Colonialism Archives - Friends of Socialist China

Keith Bennett: Conditions are maturing for the final defeat of neo-colonialism

Friends of Socialist China co-editor Keith Bennett spoke at the Global Conference on Multipolarity, held online on Saturday April 29. The conference, which was jointly convened by organizations from China, Türkiye, Russia, Brazil and elsewhere, and coordinated from Moscow, was addressed by more than 120 speakers from over 60 countries.

Addressing the theme of neo-colonialism, Keith said that the founding of the People’s Republic of China was among the great historic events which made the persistence of the old colonial empires untenable.

The collapse of the Soviet Union temporarily gave colonialism and imperialism a new lease of life, but a number of factors had served to make the moment of imperialist triumphalism a fleeting one. In particular, the People’s Republic of China, far from changing its class character, had deepened its socialist orientation and has continued its steady rise, remaining on course to overtake the United States as the world’s single largest economy, a change unseen in well over a century. Keith recalled that President Xi Jinping first said in 2017 that socialism with Chinese characteristics, “offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence.”

We reproduce below the text and video of Keith’s speech.

Dear Friends and Comrades

First, I would like to thank Nova Resistência of Brazil, the New International Order Initiative of Türkiye, the International Eurasian Movement of Russia, the Thinker’s Forum of China, and the International Russophile Movement for organizing today’s Global Multipolarity Conference and for inviting me to share some thoughts on the sub-theme of the Struggle Against Neo-Colonialism in a Multipolar World.

The themes you have chosen for today’s deliberations are the central questions of contemporary global politics. Indeed, I would argue, they are among the most vital issues facing humanity for centuries.

What is most significant about the present conjuncture is that the conditions are maturing for the final resolution of this historical problem, through the creation of a truly multipolar, or pluripolar, world, with independence as its foundation and at its core.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the great African-American scholar and revolutionary, Dr. WEB DuBois said that the defining issue of that coming century would be what he termed the ‘colour line’. He spoke just a few short years after the European colonial powers had met in Berlin to carve the continent of Africa between themselves like so many slices of cake.

Marx’s writings on the Opium Wars and capital accumulation in the Global South, with Lucia Pradella

In the interview below, Lucia Pradella engages with Joseph Mullen of The Cadre Journal on the subject of Karl Marx’s understanding of colonialism and capital accumulation in the Global South, with particular reference to China.

Dr. Pradella is a Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at King’s College London and the author of ‘Globalization and the critique of political economy: New insights from Marx’s writings’, published as part of the Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy series. The Cadre Journal is a student-run journal and podcast on anti-imperialism and communism.

Lucia explains how in her study for her master’s and PhD degrees, as well as a period spent working on the major project to publish the Complete Works of Marx and Engels, she acquired greater understanding of the breadth and depth of Marx’s studies of pre-capitalist societies and of the central role played by colonialism, and not least the Opium Wars, in primitive capital accumulation and his value theory. Whilst greater attention has tended to be paid to Marx’s writings on India, it is significant that Marx’s positive attention to, and appraisal of, the first stages of the Taiping Revolution essentially coincides with the defeat suffered by the European revolutions of 1848. Arising from his study of the Taipings, Marx postulated the possibility of a republican revolution in China.

In the Communist Manifesto, she notes, Marx and Engels proceeded from the premise that the industrial proletariat of Europe constituted the agency of the international revolutionary process, but developments post-1848 created two possible paths to revolution, on the part of the industrial proletariat and on the part of the colonised peoples. However, she contends that Marx did not abandon his view that a developed capitalism was necessary for there to be a socialist revolution.

The views and contributions of a range of people, including Rosa Luxemburg, David Harvey, Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi, Andre Gunder Frank and Samir Amin are touched on, with Lucia arguing that the dependency theorists and proponents of world systems theory overlooked some aspects of Marx’s Capital. Asked for her views on the theory of combined and uneven development, and its applicability, she expresses the view that Trotsky did not understand the centrality of colonialism in Marx’s analysis.

Noting Marx’s acuity with regards to the potential impact of developments in China on the world economy, she says that some of the developments we see today are processes that Marx already analysed at a very abstract level in Capital Volume One.

The full interview is embedded below.

Speech of W.E.B. Du Bois in Beijing University in 1959

On the 154th anniversary of his birth, we are pleased to republish this speech given in Beijing by the great African-American communist, Pan-Africanist, scholar and freedom fighter W.E.B. Du Bois on the occasion of his 91st birthday.

By courtesy of the government of the 600 million people of the Chinese Republic, I am permitted on my 91st birthday to speak to the people of China and Africa and through them to the world. Hail, then, and farewell, dwelling places of the yellow and black races. Hail human kind!

I speak with no authority; no assumption of age nor rank; I hold no position, I have no wealth. One thing alone I own and that is my own soul. Ownership of that I have even while in my own country for near a century I have been nothing but a “nigger.” On this basis and this alone I dare speak, I dare advise.

China after long centuries has arisen to her feet and leapt forward. Africa, arise, and stand straight, speak and think! Act! Turn from the West and your slavery and humiliation for the last 500 years and face the rising sun.

Justin Podur: Why comparing Chinese Africa investment to Western colonialism Is no joke

We are very pleased to reproduce this article from FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) in which Justin Podur dissects a recent broadcast by South African comedian Trevor Noah, which made facile claims that China was colonising Africa. Whilst not hesitating to acknowledge shortcomings and mistakes, Podur presents a detailed refutation of Noah’s claims and, in so doing, draws apt comparisons between China’s contributions to Africa’s development and the truly murderous and rapacious history of imperialism and colonialism on the continent.

“Why China Is in Africa” (12/16/21) is a question Trevor Noah took up last month for Comedy Central‘s Daily Show. As with many of the topics taken up by the Daily Show, the issue is no joke: China has a large and growing economic presence in many African countries. The China/Africa deals cry out for analysis: Are they different from the deals on offer from Western countries like the US, Britain or France?

Post-independence Africa’s economic relationship with the West has been mediated through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Funding for projects comes with a range of conditionalities; when Western loans come due, the IMF demands painful cuts to health and education programs as the price of refinancing. In the past, the IMF has taken outright control of African governments. At other times, the US has sponsored coups, assassinated leaders and fomented civil wars on the continent.

China calls on the UN Human Rights Council to address impact of colonialism

Republished from CGTN

The United Nations’ Human Rights Council should work to eliminate the negative impacts of colonialism on people around the world, a group of 21 countries and regions has urged.

Economic exploitation, inequality, racism, violations of indigenous peoples’ rights, modern slavery, armed conflicts and damage to cultural heritage are among the legacies of colonial repression, according to a statement read by China’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva Chen Xu.

The signatories to the statement come from across the globe including Russia, Egypt, Syria, Argentina, Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Iran, Sri Lanka, Armenia and Myanmar.

“We call on the Human Rights Council, the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights and relevant Special Procedures to pay continued attention to the negative impact of legacies of colonialism on the enjoyment of human rights,” the statement read.

Nicaragua, Palestine, Comoros, Tajikistan, Laos, Belarus, DPRK, Burundi, Venezuela and Cuba also put their names to the statement.

The period 2021-2030 marks the fourth decade the UN has dedicated to the eradication of colonialism. The first being 30 years after the pioneering 1960 Declaration on Decolonization.

A separate statement delivered by Jiang Duan, a minister in the Chinese delegation also on behalf of a group of UN members, called for nations that have conducted illegal military interventions to pay reparations. Without naming any states, he pointed out that such action had severe consequences for social and economic development.

Crimes committed during such interventions need to be fully investigated, he added.