Delegations Archives - Friends of Socialist China

The Xinjiang I saw was a hub of diversity, not oppression

In this report back for the Morning Star, Roger McKenzie shares his reflections on a recent visit to Xinjiang, China, which took in five cities and towns in ten days.

What the delegation witnessed belies the Western media narrative about religious and cultural oppression in Xinjiang. Roger writes: “I lost count of the number of mosques that I saw during my recent trip. I visited a thriving Islamic Centre in the city of Urumqi — which has received millions in funding from the Chinese government for its development to teach its around 1,000 students… Celebrations of the Islamic culture were everywhere for anyone to see.”

Having visited multiple religious sites and spoken with religious figures and political leaders, as well as ordinary people, Roger comments drily: “I can honestly say that for a country that supposedly routinely oppresses ethnic minorities, China seems to spend an inordinate amount of time celebrating them”.

Given the yawning disparity between Western media portrayal of Xinjiang and the reality on the ground, Roger asks the key question: why is this propaganda war being waged? “The geographical position of the region provides the answer. As the centre of the Silk Road renaissance, the region will be the focal point of Chinese trade and its economic heartbeat.” The US, hell-bent on maintaining full-spectrum dominance, “will use any means necessary to maintain the pre-eminence of US capital”.

Thus slanders against China aim at damaging its economy, isolating it internationally, preventing the emergence of solidarity between China and the Western progressive movement, and fomenting discontent within China itself.

This article is the first in a series of three.

The Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang is at the geographical centre of Eurasia.

The region borders eight other countries which makes it a vital part of Chinese plans for the greater integration of Eurasia and the westward opening up of this nation of 1.4 billion people.

The Comprehensive Bonded Zone in the city of Kashi is central to co-ordinating the booming trade links that China has established with its immediate neighbours.

Xinjiang, one of the largest regions in China, is a gateway to Russia, India, Pakistan, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan.

It occupies around 643,000 square miles of China — a space larger than six Britains.

Its sparse population of approximately 25 million is mainly Muslim and made up of around 65 different ethnic groups including Chinese Han, Uighurs, Kazakhs and Hui, among others.

I lost count of the number of mosques that I saw during my recent trip.

I visited a thriving Islamic Centre in the city of Urumqi — which has received millions in funding from the Chinese government for its development to teach its around 1,000 students.

I had the honour of sitting in the mosque’s main hall attached to the centre alongside the imam and hearing him talk about the support the centre had received from the government.

I also visited the magnificent and extremely busy Id Kah Mosque in the city of Kashi.

Both times the imams took the time from their busy schedules to speak about how grateful they and worshippers at the mosque are for the support provided by the government.

They told me about how the right to worship any religion is considered a private matter in China and protected in law.

That’s why it provides funds to a wide range of religious bodies representing Muslims, Buddhists and Christians among others.

None of this is recognised in the West. Instead tall tales are told about supposed widespread religious persecution.

In particular Western politicians and their stenographers in the corporate media continue to spin untruths about the treatment of religious minorities.

To be crystal clear: at no time did I witness any attempt to block anyone from being able to worship according to the Islamic faith or, for that matter, any other religion.

I heard no criticism of the government over religious persecution from senior religious figures or anyone else I met during my visit.

I was never stopped from speaking with anyone in any of the large crowds of people that I found myself in across the region.

Having made the effort to actually visit five cities in 10 days in the region rather than pontificate from thousands of miles away, I can honestly say that for a country that supposedly routinely oppresses ethnic minorities China seems to spend an inordinate amount of time celebrating them.

By that, I don’t mean the half-arsed patronising so-called celebration of diversity that now appears customary across Britain.

Leading figures in Britain trip over themselves to take a knee and say how much black lives matter to them but continue to do nothing about racism in their organisations.

It doesn’t look to me like a Black History Month-type gig where a big show is made for a short tokenistic period and then ignored for the rest of the time.

Talking up the richness of the region’s cultural diversity wasn’t just an isolated thing in Xinjiang — it was everywhere. Celebrations of the Islamic culture were everywhere for anyone to see.

I can already hear some saying that either I wasn’t looking hard enough or I was having the wool pulled over my eyes. I did look hard and I don’t believe an elaborate hoax was being played on me.

I spoke with lots of people in private with no restrictions placed on me whatsoever. In fact, my dreadlocks, and I dare say, the colour of my skin, meant I was a target of curiosity, especially among the young, many of who wanted to come and chat and have a photo taken with me.

That was frankly the most uncomfortable thing about the trip!

What I saw was lots of people going about their business in much the same way as I have seen people trying to do in many parts of the world.

I met many Communist Party officials who were questioned over the allegations made against them and their country. All of them said the only way to counter the propaganda war being waged against them was for people to come and see for themselves.

They told me how hard they were working to open up the region to more tourism so that people could experience this beautiful area but also so more people could bear witness to the truth about them.

So why is this propaganda war being waged against China in general and in particular against Xinjiang?

The geographical position of the region provides the answer. As the centre of the Silk Road renaissance, the region will be the focal point of Chinese trade and its economic heartbeat.

It means the continuing economic growth of China is disproportionately linked to Xinjiang.

Its trade routes through its eight neighbours to its wider partners will be critical to sell Chinese-made goods as well as to buy the resources needed to continue to power the country’s economy.

The US is the world’s leading economy and wants to keep it that way. Its doctrine of Full Spectrum Dominance asserts that it will use any means necessary to maintain the pre-eminence of US capital.

I think we can take this to mean that the US will not hesitate to spread misinformation about China. After all, it’s not as if the US does not have form for this type of behaviour.

They have been doing it for years, particularly across Africa and Central America where they buy organisations to ferment internal dissent against governments deemed not to be compliant.

Sprinkled with an always unhealthy dose of sinophobia the move by the US to undermine the reputation of China has largely economic foundations and false allegations of mistreatment against ethnic minorities — particularly the Uighurs — are completely without foundation.

On the contrary, there seems to me to be far more evidence of the Chinese at a national and regional level actively celebrating cultural diversity as well as striving to put in place the economic prosperity that looks as though it is undermining attempts by terrorist groups — likely funded by the West — to sow discontent in Xinjiang.

I will talk about this and the allegations of forced labour in some detail in the second part of this three series about my visit to China. In the meantime, to anyone reading this article in disbelief and who believes that either I am lying or have been the victim of what would be a truly elaborate hoax my suggestion is: go and see for yourself.

It’s a long way away but I honestly believe you will be surprised by the wonderful vibrant people and cities that will greet you.

Videos: China proves that a new world is possible! Delegates report back from China

On 16 June 2024, we held a webinar reporting back on the first exclusive Friends of Socialist China delegation to the People’s Republic of China, which took place from 14 to 24 April 2024. At the webinar we heard back from the delegates about their experiences and observations of Chinese socialism. The speakers were:

Danny Haiphong (Broadcaster; Author, ‘American Exceptionalism and American Innocence’)
Fiona Sim (Black Liberation Alliance)
Roger McKenzie (International editor, Morning Star)
Margaret Kimberley (Editor-in-chief, Black Agenda Report)
Russel Harland (trade unionist and Friends of Socialist China Britain Committee member)
Sage Stanescu (researcher and Friends of Socialist China Britain Committee member)

Embedded below is the full livestream (unfortunately including, in the first few minutes, various interruptions by racist trolls attempting to sabotage the event) and the individual panel contributions (thankfully without interruptions!).

A comparison between the experiences of the Chinese and Iraqi Communist Parties

The video embedded below is of an Arabic-language seminar held on 31 May 2024: Lessons from the Chinese Experience and a Comparison between the Experiences of the Chinese and Iraqi Communist Parties

The main presentation is given by Dr Ali Al-Assam, Managing Director of the NewsSocial Cooperative and member of the Friends of Socialist China Britain Committee, about his recent visit to China and his observations there. He was joined by Hani Lazim in the final segment of the seminar. The seminar topics include:

The Essentials for the Success of the Chinese Communist Party in Their Own Words
The Scientific Method, Learning from Experiences, Trust in the People
Management of the Socialist State

Reaching China, Xi Jinping, and People: Reflections of a delegate’s journey

In the following article, Russel Harland (Deputy Branch Secretary and International Relations Officer, Surrey County UNISON, and a member of the Friends of Socialist China Britain Committee) provides a detailed and throught-provoking description of his experiences on our recent delegation to China.

Discussing the delegation’s field trip to the Beijing headquarters of the ‘12345’ service hotline, Russel observes that this is an example of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in action, using all available resources to work for the common goal of serving the people while responding to reality in the process.” He contrasts this with his own experience working in service provision in Britain: “There were many occasions that I knew when giving vulnerable people advice, either in their homes or on the phone, that it was mostly theatre given the constraints on public services in Britain.”

Russel writes that “fundamental to our visit, unsurprisingly, is what you could call our red education”. Through the Chinese presentation of their own historical and ideological trajectory, it becomes clear that “the red gene flows through the life blood of everything that China is trying to do.” Reflecting on his experiences growing up in Belfast, Russel notes: “The battle for symbols is an important arena on the journey of any country’s rejuvenation, known only too well by those us from former colonies who have spent a lifetime walking past statues and symbols of our colonial oppression… After what our delegation experienced during our visit in China, the North of Ireland has some way to go in matching China’s cultural regeneration before it can truly unburden itself from the past.”

The article also explores the nature of China’s evolving Marxism, in particular Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. Russel emphasises the importance of casting off New Cold War propaganda – and deep-rooted ‘yellow peril’ racism – in order to understand the reality of China today.

It is vitally important for anyone wishing to understand contemporary China, that we attempt to claw ourselves out of the ideological pit of ignorance whence we bathe in untruths, which are then nonchalantly echoed as informed opinion on Xi Jinping, and China in general. Centuries of constructed racism, which we Irish understand only too well, against China from the West, with the alleged threat of the “yellow peril” lurking in the shadows ready to pounce on our “freedoms,” distorts reality and the standing in which President Xi is held, both in China and the non-western world.

Russel concludes: “The Friends of Socialist China 2024 delegation to the People’ Republic of China has born witness to an inspiring alternative that truly puts the wellbeing of all its population first.”

Russel is among the speakers at our webinar on 16 June 2024, China proves that a new world is possible! Delegates report back from China.

A chance quip by a comrade during a discussion on Chinese food one evening stimulated my reflection on the world that had opened up to me before my participation in the 2024 Friends of Socialist China (FoSC) delegation had even been confirmed. For around five years I had been attending online events organised by groups such as No Cold War Britain, the International Manifesto Group, and Friends of Socialist China, where I took inspiration to begin researching Chinese revolutionary history, economics, and Marxist theory. As a child of “The Troubles” in the North of Ireland, as it’s euphemistically known, I was a latecomer to Marxism as a mature student at university in my late thirties. The subsequent new focus on China led me to embrace a world of possibilities that would sit much more comfortably with my working-class experience and global south allegiances.

Reading from many sources, old and new, from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping, I began to formulate a tentative overview of the historical and contemporary Chinese experience, particularly from the time of China’s defeat to the British in the first Opium War in 1840, which ushered in the ‘century of humiliation’. Around this time in Ireland, Britain’s bloody footprint continued to be stamped on the colonised population, as an Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger) was set to ravage the country with devastating consequences still felt to this day as the outcome. Back in China, the crumbling dynastic society was violently exploited and reduced to extreme poverty by foreign invaders, mainly from the industrialised countries of the West and Japan, which ultimately sowed the seeds for the Civil War from 1945-49, which saw the defeated nationalists of the Guomindang retreat from mainland China to Taiwan. Bear in mind that China’s average life expectancy pre 1949 was just 36 years. Thus, the ‘century of humiliation’ left a deep scar on the population’s psyche.

Yet, in all the darkness there shone a glimmering of hope as the embers of something new began to spark. The second half of the century of humiliation witnessed the introduction of Marxism into Chinese Society, spearheaded by ‍Li Dazhao, which then led to the formation of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1921. Mao Zedong, famed for his ability to relay Marxism to the masses by writing in simple and accessible terms,wrote in 1937:

“We must use Marxism, which is positive in spirit, to overcome liberalism, which is negative. A Communist should have largeness of mind and he should be staunch and active, looking upon the interests of the revolution as his very life and subordinating his personal interests to those of the revolution; always and everywhere he should adhere to principle and wage a tireless struggle against all incorrect ideas and actions, so as to consolidate the collective life of the Party and strengthen the ties between the Party and masses…”

As a result, armed with Marxist theory, inspired by the Russian revolution, Mao Zedong built a revolutionary movement, and despite the odds and impoverished conditions secured victory. A new dawn had broken as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was declared on 1 October 1949 which set the country on the road to development based on scientific socialism.

We must remember though that China is much more than the last two centuries. In the formidable words of Victor Gao, China is a 5000-year-old civilisational fact. This bears contemporary relevance for those so-called human rights defenders engaging in scurrilous anti-China talking points emanating from destabilising sources in the West, as it reveals that China’s borders have remained largely the same during this long, sometimes turbulent history, with some differentiation in those alleged “disputed territories”, such as Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. According to Kishore Mahbubani, there are ‘some hard political realities that cannot be changed’ in China by any leader,and the territorial integrity of the country is one of them. Rather than regurgitating flippant and ignorant remarks about China, people in the West should be mindful that humanity needs engagement, not more estrangement during what appears the decaying stage of American Hegemony.

The contrast between the Chinese and Irish experiences of the 20^th century is stark. In Ireland, when an already dying James Connolly was carried on a stretcher, tied to a chair, and executed by the barbarous British for his heroic part in the Easter Uprising of 1916, it is said that Ireland’s chances of a Socialist Republic died too. Without Connolly’s Marxism and indomitable voice, an unfulfilled void was left in Ireland, which was soon to see an undemocratic partition in the north of the country which became the Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland. In the post 1949 years, Catholic Ireland in the south was to totally embrace the “red scare” of anti-communism. By the time Deng Xiaoping’s Reform and Opening Up got underway in 1978, Northern Ireland was witnessing another bloody year of conflict, as the British government was found guilty by the European Court of Human Rights for ‘inhuman and degrading treatment’ of innocent people snatched from their homes by the British army and interrogated in 1971. At this point, the Good Friday Agreement, which would give parity of rights to all citizens in the gerrymandered statelet, was still 20 years away.

This is some of the historical baggage that I was carrying prior to landing in Beijing on Sunday 14 April, although I tried to leave as much of it as I could back in London, in order to approach this delegation with a true open mind. The delegation was made up of 14 people of various ages, experiences, and backgrounds, coming from Ireland, Britain, and the US, but expanding more globally in their origins. For many of us this was our first time in China.

We were met at the airport by our three Chinese representatives from CNIE (China NGO Network for International Exchanges) Ma Jingjing, Xu Luning, and Liu Huihui, who, along with many other people during our stay, played an invaluable role in keeping us on schedule and in the right place during our 10 days in China. I think it is fair to say that by the time that our stay in China came to an end our three hosts had become comrades due to our mutual respect and shared values.

Webinar: China proves that a new world is possible! Delegates report back from China

Date	Sunday 16 June
Time	4pm Britain / 11am US Eastern / 8am US Pacific

The first exclusive Friends of Socialist China delegation to the People’s Republic of China took place from 14 to 24 April 2024. Fourteen comrades (11 from Britain, two from the US and one from Ireland) visited Beijing, Hangzhou and Jiaxing (Zhejiang province), and Changchun and Siping (Jilin province). The packed program featured visits to public service and community facilities, historic revolutionary sites and museums, political, scientific, cultural, industrial, and agricultural organisations, exhibition centres and cooperatives; as well as meetings with academics, publishers and officials.

At this webinar, we’ll hear back from the delegates about their experiences and observations of Chinese socialism.

Speakers

Margaret Kimberley (Editor-in-chief, Black Agenda Report)
Danny Haiphong (Youtuber; Author, ‘American Exceptionalism and American Innocence’)
Roger McKenzie (International editor, Morning Star)
Fiona Sim (Black Liberation Alliance)
Sage Stanescu (researcher and Friends of Socialist China Britain Committee member)
Russel Harland (trade unionist and Friends of Socialist China Britain Committee member)

Organisers

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

People, not profit, are at the centre of decision-making in China

We are pleased to republish below three short articles connected with the April 2024 Friends of Socialist China delegation to China, two written by Margaret Kimberley for Black Agenda Report, and one by Graham Harrington for Socialist Voice.

Margaret’s articles – written from China – contrast a confident, forward-looking socialist China with a decadent neoliberal United States. She writes: “The maturity and intelligence of the Chinese state are obvious to anyone who is a serious observer. The recklessness and amateurish nature of the US is also clear to anyone who pays attention.” Domestically, “China feeds its large population, launches satellites, expands a network of high-speed rail, and positions itself as a world leader while the US only knows how to obstruct and steal.” In terms of foreign policy, Margaret compares the US’s reckless devotion to the military-industrial complex with China’s commitment to peace and development. For example, while the US has just committed a further 61 billion dollars to its ill-fated proxy war in Ukraine, “China has offered its services in an effort to end the bloodshed ever since the proxy war began but it has been rebuffed at every turn.”

Margaret encourages people to reject the relentless lies and propaganda about China and instead to see it with their own eyes. “The same system which tries to convince its people that they have no alternative, that there exists nothing else in the world for them to contemplate, vilifies China and any nation which dares to be a good example.”

Graham Harrington’s article, meanwhile, focuses on the delegation’s field trips, including to the Beijing HQ of the 12345 hotline, the Zhejiang Red Boat, the Jiaxing Party-Masses Service Centre and the Siping Battle Memorial Hall. Countering the Western narrative of China as an environmental bad actor, Graham writes: “In all areas, especially Beijing, one could seen the fruits of what the CPC calls ‘Beautiful China’ in the green trees which are almost on every street. Far from the myth of a polluting superpower, China is leading the way in renewable energy. In Jilin province, delegates were told how the province had just developed a hydrogen-powered train, the very first in the world.”

Graham also describes the role of Marxism in Chinese society: “China, the CPC and Chinese people, take Marxism seriously, in the education system, in the state, as well as in public life. People are at the centre of decision-making, not profit. China puts the ‘social’ into socialism with its collective nature, encouraged at all levels.”

We will be hosting a report-back webinar for the delegation on Sunday 16 June. More information will be available soon.

Lessons from China

April 17 (Black Agenda Report) — Socialist China is a powerful economic and diplomatic rival to the United States. Its success must be studied so that liberation may be possible and to prevent the declining U.S. from doing even more damage to humanity.

On a daily basis the corporate media, members of Congress, and courtier pundits who refuse to do a basic internet search, make reference to the non-existent Chinese Communist Party and to a non-existent abbreviation, CCP. There has been a Communist Party of China (CPC) for more than 100 years. The repetition of easily provable misinformation is just one indication of the degree of manufactured hostility towards the People’s Republic of China and of the extraordinarily high levels of ignorance manufactured by the state in the U.S.

This columnist is currently participating in a delegation organized by Friends of Socialist China at the invitation of the China NGO Network of International Exchanges (CNIE) . In the short time that the delegation has been in Beijing, the maturity and intelligence of the Chinese state are obvious to anyone who is a serious observer. The recklessness and amateurish nature of the U.S. is also clear to anyone who pays attention.

While Congress joins with greedy corporate interests to steal TikTok under the false claim that the platform is under the control of the mythical CCP, Joe Biden calls President Xi Jinping to tell him not to work with Russia, its ally, and sends Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to request that China end its economic success with complaints about “over capacity” while the misnomer CCP is in regular use.

The Friends of Socialist China delegation has thus far met with CNIE officers, and visited the Red Building at Beijing University which showcases the history of that institution’s role in the development of the CPC, while also engaging with a publishing house seeking international works for its catalog. The most serious subject for discussion is socialism, its history in China, and the means to develop it around the world.

It is both eye-opening and sobering to leave the United States and visit nations in which socialists have attained state power. Especially in this moment, as a presidential election approaches, we are once again reminded that the U.S. political system will permit no requests for change. The most minimal proposals are rejected outright, while the people’s money is used to continue the failed Ukraine project and to support Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza. The precarity experienced by millions of people is explained away as a figment of their collective imagination or the result of their own stupidity.

Socialism is a necessity as the U.S. faces crises of its own making. Ocean temperatures rise because of continued capitalist fossil fuel production, wages stagnate, and the cost of food and housing continue to rise as corporations price gouge the public. Imperialism continues endangering the world as the U.S. has created a region-wide catastrophe in the Middle East.

Delegates from Britain, Ireland and the US learn about the past, present and future of Socialist China

The first exclusive Friends of Socialist China delegation to the People’s Republic of China took place from 14 to 24 April 2024.

Invited by the China NGO Network for International Exchanges (CNIE), which works under the direction of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (IDCPC), 14 comrades (11 from Britain, two from the United States and one from Ireland) visited Beijing, Hangzhou and Jiaxing (Zhejiang province), and Changchun and Siping (Jilin province). The packed program featured visits to public service and community facilities, historic revolutionary sites and museums, political, scientific, cultural, industrial, and agricultural organisations, exhibition centres and cooperatives, and famous scenic spots among others.

Serving the people

Our first site visit, on 15 April, was to the Beijing headquarters of the ‘12345’ government service hotline, where 1,500 employees (mostly CPC members) work in shifts to provide a single point of access for any and all problems and queries – for example, rubbish being left on the street, heating not working, or older people not receiving food deliveries. The service aims to provide “a bridge connecting people, party and government”, and is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, free of charge. We were told that the Beijing HQ typically receives 60,000 calls a day, and 90 percent of these are resolved to the user’s satisfaction. The service in some form has been operating for 30 years, with substantial improvements over that period, including most recently support for more languages allowing visiting tourists and international residents to utilise the hotline.

Thanking our hosts at the 12345 hotline HQ, head of delegation Keith Bennett observed that the service embodies three important characteristics of the Chinese Revolution. Firstly, it represents a modern implementation of the slogan ‘serve the people’. Secondly, it is consistent with the mass line: “take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action”. Lastly, the 12345 service is an example of using modern technology in order to carry out social investigation, “investigating the conditions of each social class in real life”. The use of big data allows the local government to notice trends in residents’ enquiries and proactively solve problems and improve services.

At the Beijing headquarters of the ‘12345’ government service hotline

The spirit of serving the people was also evident at the Party-masses Service Centre of Jiaxing, Zhejiang, which we visited on 19 April. Opened in 2021, it’s a hub for training, exhibitions, volunteer services, social organisation incubation, and provision of mental health services. Delegates were amazed to learn that people can register for counselling and get an appointment booked for the next day – free of charge. Also impressive were the meeting spaces and lecture halls that could be hired free of charge for use by the local community. The therapy is framed within a context of public health, and is based on the principle that “only with peace of mind can the people and the country be safe.”