conviction and decisive leadership. He is a leader who always puts the people first, genuinely works for their welfare, spares no effort in safeguarding their interests and remains deeply connected to them.

Noting that his first visit to China was in 2004, when he served as Sri Lanka’s Minister of Agriculture, Dissanayake noted that China had made extraordinary achievements in the ensuing two decades. Asked what he had drawn from his visit to the Museum on the history of the Communist Party of China (CPC), he said that behind all China’s achievements lies a history of relentless struggle, unwavering belief and refusal to give up. These lessons are applicable to the development of all countries.

Sri Lanka also wished to learn and benefit from China’s technological expertise and related investment in the field of renewable energy, where it had become the global leader.

Likewise, China’s pivotal role in the global fight against poverty was setting an extraordinary example for countries and peoples worldwide. Sri Lanka will research and learn from this example and he wishes to personally visit China’s rural areas to see their development first hand.

Starting from the famous rubber-rice pact of 1952, today China is Sri Lanka’s most trusted economic partner. One of the first countries to sign up to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), it has become very important to Sri Lanka’s economic development, with increasing and diversifying exports to China and developing large scale industrial parks to complement the existing major infrastructure projects high on the agenda.

Studying and learning from China’s development model, he stressed, was essential for Sri Lanka. A key lesson is that every country must find its own way to modernisation and adopt a development model suited to its own conditions, rather than blindly copying the development experiences of others.

Regarding the well-known initiatives put forward by Xi Jinping, Dissanayake said that the Global Development Initiative means that the benefits of human progress and development can reach every individual; the Global Security Initiative offers inclusiveness and universal benefits; and the Global Civilisation Initiative respects and integrates unique civilisations and cultures, and the shared values of all countries.

Asked about how his government is facing challenges and implementing change, the Sri Lankan leader first noted that his government had been formed when the national economy was in tatters and the country had been forced to declare bankruptcy. Therefore, its immediate priorities were to pull out of the crisis, ensure economic stability and drive forward development through well structured planning and decisive action.

The political system also needs major reforms, with the entrenched issues of corruption and waste needing to be addressed.

CGTN’s full interview with President Dissanayake is embedded below.

Trump, tariffs and the working class

The two articles below address the tariffs recently announced by the US against China, Canada and Mexico.

The first article, written by Friends of Socialist China advisory group member and International Manifesto Group convenor Radhika Desai, republished from CGTN, points to the cynical economic motives for these tariffs: to rob from the poor to pay the rich. Since the cost of tariffs is passed on to consumers, they constitute a stealth tax on ordinary Americans, and will help make up for the loss of revenue resulting from the Trump regime’s tax cuts for the super-rich.

The cost of the tariffs will be paid by ordinary US consumers. And they will pay in order that the richest US taxpayers can enjoy greater tax cuts, which is the key reason why Trump needs the tariff revenues.

Tariffs will also drive up inflation, further impacting living conditions of the working class.

The putative aim of the tariffs is to bolster US manufacturing. However, “for US capital, given its decades-long reluctance to invest productively at home, it’s going to take a lot more than tariffs. US capital needs to be turned away from the unproductive, predatory and speculative financial ventures in which it is engaged and towards serious productive investment.”

The second article, republished from Workers World, details the likely negative impact of the tariffs on the US economy, and denounces the Trump administration’s threats against the BRICS countries.

Attacks against BRICS are detrimental to workers in G7 countries… BRICS countries are displaying self-sufficiency and independence from Western imperialism and settler colonialism. Relations between China and Russia have also strengthened because of BRICS. Many countries in the Global South have less of a need to trade with the U.S. than they did in previous decades, and therefore they have more leverage to maintain sovereignty.

The article concludes:

Trump’s promotion of tariffs is harmful to workers all over the globe. Imperialist protectionism and isolationism are an obstacle to working-class unity, and they should be opposed. International solidarity is necessary in resisting anti-worker tariffs and defeating the racist, xenophobic “America First” agenda. Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!

Trump’s empty tariff brinkmanship

After days of keeping the world guessing whether he would commit to such a disastrous course, U.S. President Donald Trump has started his trade wars against his country’s three most important trade partners, Canada, Mexico and China.

In announcing the tariffs on exports from these countries, Trump was self-contradictory, claiming they were a negotiating tool designed to deal with U.S. trade deficits, and then that they were not. Their true extent remains unclear: From the apparently blanket tariffs of 25 percent on Canada and Mexico and 10 percent on China, he has already reduced tariffs on oil, natural gas and electricity from Canada to 10 percent, and uncertainty prevails over exactly which goods they will hit, how, and by how much.

The Financial Times called it “a trade war on steroids” while the Washington Post declared it “the dumbest trade war in history.” Many others said these sky-high tariffs could not be expected to last forever.

So, as the world tightens its seatbelt for a bumpy ride through the Trump quadrennial, let’s parse the real wheat from the rhetorical chaff so we can better anticipate the course of the trade wars Trump has started. The key is that Trump’s tariffs are incoherent in conception and applied for the wrong reasons.

Trump is certainly using them as negotiating tools. He claims they are superior to sanctions, which scare other countries from the dollar system he wishes to save. Exactly how adding the weaponization of trade to the weaponization of the dollar is going to help the U.S. is anyone’s guess.

Continue reading Trump, tariffs and the working class

Is DeepSeek China’s Sputnik moment?

In the article below, reprinted from People’s World, CJ Atkins examines the geopolitical significance of the success of China’s DeepSeek R1 model, which has been taking the world by storm in recent weeks, and which was responsible for chip manufacturer Nvidia suffering the biggest ever fall in share price in a single day.

Atkins notes that the Biden administration’s export ban on the most sophisticated microchips has clearly backfired. “The export bans simply spurred Chinese developers to get creative, pushing them to come up with cheaper and more efficient ways of using the older chips they already had access to. They discovered means to train and operate AI models using less memory and less computing power. This resulted in a model that was cheaper to build and less damaging for the planet to operate than those developed by the U.S. tech monopolies.”

Importantly, DeepSeek’s developers made their model open source, allowing anyone to use it for free. “That means they showed their work for the world to see and adapt for further development. Other scientists and coders can build on DeepSeek-R1 to create their own AI models.” The article cites Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek, as saying that “our starting point is not the opportunity to make a quick profit, but rather to reach the technical frontier and drive the development of the entire ecosystem”.

The stunning success of DeepSeek’s model highlights the fact that China is now a major player in the global tech industry, and is increasingly setting the pace in terms of innovation. This is testament to the effectiveness of China’s economic model, and calls to mind Deng Xiaoping’s 1984 comment that “the superiority of the socialist system is demonstrated, in the final analysis, by faster and greater development of those forces than under the capitalist system”.

Atkins warns that the DeepSeek phenomenon will likely trigger a deepening of the US’s trade war against China, along with an expansion of its campaign of containment and encirclement. “We can expect a ramping up of military tensions over the long term. The weapons dealers and neocon warhawks will seize the moment to beat the drums of a real war against China. There will be a tightening of U.S. imperialism’s military encirclement of China, and a propaganda onslaught warning of the ‘China threat’ will wash over the American people. Anti-Asian racism will figure prominently, just as it did during the pandemic.”

The article concludes by noting that China’s consistent call is for peaceful coexistence and international cooperation between countries with different social systems. The US and China could and should be working together to push science and technology forward in the service of humanity, but the US ruling class cannot be expected to pursue such a path in the absence of mass pressure. “The tech monopolists will do anything to protect their own profits and power, even if it means keeping the world divided and holding back shared progress.”

In 1978, just months before China initiated the reform and opening up of its economy, Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping told a meeting of researchers:

“Our science and technology have made enormous progress since the founding of New China…. But we must be clear-sighted and recognize that there is still an enormous gap between our level and that of the most advanced countries and that our scientific and technical forces are still too meager.”

If he were alive to witness the events of the last few days, would Deng be shocked?

The release of the DeepSeek-R1 chatbot, a Chinese-developed large language model (LLM), threw the global artificial intelligence industry into chaos and wiped a trillion dollars off the values of some of the biggest tech corporations on the New York Stock Exchange—overnight.

Is this China’s “Sputnik moment,” comparable in historic significance to the Soviet Union’s inauguration of the space age with the launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957?

Back then, U.S. capitalism made the mistake of assuming that blockading the socialist half of the world via trade walls and embargoes would keep it technologically backward forever. The same error is being made again with China.

No chips for China

Export bans on the most sophisticated microchips that power advanced AI applications, along with chip-making equipment and software, were imposed by the Biden administration in 2022, using “national security” as a justification.

With Trump campaigning last year to go even further, Biden toughened his restrictions in December. The graphics processing units (GPUs) that are the go-to for training AIs like ChatGPT and DeepSeek were put on an export blacklist, forbidden from being shipped to China or companies in third countries that do business with the People’s Republic.

But the U.S.’ economic aggression now appears to have backfired. The export bans simply spurred Chinese developers to get creative, pushing them to come up with cheaper and more efficient ways of using the older chips they already had access to.

They discovered means to train and operate AI models using less memory and less computing power. This resulted in a model that was cheaper to build and less damaging for the planet to operate than those developed by the U.S. tech monopolies.

Continue reading Is DeepSeek China’s Sputnik moment?

Sino-British Concert: East-West Dialogue, Spring Sequence of New Sounds

On February 2, 2025 the ‘Sino-British Concert: East-West Dialogue, Spring Sequence of New Sounds’ was held at London’s Royal Academy of Music. David Peat, Secretary of Friends of Socialist China (FoSC) Britain Committee, attended the event on invitation. The following is his report.

On Sunday 2nd February, visitors to London’s central Shaftesbury Avenue and surrounding streets were able to take part in Chinese New Year (CNY) celebrations. The breadth of China’s historic culture and modern development were all displayed: exuberant traditional ‘Lion Dances’ took place next to China’s cutting-edge high-tech electric BYD vehicles. People could purchase good fortune souvenirs, and enjoy street snacks and the sounds of firecrackers, all along the temporarily pedestrianised thoroughfare. Each year London’s main Chinese New Year celebration, which expanded beyond the bounds of Chinatown proper since the mayoralty of Ken Livingstone, can be enjoyed by both tourists and residents of the capital city. With the recent viral success of the Xiaohongshu [Red Note] app, western users have been able to witness the amazing CNY celebrations that take place all over China, so no doubt some attendees were keen to enjoy that closer to home.

To the west of Chinatown proper, another event was held, which was a stunning display of musical skill and proof that artistic cultures – and cultures in general – benefit from sharing traditions and influence across borders. This event was the Sino-British Concert: East-West Dialogue, Spring Sequence of New Sounds, hosted by the Sino-British Ensemble, the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU), and the UK Beijing Arts Centre.

In attendance at the event was Chinese Ambassador Zheng Zeguang and his wife Counsellor Hua Mei, along with Minister Zhao Fei. Among others present were representatives of organisations that have sought to build connections and understanding between China and the UK, including Special Guest Michael David Wood, historian and SACU President, who is especially known for his book and BBC documentary on China’s iconic Tang dynasty poet Du Fu. Prior to the performances, Professor Wood gave a brief talk outlining the history of musical exchanges between the west and the east and highlighted the ongoing potential for artistic collaboration to build bridges between nations and peoples.

This sold-out event was held in the beautiful Duke’s Hall of the Royal Academy of Music. The program was expansive and diverse, with more than 80 musicians performing 10 ‘dialogues’, in which one piece of music from the western tradition and one from the eastern were performed alternately, or even directly in conversation with one another. The Sino-British orchestra features musicians from China, the UK, India, Germany, Italy, Romania and other countries, and also foregrounded pieces and musical styles from China’s ethnic minority musical traditions.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has highlighted how China in its history has long cherished the notion of “harmony without uniformity.” In a speech at UNESCO headquarters in 2015 titled ‘Exchanges and Mutual Learning Make Civilizations Richer and More Colorful’, President Xi quoted Yan Zi, prime minister of the State of Qi during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC), who is recorded as observing: “Only by combining the texture, length, rhythm, mood, tone, pitch and style adequately and executing them properly can you produce an excellent melody… Who can tolerate the same tone played again and again with one instrument?”[1] This observation matches the purpose of the concert: appreciating the new connections and possibilities that can be created when diverse musical traditions and peoples are brought into contact. As the enormous interest in apps like RedNote has shown, people in both East and West are intensely curious to make connections with one another, and the results are ‘win-win’ when they do. Events like the Sino-British concert are a wonderful way to establish and strengthen these sorts of links.

For those interested in similar events in future, check SACU’s website at Home – Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU)

[1] Xi Jinping, The Governance of China Vol 1, pp. 283 – 289.

China and Nicaragua share experiences and concepts in fighting against imperialism, colonialism and hegemony

The strong fraternal relations between the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) of Nicaragua were underlined in a January 13 meeting in Beijing between Liu Jianchao, Minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee (IDCPC), and a delegation led by Fidel Antonio Moreno Briones, Secretary General of the Managua Mayor’s Office and Organisation Secretary of the FSLN.

Liu said, under the strategic guidance and personal promotion of President Xi Jinping and President Daniel Ortega, China and Nicaragua have seen strong development in bilateral relations, and officially established a strategic partnership in 2023, continuously releasing the dividends of the resumption of diplomatic relations. He said, despite different scales, the CPC and the FSLN have always treated each other as equals and respected each other. The two parties have similar experiences and shared concepts in fighting against imperialism, colonialism and hegemony.

Moreno said, since the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries fruitful results have been achieved in practical cooperation in various fields, bringing tangible benefits to the Nicaraguan people. The delivery and operation of buses produced in China have boosted the development of Nicaragua’s public transportation system. Nicaragua is willing to continue to strengthen practical cooperation with China in economy, trade, transportation, humanities and other fields. The CPC, a century-old party, has led the Chinese people to make great achievements in poverty alleviation, environmental protection and economic development, providing important inspiration and reference for the FSLN.

Earlier, on January 8, Ma Hui, Vice-Minister of the IDCPC met with a delegation led by Enrique Santiago, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE).

Ma spoke positively of the relations between the two parties and countries, saying that the CPC is willing to deepen traditional friendship with the PCE, strengthen exchanges and mutual learning on state and party governance, enhance political mutual trust between China and Spain and deepen pragmatic cooperation between the two countries through inter-party channels, and promote mutual understanding between the two peoples.

Santiago said, the PCE appreciates the economic and social achievements made by the Chinese people under the leadership of the CPC and is willing to further strengthen inter-party exchanges and cooperation with the CPC, continuously deepen China-Spain comprehensive strategic partnership and jointly contribute to world peace and stability.

The following articles were originally published on the website of the IDCPC.

Liu Jianchao Meets with a Delegation of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) of Nicaragua

Beijing, January 13th (IDCPC) — Liu Jianchao, Minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee (IDCPC), met here today with a delegation led by Fidel Antonio Moreno Briones, Secretary General of the Managua Mayor’s Office and Organization Secretary of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) of Nicaragua.

Continue reading China and Nicaragua share experiences and concepts in fighting against imperialism, colonialism and hegemony

Xi congratulates Lukashenko on re-election as Belarusian president

Presidential elections were held in Belarus on January 26. Alexandr Lukashenko, who has held office since 1994, was re-elected to serve a further five-year term. With a turnout of 82%, Lukashenko received 87.48% of votes cast.

Chinese President Xi Jinping was among the first foreign leaders to congratulate his Belarussian counterpart.

Noting that he has maintained close contact with Lukashenko in recent years, Xi said they have jointly chartered the course for and led the development of China-Belarus relations and pushed bilateral ties to an all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership of all time high.

“I attach great importance to the development of China-Belarus relations. I am ready to join efforts with you to continue the traditional friendship between China and Belarus, deepen bilateral mutually beneficial cooperation, and promote the progressive development of the Chinese-Belarusian relations for the benefit of the peoples of the two countries,” the Chinese president emphasised.

Xi Jinping wished good health and success in his work to Aleksandr Lukashenko, prosperity and strength to friendly Belarus, and happiness and well-being to the Belarusian people.

The Belarusian Telegraph Agency (BelTA) has also been reporting numerous congratulatory messages from other foreign leaders.

Russian President Putin wrote: “Your convincing victory in the election clearly demonstrates your high political authority and the unconditional support of the people for the state course of Belarus…  You are always a welcome and dear guest in Russia. As we agreed, we will soon meet in Moscow.”

Vietnamese President Luong Cuong said: “Vietnam always follows and observes with satisfaction the accomplishments secured by the Belarusian nation under your leadership in terms of social and economic development and the enhancement of the international positions of the country. Vietnam attaches great importance to strengthening and developing the traditional friendship with Belarus.”

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo jointly wrote: ““We are happy about and proud of our close, fraternal and revolutionary relations. We have common aspirations, goals and commitment to achieve peace, well-being and prosperity. We congratulate you on this historic triumph. Your courageous people have elected you to continue to lead the struggle for a new, multipolar world based on the principles of justice, brotherhood and respect.”

Serbian President Vucic said: “I would like to express my gratitude for the principled position and unwavering support of the Republic of Belarus and you personally on the issue of territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Republic of Serbia.”

The day after receiving congratulations from Xi Jinping, the Belarus leader wrote to congratulate his Chinese counterpart on the occasion of the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year):

“The past year was marked by significant accomplishments on the part of the People’s Republic of China, which remains a reference point and an example to follow,” the congratulatory message reads. “As a result of the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China we witnessed further development of China’s responsible foreign policy, which reflects the country’s role in the world and is consonant with modern challenges… Our country has been, is, and will be a reliable partner of the People’s Republic of China in the course of achieving all the set goals. There is no doubt that in 2025 we will continue progressively and systemically bolstering the all-weather and all-round strategic partnership while our friendship will be a reference point for the entire world.”

On January 26, Lukashenko spoke with Chinese journalists after casting his vote.

Continue reading Xi congratulates Lukashenko on re-election as Belarusian president

China’s DeepSeek AI scores important victory against US tech hegemony

We republish below three articles about the recent release of DeepSeek R1, an artificial intelligence (AI) model that performs as well as – or better than – its major US-based competitors, but at a fraction of the cost and using relatively low-grade semiconductors.

The first article, by Marxist economist Michael Roberts, notes that DeepSeek R1 is fully open source, meaning that the code behind it is fully visible to programmers around the world and can be freely used and adapted. “This is a real blow to the ‘proprietary’ secrets that OpenAI or Google’s Gemini lock away in a ‘black box’ in order to maximise profits. The analogy here is with branded and generic pharmaceuticals.” Indeed, the whole orientation of DeepSeek is towards scientific research and the production of social goods, rather than the relentless pursuit of profit at all costs.

Michael observes that DeepSeek has caused unprecedented losses to US technology stocks – “chipmaker Nvidia and so-called ‘hyperscalers’ Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta Platforms collectively shed almost $750bn of their stock market value in one day” – as it became apparent that the tech giants’ spending of billions of dollars on scaling their computing power is essentially unnecessary. These companies have put all their eggs in the hardware basket, but a small team of researchers in China have shown that the mathematical/algorithmic component is at least as important.

Meanwhile, the DeepSeek phenomenon is a powerful demonstration that the US “chip wars” are not having the desired effect:

What must enrage the tech oligarchs sucking up to Trump is that US sanctions on Chinese companies and bans on chip exports have not stopped China making yet more advances in the tech and chip war with the US. China is managing to make technological leaps in AI despite export controls introduced by the Biden administration intended to deprive it of both the most powerful chips and the advanced tools needed to make them.

Michael further points to the political economy of the situation, noting that “state-led planned investment into technology and tech skills by China works so much better than relying on huge private tech giants led by moguls.” He quotes billionaire tech investor Ray Dalio: “In our system, by and large, we are moving to a more industrial-complex- type of policy in which there is going to be government-mandated and government-influenced activity, because it is so important… Capitalism alone — the profit motive alone — cannot win this battle.”

The second article, by Gary Wilson in Struggle La Lucha, provides a broad overview of the geopolitics of the “chip wars” and the significance of DeepSeek’s success.

DeepSeek’s model outperformed OpenAI’s best, using less data, less computing power, and a fraction of the cost. Even more remarkable, DeepSeek’s model is open-source, meaning anyone can use, modify, and build on it. This stands in stark contrast to OpenAI’s closed, profit-driven approach.

Gary’s article continues to contrast DeepSeek’s business model – and China’s overall approach to AI – with that of the US tech giants:

Corporate rulers want AI to monitor workers, lower wages, bust unions, or shift work to machines altogether, leading to cutbacks and layoffs. The World Economic Forum famously predicted that AI would replace millions of “useless” human workers by 2030. Unlike US tech companies seeking monopoly control, DeepSeek treats AI like electricity or the Internet — a basic tool that should be accessible to everyone… AI, as a public utility, can be used to complement human labor, improve safety, reduce drudgery, and create better-paying jobs rather than eliminate them.

This touches on the broader question of the role of technology in society. Under capitalism, AI is used to maximise profits, which often means replacing human labour with algorithms, thereby deepening unemployment and, ultimately, impacting the long-term viability of the entire system by reducing the rate of profit. Under working class leadership on the other hand, technology can be used to improve the quality of life for all.

An editorial in the Morning Star on 28 January reiterates the blowback effect of US’s tech sanctions on China. “In placing sanctions on microchip exports to China, it forced developers in that country to use their chips more efficiently.”

Furthermore, DeepSeek is indicative of China’s emergence as a technology superpower. “The days are gone when Chinese economic advance largely relied on technical innovations developed elsewhere.” As such, “this week’s events are a landmark in the decline of US hegemony, and in the development of global multipolarity. With all its contradictions and contestations, that can only be welcome.”

AI going DeepSeek

Most readers will know the news by now. DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, released an AI model called R1 that is comparable in ability to the best models from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta, but was trained at a radically lower cost and using less than state-of-the art GPU chips. DeepSeek also made public enough of the details of the model that others can run it on their own computers without charge.

DeepSeek is a torpedo that has hit the Magnificent Seven US hi-tech companies below the water line. DeepSeek did not use the latest and best Nvidia’s chips and software; it did not require huge spending on training its AI model unlike its American rivals; and it offers just as many useful applications.

Continue reading China’s DeepSeek AI scores important victory against US tech hegemony

Friends of Socialist China stand with the Bolivarian Revolution and a multipolar world

Nicolás Maduro was inaugurated as President of Venezuela for a third term on January 10.

Wang Dongming, a vice chairperson of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) attended the inauguration as the Special Envoy of Chinese President Xi Jinping. He was among many senior political figures to participate, including the Presidents of Cuba and Nicaragua, the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the former President of Honduras, the Special Envoy of the Russian President, the General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), and official representatives from Bolivia, Algeria, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Serbia, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada and Saint Lucia among others.

Meeting with Maduro after his inauguration, Wang said that, in September 2023, Xi and Maduro jointly announced the elevation of China-Venezuela relations to an all-weather strategic partnership, leading bilateral relations into a new era. Last year, the two sides solemnly celebrated the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties, and the friendship between the two countries has become more deeply rooted in the hearts of the two peoples.

Maduro asked Wang to convey his highest respect and sincere greetings to Xi and extended his gratitude to him for sending a special envoy to attend the inauguration ceremony of his new term.

Venezuela, he said, attaches great importance to developing the China-Venezuela all-weather strategic partnership and firmly supports China in safeguarding its core interests. Venezuela stands ready to join hands with China to advance practical cooperation in various fields, strengthen the exchange of governance experience, and lift bilateral ties to a new level.

Earlier, on January 7, another Special Envoy of President Xi, Hao Mingjin, also a vice chairperson of the NPC Standing Committee, attended the inauguration of Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama in the capital Accra.

Meeting Mahama after the inauguration, Hao said that China deeply values its traditional friendship with Ghana and remains committed to fostering China-Ghana relations from a strategic and long-term perspective. This year marks the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. China is ready to take this opportunity to enhance communication with Ghana within the frameworks of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), aiming to elevate the China-Ghana strategic partnership to new heights.

An analysis of the significance of Mahama’s electoral victory may be read here.

In Venezuela, the high-level delegations were joined by representatives of progressive and popular movements from around 120 countries. Friends of Socialist China was honoured to send a delegation to Venezuela on this occasion.

We publish below the report and reflections of one of our delegates, Russel Harland, a fulltime trade union official and member of our Britain Committee. The other articles below were originally published by the Xinhua News Agency.

Three other articles by our comrades David Peat and Fiona Sim were published in the Morning Star.

Friends of Socialist China is also among the sponsors of a webinar, ‘Defending the Bolivarian Revolution: Delegates report back from Venezuela’ being organised by the International Manifesto Group (IMG) on Saturday February 1. You can register here.

Xi’s special envoy attends Venezuelan president’s inauguration

CARACAS, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping’s special envoy Wang Dongming attended here the inauguration of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at the invitation of the Venezuelan government on Friday.

Maduro met with Wang, also vice chairperson of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, at the presidential palace after the inauguration.

Wang conveyed cordial greetings and good wishes from Xi to Maduro and congratulated him on his re-election as president of Venezuela.

Wang said that in September 2023, Xi and Maduro jointly announced the elevation of China-Venezuela relations to an all-weather strategic partnership, leading bilateral relations into a new era.

Last year, the two sides solemnly celebrated the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties, and the friendship between the two countries has been more deeply rooted in the hearts of the two peoples, Wang said.

China is willing to work with Venezuela to continue to implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, consolidate and develop the traditional friendship, and push forward bilateral relations for the benefit of the two peoples, Wang said.

Maduro asked Wang to convey his highest respect and sincere greetings to Xi, and extended his gratitude to Xi for sending a special envoy to attend the inauguration ceremony of his new term.

Venezuela attaches great importance to developing China-Venezuela all-weather strategic partnership, and firmly supports China in safeguarding its core interests, Maduro said, adding that Venezuela stands ready to join hands with China to advance practical cooperation in various fields, strengthen the exchange of governance experience, and lift bilateral ties to a new level.

Continue reading Friends of Socialist China stand with the Bolivarian Revolution and a multipolar world

A major milestone in socialist history – a review of People’s China at 75: The Flag Stays Red

We are very pleased to republish below a comprehensive review by Gabriel Rockhill of “People’s China at 75: The Flag Stays Red”, edited by Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez, the co-editors of this website, and published by Praxis Press.

Recalling how Lenin rejoiced when the October Revolution outlasted the Paris Commune, Gabriel notes: “Karl Marx, writing on these events at the time, celebrated the unprecedented advances of the workers’ movement while lucidly identifying its principal limitation: it had not crushed the bourgeois state and founded a proletarian state capable of defending its interests. This is a lesson that Vladimir Lenin had taken to heart, and his reputed dance in the snow feted the practical success of a correct theoretical assessment.”

On October 1st, 2024, for which anniversary this book was published, the People’s Republic of China eclipsed the longevity of the Soviet state.

How should those “who support the struggle for a more egalitarian and ecologically sustainable world” respond?

Gabriel notes that the book “seeks to respond to these questions and others through rigorous materialist analysis and a coherent theoretical framing of the PRC’s place in world history. Comprised of eleven incisive analyses framed by a capacious introduction, the book serves as a useful guide to anyone interested in a crash course on China by some of the world’s leading experts on the question. Given its readability, with concise essays and a total length of just under 150 pages, it is particularly well suited for full-time organisers and a broad readership outside of academic circles. Since it covers so much terrain and tackles many pressing questions head-on, it is, in many ways, a perfect primer on China. At the same time, it is packed with empirical details, extensive references, and insightful analyses that will be of interest to those with a strong working knowledge of the PRC.”

He goes on to argue that every socialist project has had to chart new territory in its own unique circumstances and explore ways of eking out an existence in a hostile, imperialist world intent on destroying it. Implicit in the book’s argument is the rejection of the idealist approach to the question of socialism, which consists in defining it in the abstract and then dismissing anything in the real world that does not live up to this speculative abstraction. Instead, Bennett and Martinez invite us to approach the issue of socialism from a dialectical materialist vantage point. This means recognising that it is a process that takes on specific forms in different material circumstances, and we, therefore need to analyse the complexities of practical reality rather than simply relying on theoretical definitions from the sidelines of history.

Outlining some of China’s achievements, as presented in the book, he writes that:

“Since many of these facts are undeniable and even admitted by the imperialist powers, there has been an attempt to attribute China’s meteoric rise to its supposed embrace of capitalism in the post-Mao era. Many analysts, including self-proclaimed Marxists, embrace a schematic and reductivist version of history that simply juxtaposes a socialist age under Mao to a capitalist epoch begun with Deng Xiaoping. One of the many strengths of this book is its dialectical and materialist approach to the history of the People’s Republic, which provides a fine-grained elucidation of the concrete realities of the PRC’s developmental strategy rather than falling prey to metaphysical ‘all or nothing’ assumptions.”

Echoing the conclusion of Deng Xiaoping’s November 1989 talk with Julius Nyerere, the founding president of Tanzania, Gabriel summates:

“As long as China remains on the socialist path, approximately one sixth of the world’s population will be living under socialism and striving – against great odds – to chart uncharted territory. As one of the longest lasting and largest socialist experiments on planet Earth, there is much to learn from it. This book is an indispensable guide to understanding the PRC and appreciating its impressive accomplishments in only seventy-five years of existence.”

Gabriel Rockhill is the Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique and Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, USA.

“People’s China at 75: The Flag Stays Red” can be purchased from the publishers in paperback and digital formats.

This review was originally published by Black Agenda Report. It has also been republished by Popular Resistance and Internationalist 360°. An abbreviated version was published by the Morning Star.

One of the most legendary scenes of revolutionary joy in the history of the world socialist movement is said to have occurred when Vladimir Lenin reportedly went out to dance in the snow in order to celebrate the fact that the recently minted Soviet Republic had outlasted the Paris Commune. The workers who had taken over the French capital in 1871 and launched a collective project of self-governance were able to hold out for seventy-two days before the ruling class trounced this experiment in a more egalitarian world. Karl Marx, writing on these events at the time, celebrated the unprecedented advances of the workers’ movement while lucidly identifying its principal limitation: it had not crushed the bourgeois state and founded a proletarian state capable of defending its interests. This is a lesson that Vladimir Lenin had taken to heart, and his reputed dance in the snow feted the practical success of a correct theoretical assessment.

The Soviet Union lasted for seventy-four years if one includes the five years of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1917-1922). The People’s Republic of China (PRC) recently outstripped it by celebrating its seventy-fifth birthday (1949-2024). Measured in years rather than days, the celebration organized in the Great Hall of the People was much more sober than Lenin’s purported frolic in the snow. It included a balanced appraisal of what has been accomplished thus far and what remains to be done. President Xi Jinping delivered a speech that stressed how the Communist Party of China (CPC) “has united and led the Chinese people of all ethnic groups in working tirelessly to bring about the two miracles of rapid economic growth and enduring social stability.”[1] Reactions in the imperial core, known for its histrionics regarding China’s imminent collapse, were markedly different. The title of one of the Associated Press’s articles directly contradicted Xi Jinping’s claim: “China marks 75 years of Communist Party rule as economic challenges and security threats linger.”[2]

Continue reading A major milestone in socialist history – a review of People’s China at 75: The Flag Stays Red

The US seeks to reverse China’s progress and bring it to heel

The International Manifesto Group (IMG) organised a webinar on ‘Trump’s Presidency and the Prospects for Peace in 2025’ on Sunday 19 January, the day before the US presidential inauguration.

The speakers were:

  • Ramzy Baroud (Palestine Chronicle)
  • Jacquie Luqman (Black Alliance for Peace)
  • Andrew Murray (Stop the War Coalition)
  • Gabriel Rockhill (Critical Theory Workshop)
  • Keith Bennett (Friends of Socialist China); and
  • Sara Flounders (International Action Center)

The event was moderated and introduced by Radhika Desai on behalf of the IMG and was also sponsored and supported by Friends of Socialist China, Palestine Chronicle, Critical Theory Workshop and the International Action Center.

Building for the event, the IMG wrote: “Given that the US is usually the prime instigator of our world’s conflicts and given that Trump sometimes spoke on the campaign trail about ending at least some of them, we ask what prospects the incoming Trump administration offers for peace. Will Trump’s second term be more or less aggressive than his first? Will he honour his campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine? Will he double down on his enthusiastic support for Israeli genocide? Will he escalate the New Cold War on China or attempt another ‘deal’? Will opportunities for peace in Korea and Iran be seized or squandered? What to make of Trump’s bellicose rhetoric in relation to Central America? How will the new administration affect humanity’s trajectory towards peace and multipolarity?”

Keith’s contribution focused on China and Korea and we reproduce his remarks below. Videos of all the contributions can be viewed on the IMG’s YouTube channel.

Meeting on the theme of Trump’s Presidency and the Prospects for Peace in 2025, it is natural we look especially at the war raging in Ukraine for nearly three years and at the situation in West Asia, as a tentative ceasefire emerges after more than 15 months of unrelenting genocide in Gaza. With so many thousands of lives being lost is it self-indulgence or overreach to also turn our attention to the Asia Pacific region?

But today, no bilateral relationship is more important, more strategic and more fraught with dangers of global conflict than that between the United States and China.

Faced with the peaceful rise of China, a rise unparalleled in human history, it has essentially become a consensus among the otherwise contending wings of the US ruling class that the preservation of US global hegemony necessitates taking China as Washington’s principal adversary. From Greenland to the South Pacific. And from semiconductors to social media.

As with Cold War One and the Soviet Union, the US seeks to reverse China’s progress and, at best, bring it to heel, through a combination of a debilitating arms race, ideological subversion and economic and technological strangulation. A key difference is that not only has China drawn lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Whereas the USA and the USSR were essentially economically insulated from one another, China has spent the best part of half a century integrating itself into the global economy, creating such facts on the ground in the process as ever more complex global supply chains, and with China accounting for some 11% of US foreign trade.

So, what does Trump’s return mean for China/US relations?

First, Trump revels in his role as Disruptor-in-Chief, so the first thing we should expect is the unexpected. Certainly, if he carries through on even a fraction of his recent threats regarding tariffs, not only will China face an economic challenge. The entire global economy, in a parlous enough state as it is, and not least the US economy itself, will be plunged into crisis.

But overall, there seems little reason to anticipate a fundamental change of direction. When Biden assumed the presidency, many had hopes for a return to a more rational and constructive China policy in Washington. This did not materialise. Far from reversing Trump’s anti-China measures, the Biden administration ratcheted them up substantially, especially in terms of trying to restrict China’s access to computer chips and other advanced technology.

To the extent there was change under Biden, it came essentially in two areas:

•       His administration largely eschewed the openly racist rhetoric of Trump (kung flu, Chinese virus, etc.), which undoubtedly made life somewhat more tolerable for many Chinese and other Asian and Pacific Islander Americans.

•       Whereas Trump was an ‘equal opportunities bully’ when it came to insulting and threatening allies and adversaries alike, Biden’s team worked hard, and with a considerable degree of success, to reinforce cohesion in NATO, get the EU onside, and reinvigorate and reinforce old alliances, such as those with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, all with a view to confronting China, along with Russia, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and other states in Washington’s crosshairs.

So, even if Trump ups the ante with China, it will not break the essential continuum established by Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton with their 2011 ‘pivot to Asia’.

Continue reading The US seeks to reverse China’s progress and bring it to heel

From TikTok to the Little Red Book

The following article by Joe Scholten takes a look at the Chinese social media app RedNote (小红书/xiaohongshu – the direct translation of which is Little Red Book), to which millions of “TikTok refugees” migrated after the Biden regime banned TikTok.

Joe notes that the sudden appearance of millions of US users on RedNote has led to an unprecedented (and unpredicted) cultural exchange between particularly young people in China and the US – in spite of the best efforts of the US government to prevent such exchanges. “What stunned me most was that for the first time in a very long time I had seen Americans critically engaging with a fundamental truth regarding China that I thought would take Americans decades to understand: that at the end of the day we have collectively been lied to about China.”

The article describes how people in the US were able to see for the first time how people in China really live, and how many were shocked that ordinary Chinese people find it far easier to afford dignified housing, good quality healthcare and nutritious food than their US counterparts. What’s more, the “TikTok refugees” were surprised to find that the Chinese people they encountered online were able to express themselves freely on a wide range of topics. “For example, they seemed surprised that there was a plethora of LGBTQ content, or the account of a Uighur medical student talking about how much she liked the nightlife in her college city, or just how unifying cat taxes and tongue-in-cheek memes about China stealing data were.”

Joe concludes:

This moment with RedNote is a historic one. I sincerely hope that Americans will go to Little Red Book and see how their own lives could be better. I want Americans to see how we can build a better world, a socialist world, and how we can learn from the things China does well and apply those lessons to the betterment of the world.

The incoming Trump administration has given TikTok a 75-day reprieve, so it remains to be seen whether US users will be able to continue on the app going forward. Regardless, the cultural exchange that has opened up via RedNote is a positive example of grassroots people-to-people relations that can help to counter the New Cold War propaganda and build towards a future of peace and cooperation between the US and China.

Joe Scholten is a writer and activist from St Louis, Missouri.

As news has come forth that the United States Supreme Court has upheld a proposed TikTok ban following months of lawsuits against the ban, a somewhat strange phenomenon has emerged, with millions of American users fleeing to a Chinese Social Media app 小红书 (literally “Little Red Book”, but usually known in English as RedNote). As of the penning of this article roughly 3.4 million American users have downloaded the app as per Reuters; I suspect however that number is an underestimate given my own experiences on the app.

The app’s user base is largely made up of women, with about 300 million users. By US standards this is a large user base, but WeChat has roughly 1 billion more active users. Despite such a large user base Americans, and anglophone internet users in general, are likely unfamiliar with the Chinese internet. Sites like BIlibili, Youku, Weibo, etc aren’t household names in most anglophone countries outside of largely immigrant and ethnically Chinese communities within said countries. The large influx of users to RedNote has been one of the more unexpected events of the last few years, though I suppose this may be a week when decades happen.

Before penning an analysis of this application, I wanted to understand it by engaging with it, and although I have had plenty of thoroughly eye opening experiences, I will discuss these later.  I would like to first begin this section by detailing how American audiences have reacted to these events. Millions of views have been garnered on platforms like TikTok describing how Americans have been lied to about China. Upon seeing how people in China can afford groceries, how housing is affordable, how the government prevents homelessness, and how the social credit system doesn’t exist, many Americans express the sentiment that they have been lied to by their government. By all accounts they have been lied to, seeing posts from Chinese audiences confused by the concept of “social credit” has exposed millions of Americans to a fundamental truth: much of the information they have received about China has been false. From a historical standpoint this has been an enormous paradigm shift.

During the Cold War, a strength of the American system was how ubiquitous and global US products were – things like Coca Cola, Hollywood, popular music and so on were globally recognizable brands. Even in the USSR you could find teenagers who wanted to emulate US culture (stilyagi). Arguably to this day the same can be said in relation to these  brands. Tools like social media are often headquartered in the US and have ties to US intelligence agencies. Yet for presumably the first time in history, US users are flocking in the millions to an app headquartered in a socialist country. What’s more, Americans are beginning to understand that they themselves have been consuming US capitalist propaganda from the apps they consume. The hegemony of US social media is being broken.  

Continue reading From TikTok to the Little Red Book