Category: Books

This is a book above all for the new generation mobilised by Gaza

The following is the full text of the remarks prepared by Keith Bennett for the 20 September online launch of China’s Foreign Policy and the Making of a Multipolar World: Changes Unseen in a Century, which he edited along with Carlos Martinez. (His speech as delivered was abbreviated due to time constraints.)

Taking up the concept of changes unseen in a century, advanced by Xi Jinping and incorporated into the book’s title, Keith notes that: “One key manifestation of this in our part of the world can be summed up in three words: Gaza changes everything.”

He adds that: “It is above all this new generation coming to anti-imperialist politics that we hope our book can reach.”

The book is available from socialistbooks.com. The discount code CHINA35 gives 35 percent off all titles from the publishers Praxis Press until the end of the year.

In his testimonial for the book that we’ve been launching online today, George Galloway, as most if not all of you will know currently a parliamentary candidate for the constituency recently held by the prime minister of the United Kingdom, writes:

“Only the light-hearted care naught for where China goes next. The future of China will shape yours.”

One might disagree with George on many things, but on this at least reasonable people should surely not differ.

Yet, as China, to paraphrase Xi Jinping, steadily advances to the centre of the world stage, in our part of the world there is still a dearth of serious scholarship and a serious lack of understanding of what is actually happening, how the country and its leadership actually thinks and acts, and how that is changing the face not only of China but of the world as a whole.

There is not a shortage of copy per se. If you pick up a comic like the Telegraph, the Mail or the Murdoch Times, you can, on a daily basis, read entertaining fiction, suggesting for example that China is bugging tractors in order to harvest the kind of prosaic information readily available on a government website. Slightly more sophisticated versions of the same are offered by the chronically anachronistic voice of classical liberalism, The Economist, and even the venerable pink paper, the Financial Times.

There are a few, but still far too few, books offering excellent Marxist analysis of China, including from Carlos Martinez, Jenny Clegg, and the late and always much missed Jude Woodward. And from John Ross, Ken Hammond and Roland Boer. There are also the rightly popular work of Martin Jacques and the phenomenal scholarship of Peter Nolan.

Yet if you go into a branch of Waterstones, for example, with the possible exception of Martin Jacques’ key work, thanks in large part to its brilliantly provocative title, you’re highly unlikely to find any of these authors.

What you’re likely to find is the scribblings of the renegade Jung Chang, who serves up a diet of political pornography thinly disguised as biography; of the charlatan Gordon Chang, who informed us in 2001 that China was certain to collapse by 2011, yet is still, presumably as a kind of therapy, periodically paraded in public as some kind of China expert; or of Frank Dikötter, whose dubious scholarship would have us believe that the greatest revolution in human history is little more than one great, century-long criminal conspiracy.

What this all reflects is that the battle on the ideological front, and the battle for public opinion, are key parts of the cold war against socialism and human progress; and are key fronts in the class struggle.

Chairman Mao observed that to make a revolution it is always necessary first of all to create public opinion. And the same goes for counter-revolution.

It was precisely in order to take up that battle for public opinion, as a key front in the class struggle, the struggle for peace and against war, the struggle for socialism and against barbarism, that, in May 2021, Carlos, Danny Haiphong and myself, took the initiative to establish Friends of Socialist China. And why Carlos and myself embarked on this book project.

As they have demonstrated again in their contributions today, the authors represent some of the finest activist scholars working in the China field today. We are indebted to them for giving so generously of their time and their wisdom.

I use the designation activist scholars advisedly. This is exactly what we are aiming for. As Stalin well put it in his celebrated work, Foundations of Leninism:

“Of course, theory becomes purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice, just as practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illumined by revolutionary theory. But theory can become a tremendous force in the working-class movement if it is built up in indissoluble connection with revolutionary practice.”

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

We are very pleased to publish the detailed review below by Dr Francisco Dominguez of the recently published ‘China’s Foreign Policy and the Making of a Multipolar World: Changes unseen in a century’, edited by Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez. Francisco is one of the foremost anti-imperialist scholars and activists in Britain. Originally a political refugee from Pinochet’s Chile, he was the head of the Research Group on Latin America at Middlesex University and is the National Secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign and an executive committee member of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign.

Francisco goes through the book chapter by chapter and concludes that it is “a book that is a must read”.

It was launched online on 20 September and is available from socialistbooks.com. The discount code CHINA35 gives 35 percent off all titles from the publishers Praxis Press until the end of the year.

Three features define the contours that this book seeks to scrutinise in its examination of China’s foreign policy. The first is the proposition that “the world is presently witnessing changes unseen in a century”, whose pace and scale have intensified dramatically. The second concerns the transformation of China’s foreign policy, hitherto moulded by the principle of “hide our capacities and bide our time” and the practice of “being good at maintaining a low profile”, but now “replaced by a more assertive and proactive strategy” aimed at promoting the interests of the Global South, advancing peace and common security, and pursuing a more just world order. The third is an exploration of the historical roots and theoretical foundations of China’s foreign policy. This is quite an undertaking for a group of nine intellectual cadres, each addressing specific dimensions of China’s foreign policy, which has itself become a crucial factor in the ongoing “changes unseen in a century”.

The images on the book’s cover provide an intriguing foretaste of its content. The first depicts the 1955 Bandung Conference, at which the then Third World—represented by 29 participating countries, and still largely confined to aspirational declarations—expressed its desire for a “more just world system”, free from colonial oppression and founded upon respect for the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries. The conference also featured Zhou Enlai’s proposal, on behalf of the recently founded People’s Republic of China, of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.

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Launching “China’s Foreign Policy and the Making of a Multipolar World”

On 20 September, Friends of Socialist China and the International Manifesto Group, together with Praxis Press, Manifesto Press and the Critical Theory Workshop, held an online launch for the newly-released China’s Foreign Policy and the Making of a Multipolar World: Changes Unseen in a Century. Edited by Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez, the book brings together nine essays on the history, theory and practice of China’s foreign relations. Chaired by Carlos, the launch heard from contributors Andrew Murray, Danny Haiphong, Mick Dunford, Jenny Clegg, Torkil Lauesen, Ken Hammond and Keith.

The full video of the event is embedded below, and each contribution is also available as a separate video, linked in the text that follows.

A case study in Iran

Carlos opened the launch by explaining why the book was put together. The US-Israeli war on Iran, he argued, is not only an attack on a country Washington and Tel Aviv happen to dislike, but part of a desperate campaign to arrest the whole process of multipolarity. It has failed: Iran’s sovereignty is intact and its strategic relationship with both China and Russia has deepened.

China’s conduct in the war, Carlos suggested, provides a case study for the book’s key arguments. Beijing condemned the aggression from the outset, continued buying the bulk of Iran’s oil in defiance of US sanctions, vetoed Security Council resolutions designed to legitimise the war, and worked persistently with regional countries – most notably Pakistan – towards a ceasefire and negotiated solution. That combination of material solidarity and an unwavering insistence on peace and the UN Charter is what the book sets out to explain: a foreign policy that is “neither the menacing expansionism imagined by the China hawks, nor the timid inadequacy lamented by parts of the Western left”.

Not a Cold War re-run

Andrew Murray, political correspondent of the Morning Star, argued that China’s rise cannot be understood without its corollary, the decay of the United States. After all, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the financial crash of 2008, had little to do with China. Only now, with US decline and China’s growing weight combined, has the contradiction between imperialism and a Global South in which China plays a leading part clearly become the main contradiction in world politics.

This is not a simple re-run of the Cold War. The Soviet Union faced a far more powerful array of forces, and the mass national liberation and labour movements of that era do not exist in the same form today. Washington has moved from hoping for the incremental restoration of capitalism in China towards military and strategic encirclement, of which AUKUS is but one symptom.

On the charge that China is imperialist, Andrew commended Carlos’s polemic with Greg Godels and offered the historian Victor Kiernan’s definition of imperialism as “coercion exerted abroad, by one means or another, to extort profits above what simple commercial exchange can procure”. That coercive element, he said, is “something which is entirely absent from China’s conduct of international affairs and business”.

Continue reading Launching “China’s Foreign Policy and the Making of a Multipolar World”

Can China save the world?

In the following review of China’s Foreign Policy and the Making of a Multipolar World, Dirk Nimmegeers describes the collection as an “intriguing, enjoyable read, aimed at a diverse readership”. The review gives an overview of each of the ten chapters – from the historical and theoretical framing provided by the editors, through contributions by Ken Hammond, Andrew Murray, Jenny Clegg, Danny Haiphong, Cheng Enfu, Torkil Lauesen and Michael Dunford, to Carlos Martinez’s closing chapter on the Four Global Initiatives.

This review first appeared, in Dutch, on Chinasquare.be, and has been machine translated.

Note: there will be an online book launch for the book – hosted by Friends of Socialist China together with the International Manifesto Group, Praxis Press, Manifesto Press and the Critical Theory Workshop – on Sunday 20 September at 4pm Britain (5pm Western Europe, 11am US Eastern), at which seven of the book’s contributors will speak.

At present, ‘the world is undergoing changes the likes of which have not been seen for a century’. This is a well-known statement by the Chinese leader Xi Jinping. According to Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez, it is becoming clearer every day that Xi is right. They point, to name but a few signs, to the course of the war against Iran, or the rise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Furthermore, the editors of Friends of Socialist China note that China has adapted its foreign policy to this reality, shifting from a low profile approach to a more assertive and proactive strategy. When they asked seven other eminent specialists for their analysis of China’s foreign policy, the editors therefore decided to give the collection a subtitle that echoes Xi’s vision. China’s Foreign Policy and the Making of a Multipolar World: Changes unseen in a century was published by Praxis Press at the end of August.

The book contains analyses of what China represents in geopolitical terms today. The authors are well-established and experienced academics and journalists. They provide answers to questions on this subject, which is of the utmost importance for the future of the world – questions that preoccupy many readers, particularly those on the progressive and left-wing spectrum. What is the historical background to Chinese foreign policy, and how will it evolve? On what principles and theories is it based? How does practice relate to propaganda? Is China a new imperialist power? Is its international policy ‘good enough’ for a country that calls itself socialist? And what does China’s rise mean for the Global South, for the prospects of peace and for the long-term struggle to establish a more just world order?

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

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

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

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

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

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An analysis of the escalating US threats toward China

In the following article, Mick Kelly, the Political Secretary of the Freedom Road Socialist Organisation (FRSO) in the United States, argues that the US is on a collision course with socialist China. Scholarly international relations journals, such as Foreign Affairs, regularly carry articles about a coming war between the two countries.

Mick notes that in a rapidly changing world China is ascending while the United States is being left behind, with China’s rapid development standing in great contrast to the deteriorating economic position of the US. The bellicose war threats from Washington are a sign of weakness, not strength.

Giving a historical context, he points out that from the victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949 until the early 1970s, US foreign policy towards China was characterized by extremely hostility. Then came “ping pong diplomacy,” and in 1972 both countries signed the Shanghai Communiqué agreeing that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.” This One China principle was reaffirmed when Beijing and Washington established formal diplomatic relations at the end of 1979

In the following decades, the US followed a strategy of “peaceful evolution,” which held that by using political, economic and cultural ties, it would be possible to foster forces in China antithetical to socialism, capitalism would prevail, and a Western-style government would ultimately be established. The application of this strategy was played out in the late 1980s when the US did everything it could to encourage turmoil in China and the other socialist countries. In China, however, socialism continued to not only survive but to thrive, creating incredible social achievements such as the elimination of extreme poverty.

Mick concludes that: “Socialist China is a beacon of progress. Its existence demonstrates that socialism brings peace and prosperity, while the United States controls a declining empire that is continuously at war. The difference between the two roads these respective countries offer could not be starker. When US warmongers talk about ‘modernising’ nuclear weapons, in the next breath they mention China. Progressives and revolutionaries in the United States must do everything in our power to stop them and join with people around the world who want to do the same.”

The article originally appeared in the book, China Changes Everything. It is republished here from Workers World.

Continue reading An analysis of the escalating US threats toward China

Storming the heavens – A masterful Marxist study of China’s revolution

In the following article, which was originally published in the Morning Star, Ben Chacko acclaims Jenny Clegg’s recently published, ‘Storming the Heavens: Peasants and Revolution in China, 1925-1949 Viewed Through a Marxist Lens’ as a “a masterful analysis that puts class struggle back at the heart of our understanding of China’s revolution.”

Ben begins by noting that: “China’s revolution is arguably the most enduringly significant of the great 20th-century revolutions. Not simply because the Russian Revolution, whose impact on socialist thinking across the West is greater, ended in counterrevolution from 1989-91 — but because the Chinese people ‘standing up,’ to use Mao Zedong’s phrase, set the country on a path which is today shifting the global balance of power, and bringing an end to almost five centuries in which Europe and its settler-colonial offshoots have come to dominate the world.”

This he notes was a revolution in which the peasantry were the main revolutionary force, something that upended most traditional Marxist assessments. This, Ben argues, is “significant in ways an internationalist left needs to understand because the current transformation of the world seems, again, to have more to do with a Third World that’s ‘standing up’ than with workers’ revolution in the capitalist core.”

The review notes how Jenny demonstrates Mao’s careful assessment of class contradictions in the countryside from the 1920s on, and the way, over time, that the Communist Party of China (CPC’s) handling of them changed, both through experience gained by trial and error, summing up, adjustment and rectification, as well as in response to changed conditions, not least Japanese aggression and the ensuing nationwide war of resistance.

According to Ben: “The book tells the history of particular developments in China and makes no claim to impart lessons for British socialists today: given the utterly different social and economic conditions, that might seem ambitious (the slogan ‘to everyone land, a house and a horse’ might not address a modern British worker’s most pressing needs).”

Certainly, the vast differences in social and economic conditions speak for themselves. Although the right to a secure, decent and warm home and the adequate provision of safe, affordable, accessible and environmentally friendly public transport might well be welcomed by many workers in all parts of Britain.

Indeed, Ben goes straight on to note that: “The left here, though, has repeatedly failed to build a winning alliance that unites a majority who are all working class, but within which there are significant gradations of income and assets, against an elite enriched by its control of capital. The Chinese Communist approach of testing policies that cement unity within a class despite differences is certainly worth emulating.”

In concluding, Ben explains how Jenny introduces the reader to a “many-sided, long-running debate on the nature of China’s revolution and the character of its ‘new democracy’, built on an alliance of different social classes. China’s story emerges on its own terms, where many Western socialists have tried to interpret it in light of their attitudes to Russia’s. People will still debate, for example, whether Stalin or Trotsky was right about Chinese communist policy in the 1920s: Clegg establishes that — understandably — neither had as strong a grasp on Chinese realities as Mao.

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Book launch: Jenny Clegg – Storming the Heavens (14 February)

📆  Saturday 14 February 2026, 3pm Britain, 10am US Eastern

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Join us in person or online for a discussion of Jenny Clegg’s Storming the Heavens: Peasants and Revolution in China, 1925-1949.

The book launch will be held at Marx Memorial Library. This event will feature a discussion of the book’s themes with the author along with China specialists and leading Marxist scholars, followed by a Q&A session and book signing.

‘A major accomplishment … (combining) detailed historical analysis..with a keen sense of theory….’ David Laibman, Editor Emeritus, Science & Society

‘Extremely useful in all capitalist countries, especially those in the South’ Cheng Enfu, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

‘An essential guide to negotiating the complex terrain of the agrarian class structure in pre-revolutionary China’ Utsa Patnaik, Professor Emerita, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India.

‘A masterful analysis that puts class struggle back at the heart of our understanding of China’s revolution’, Ben Chacko, editor, Morning Star

Storming the Heavens sets peasant mass struggle centre-stage in the Chinese revolution: the peasant movement changed China and China changed the world. Revolutions, said Marx, project themselves towards the future: nothing could be more true than the case of China today with the special characteristics of its ongoing socialist modernisation rooted in this history of societal transformation.

There will be copies of the book available for purchase!

Speakers

  • Jenny Clegg, author and researcher
  • Vijay Prashad (video link), author and historian
  • Cheng Enfu (video link), President of the World Association for Political Economy
  • Michael Dutton, Emeritus Professor, Goldsmiths, University of London
  • John Foster, Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences, University of the West of Scotland
  • Chair: Radhika Desai, Professor, University of Manitoba

Organisers

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China Changes Everything: A book review

In the following review of the new anthology China Changes Everything, Steve Lalla describes the book as “a must for those who seek facts about the economic, political, and cultural development of China since 1949, particularly in comparison to that of the United States and particularly regarding the most hotly debated issues”.

On the issues of public health, the climate crisis, foreign policy orientation and more, China Changes Everything “succinctly contrasts the facts of life in the US, Europe, or Canada with those in the People’s Republic, and confirms that the glaring differences exist precisely because China has not followed the capitalist path of prioritising corporate profit over basic public needs”.

Steve recommends all progressive people in the West to read the book, and concludes that it “outlines a realistic vision for our future and provides hope for those in the West who are often disillusioned with all social and political projects”.

This book review originally appeared in Orinoco Tribune. China Changes Everything can be purchased from Amazon US and Amazon UK.

A new book edited by Kyle Ferrana, China Changes Everything, bills itself as an anthology by “social justice activists, journalists, and commentators” and brings together chapters about the People’s Republic of China written by prominent left-wing analysts, including Arnold August, Roger Harris, Radhika Desai, Carlos Martinez, Gerald Horne, Lee Siu Hin, Margaret Kimberley, Danny Haiphong, KJ Noh, Sara Flounders, and many more.

The publication covers a comprehensive range of subjects in the ongoing “China debate” and includes chapters on such hot topics as China’s relation to Palestine and China’s foreign affairs policies, its banking and healthcare system, its transportation infrastructure and the rail and air infrastructure that China has helped to build in developing nations, its achievements in green technology and poverty alleviation, China’s military expenditures and aims, its role in the “space race,” its alleged genocide of the Uyghurs, and the status of Taiwan and Tibet, among others.

The first entry—written by Sara Flounders and titled “A Fundamental Difference: China—Socialist or Imperialist?”—dispels the widespread myth prevalent among Western thinkers (and even among Western Marxists) that China’s economy is essentially capitalist. Flounders contrasts China’s economic system with that of the US and demonstrates how it is the essential differences in their respective economic structures that have propelled China’s economic growth since its liberation in 1949: “In the United States, nearly all resources are privately owned by a handful of billionaires. Even public forests, waters, and raw minerals are ripe for exploitation for private profit. In China, the overwhelming bulk of resources—oil, gas, coal, gold, gems, rare earth minerals, and water are socially owned and used for the development of the whole society.”

Continue reading China Changes Everything: A book review

China Changes Everything: An anthology by social justice activists, journalists and commentators

We’re very pleased to announce the release of a new book, compiled by the Friends of Socialist China US Committee and edited by Kyle Ferrana, exploring China’s remarkable rise and its role in the world. Topics include China’s poverty alleviation program, its progress in developing green energy, the Belt and Road Initiative, the nature of the Chinese economy, China’s foreign policy, and much more.

China Changes Everything can be purchased from Amazon US and Amazon UK.

Contents

Part 1: China’s Road to Socialism

  • A Fundamental Difference: China – Socialist or Imperialist? – Sara Flounders
  • Communist Principles & Culture Drive China’s Development for the Benefit Of All Humanity – Jacqueline Luqman
  • Completing the Original Mission: Reinvigorating Marxism in Contemporary China – Ken Hammond

Part 2. Socialist Planning in Practice

Infrastructure:

  • Reflections on How China is Building Socialism – Sydney Loving
  • Steel Tracks vs War Tracks: China Builds Subways and Aids Gaza While the U.S. Builds Militarism – Lee Siu Hin
  • Between the Rust Belt and the Model City – Pawel Wargan
  • A Tale of Two Economic Systems’ Transit – Betsey Piette

Healthcare:

  • If China Provides Universal Healthcare, Why Can’t the U.S.? – Margaret Flowers
  • Healthcare in China: A Cooperative Project – Sue Harris

Green Development:

  • China Leads the World in Energy Production and Green Technology – Lyn Neeley
  • China: Terraforming for the 21st Century – Judy Bello
  • China’s Aquacultural Revolution – Kyle Ferrana

Part 3. Plans for a Future World

  • Contrasting Strategies of the U.S. and China: Prospects for Peace and Solving Global Problems – Roger Harris
  • The Race for Moondust: U.S. Imperialism vs. China – Janet Mayes
  • Science Fiction or Science Reality? Socialism Leads Humanity out of Artificial Scarcity – JR Hagler

Part 4. Moving from Isolation to Prosperity

  • Leadership Was the Key in China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation Campaign – Dee Knight
  • Dismantling Western Hypocrisy on Xinjiang and Gaza – Arjae Red
  • Xizang’s Leap from Serfdom to Socialism – Arnold August

Part 5. The U.S. War Drive Against China Intensifies

  • The U.S. Advances Its Dystopian Plans to Destroy China – Megan Russell
  • China Cannot Be Contained – Margaret Kimberley
  • The U.S. Wants War with China – Joe Lombardo
  • The Greatest People’s Success Story in Human History – KJ Noh
  • Taiwan’s Residents Reject Being Washington’s Proxy – Chris Fry
  • An Analysis of the Escalating U.S. Threats Toward China – Mick Kelly

Part 6. China’s Impact on the World

  • Around the World China is Turning on the Lights – Greg Dunkel
  • Lips and Teeth: Korea, China, and Northeast Asia’s Long Revolution – Ju-Hyun Park
  • Is China’s Foreign Policy “Good Enough”? – Danny Haiphong
  • China, Yemen and the Red Sea Passage – Ché Marino
  • Should the Renminbi Replace the Dollar? The Surprising Answer – Radhika Desai

Part 7. Looking Back & Looking Forward

  • The Rise of China and the Crisis of U.S. Imperialism – Gerald Horne, Anthony Ballas, Aspen Ballas, and PM Irvin
  • Shoulder to Shoulder: British People’s Solidarity with the Chinese People’s War of Resistance – Keith Bennett
  • 200+ Years of U.S. Military Deployments in and around China – Michael Kramer
  • Defend the Socialist Countries, Stand With the Peoples of the World Against Imperialism – Carlos Martinez

Storming the Heavens: Peasants and Revolution in China, 1925-1949 – viewed through a Marxist lens

We are pleased to announce the release of a new book by Jenny Clegg.

Storming the Heavens: Peasants and Revolution in China, 1925-1949 – viewed through a Marxist lens brings into focus the central role of peasant mass power in China’s revolutionary transformation. Engaging with debates in peasant studies, on China’s historical transformation, as well as within the Communist movement, it delves into both objective and subjective aspects of the peasant struggle.

In critiquing reformist-orientated perspectives of mainstream Western Sinology, the discussion draws on the neglected works of Chinese Marxists, Chen Hanseng and Chen Boda, to reveal how a system of monopoly rent exacerbated land hunger impacting both poor and middle peasants, making radical land reform the central issue for the revolution.  It goes on to explore how the Asiatic features of Chinese feudalism shaped landlord power to complicate peasant organisation at local levels. 

Going on to address questions of peasant agency and CPC leadership, traditional rebellion and modern proletarian revolution, the work considers case studies from the field of Chinese peasant studies together with Party documents. Following the zig-zag revolutionary process, it sees how Party and peasant were brought together in a dynamic relationship of mutual learning within a context of change. 

Mao’s methods of rural work, Party building and mass organisation are shown as meaningful in meeting the practical challenges of agrarian transformation. Applying a distinctive class analysis, the book shows how the CPC found ways to tackle the resilience of feudal power, handling the contradictions both among the peasants and between the agrarian and national movements to unite the revolutionary forces in reaching towards a socialist future.

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About the author

Jenny Clegg is a China specialist. She first visited China in 1971 and has followed its development and international role ever since. She was awarded a PhD by the University of Manchester for her thesis on peasants and revolution in China in 1989, and subsequently became a Senior Lecturer in Afro-Asian Studies and Asia Pacific Studies at universities in the North of England. She continues to research and write about China from a Marxist perspective. She is a member of the Friends of Socialist China advisory panel.

Endorsements

Storming the Heavens is a major accomplishment.  It combines detailed historical  analysis of China’s agrarian social relations, prior to 1949 and beyond, with a keen sense of theory, integrating Western and Chinese sources, Marxist and non-Marxist alike, into a vibrant picture of struggle and transformation.  The CPC’s programs and practices are given detailed, and often admiring, attention, while still being carefully dissected with an eye to errors, misjudgments and shortcomings.  The complexities of national vs. agrarian movements, relations between poor and middle peasants, navigation of stages in social and political development, differences in class structure between north and south, and much more — all of this unfolds in a story that is both remarkably specific and deeply universal in its implications.  All in all, a fine addition to our knowledge of modern China.

David Laibman, Professor Emeritus, Economics, City University of New York, Editor Emeritus, Science & Society

This monograph is a systematic study by a British Marxist economist of the situation in rural China during the Republican period. It presents an insightful analysis of the new democratic revolution in the countryside of China centred on the agrarian revolution led by Mao Zedong. This book is very important for any Chinese scholar who wishes to learn about the perspectives of research from experts outside China, and is extremely useful in all capitalist countries, especially those in the South, for understanding how to develop the countryside and truly safeguard the interests of the peasants through reforms, as well as for understanding the theories of Marxism-Leninism and its sinicization.

Cheng Enfu, Member of the the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, President of the World Association for Political Economy 

For those who wish to understand the origins of the Chinese revolution, this book is an essential guide to negotiating the complex terrain of the agrarian class structure in pre-revolutionary China; the Marxist and alternative analyses of this structure; and the debates which underlay the eventual formulation by the CPC of the strategy that led to victory over both the Japanese and the Kuomintang. As well as discussion of the theoretical contribution of Mao Zedong to Marxism, as this guided CPC strategy….the book covers a range of debates over an extensive area of discourse. 

Utsa Patnaik, Professor Emerita at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi, India.

Jenny Clegg’s Storming the Heavens offers a brilliantly enlightening Marxist understanding of socialist China.  Based on years of research it is focused on the dynamic and transforming relationship between the Communist Party of China and China’s diverse peasant communities.  Like the studies made by Lenin of Russia’s peasantry, or Connolly’s of Ireland’s, both very different, it enables us to understand the specifically national characteristics of the party’s Marxist practice.  It is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand China’s role in the world today.

John Foster, Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences, University of the West of Scotland

Contents

Introduction

Part 1 Landlord monopoly and peasant land hunger – the distinct characteristics of China’s agrarian structure

  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1: Land Ownership, Rent and the Condition of the Peasantry
  • Chapter 2: Landlordism and Commerce
  • Chapter 3: Landlord, State and Village – the Articulation of Economic and Political Power in Chinese Feudalism
  • Chapter 4: The Impact of Imperialism

Part 2 From stagnation to crisis: economic and political dimensions of agrarian China’s decline

  • Introduction
  • Chapter 5: Market and Technological Constraints and the Problem of Monopoly Rent
  • Chapter 6: Huang and the Involuting Peasant Economy of North China – Between Lenin and Chayanov
  • Chapter 7: The Role of the State – for the Common Good or Legitimising Landlord Power?
  • Chapter 8: The Tenacity of Chinese Feudalism
  • Chapter 9: Peasant Rebellions and Why They Failed
  • Chapter 10: The Failure of Reforms
  • Chapter 11: The Convoluted Trajectory to Revolution

Part 3 China’s revolutionary experience from United Front to land revolution (1924-1937) and the evolution of Mao’s strategy

  • Introduction
  • Chapter 12: Peasants and Revolution – from Lenin to Mao
  • Chapter 13: China’s First Revolution and the CPC-KMT United Front (1924-1927)
  • Chapter 14: From the Towns to the Countryside – Rethinking Revolutionary Strategy
  • Chapter 15: The Land Revolution, Soviet Power and the Dynamics of Peasant Class Struggle
  • Chapter 16: Mao and the Sinification of Marxism – Class Analysis and the Mass Line
  • Chapter 17: From Agrarian to National Revolution

Part 4 China’s revolutionary experience from Second United Front to land revolution (1937-1949) and the implementation of Mao’s strategy

  • Introduction
  • Chapter 18: The Anti-Japanese War and the United Front (1937–1945) – the Challenges of Party Building
  • Chapter 19: Building the New Democratic State
  • Chapter 20: The Return to Land Revolution (1946-48) – from Moderate to Radical Land Policies
  • Chapter 21: The Return to Land Revolution (1946-48) – Mao’s methods refined

Part 5 Peasants, revolution and the CPC

  • Introduction
  • Chapter 22: From Traditional Rebellion to Modern Revolution
  • Chapter 23: Peasants as Free Trade Familialists – Thaxton’s Contribution
  • Chapter 24: What Difference did CPC Leadership Make?

Conclusion

Xi Jinping’s Governance of China illuminating the path ahead

In the following article, which was originally published by China Today, our co-editor Keith Bennett welcomes the publication of the English language edition of the fifth volume of Xi Jinping’s ‘Governance of China’, noting:

“Through the writings and speeches of President Xi one can gain a better understanding of China – where it is going and how it approaches the great issues facing humanity. This is related to the fact that, under Xi’s leadership, China is returning to the centre of the global stage. But it does so, not as an aspiring new hegemon, and not following the old path of colonialism and hegemonism, which have caused, and continue to cause, so much bloodshed and suffering, but rather from a new and visionary paradigm.”

Keith briefly outlines the lineage of Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy, through the internationalist rallying cry of Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, Lenin’s elevation of the oppressed peoples to stand alongside the working class in the world revolutionary process, and Zhou Enlai’s elaboration of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, through to today’s collective rise of the Global South, with Socialist China in the vanguard.

Xi Jinping’s concept of a community of shared future for humanity can be embraced and welcomed by the great majority of humanity.

Like many people around the world, be they China scholars, friends of China or students of Marxism, I have been looking forward to the publication of the fifth volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China and was very pleased to hear that it is now available. 

The eagerness and interest with which this latest volume has been awaited and will be received reflects a number of things. Through the writings and speeches of President Xi Jinping one can gain a better understanding of China – where it is going and how it approaches the great issues facing humanity. This is related to the fact that, under Xi’s leadership, China is returning to the center of the global stage. But it does so, not as an aspiring new hegemon, and not following the old path of colonialism and hegemonism, which have caused, and continue to cause, so much bloodshed and suffering, but rather from a new and visionary paradigm. 

Xi’s grand vision of a community with a shared future for humanity is welcomed by a majority of the world’s nations, particularly the Global South family, who have suffered for centuries under the iron heel of the Global North. Xi’s vision is welcomed precisely because it accords with the interests and needs of the people of every country. 

As far back as 1848, German philosophers and revolutionary socialists Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), co-authors of The Communist Manifesto, wrote that, “In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they [the communists] point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.” 

As the foremost proponent of Marxism for the 21st century, Xi has inherited, applied and developed this principle elaborated by Marx and Engels.  

Historically, this development has passed through a number of distinct phases. Taking into account the fact that imperialism had completed the colonial division of the world, and that the modern national liberation movement was coming into being as the most powerful ally of the working class on a world scale, Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) – founder of the Russian Communist Party – updated the slogan of “workers of the world unite” to also embrace the oppressed peoples. At the same time, faced with the fact that the Soviet Union was likely to remain the world’s sole socialist country, at least for a time, he advanced the concept of peaceful coexistence as an important component of the foreign policy to be pursued by a socialist state. Later, Zhou Enlai (1898-1976), then Chinese premier, in turn, faced with the fact that states with different social systems would continue to exist for a long historical period, raised peaceful coexistence from a policy to the level of theory, encapsulated and summed up in his famous Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.  

Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy inherits and builds on this entire legacy. If, 70-plus years ago, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence gave the socialist countries, and the newly independent countries just embarking on the road of building a new society, freedom to breathe and room to maneuver, today we face a qualitatively different situation.  

As a key component of the changes unseen in a century, we now see the collective rise of the great mass of developing countries, which today we generally refer to as the Global South, with socialist China as the vanguard, an indispensable nation steadily advancing to the center of the world stage. 

This therefore places the question of what kind of world should we build and how should we build it, not simply as a task on the agenda but rather as a task taken up for solution, and so this is precisely a key question to which Xi Jinping Thought addresses itself. 

Around the time I first visited China, back in 1981, and prior to that, practically the first sight that people encountered as they entered the mainland from Hong Kong was the huge banner reading, “Long live the great unity of the peoples of the world!” 

And just as Marx and Engels wrote about the “common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality,” for his part, Confucius (551 BC- 479 BC) famously advocated the great harmony of all under heaven. 

It is by embodying these precepts of both scientific socialism and fine traditional Chinese culture and civilization, and proceeding from the theory of “adapting the basic tenets of Marxism to China’s realities and to its traditional culture”, that Xi has defined the strategic goal, the task taken up for solution, as the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.  

Of course, some might say that this is just a phrase. And in the mouths of many politicians around the world that would most likely be the case. But in Xi’s case it represents the summation and acme of a whole body of continually developing theories and practices. In particular, it is the cumulative product of a whole series of initiatives, starting with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and proceeding through a series of global initiatives on development, security and civilization. Together, these represent the building blocks of global peace, common prosperity, mutual respect and harmony, which, in turn, are the prerequisites for a sustainable community of shared future. 

Xi is also clear that this cannot be realized solely through relations among states but rather must also embrace people-to-people diplomacy. In fact, he has gone so far as to stress that relations between peoples are the foundation and bedrock of good state-to-state relations. In this he inherits and builds on Mao Zedong’s conclusion that, “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.” That is why Xi gives so much attention to people-to-people diplomacy, meeting people on his travels, keeping in contact with old friends even after decades, writing personal letters, and never forgetting China’s old friends and their family members and descendants. 

Today, humanity has long since passed the point where its fundamental problems can be contained or resolved within national borders. Not all progressive people in the West realize it yet, but the issue is no longer whether one is for or against globalization, but whether to continue to go down the road of a globalization where the rich continue to get richer and the poor continue to get poorer on a global scale, as practiced by the ruling circles in advanced capitalist countries, or whether to pursue an equitable and inclusive globalization as championed by China. Likewise, the existential threats facing humanity, whether they be from the looming threat of climate catastrophe, the danger of nuclear war or of zoonotic pandemics, all show that a community with a shared future for humanity is a worthy goal, one that can be embraced and welcomed by the great majority of humanity. But even more fundamentally, it is increasingly becoming the very prerequisite for the continuation of human civilization and indeed survival, and most likely for the survival of many other forms of life on earth as well. 

No country, no matter how rich or powerful, can solve the problems facing humanity and Mother Earth on their own, let alone with a “beggar my neighbor” attitude. Rather, it’s the case that we sink or swim together. Xi’s concept of a community with a shared future is the shoreline that humanity has to swim towards. The Governance of China is like a lodestar or lighthouse illuminating the way to a distant shore. That is why I am sure that this latest volume will be eagerly awaited, read, studied and discussed by people on every continent. 

China is a force for peace and progress, that’s why the world needs China

Friends of Socialist China was among the organisers of a hybrid event in Portland, Oregon (US), held on 22 June 2025, discussing Kyle Ferrana’s important book Why the World Needs China.

In his speech (delivered via Zoom), Carlos Martinez endorsed the central thesis of the book, arguing that China represents a global vision centred around peace, progress and sustainable development; whereas the US and its allies represent a global vision centred around imperialism, hegemony, war, ecocide and chaos.

Discussing recent developments in West Asia, in particular the US-Israeli criminal attacks on Iran and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Carlos highlighted China’s constructive role in the region, including its mediation between Iran and Saudi Arabia and its support for Palestinian unity. He linked the attacks on Iran with the West’s continuing efforts to destabilise China and broader imperialist resistance against a rising multipolar world.

Emphasising the need for global solidarity, Carlos called for building “a global united front composed of the socialist countries, the national liberation movements, the anti-imperialist forces of the Global South, and the progressive forces in the advanced capitalist countries”, for supporting the forces of liberation worldwide, and for supporting the socialist countries – “and particularly China, as the largest and most advanced socialist country, as the country which is at the core of the emerging multipolar system”.

The video of the speech is embedded below, followed by the text.

“Why the World Needs China” is the somewhat provocative title of Kyle’s book.

But in my view the essential correctness of this title is becoming clearer and clearer with every passing day, and specifically with every despicable act of aggression carried out by the United States and its Israeli proxy against the people of Palestine, of Iran, of Yemen and of Lebanon.

As you all know, last night the US military openly joined Israel’s criminal war against Iran, bombing three nuclear facilities. I say “openly joined the war”, because the fact is that the US and its allies been providing weapons, intelligence, logistical support, war propaganda and diplomatic cover from the very beginning – both for this war on Iran and for the genocidal assault on Gaza.

The whole world can increasingly see what the United States and its allies represent, and increasingly the whole world can see what China represents. And these are two vastly different visions of the future of the world, one put forward by the capitalist class in the United States, one put forward by the working class in China.

The US is proposing a Project for a New American Century. This neoconservative notion – originally associated with notorious hawks such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney – has become a consensus position in mainstream US politics, adhered to by all administrations, Republican and Democrat alike. It’s a fundamentally hegemonist, imperialist proposal; a proposal for spreading death and destruction for the sake of projecting the US’s domination of the 20th century into the 21st century.

Continue reading China is a force for peace and progress, that’s why the world needs China

Book review: Torkil Lauesen – The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism

The following text by Carlos Martinez, written for the May-June 2025 issue of Communist Review, reviews The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism, by Danish revolutionary intellectual Torkil Lauesen.

The review highlights and explores a number of key themes from the book, including the assessment of the history of the global working class movement within a framework of historical materialism; the possibility that humanity has reached a turning point and that capitalism has run out of ways to sustain itself; and the indispensability of constructing a global united front composed of the socialist countries, the national liberation movements, the anti-imperialist forces of the Global South, and the progressive forces in the advanced capitalist countries.

The review notes: “One of the most significant aspects of The Long Transition is its serious attempt to understand and explain contemporary China, and in particular to assess the results – and perhaps necessity – of the Reform and Opening Up process introduced in 1978, gradually introducing market mechanisms to the economy, allowing private ownership of capital, encouraging investment from abroad, and integrating China into the global economy.”

Lauesen’s investigations of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics lead him to the conclusion that “the importance of socialist-oriented development in China can hardly be overestimated. It can tip the global balance of power decisively in favour of a socialist world order.”

As Carlos states in his review, The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism is a richly rewarding and important read. It can be purchased or downloaded from Iskra Books.

Long transition

The latest book from Danish revolutionary intellectual Torkil Lauesen, The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism, is highly ambitious in its scope, providing an assessment of the first two centuries of humanity’s attempts to build socialism, and outlining some of the necessary or possible next steps on that journey.

Lauesen describes in some detail the history thus far of the “long transition” from capitalism to socialism – starting with the first rumblings of proletarian revolt in mid-19th century Europe, then moving on to the Paris Commune, the rise and fall of the German workers’ movement, the October Revolution, the early attempts at socialist construction in the Soviet Union, the eastward shift of the revolutionary centre of gravity in the post-WW2 era, and the ongoing socialist project in the People’s Republic of China.

These milestones are contextualised within a long-running, dialectical struggle between two social systems. While all except the last are by now studied as history rather than as contemporary politics, and while many failed to achieve their stated aims, they all form links in an ongoing chain: the long transition to socialism. Lauesen writes that “the struggle and suffering of millions of communists and socialists for the past two hundred years have not been in vain, but are contributions to this long process of creating a better world.” (p2)

Such a sentiment – heartening to those of us that have lived through a low ebb of the communist tide – echoes the powerful words of Korean revolutionary Kim San in Helen Foster Snow’s remarkable Song of Ariran:

Nearly all the friends and comrades of my youth are dead, hundreds of them… Their warm revolutionary blood flowed proudly into the soil of Korea, Manchuria, Siberia, Japan, China. They failed in the immediate thing, but history keeps a fine accounting. A man’s name and his brief dream may be buried with his bones, but nothing that he has ever done or failed to do is lost in the final balance of forces.[1]

In such a framework, the retreats suffered by our movement should be considered as part of an inevitable ebb and flow of a complex trajectory that could take hundreds of years but which nonetheless has an inexorable historical materialist tide. As Deng Xiaoping observed in 1992, commenting on the collapse of the Soviet Union: “Feudal society replaced slave society, capitalism supplanted feudalism, and, after a long time, socialism will necessarily supersede capitalism. This is an irreversible general trend of historical development, but the road has many twists and turns… Some countries have suffered major setbacks, and socialism appears to have been weakened. But the people have been tempered by the setbacks and have drawn lessons from them, and that will make socialism develop in a healthier direction.”[2]

The transition process is complicated by the fact that capitalism and socialism do not exist independently of one another, but rather constitute a unity of opposites, one constantly acting on and transforming the other. Lauesen writes for example that “the way capitalism works today is a product of the Russian Revolution and Soviet industrialisation, the anti-colonial uprisings in the Third World, the 1968 uprising, and the current Chinese development of socialism.” This view is shared with the late Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin, who wrote that “the long transition of world capitalism to world socialism is defined by the internal conflict of all the societies in the system between the trends and forces of the reproduction of capitalist relations and the (anti-systemic) trends and forces, whose logic has other aspirations – those, precisely, that can be defined as socialism”.[3]

Capitalism is running out of road

Marx and Engels thought that capitalism’s contradictions and its tendency towards crisis would condemn it to a relatively brief existence. Lauesen cites Engels in 1847, writing that the bourgeoisie “will at most win a few years of troubled enjoyment, only to then be immediately overthrown… You shall be allowed to rule for a short time… but do not forget that ‘the hangman stands at the door’”. (p54)

A hundred and seventy-eight years hence, it has to be admitted that capitalism has shown itself to be remarkably adaptive, “finding new escape routes from its problems” (p22) in the form of new technologies, colonial and imperial expansion, war, repression, cultural hegemony, and the provision of “bread and circuses” to a privileged layer of the working class.

However, while problems can be swept under the carpet, they can’t remain there permanently. Neoliberal globalisation gave the US an additional four decades of hegemony starting in the 1970s, but Lauesen considers that capitalism is running out of options for mitigating its contradictions.

I do not believe that capitalism will survive this century. Capitalism reached its zenith around 2000. It is still dominant, but is in decline, reflected in the turn from neoliberal economic globalisation towards military defence of a US hegemony that is no longer economically based. The decline of US hegemony and the rise of China as a driver for a more multipolar world system can lead to a geopolitical balance, in which social movements and nations in the global South can move in the direction of socialism. (p10)

China’s emergence is central to Lauesen’s analysis. While the US-led capitalist world system is in decline, China – led by a Communist Party and following a hybrid economic model with public ownership and planning at its core – is increasing in strength, prosperity and influence. China is “the leading industrial producer and the biggest actor in the world market”, as well as being “the driving force behind the effort to establish a multipolar world-system.” (p10)

Furthermore, China’s rise is not reliant on hegemonism. As President Xi Jinping has pointedly remarked: China will “neither tread the old path of colonisation and plunder, nor the crooked path taken by some countries to seek hegemony once they grow strong.”[4] Because the capitalist class in China is not the ruling class, it is not able to define the country’s foreign policy. Li Zhongjin and David Kotz have pointed out, any drive towards hegemonism by China’s capitalists is restrained by a CPC government which “has no need to aim for imperial domination to achieve its economic aims”, and “the Chinese capitalist class lacks the power to compel the CPC to seek imperial domination.”[5]

Lauesen considers that the failure of the forces of global socialism to win a final victory over capitalism is rooted primarily in the fact that capitalism has still found ways to expand; it has still until very recently retained the edge in terms of driving human progress forward. This is changing. As Deng Xiaoping commented in 1984, “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”.[6] The extraordinary success of DeepSeek’s R1 model; China’s leading role in renewable energy and green transport; its charting of new territory in telecommunications, advanced industry, space exploration, medical science and more all indicate that humanity is reaching a turning point.

Understanding China

One of the most significant aspects of The Long Transition is its serious attempt to understand and explain contemporary China, and in particular to assess the results – and perhaps necessity – of the Reform and Opening Up process introduced in 1978, gradually introducing market mechanisms to the economy, allowing private ownership of capital, encouraging investment from abroad, and integrating China into the global economy.

Lauesen’s writing betrays a certain ambivalence on this topic, and it’s not difficult to imagine that, given his long adherence to a variant of Cultural Revolution-era Maoism, it has been no easy task coming to terms with Deng Xiaoping Theory. And yet, Lauesen’s methodology adheres to Mao Zedong’s observation that “the only yardstick of truth is the revolutionary practice of millions of people”.[7] As such, he recognises that China’s extraordinary rise constitutes “an epochal change in the world-system. China was able, for the first time in two hundred years, to break the polarising dynamic of capitalism between the West and the rest of the world.” (p256)

Lauesen also recognises that this success would likely not have been possible without the introduction of market reforms and integration into the global economy from the late 1970s onwards. Marx writes that “the development of the productive forces of social labour is capital’s historic mission and justification”.[8] China’s leadership recognised that capital could still perform that historic mission in a socialist country, under the leadership and guidance of the Communist Party. Lauesen views this as necessary, in a context where “actually existing socialism” in both Soviet and Chinese flavours had been as yet unable “to break the power of the global capitalist market, which blocked the road to the development of socialism”. (p221)

In a capitalist-dominated world, without a sufficiently developed economic base, China had to become part of the world economy. It had to build up its productive forces under conditions which would almost certainly be a threat to the hard-won political preconditions, since capitalist norms and values would penetrate society… It could not continue the development of its productive forces without investments and trading with capitalist countries. It needed to begin the transfer of technology from the imperial countries. (p226)

Interestingly, Lauesen considers that the concept of ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ is not a post-Mao development; that China’s economic reform was not a manifestation of Mao Zedong and his supporters losing the two-line struggle with so-called capitalist roaders. Rather, Mao himself “was part of this new strategy, shifting the course from port to starboard to avoid sailing too close to the wind of the looming storm of global capitalism”. (p221)

In this analysis, the Third Industrial Revolution – the rise of electronics, telecommunications, automation and computers, combined with the massive expansion of globalised production chains enabled by containerisation – gave a new lease of life to capitalism and affected the balance of power in the global class struggle. “Revolutions erupted in Cuba, Algeria, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, and so on, but despite their socialist aspirations, they hardly left the ground concerning the construction of socialism. Therefore, it was not only the Cultural Revolution that lost its steam through the 1970s, it was revolutionary movements all over the world. This indicates that there was a deeper transformation occurring in world capitalism, which was reflected in global class struggles.” (p218)

China needed to rapidly develop its productive forces – “not only to eradicate poverty in China itself, but also because it is necessary to possess the most developed technology to break the dominance of capitalism, and thus promote a global transformation towards socialism” (p272). And this dynamic is first detected not in Deng’s speech at the third plenary session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in December 1978, but in Richard Nixon’s meeting with Mao in Beijing in February 1972, and China’s acquisition of various industrial facilities from the West in the following years.

Bringing the story up to the present, Lauesen states that “a socialist-oriented China will be of great importance for a transition towards global socialism”, in particular because it “will create possibilities for anti-capitalist struggles within the remaining capitalist world system”. As such, “the importance of socialist-oriented development in China can hardly be overestimated. It can tip the global balance of power decisively in favour of a socialist world order” (p276). This is consistent with the great Italian Marxist philosopher Domenico Losurdo: “Thanks to the prodigious economic and technological development of China, defined as the most important event of the last five hundred years, the Columbian era has come to an end”.[9]

Global united front

The capitalist system is increasingly becoming a hindrance to human progress, and a threat to human survival, but a socialist future is not, of course, guaranteed. It was 110 years ago that the heroic Polish-German revolutionary and theoretician Rosa Luxemburg popularised the idea that humanity faced a stark choice: between socialism and barbarism. But now as then, barbarism is still on the table, and in this era of existential threats to humanity – climate change, pandemics, antimicrobial resistance, nuclear warfare, the dangers posed by unrestrained and unscrupulous use of artificial intelligence – its possible dimensions are all too visible.

Objective factors increasingly favour the global movement for socialism, but the subjective factors have to be mobilised as well. Lauesen writes: “Capitalism can collapse in a brutal, chaotic endgame of wars and natural disasters. To avoid this is our task; and to accomplish that task, we must fulfil the transition to socialism. To do this, we need to learn from the past and mobilise, organise, and develop a strategy for future struggles.” (p2)

In Lauesen’s view, the left in the Global North will not be the driving force in the transition toward global socialism. But this doesn’t mean that the left should simply maintain a humdrum existence fighting for better pay and conditions. “It is not enough to wait for the proletariat of the Global South to create a revolutionary situation in our part of the world”. (p359)

Rather, Marxists in the West must urgently adopt an internationalist perspective and help construct a global united front composed of the socialist countries, the national liberation movements, the anti-imperialist forces of the Global South, and the progressive forces in the advanced capitalist countries. After all, “if reforms in the Global North are not accompanied by the deconstruction of imperialism, then they are not a step forward — they are parasitic”. (p353)

Lauesen urges his readers to make a permanent break with social chauvinism; to make a permanent break with the arrogant Western Marxism described by Losurdo, which rejects the leadership and the lessons of actually existing socialism; to support the Global South’s struggle against imperialism; to support those countries and movements developing socialism; to oppose wars; and to “make sure that the North is no safe ‘hinterland’ for imperialism, which means struggle against right-wing national chauvinism, racism, and imperialist political and military intervention”. (p359)

The appeal from the Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East, held 125 years ago, urges the Western working classes: “You cannot free yourselves without helping us in our struggle for liberation. The wealth of our countries is, in the hands of the capitalists, a means of enslaving you.”[10] Lauesen calls on us to take up this challenge anew.

In a relatively long book, dealing with difficult and controversial topics, there is inevitably no lack of things to disagree with. Nonetheless, The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism is a richly rewarding and important read.

[1]                  Chang Chi-rak and Nym Wales. Song of Ariran: A Korean Communist in the Chinese Revolution. San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1972, p216

[2]                 Deng Xiaoping 1992, Excerpts From Talks Given In Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai, Marxist Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1992/179.htm

[3]                 Samir Amin. Global History: A View from the South. Cape Town, South Africa : Dakar, Senegal : Bangalore, India: Pambazuka Press, 2011, p185

[4]                 Xi Jinping 2023, Full text of Xi Jinping’s keynote address at the CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-level Meeting, Xinhua. https://english.news.cn/20230316/46287ba021164317ab578b18b447a0af/c.html

[5]                 Li Zhongjin and David Kotz 2020, Is China Imperialist? Economy, State, and Insertion in the Global System, American Economic Association. https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2021/preliminary/paper/e4D3fNd3

[6]                 Deng Xiaoping 1984, Building a Socialism With a Specifically Chinese Character, Marxist Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1984/36.htm

[7]                 Mao Zedong 1940 On New Democracy, Marxist Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_26.htm

[8]                 Karl Marx. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. V. 3: Penguin Classics. London, 1981, p368

[9]                 Domenico Losurdo. Western Marxism: How It Was Born, How It Died, How It Can Be Reborn (ed. Gabriel Rockhill). Monthly Review Press, 2024, p227

[10]               Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East: Appeal from the Congress (1920), Marxist Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/baku/to-workers.htm

Book review: The Great Reversal – Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power

We are pleased to republish the below review by Glyn Ford of Kerry Brown’s ‘The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power’, published by Yale University Press in July 2024.

Professor Kerry Brown is the Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London, a prolific author, a former diplomat at the British Embassy in Beijing and one of Britain’s most distinguished and erudite Sinologists. Or as Ford aptly puts it: “Kerry Brown is one of Britain’s most skilled and knowledgeable Chinese hands, which explains why he is no longer a UK diplomat serving in China.” He continues to satirise the somersaults in UK policy towards China in recent years, which indeed defy logical comprehension: “One moment it was President Xi drinking a pub pint in a local with Cameron and next proposals to ban Beijing’s diplomats from the Strangers Bar in the Commons.”

Ford considers Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s recent China visit to have been “seriously underwhelming,” believing it has  left Labour “looking for the plot.” He argues that: “Brown’s book, stretching across four centuries, may help show where it might be found. When Britain first encountered Imperial China, we were the supplicants. The Qing economy was stronger and their technology superior – as so authoritatively mapped in Joseph Needham’s ‘[History of] Science and Civilisation in China.’”

Paraphrasing Mao’s famous expression, Ford notes that the nineteenth century wars between Britain and China demonstrated that power grew out of the barrel of a gun. “London’s drug wars between 1839-42 and 1856-60 were fought to prevent China from bringing under control the opium epidemic destroying civil society. The fruits of victory included the legalisation of opium and Hong Kong. This is a period of subjugation that China’s rulers have burnt deep into their psyche.”

As a result of the forces unleashed in Chinese society, Ford notes: “Internally, nationalism and communism were competing poles of attraction for China’s confident new men and women. Communism came out top and, after a difficult quarter century, the country was able to stand tall for the first time in almost four centuries. Socialism with Chinese characteristics proved better at driving economic growth than free-market capitalism.”

He explains that: “Kerry Brown wants Britain to get real about China. Adrift from Europe after Brexit and with little opportunity of economically chaining ourselves to a mad dog in the United States, there is no option but to engage with China.”

Whilst echoing the claims of “serious human rights problems in China”, Ford pointedly adds: “But we are living a fantasy to believe we have either the strength or moral authority to take the lead. Britain’s perfidious history makes us one of the least appropriate advocates in China’s eyes, while our needy economy makes threats of economic coercion comic.”

Glyn Ford was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from the British Labour Party from 1984-2009 (and concurrently for the Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party, 1999-2009.) His special interests include East Asia, especially the Korean peninsula. He is the author of three books on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), a country he has visited over 50 times. The most recent was reviewed by Keith Bennett in the Morning Star.  His previous book was reviewed by Carlos Martinez in the Morning Star and by Keith Bennett in Chartist. Since leaving the European Parliament, Ford has remained active in ‘Track 2’ diplomacy with the DPRK and with East Asia generally.

The below review was originally published by Chartist. Chartist describes itself as “the bi-monthly political magazine of the democratic left” and is generally considered a representative voice of the so-called ‘soft left’ in the British Labour Party.

Kerry Brown is one of Britain’s most skilled and knowledgeable Chinese hands, which explains why he is no longer a UK diplomat serving in China, but rather in the greener pastures of academia heading the Lau China Institute at King’s College London. After all, he can’t possibly have ridden the bucking bronco of what purported to be a coherent China policy over the last long quarter century since the retrocession of Hong Kong in 1997. The short China deck of partner, competitor and adversary has been regularly shuffled both within and across UK governments. One moment it was President Xi drinking a pub pint in a local with Cameron and next proposals to ban Beijing’s diplomats from the Strangers Bar in the Commons.
 
Now, after Rachel Reeves’s seriously underwhelming visit, Labour is left looking for the plot. Brown’s book, stretching across four centuries, may help show where it might be found. When Britain first encountered Imperial China, we were the supplicants. The Qing economy was stronger and their technology superior – as so authoritatively mapped in Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China – and their power was enormous in their fastness. When Britain first knocked, China never even answered the door. Their fatal flaw was stasis. The English protestants had discovered progress that triggered the first industrial revolution. While they were defensive and insular, we became offensive and expansionist. 
 
The Anglo-Chinese Wars demonstrated that power grew out of the barrel of a gun. That was the proximate cause of victory, but not before Chinese society was debilitated by dogma and drugs. Missionaries substituted the catechism for Confucius. A shadow black economy emerged as opium, grown under the auspices of the British government in India, destroying civil society. George Orwell’s father was a Sub-Deputy Opium Agent in the Indian Civil Service. London’s drug wars between 1839-42 and 1856-60 were fought to prevent China from bringing under control the opium epidemic destroying civil society. The fruits of victory included the legalisation of opium and Hong Kong. This is a period of subjugation that China’s rulers have burnt deep into their psyche.
 
As the West’s other imperial powers caught and, in the case of Germany and the US, eventually passed Britain, there was a scramble for China. It was a pointillist occupation as they cherry-picked China’s cities for occupation with Russia and Japan scavenging over the scraps. Beijing’s central control collapsed into warlordism. The country and civilisation were at the bottom. The only way was up. 
 
Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905 saw Asia best Europe for the first time. This and the post-War world saw the easy emergence from the social ruins of modernism and nationalism. Britain was challenged for pride of place both in and over China. Internally, nationalism and communism were competing poles of attraction for China’s confident new men and women. Communism came out top and, after a difficult quarter century, the country was able to stand tall for the first time in almost four centuries. Socialism with Chinese characteristics proved better at driving economic growth than free-market capitalism. Democracy, despite claims to the contrary, was no necessity for economic success. The somersault was complete with China back on top. Its technology is back with the best, and in some sectors ahead of the game. Its military might expand to catch and match the US. The economy takes the lead. As The Great Reversal notes, China is the largest trading partner for 120 countries globally. The UK, in contrast, is on zero.
 
Kerry Brown wants Britain to get real about China. Adrift from Europe after Brexit and with little opportunity of economically chaining ourselves to a mad dog in the United States, there is no option but to engage with China. The deck needs to be stacked and dealt with the principle of collaborator, contender and challenger. There are undeniably serious human rights problems in China. But we are living a fantasy to believe we have either the strength or moral authority to take the lead. Britain’s perfidious history makes us one of the least appropriate advocates in China’s eyes, while our needy economy makes threats of economic coercion comic. The Germans know not to be in the vanguard when pressing Israel on its human rights violations. For some reason, Britain seems tone-deaf with respect to China. Even the EU in the shadow of Trump is talking of building relationships not just with partners that share values, but those with shared interests. As the US looks to hunker down domestically within the Americas after seizing control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, the future looks bleak for a Britain going it alone. The EU is another option, but that’s another story. But even then, China shouldn’t be neglected.

Book review: People’s China at 75 – The Flag Stays Red

We are pleased to republish this short review of ‘People’s China at 75, the Flag Stays Red’, edited by our co-editors Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez, which was originally published in the current (Spring 2025) edition of China Eye, the magazine of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU).

In the editorial, editor Walter Fung also writes: “Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez’s book, People’s China at 75, the Flag Stays Red, is extremely important as it presents facts from the Chinese point of view of China’s development since the 1949 revolution. Not all histories, even by eminent historians and well qualified scholars present accounts which are without some ‘Western’ bias.”

Further information about SACU, including PDF editions of China Eye, may be found here. The book can be purchased from the Praxis Press website in paperback or digital format.

People’s China at 75, the Flag Stays Red, Edited by Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez. 152 pages. Praxis Press Glasgow, 2025. 

This is an important book for anybody who wants to understand the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Communist Party of China (CPC). Written by several expert authors, the book relates the origins of the CPC and the formation of the PRC and discusses the current position in the world in a clear and concise way. Many references are given at the end of each chapter. The introductory chapter is ‘understanding socialism with Chinese characteristics’, written by the two editors of the book, both of whom are members of SACU.

The aims of Xi Jinping in his programme for a’ New Era;’ are listed and explained. They include: battling against corruption, eliminating extreme poverty and ensuring that those lifted out of poverty do not slip back into poverty, tackling pollution, protecting the environment, safeguarding diversity, being a leader in renewable energy and working against climate change, increasing medical care and insurance and also old age pensions.

Steps will be taken to strengthen the Party and ensuring that it serves the people. In addition, support will be given to support other socialist countries. A strategic goal will be building a world community of a shared future for humanity.  

Other chapters include; building socialism with Chinese characteristics, standing up and opposing hegemony and China’s socialist democracy. Jenny Clegg, a SACU Vice-President relates China’s transition to socialism during the years 1949-56. Despite many challengers and mistakes much was achieved in providing basic necessities of life such as food, clothing and rural medicine through the efforts of barefoot doctors. Advances were made in agricultural techniques and life expectancy was significantly increased.  

Book Review: The East is Still Red by Carlos Martinez

We are pleased to reproduce below a review of Carlos Martinez’s The East is Still Red – Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century, from the blog Explore the Mundane: Ordinary Notes from a Taiwanese Chinese American Adoptee.

The book is described as being a necessary read, “both as a person newer to Marxism-Leninism and as a person born in Taiwan trying to understand the historical and present relationship between China and Taiwan.”

The reviewer, Kayla, highlights in particular the sections covering the early history of the Chinese Revolution; the response to the “Mao as monster” narrative; The Communist Party of China’s continuing commitment to Marxism; and the importance of opposing the US-led drive to war with China.

Kayla concludes:

The East is Still Red is a significant contribution to combat the West’s anti-China, anti-communist propaganda and to demonstrate the increasing escalation of the new Cold War to contain China. This book is an extraordinary guide for organizers and activists alike, and I would encourage folks especially on the left, to study this extraordinary resource and to learn about socialist China.

The East is Still Red can be purchased in paperback and digital format from the Praxis Press website.

Author and political activist Carlos Martinez writes a compelling case about the necessity of socialism, rooted in the revolutionary science of Marxist-Leninism, in his book The East is Still Red.

Learning about history, though essential, can be a daunting task because of how much research is digested and how dense the text itself can be. This is not the case with The East is Still Red. Martinez’s work is incredibly accessible and digestible, with each chapter being relatively short and broken into clear subsections. It’s easy to follow along with the arguments that Martinez presents, backed with ample evidence and sources.

The East is Still Red was necessary for me to read, both as a person newer to Marxism-Leninism and as a person born in Taiwan trying to understand the historical and present relationship between China and Taiwan. Through Martinez’ research and compelling writing, it’s also opened other avenues and resources to learn about socialist China. (I wrote more about this in January’s monthly reflection, “On Coming Out of the Fog” which you can read HERE.)

The U.S. ruling class is trying to maintain its hegemony, and we’ve seen the ongoing and increasing escalations to ‘contain’ China. These anti-China policies are bipartisan, as we saw with the Obama administration’s 2012 ‘Pivot to Asia’. Regardless of whether the Democratic party or the Republican party are in office, they both serve U.S. imperialism where there is no place for socialism, a direct threat to their existence. 

Note: The summary below does not do justice to the thorough research and analysis that author and political activist Carlos Martinez conducted for The East is Still Red. As with all book reviews and reflections, I’ve done my best to highlight key takeaways as a reader (though I cannot emphasize enough to check out this book for yourself). 

PAST

It’s impossible to discuss the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 without mentioning the multifarious ways that war, occupation, and foreign policy have contributed to China’s history, including the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Civil War, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War. And, in nearly all of these wars, the U.S. played an insidious role whether it was its failed attempts to negotiate an agreement between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Communist Party of China (CPC), its declaration to contain communism in the Truman Doctrine, or its (ongoing) military support for Taiwan.

This broader context of global relations is necessary to understand the long fight against foreign domination and exploitation, to understand the economic conditions of China, and to contextualize its historic achievements of evolving from a semi-feudal country towards a socialist country. 

Continue reading Book Review: The East is Still Red by Carlos Martinez

China’s flag stays red

The meeting room of London’s Marx Memorial Library was packed on the evening of Thursday March 20, with others joining online, for the launch of People’s China at 75 – The Flag Stays Red, edited by Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez, the editors of this website.

The meeting was chaired by Carlos Martinez, with speakers, Keith Bennett, Professor Radhika Desai and Dr. Jenny Clegg. They were followed by a lively round of discussion and questions and answers. Andrew Murray was also due to speak but unfortunately was not able to make it.

We publish below the text of Keith’s opening speech. The meeting can be viewed on YouTube (and the video is also embedded below).

The book is available from the publishers in paperback and digital formats. Note that, for the month of March 2025, to celebrate the launch meeting, Praxis Press are running a 25 percent discount on their full catalogue – the discount code is 25FOR25.

Thank you for coming this evening and thank you also to those who have joined us online and those who will watch online in the days to come.

We’re fortunate to have a number of the authors who contributed chapters to this book with us this evening and doubtless they’ll introduce their work and the themes they sought to address.

As co-editor, along with Carlos, I want to say a bit about why and how we came to produce it.

There are two well-known sayings in English that I’d like to mention here.

The first is: Never judge a book by its cover.

And the second is: There’s an exception to every rule.

So, please take a look at the beautiful cover of our book.

I’m sure many of you have already seen it. I submit that it represents one of the exceptions to the rule. In words, as well as graphically, it sets out what we want to say and where we stand.

As Friends of Socialist China, we conceived of this book as part of our celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, which fell on October 1st last year. And thanks to the stupendous efforts of our publisher, comrade and friend, Kenny Coyle, who also contributed a highly thoughtful and enlightening chapter on the antecedents of socialism with Chinese characteristics in Lenin’s explorations on the ways of building socialism, we got it out in time for our celebration and conference, held in London’s historic  Bolivar Hall on the last Saturday of September.

With a day-long conference attended by well over 100 people, a book, and a special supplement in the Morning Star, it was a landmark in the development of our work.

Some comrades have kindly said that we must have worked very hard to produce the book. I’ll let others be the judge of that. But I’ll just say that we did so in about three months – if I recall correctly – from start to finish; from conceiving the idea to the published product.

We could do so thanks to the amazing cooperation we had from all our authors and, as I’ve just mentioned, the sterling efforts of our publisher.

Continue reading China’s flag stays red

Book launch: People’s China at 75 – The Flag Stays Red

Date Thursday 20 March 2025
Time6:30pm Britain / 1:30pm US Eastern
VenueMarx Memorial Library
London EC1R 0DU
And Zoom
register on zoom

Speakers

  • Keith Bennett
  • Andrew Murray
  • Radhika Desai
  • Jenny Clegg
  • Chair: Carlos Martinez

Information

Edited by Friends of Socialist China co-editors Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez, and published by Praxis Press, People’s China at 75 – The Flag Stays Red brings together a range of perspectives regarding the trajectory of Chinese socialism over the past 75 years, with the aim of presenting China’s achievements and challenging popular misconceptions.

Today’s China is at the forefront of the world economy. It has eliminated absolute poverty and is leading the world in tackling climate change, as well as in the development of the cutting-edge technologies that will be essential to building a sustainable future for humanity.

China has achieved this unprecedented development in less than a century, yet these achievements are frequently misinterpreted or distorted. People’s China at 75 – The Flag Stays Red, featuring chapters by Andrew Murray, Cheng Enfu, Roland Boer, Radhika Desai, Ken Hammond, Jenny Clegg, Keith Bennett, Carlos Martinez, Kenny Coyle, Mick Dunford, J Sykes and Efe Can Gürcan, aims to provide the political, historical and economic context that best explains China’s astonishing rise.

We will be officially launching the book at London’s historic Marx Memorial Library. Join us in person or online for fascinating talks from contributors to the volume, and gain fresh insights on the much misunderstood and misrepresented People’s Republic of China.

There will be copies of the book available for purchase, at a special price of £10!

Organisers

This event is organised by Friends of Socialist China and supported by the Morning Star and the International Manifesto Group.

register on zoom

Ghassan Kanafani, China, and the global struggle against imperialism

We republish below a book review by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez of Ghassan Kanafani — Selected Political Writings, recently released by Pluto Press.

Best known for his literary works, Ghassan Kanafani was also a leading member and spokesperson of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and co-author of its program, Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine. Carlos comments: “A powerful and consistent advocate of armed struggle against colonial occupation, and of the centrality of the working class and peasantry in the struggle for national liberation, Kanafani was deeply influenced by the ideas of Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, and situated the Palestinian liberation struggle within the broader global struggle against imperialism and for socialism. His two visits to China (in 1965 and 66) left a profound mark on his thinking.”

The review further notes that Kanafani “took tremendous inspiration from the construction of ‘actually existing socialism’ and the revolutionary anti-colonial struggles waging around the world, and situated the Palestinian struggle within a global united front against imperialism.”

Carlos concludes:

As Kanafani wrote, “the Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever they are, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era”. As such, Selected Political Writings deserves to be widely read. The editors have performed a most valuable service in making Kanafani’s political contributions available for readers of English.

This review first appeared in the Morning Star.

This new volume from Pluto Press, edited by Louis Brehony and Tahrir Hamdi, brings together some of the most important essays, manifestos and journalistic reports by the revered Palestinian writer and activist Ghassan Kanafani.

Kanafani is best known for his literary works, all of which are deeply imbued with the spirit of anti-colonial resistance. His novels, short stories and essays, such as Men in the Sun (1962) and Returning to Haifa (1969), vividly depict the experiences of exile, dispossession and resilience, giving voice to the Palestinian collective memory.

Rashid Khalidi, in The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine observes that, “among the literary figures whose ideas and images played a major role in the revival of Palestinian identity, Kanafani was perhaps the most prominent prose writer and the most widely translated”.

Kanafani also made important contributions as a journalist, theorist and political activist. Indeed, the editors of Selected Political Writings consider that he was “Palestine’s greatest Marxist thinker. His ideas – forged in the firepit of war, crisis and armed resistance – are flammable materials, rich in the lessons of the revolutionary sparks which ignited his era.”

Kanafani was spokesperson of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP – a Marxist-Leninist organisation that forms part of the resistance front in Gaza today) from the time of its formation in 1969, and co-authored its program, Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine.

A powerful and consistent advocate of armed struggle against colonial occupation, and of the centrality of the working class and peasantry in the struggle for national liberation, Kanafani was deeply influenced by the ideas of Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, and situated the Palestinian liberation struggle within the broader global struggle against imperialism and for socialism. His two visits to China (in 1965 and 66) “left a comparably profound mark on his thinking”.

Indeed, on page 113 of Selected Political Writings, in an extract from Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, we find: “The Palestinian and Arab liberation movement in alliance with national liberation movements in all undeveloped and poor countries will, in facing world imperialism led by the USA, find a strong ally to back its forces and augment its power of resistance. This ally is the People’s Republic of China.”

Continue reading Ghassan Kanafani, China, and the global struggle against imperialism