Marxism Archives - Friends of Socialist China

Challenging the purists: the Marxist debate over China’s path

The article below was submitted by Dan Farhat, an author and researcher based in Beirut, Lebanon.

Dan responds to the critique made of China by some of the (particularly Western) left, that the introduction of market mechanisms from 1978 onwards was a betrayal of socialism and that China has become – or is on its way to becoming – a capitalist country.

Comparing China’s Reform and Opening Up with the New Economic Policy in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and drawing inspiration from the writings of the Italian Marxist philosopher Domenico Losurdo, Dan argues that China’s reforms constituted a creative and successful response to the conditions faced by the country at the time, and indeed have been a key factor in China’s successes in eradicating extreme poverty and raising living standards beyond recognition.

The article further notes that, while the spread of market forces introduces contradictions, risks and challenges, the Chinese leadership has been able to manage these by maintaining the leading role of the CPC and the state sector, and “preventing the bourgeoisie from becoming a cohesive and politically powerful class”.

The following story was shared by the former deputy editor-in-chief of China Daily, Kang Bing:

Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, my childhood memory is closely tied to hunger. In my home city of Xi’an, the monthly quota for one urban resident was 100 grams of cooking oil, half a kg of meat, half a dozen eggs, and 100 grams of sugar. As for milk, it was given only to families with newborns. Many families today consume the entire monthly quota of oil, meat, eggs, and sugar in one day.

Although the ration system ensured everybody had a share of the available food and prevented starvation deaths, it led to malnutrition among children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly alike. Not a single boy among my 100 male classmates who graduated from high school with me in 1977 crossed 1.8 meters in height thanks to malnutrition.

Today’s picture is very different, with the country emerging as the world’s second-largest economy. Millions of people have been lifted out of poverty, and the quality of life in China has improved significantly – indeed, at a rate never seen before in human history. This incredible transformation is in no small part testament to the profound impact of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms.

Deng himself famously said that “to build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.” For Deng, true socialism was not about keeping everyone equally poor; it was about lifting people out of poverty. Deng saw a socialism that, through the utilization of market mechanisms, and by focusing on development and economic growth, could transform the lives of ordinary people and elevate China’s position in the global economy.

Friends of Socialist China holds roundtable discussion with visiting delegation from Fudan University School of Marxism

On Tuesday 14 January 2025, Friends of Socialist China hosted a roundtable discussion in London with a group of seven academics from the School of Marxism at Shanghai’s Fudan University, one of China’s leading academic institutions. The meeting was attended by ten members and allies of Friends of Socialist China’s Britain committee, and was coordinated by Efe Can Gürcan, an adjunct professor at Shanghai University and visiting professor at the London School of Economics (LSE).

The delegates from Fudan – professors Gao Guoxi, Mei Xian, Zhang Xinning, Wu Haijing, Gao Xiaolin, Zhang Qifeng and Cui Hanbing – described their areas of research, which include moral philosophy, Marxist ethics, political economy, the history of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and the image of the CPC overseas.

Following introductions, there was a wide-ranging discussion based on a number of questions posed by the Fudan delegates.

A particularly lively discussion took place in response to the question of what European socialists think about China’s development. Friends of Socialist China co-editor Keith Bennett provided an overview of the British left’s relationship with the Chinese Revolution and the People’s Republic of China, starting with the work of the Communist Party of Great Britain in extending solidarity to the CPC and the Chinese people’s struggle for liberation from the 1920s.

Keith noted that this relationship weakened from the 1960s with the emergence of the Sino-Soviet Split. Meanwhile there were a variety of trends in the British (and Western) left, broadly falling within the parameters of what Domenico Losurdo writes about in his Western Marxism (published for the first time in English last year), that have always tended to display a dismissive, doctrinaire and ultra-left approach to Chinese socialism and actually existing socialism in general. Nevertheless, despite these twin challenges, and although to a lesser extent compared to some other developed countries in Europe, North America and Australasia, many people mobilised by the youth and student upsurge and the emergence of new social movements, were inspired by events in China to varying extents. However, changes in China’s economic strategy and its engagement with the global left from the late 1970s contributed to confusion and disillusionment among significant sectors of the socialist and progressive movements in the West.

Keith added that in recent years however, for a number of reasons, this dynamic is starting to shift in a positive direction, with renewed interest in Chinese socialism and China’s role in the world. Partly this is due to the very clear emphasis placed under the leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping on the importance of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. But it also reflects a deepening economic and political crisis in the West, and the comparison between Western dysfunction and the extraordinary progress being made in China on poverty alleviation, improvement of people’s living standards, environmental protection, and so on. As a result, there is more scope now for building understanding of Chinese socialism than there has been for at least four decades.

Comrades who had recently returned from representing Friends of Socialist China at the inauguration of President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas commented on how differently China is perceived in Venezuela and other countries outside the Global North. They noted that Britain’s colonial history continues to impact people’s worldviews, and that a decolonial perspective is needed in order to develop a deeper understanding of China’s rise and its role in the struggle against imperialism.

The comrades from Fudan also introduced the issues of the changing nature of the working class as well as to the structure of global capitalism in recent decades. Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez highlighted the importance of continuing to define class in terms of relationship to the means of production, as part of a process of building unity around the shared interests of the working class. This connects to the importance of building understanding of China, since China provides an inspiring example of what the working class and its allies in power can achieve. The fundamental reason that China has had world-historic successes in poverty alleviation, technological development, improvement of living standards and more is that it is led by a Communist Party, guided by the principles of Marxism adapted to Chinese reality and traditions, and with a state system led by the working class and based on an alliance of workers and peasants.

A number of comrades contributed to a discussion of capitalism in its current neoliberal, financialised form, describing how the system’s declining rate of profit and inability to suppress China’s rise are leading the US and its allies to ever more reckless militarism and adventurism.

Concluding the meeting, the delegates from Fudan University and Friends of Socialist China discussed several interesting and inspiring ideas for further cooperation and coordination in the coming period.

Is Marx still relevant today?

The following article by Zhang Wan, a Current Affairs Commentator at CGTN, has been translated by the Academy of Marxism of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and we are publishing it at their request.

It presents the observations and reflections of a number of Chinese and international scholars and political figures, with Xin Xiangyang, head of the Academy of Marxism, noting that, “Although Marx never visited China, his visions and assessments are largely in line with the reality of China.”

Comparing the experiences of China and the former Soviet Union, both Xin and Professor A.V. Lomanov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, draw attention to the crucial importance of the ‘second integration’ advanced by President Xi Jinping, namely that of Marxism with traditional Chinese culture.

The following is the text of the article.

Over a century and a half ago, Karl Marx envisioned that China would eventually experience significant social and economic upheaval as it transitioned from feudalism to a socialist society. The internal contradictions of the feudal system, combined with external pressures from capitalist forces, would lead to class struggles, which would ultimately result in a revolution, thus paving the way for a more equitable social order and shaping its specific path to socialism.

How did Marx foresee the development of Chinese society and its continuous progress? According to Xin Xiangyang, head of the Academy of Marxism of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in 1939, Mao Zedong stated that China’s national condition was a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. Following that, the Chinese have spent a hundred years with Marxism to understand this condition. “Although Marx never visited China, his visions and assessments are largely in line with the reality of China,” Xin added.

Professor A.V. Lomanov of the Russian Academy of Sciences explains that Marxism evolved in Russia at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century, where it became known as Leninism. “A new phase began in the 1930s with the Communist Party of China’s adaptation of Marxism, referred to as ‘Marxism with Chinese characteristics’.”

Xin Xiangyang points out that the Communist Party of China has integrated the fundamental principles of Marxism with China’s actual conditions and traditional culture, known as “the two combinations”, achieving the socialist future that Marx envisioned for China’s social development.

Speaking of the weakness of the former Soviet Union, Lomanov believes it was the absence of a “second combination.” “The first combination involved adapting Marxist theory to the specific conditions of the country. However, the second combination, which China pioneered, involved integrating Marxism with traditional culture. In the Soviet context, accepting Marxism often meant rejecting traditional culture, which created a fundamental conflict, akin to mixing fire and water. Soviet culture, particularly shaped by Orthodox Christianity, made it hard to separate the culture of the Soviet Union from its religious roots. Consequently, the Communist Party in the Soviet Union failed to address this area, and this deep cultural foundation – characterised by strong religious elements – remained unresolved until the Soviet Union’s dissolution”, he added.

For thousands of years, Chinese have been striving for the ideals of “Great Harmony” and “The world is for all”. Xin Xiangyang elaborates that these ideals resonate deeply with Marxist concepts of communism and align closely with Marx’s notion of a society where the people are the “protagonists of history.” This emphasis on the people’s role as the foundation of the state parallels the historical Chinese principle of prioritising the well-being of the populace.

Chinese president Xi Jinping has said, “Since the introduction of Marxism to China, scientific socialism has become widely accepted by the Chinese people. It has gone on to take root in this country and delivered impressive results. This is clearly not accidental. It is consistent with the culture and values that our people have taken up and passed on for several thousand years.”

Forum defends anti-imperialist Marxism and People’s China

As we reported on 28 October, Friends of Socialist China recently participated in an event in New York City to celebrate the release of two revolutionary books: People’s China at 75: The Flag Stays Red, and Western Marxism by Domenico Losurdo, translated into English for the first time.

The article below is a write-up of that event by Sue Harris for Workers World.

Summarising the remarks made by the panelists (Gabriel Rockhill, Danny Haiphong and Carlos Martinez) and the chair (Sara Flounders), Sue notes that “the panelists agreed on the usefulness of Marxist theory in pursuing the struggle of the exploited classes against their exploiters and of oppressed nations against imperialism, which they considered the centre of today’s class struggle”.

Further: “The imperialist ruling class is trying to mobilize the population to consider People’s China their enemy. The speakers eloquently combatted these lies, which are delivered incessantly with the ruling class’s massive propaganda machine.”

Beneath the article you can find a video of the event, which was live-streamed on Danny Haiphong’s YouTube channel.

On Oct. 24, 2024, in New York City, Friends of Socialist China celebrated the release of two revolutionary books: “People’s China at 75: The Flag Stays Red,” edited by Carlos Martinez and Keith Bennett, and “Western Marxism,” a collection of essays by the Italian Marxist-Leninist Domenico Losurdo, translated into English for the first time, with an introduction co-written by Jennifer Ponce de León and the editor, Gabriel Rockhill.

The meeting, which united Marxists working in different areas in defense of China against U.S. imperialism, was held at the Workers World Party office in midtown Manhattan in New York. The office, called the Solidarity Center, is used by groups joined in the working-class struggle, including workers at Amazon, Laundry Workers, student encampments for Palestine and the Venceremos Brigade for socialist Cuba.

Broadcast on several different media platforms, the meeting was carried on independent journalist Danny Haiphong’s YouTube channel, was on Zoom and was made into a podcast. A link to the meeting’s video will be available at workers.org and iacenter.org.

On the panel at the book launch were Haiphong, Gabriel Rockhill, Martinez and Sara Flounders, all known for their knowledge of developments in the People’s Republic of China and their ability to get this knowledge across in Zoom broadcasts, videos, articles and books.

It was in keeping with the anti-imperialist and struggle orientation of the speakers that Flounders, who chaired the meeting, opened with a salute to the revolutionary Yahya Sinwar, chair of the Political Bureau of the Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement. Sinwar was an organizer in Gaza of the October 7 Al-Aqsa Flood Battle, a martyr in battle against Zionism and U.S. imperialism.

Flounders said, referring to Sinwar, “Resistance does not die with the martyrdom of leaders. Resistance lives on, driven by the hunger of millions for liberation and justice.”

A multipolar world

Haiphong helped found Friends of Socialist China, is co-author of “American Exceptionalism and American Innocence” and a contributor to Black Agenda Report. His well-attended broadcasts cover geopolitics relating to China, West Asia, the Ukraine war and how the development of a multipolar world — as opposed to a unipolar world dominated by U.S. imperialism — can aid the liberation of the bulk of humanity.

Rockhill is Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop and professor of Philosophy at Villanova University. He has had many books published, with one set for publication in 2025, “Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?” He is editor-in-chief of the World Marxist Review and a co-director of Anti-Imperialist Marxism, a book series with Iskra.

Martinez is a researcher and political activist living in London. His first book, “The End of the Beginning: Lessons of the Soviet Collapse,” was published in 2019 by LeftWord Books. His recent book, “The East Is Still Red – Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century,” was published in 2023 by Praxis Press and reviewed in Workers World. (workers.org/2023/07/72231/) He is a co-editor of Friends of Socialist China.

The panelists agreed on the usefulness of Marxist theory in pursuing the struggle of the exploited classes against their exploiters and of oppressed nations against imperialism, which they considered the center of today’s class struggle.

The imperialist ruling class is trying to mobilize the population to consider People’s China their enemy. The speakers eloquently combatted these lies, which are delivered incessantly with the ruling class’s massive propaganda machine.

With their exposure of what they call “Western Marxism,” the speakers also refuted those academic Marxists who might have strong critiques of capitalist society but who never side with existing socialist countries, and they also undervalue the role of national liberation struggles.

They discussed how theory must be applied dialectically, taking into account the challenges of building socialism or even building a national economy in a world still dominated by imperialism. As Martinez put it, “Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels didn’t have the opportunity to view a socialist country over a long period of time.”

Flounders took up the same question, saying it is our responsibility to combat the ideas of the “housebroken, tamed Marxists in the predatory, capitalist centers, those who strip Marxism of its revolutionary character, the academic Marxists who find ways to support their own imperialist governments against the rising anti-colonial and revolutionary struggles of the Global South.”

In the presentations and in a lively Q&A, the panelists had an opportunity to develop their ideas and introduce their works.

People’s China and Western Marxism

On Thursday 24 October, Friends of Socialist China participated in an event in New York City to celebrate the release of two revolutionary books: People’s China at 75: The Flag Stays Red, and Western Marxism by Domenico Losurdo, translated into English for the first time.

The event, which was held at the International Action Center HQ, featured a panel discussion with Carlos Martinez (co-editor of People’s China at 75), Gabriel Rockhill (editor of Western Marxism), and Danny Haiphong (independent journalist and broadcaster). The panel was chaired by Sara Flounders of the International Action Center.

Embedded below is a video of the event, which was live-streamed on Danny Haiphong’s YouTube channel, followed by the approximate text of Carlos’s remarks connecting the two books.

What was the reason for putting People’s China at 75 together?

The main motivation was that this milestone, the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, when Mao Zedong famously proclaimed in Tiananmen Square that “the Chinese people have stood up”, provided an opportunity to reflect on the significance of that event.

And it’s an evolving significance. The Chinese people are still living that history; indeed the world is living that history. The Chinese Revolution changed the world forever, and the processes of building socialism and struggling against imperialism are ongoing processes that modern China is very much a part of.

So we wanted to examine China’s trajectory since 1949 and to help people get to grips with China’s socialist project in all its different phases. Certainly this is a topic that’s very little understood in the Western world, including among many on the left.

And that’s perhaps where the overlap lies between the two books we’re discussing this evening.

The Western Marxism described by Losurdo is essentially dogmatic; it considers socialism from an abstract, purely theoretical viewpoint.

For these Western Marxists, it’s a handful of academics spending their time in conferences and writing vast impenetrable volumes that are at the cutting edge of knowledge production.

For the Eastern Marxists on the other hand – the people that are oriented to the actually existing struggle against imperialism and for socialism – it’s precisely those states, movements and parties that are engaged in the process of building socialism and struggling against hegemony that are making the major contribution to moving humanity’s collective understanding forward.

The dialectical relationship between theory and practice is at the core of Marxism. As Mao famously put it in his essay ‘On Practice’, “if you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself.”

Abstract theory won’t help us much when it comes to understanding modern China.

Where in Marx’s Capital or Theories of Surplus Value can you find a reference point for China’s reform and opening up process, which was launched in 1978? Nowhere.

Apart from anything else, Marx and Engels didn’t live to see the emergence of socialist states – beyond the early experiment of the Paris Commune – and couldn’t be expected to predict what problems might face a socialist state, recently emerged from semi-colonial semi-feudal status, thirty years after its founding, faced with imperialist encirclement and nuclear blackmail, and dealing with the responsibility of feeding a fifth of the world’s population with 6 percent of the world’s arable land.

Just as no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, no revolutionary process proceeds along straight and predictable lines. Or as Lenin put it when discussing the heroic 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland: “Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip service to revolution without understanding what revolution is.”

People see huge inequality in China, people see private capital in China, people see billionaires in China, people see McDonalds and KFC in China, and they pronounce: this isn’t socialism.

But what about the elimination of absolute poverty? What about the extraordinary improvements in people’s living standards? What about the fact that in this vast Asian country of 1.4 billion people, nobody suffers malnutrition, everybody has sufficient food, everybody has a roof over their head, everyone has clothing, everyone has access to education, healthcare, running water and modern energy.

Here we are in New York, in the heart of global capitalism. Do people here have those basic rights? How far would I have to walk from this building to find someone that doesn’t have a roof over their head, or who doesn’t have healthcare? I suspect not very far.

Why is it that China’s been able to solve these problems? Why is it that China is so focused on living standards and meeting people’s most fundamental human rights? Why is it that China is so far out in front when it comes to renewable energy, electric vehicles, forestation and biodiversity protection? Why is it that China made so much effort to prevent loss of life during the Covid-19 pandemic, whereas in the US over a million people died?

Clearly, the answer relates to China’s economic, political and social project. That China remains on the path to socialism, that has a mixed economy in which the commanding heights are publicly owned, that is run by a Marxist-Leninist party, and where the capitalist class is denied the right to organise in its own political interests.

So in terms of the line Losurdo draws in Western Marxism, I think it’s reasonable to say that on one side of that line you have people who only criticise and condemn China, who label it as capitalist or imperialist, who push the slogan ‘Neither Washington Nor Beijing’; and on the other side you have people who stand in solidarity with China, who seek to learn from China, who showcase China as an example of what can be achieved under socialism, and who resolutely oppose the US’s plans to contain and encircle China.

Engaging with the People’s Republic

A high-level delegation from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, headed by its Chair, Dr. Heinz Bierbaum, visited China in March. The foundation is closely associated with Germany’s Die Linke (Left Party).

The following article, which we reproduce from the foundation’s website, details the background to the delegation, reports its visits and meetings in Beijing, Zhejiang and Shanghai, and outlines the key themes for its future work with China. Giving an overall context, the article notes:

“Over the span of two generations, the People’s Republic of China has gone from one of the poorest countries in the world to its second-largest economy and a rising global power, and did so while maintaining its own, distinct developmental model. Its state-directed market economy has lifted over 800 million people out of poverty, and garnered the attention of other developing countries looking to extract themselves from the middle-income trap.”

It adds that the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation is working to reinvigorate ties between China and progressive parties and movements in Germany, in the spirit of fostering a global debate on the nature of socialism in the twenty-first century.

Moving forward, the work of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Beijing Office will focus on exchanges between European and Chinese Marxists, translating Chinese debates into Western contexts and vice-versa.

Dr. Jan Turowski, office director since 2017, argues that different historical contexts must always be taken into account when evaluating debates on Marxism and socialism:

“In China, and particularly in the Communist Party, socialism is treated less as a state of affairs than a goal-oriented strategic process… As a theoretical debate in constant interplay with practical developments, conflicts of interest, and policy demands, it changes, experiments, conforms, and yet continues to structure the political process, giving it direction over the longer term… In contrast, the debate in the West as to whether China is socialist or not often focuses — rather unproductively — on a state of affairs and set of binary categories: either a society is socialist or it is not. Many Western leftists discuss China’s contradictions as good or bad, right or wrong, rather than confronting them as an integral part of the socialist experiment. Nevertheless, bringing Chinese and Western debates on socialism together in an open-minded and interested way, without denying the many differences, might well spark some creative ideas.”

The observation is as banal as it is true: China’s economic and geopolitical rise over the past four decades has transformed both the country and the world around it, and will continue to do so for decades to come. Over the span of two generations, the People’s Republic of China has gone from one of the poorest countries in the world to its second-largest economy and a rising global power, and did so while maintaining its own, distinct developmental model. Its state-directed market economy has lifted over 800 million people out of poverty, and garnered the attention of other developing countries looking to extract themselves from the middle-income trap.

It was thus only natural for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation to begin supporting projects in China in 2002, and open one of its first international offices there in 2008. Since then, our Beijing branch has grown from a modest outpost to a fully-fledged regional office, organizing high-level exchanges and joint conferences and publications with a number of universities, research institutions, and even the Communist Party of China. Against a backdrop of growing geopolitical tensions, the foundation’s work seeks to maintain and expand corridors for debate and exchange, and learn from each other’s experiences in the interest of mutual understanding. The many differences between China, Germany, and Europe notwithstanding, we are convinced that only through dialogue can conflicts be resolved in a constructive manner.

As the COVID pandemic draws to a close and travel restrictions ease, the office has intensified its activity by hosting several international delegations and organizing a series of seminars and workshops in China and Germany. Together with the launch of a new bilingual website, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation is working to reinvigorate ties between China and progressive parties and movements in Germany, in the spirit of fostering a global debate on the nature of socialism in the twenty-first century. Chinese scholars often emphasize that their experience is unique and cannot be seen as a blueprint for movements and parties in other parts of the world. Nevertheless, any discussion of socialism’s prospects today cannot afford to ignore the experience of 1.4 billion people living under a system that describes itself as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.

Friends from Afar

A recent sign of the office’s renewed activity was a high-level delegation to China in late March, hosted by the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) and led by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s chair, Dr. Heinz Bierbaum. Together with representatives from the foundation’s Executive and Academic Advisory Board, Bierbaum visited Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai, and met with representatives of municipal administrations, cultural institutions, and the Communist Party.

The delegation began its trip with a visit to the Central Party School in Beijing, where Vice President Li Yi discussed China’s socialist modernization with participants and emphasized the need for mutual cooperation in international relations. Later in the day, delegates were received by CPAFFC President Yang Wanming, who emphasized the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s longstanding role in strengthening person-to-person exchanges between China and Germany, and expressed optimism that relations between the two countries would continue to develop positively. Further meetings with representatives of the International Department of the Central Committee and the National People’s Congress underlined the depth of cooperation the foundation has developed in China over the past two decades.

The country’s high-speed rail network has helped to transform China’s transportation system, and demonstrates what kind of green infrastructural development is possible under the right conditions.

After taking in the sights of Beijing, the delegation travelled south to Hangzhou, capital of the eastern coastal province Zhejiang. Here, participants visited the nearby model village of Xiaogucheng, where the local Party leadership has instituted a number of effective anti-poverty strategies and pioneered new structures of community governance. Hangzhou has also broken ground in its attempts to integrate high-tech development with environmentally sustainable urban planning, as the delegation learned in Dream Town, a major tech hub along the city’s historic waterfront that seeks to integrate, rather than replace, the existing ecological and urban space.

The delegation’s visit concluded in Shanghai, China’s largest and wealthiest city, where participants met with Chen Jing, President of the Shanghai People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, and learned about the city’s unprecedented growth within the framework of the state-led market economy. The Shanghai Master Plan, which runs from 2017 to 2035, seeks to turn Shanghai into a “modern socialist international metropolis” seamlessly integrating life, work, and the surrounding environment. It stands as an exemplary case of China’s approach to development, whereby the fundamental parameters of economic growth are laid out in a series of five-year plans, leaving ample room for experimentation and creativity at the local and regional levels.

Perhaps most remarkable for delegation participants was the substantial progress the People’s Republic has made in terms of what in China is referred to as “ecological civilization”. Electric vehicles were to be seen in every city the delegation visited, marked by their silent engines and green license plates that set them apart from the rest of the fleet. Indeed, in Shanghai, over half of new vehicle registrations are electric. The country’s high-speed rail network, which consists of 45,000 kilometres of track and encompasses two-thirds of all high-speed rail in the world, has helped to transform China’s transportation system, and demonstrates what kind of green infrastructural development is possible under the right conditions. Summing up his impressions, Dr. Bierbaum remarked that he was “deeply impressed by the level of economic and technical development achieved, above all by the fact that a high degree of qualitative and, in particular, ecological aspects have been taken into account.”

Keith Bennett: Understanding Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

The Brighton Morning Star Readers and Supporters organised a meeting on the theme, China and the Struggle for Peace on March 24.

The invited speakers were our co-editors Carlos Martinez and Keith Bennett.

In his presentation, Carlos explained the thinking behind China’s foreign policy, showing how it is based on the principles of peace, development and win-win cooperation, and explained how this approach is rooted in China’s history and ideology, and is consistent with the country’s overall strategic goals.

The text of Carlos’s presentation can be read here.

Following this, Keith presented a broad overview of China’s socialist development, contextualising it in the overall history of the exercise of state power by the working class and its allies and the original road taken by the Chinese communists led by Mao Zedong, which represents a major contribution to the theory and practice of revolution.

He prefaced his contribution by noting that the Morning Star carries the words, “For Peace and Socialism” on its masthead every day, highlighting the fact that the struggles for peace and for socialism are inextricably intertwined.

A lively discussion and Q&A followed the presentations, which was continued informally in one of Brighton’s excellent local pubs.

We reprint below the text of Keith’s remarks.

The Communist Manifesto, the foundational text of scientific socialism, is still considerably short of 200 years old.

The working class and its allies have now held state power, and engaged in a serious project of socialist nation building, somewhere continuously for just under 107 years.

The Chinese working class, together with the peasantry and representatives of all patriotic sections of Chinese society, have held state power for just coming up to 75 years, with some two decades of running revolutionary base areas before that.

Since the October Revolution of 1917, serious attempts, with varying degrees of success, have been made to establish and build socialism in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, South America and Africa.

Therefore, on the one hand we can say that humanity has acquired a certain degree of experience and lessons, both positive and negative, regarding the struggle to establish and build socialism.

But more fundamentally, we can say that, in the long course of human history, socialism remains a very new and fledgling system.

This is not to say that there is nothing to learn and draw from. Xi Jinping’s point that socialism with Chinese characteristics offers a new reference point and option for those countries that wish to rapidly develop their economies while maintaining their independence acquires ever greater validity practically with each passing day.

And communists everywhere still draw on the historical experience of the USSR, its monumental achievements, as well as its mistakes, that contributed to its ultimate demise, as well as the experience of every historical and contemporary attempt to build socialism.

But despite the fact that we do not start from a completely blank page, the most fundamental lesson we can draw so far from the historical and ongoing attempts to build socialism, I would argue, is that there is no ready-made blueprint or master plan, no straight road, and certainly no ‘one size fits all’ formula that can be downloaded and implemented at any time and in any place.

Moreover, for most of their political lives (arguably less so towards the end) Marx and Engels envisaged socialism replacing highly developed and advanced capitalism.

So far, this has not happened anywhere.

One could of course argue, like some ultra leftists and dogmatists, that this somehow invalidates the whole experience of actually existing socialism.

Or one can appreciate that this conditions the context in which countries and peoples move towards socialism, that every country will approach socialism in its own way, and that, not least, the character and duration of the transition period may vary enormously.

What’s highly relevant to those countries in which socialism has actually triumphed, theorised by Lenin as ‘breaking the chain at its weakest link’, is the fact that attempts to build socialism have all occurred in a world that is still largely dominated by capitalism and imperialism.

Moreover, every preceding class that rose to political power did so in the wake of and in the context of their rising economic power. In the case of the proletariat, it is almost the exact opposite.

All this helps explain why Stalin, in his Foundations of Leninism, explains that, even after it has taken power, for a time, the proletariat remains weaker than the bourgeoisie.

This is some of the context in which we must start to look at the trajectory of the Chinese revolution.

Although China has the world’s longest continuous civilisation and was the world’s biggest economy for most of the last two millennia, since the British launched the first Opium War in 1839, the country was reduced to a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society. Not for nothing is the ensuing period known by the Chinese as the ‘century of humiliation’, marked by unequal treaties, foreign aggression, most devastatingly that by Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, and by wars of aggression and resistance, civil wars and ultimately a victorious revolution.

Whether when the Communist Party of China was founded in 1921, or the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949, China was one of the poorest and most wretched societies on earth. Illiteracy was as high as life expectancy was low.

So, how did the Chinese revolution succeed?

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.”

Friends of Socialist China participates in Karl Marx commemoration

Friends of Socialist China joined hundreds of comrades at the grave of Karl Marx in north London’s Highgate Cemetery on Sunday March 17 to mark the 141^st anniversary of the death of the founder of scientific socialism.

In 2018, marking the 200^th anniversary of his birth, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said that Marx is the “teacher of revolution for the proletariat and working people all over the world, the main founder of Marxism, creator of Marxist parties, a pathfinder for international communism and the greatest thinker of modern times.”

With noble ideals and no fear of difficulty or adversity, throughout his life, Marx devoted himself to perseveringly striving for the liberation of humanity, scaling the peak of thought in his pursuit of truth, and the unremitting fight to overturn the old world and establish a new one, Xi added.

This year’s Highgate commemoration, the largest for many years, was jointly organised by the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and the Marx Memorial Library (MML) and chaired by Mary Davis, Secretary of the Library and Executive Committee (EC) member of the CPB.

It heard orations from Lord (John) Hendy KC, a prominent labour movement lawyer on behalf of the MML, and from Alex Gordon, Chair of the Library, President of the railworkers’ union RMT and CPB EC member.

In his address, Alex noted that: “What Marx could not foresee, because no socialist planned economy arose in his lifetime, is that the world capitalist economy in 2024 would depend for its economic growth, technological and scientific innovation, and new developments in world trade on the rise of the economies of the global South, and the leading role of socialist China.”

Alex’s full speech may be read here. And Lord Hendy’s may be read here.

Following the speeches, floral tributes were paid by the CPB and MML, the Embassy of socialist Vietnam, the communist parties of Kenya, Cyprus, Spain, Malaya, India (Marxist), Iraq, Iran, Sudan, and Greece, the Communist Front (Italy), Friends of Socialist China, the Young Communist League, the UK branch of the Student Federation of India, the Morning Star, the London District of the CPB, and a delegation of Chinese students in the UK.

Representatives of the Cuban Embassy and the Irish party Sinn Féin also attended the ceremony, which closed with the singing of the Internationale. The Friends of Socialist China comrades accompanied Booker Ngesa Omole (National Vice-Chairperson and National Organising Secretary of the Communist Party of Kenya), who addressed our event Africa, China and the Rise of the Global South the previous evening.

To be a socialist one must be an anti-imperialist

In the following article, which was originally published by Fight Back! News, the US Marxist-Leninist, J. Sykes argues forcefully that to be a socialist one must be an anti-imperialist.

He develops his argument not least on the basis of comparing and contrasting the global roles played respectively by the United States and other imperialist powers on the one hand and socialist China on the other as well as by drawing on the theoretical contributions of Mao Zedong to the Marxist understanding of the anti-imperialist struggle.

According to Sykes:

“For the US, this [necessity of imperialism to resort to military force] includes a network of military bases, spanning the world, and its military alliances, like NATO, which it dominates. It will not hesitate to intervene militarily, or to arm and fund its proxies, such as Ukraine and Israel. It will stage coups and assassinate leaders. There is no price in human bloodshed and suffering that is too high to protect US hegemony and imperialist super-profits.

“China’s foreign policy in the developing world is nothing like this. It is neither exploitative nor extractive and is based on equal and mutually beneficial trade agreements. It is also fundamentally peaceful. The countries that benefit from trade and development from China are not locked into underdevelopment by China. Nor are they targeted for Chinese military intervention, or coups. On the contrary, China provides an alternative to imperialist underdevelopment that many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are glad to take.

“China doesn’t do this because the Chinese are nice and the imperialists aren’t. The imperialists are violent, exploitative and extractive because they must be. The imperialist system is governed by laws, laws inherent to capitalism. China behaves differently because these are laws from which the working class has freed itself in the socialist countries. Socialism, and China in particular, is thus a counterbalance to imperialism in the world. This counterbalance causes the contradiction between the imperialist and socialist systems to sharpen, leading to a constant barrage of anti-China propaganda and increasing aggression from the US towards China.”

Sykes further draws on Mao Zedong’s famous article On Protracted War to explain the difference between just and unjust wars, and on Mao’s The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War for its specific application of this understanding to World War II, where Chairman Mao made his famous observation that, “in wars of national liberation patriotism is applied internationalism.”

Since the writing of The Communist Manifesto and the founding of the First International, proletarian internationalism has been a cornerstone of scientific socialism, and is a pillar of Marxism-Leninism. Today, in the era of imperialism, putting genuine proletarian internationalism into practice demands that we be consistent anti-imperialists.

Beyond any moral questions, there are two obvious, material reasons for this proletarian internationalist, anti-imperialist unity. On the one hand every dollar that goes to imperialist war is a dollar that could have been spent on people’s needs at home. But even more importantly, every blow struck against imperialism weakens the monopoly capitalist class here.

What imperialism is and what it is not

First, let’s be clear on what imperialism means. Understanding the link between imperialism and monopoly capitalism is essential. Indeed, imperialism and monopoly capitalism aren’t just linked, they’re synonymous. Failing to understand this, some people think any kind of big country is an empire and that any empire is imperialist, from ancient Rome to socialist China. But this is an idealist and metaphysical view. In other words, this view fails to look at how imperialism develops historically, according to definite material processes. It should be obvious that the Roman Empire and the U.S. empire are qualitatively different.

If we look at imperialism historically, we have to understand its relationship to the dominant socio-economic system. V.I. Lenin developed the scientific analysis of imperialism in his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, to help the working-class movement understand the demands that this new historical stage of capitalism placed on the socialist movement. In “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism,” Lenin writes, “Imperialism is a specific historical stage of capitalism. Its specific character is threefold: imperialism is monopoly capitalism; parasitic, or decaying capitalism; moribund capitalism. The supplanting of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic feature, the quintessence of imperialism.”

Lenin, China, Palestine, and the global struggle against imperialism

Below is the text and video of a short speech given by Carlos Martinez on behalf of Friends of Socialist China at the International Assembly Against Imperialism in Solidarity with Palestinian Resistance, held at the Malcolm X & Dr Betty Shabazz Memorial & Educational Center in New York City on January 21, 2024.

The event was organised by Workers World Party, and the date was chosen to honour the centennial of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, who died that day in 1924.

Carlos asks “what ties together these seemingly disparate themes of Palestine, China and Leninism”, suggesting that the answer lies in the global struggle against imperialism. He explains the effect of Lenin’s analysis of imperialism in expanding the scope and applicability of Marxism to cover the entire world; how this informed Soviet support for socialist and national liberation projects in the Global South; and how People’s China carried forward this tradition. “China has been and remains a bulwark against imperialism, standing in solidarity with the Global South.”

The speech discusses China’s long history of solidarity with Palestine, and its current positive diplomatic role in opposition to the genocide in Gaza, and concludes:

“The brave Palestinian people, with the solidarity and support of freedom-loving people around the world, will surely win their liberation.”

Dear comrades and friends,

It’s a great honour for Friends of Socialist China to be invited to contribute to this International Assembly Against Imperialism, in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

What ties together these seemingly disparate themes of Palestine, China and Leninism?

The answer lies in the struggle against imperialism.

The original slogan of the communist movement, ‘Workers of the world unite’ – the rallying cry and final phrase from the Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels in 1848 – was put forward at a time when the nascent communist movement was geographically limited to Europe and North America, and focused almost exclusively on the industrial working class.

Lenin’s study of global political economy, and particularly of the dynamics of monopoly capitalism and the emergence of modern imperialism, led him to an acute understanding of the expanded – global – applicability of Marxist thought. He understood that, as a result of imperialist domination, the capitalist class of the metropolis had become an enemy not just to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries but to the broad masses of the oppressed in all countries.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks thus proposed the development of a worldwide united front of the working class and all peoples oppressed by imperialism. Such a united front would be capable – indeed still is capable – of taking the fight to the oppressors, of defeating imperialism, of establishing national independence and sovereignty for the peoples of the Global South, and thereby opening the possibility for a global advance to socialism.

Hence at the second congress of the Comintern in 1920, ‘Workers of the world unite’ was updated to ‘Workers and oppressed peoples of all countries, unite’.

In his letter titled Better Fewer, But Better, the last document he wrote, Lenin observed that “in the last analysis, the outcome of the struggle will be determined by the fact that Russia, India, China etc account for the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe. And during the past few years it is this majority that has been drawn into the struggle for emancipation with extraordinary rapidity, so that in this respect there cannot be the slightest doubt what the final outcome of the world struggle will be. In this sense, the complete victory of socialism is fully and absolutely assured.”

The Chinese communists of course played a crucial role in developing this ideology and applying it in practice. The overthrow of imperialist domination and the construction of socialism in China, Korea and Vietnam represented a profound shift of the revolutionary centre of gravity in the world towards the East and the South.

The Chinese benefited enormously from the solidarity of the Soviet peoples.

Mao Zedong stated in 1949, just two months before the proclamation of the People’s Republic, that “it was through the Russians that the Chinese found Marxism. The salvoes of the October Revolution brought us Marxism-Leninism. The October Revolution helped progressives in China, as throughout the world, to adopt the proletarian world outlook as the instrument for studying a nation’s destiny and considering anew their own problems.”

In turn, China has been and remains a bulwark against imperialism, standing in solidarity with the Global South.

China’s history of support for the Palestinian national struggle in particular goes back to the 1950s. As Xi Jinping has put it, no matter how the international and regional situation changes, China always firmly supports the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore the legitimate rights and interests of their nation, and always stands with the Palestinian people.

China sent its first aid to the Palestinian people in 1960, and when the PLO was founded in 1964, China became the first non-Arab country to recognise it. The first Palestinian fighters were sent for military training in China in 1965. It was also one of the first countries to recognise the State of Palestine – on 20 November 1988. Indeed Yasser Arafat – Chairman of the PLO from 1969 to 2004 – stated in 1970 that “China is the biggest influence in supporting our revolution and strengthening its perseverance.”

Premier Zhou Enlai wrote in 1967; “Wherever there is oppression, there is resistance; wherever there is aggression, there is struggle against aggression. I believe that having taken up arms, the revolutionary Arab people of Palestine and the entire Arab people will not lay down their arms and, like the heroic Vietnamese people, will fight on unflinchingly, resolutely and stubbornly until final victory.”

Today, China is among the loudest voices calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and insistently calling for the restoration of the legitimate national rights of Palestine, and for the establishment of an independent State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital and with the right of return.

The heroic Palestinian resistance has put the issue of Palestine back at the centre of global politics. Meanwhile the shift towards a multipolar world and away from US hegemony is creating favourable conditions for finding a lasting and just solution.

Even as we witness the horrors of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, we remember the words of the great Paul Robeson, that the people’s will for freedom is stronger than atom bombs. The brave Palestinian people, with the solidarity and support of freedom-loving people around the world, will surely win their liberation.

Lenin walks around the world

The following article by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez, was originally published on 20 January 2024 in the Morning Star, to coincide with the centenary of Lenin’s death.

Carlos highlights Lenin’s contribution to the understanding of imperialism; how this understanding fed into the expansion of Marxism to the Global South; and how this in turn created a material basis for a worldwide united front of the working class and all peoples oppressed by imperialism.

The article explores some of the historic achievements of this united socialist and anti-imperialist struggle, citing Mao Zedong in 1949: “It was through the Russians that the Chinese found Marxism. The salvoes of the October Revolution brought us Marxism-Leninism. The October Revolution helped progressives in China, as throughout the world, to adopt the proletarian world outlook as the instrument for studying a nation’s destiny and considering anew their own problems.”

Also mentioned is the rejection of Lenin’s anti-imperialism by the forces of social democracy in the West, where, Lenin wrote, “high monopoly profits for a handful of very rich countries” opens up “the economic possibility of corrupting the upper strata of the proletariat, and thereby fosters, gives form to, and strengthens opportunism”.

Carlos concludes:

To be Marxist-Leninists in the 21st century means to return to a strategy of a worldwide united front between the socialist countries, the oppressed nations, and the working class in the imperialist countries. It means standing up for Palestine. It means continuing the fight for a united Ireland. It means opposing the campaign of containing and encircling China. It means opposing NATO. It means supporting the emerging multipolar trend. It means standing with Cuba, with Vietnam, with the DPRK, with Laos, with Venezuela, with Nicaragua, with Syria, with all countries defiantly standing up against imperialist hegemony. It means opposing racism, sexism and all forms of exploitation and oppression, rejecting collaborationism and social chauvinism, going “lower and deeper” and fighting resolutely for a socialist future.

Study of imperialism

Marx had already outlined the economic dynamics of an emerging international capitalism in Volume 1 of Capital, first published in 1867: “A new and international division of labour springs up, one suited to the requirements of the main industrial countries, and it converts one part of the globe into a chiefly agricultural field of production for supplying the other part, which remains a pre-eminently industrial field.”

By the end of the 19th century, the extraordinary concentration of capital and the supremacy of finance capital had brought the era of ‘free market’ capitalism to an end and ushered in an era of monopoly capitalism – in which phase capitalism remains.

Having dominated and saturated the home market, monopolies were increasingly driven abroad in pursuit of profit. Lenin wrote in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism that “the export of capital greatly affects and accelerates the development of capitalism in those countries to which it is exported.” Export of capital stimulated the incorporation of the “chiefly agricultural” economies of the Global South into the world capitalist system, introducing industrial production and creating a social class that had no option but to sell its labour power – the working class.

With the internationalisation of capital and the subjugation of the greater part of the planet by a handful of wealthy nations, capitalism became more and more militarised. Extreme force was needed to keep colonies and “spheres of influence” under control, and furthermore was a key feature of the rising competition between the imperialist countries for control of the world’s land, labour, natural resources and markets. Such competition was the basis for World War 1.

Lenin understood that, with capitalism having “grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the people of the world by a handful of ‘advanced’ countries”, the capitalist class of the metropolis had become an enemy not just to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries but to the broad masses of the oppressed in all countries. “Imperialism is leading to annexation, to increased national oppression, and, consequently, also to increasing resistance.”

This analysis provided the theoretical basis for a strategic unity of the socialist and national liberation movements, on which basis Lenin and the Bolsheviks proposed the development of a worldwide united front of the working class and all peoples oppressed by imperialism. Such a united front would be capable – indeed still is capable – of taking the fight to the oppressors, of defeating imperialism, of establishing national independence and sovereignty for the peoples of the Global South, and thereby opening the possibility for a global advance to socialism.

Hence at the second congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1920, ‘Workers of the world unite’ was updated to ‘Workers and oppressed peoples of all countries, unite’.

Xi Jinping speech at the symposium commemorating the 130th anniversary of the birth of Mao Zedong

The article below is the full text of the speech given by Comrade Xi Jinping at the meeting held in Beijing on the morning of December 26, 2023, to commemorate the 130th anniversary of the birth of Comrade Mao Zedong.

In his speech, Xi gives a comprehensive exposition of key revolutionary contributions of Mao Zedong and salient features of Mao Zedong Thought, as well as key tasks facing China today on the basis of the foundations laid by the preceding generations of Chinese revolutionaries, the foremost of whom was Mao Zedong, and in the new era.

Xi Jinping begins his speech by stating that:

“Today, with great reverence, we solemnly assemble here to commemorate the 130th anniversary of the birth of Comrade Mao Zedong, the main founder of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the People’s Republic of China, and the great leader of the Chinese people of all nationalities.

“Comrade Mao Zedong was a great Marxist, a great proletarian revolutionary, strategist, and theoretician, a great pioneer of the Sinicisation of Marxism, a great founder of China’s socialist modernisation, a great patriot and national hero of China in modern times, the core of the party’s first generation of central collective leadership, a generation of great men who led the Chinese people to completely change their own destiny and the appearance of the country, and a great internationalist who made major contributions to the liberation of the oppressed nations of the world and the cause of human progress.”

Noting the ruinous state of China at the time of Mao’s birth, Xi said that: “When he was young, Comrade Mao Zedong set up a lofty ambition to save the nation from danger and threw himself into the great cause of saving the country and the people… and, in the course of repeated comparisons and explorations, resolutely chose Marxism-Leninism and the lofty ideal of striving for the realisation of communism.”

“Comrade Mao Zedong’s life was a life of unremitting struggle for the prosperity and strength of the country, the rejuvenation of the nation, and the happiness of the people. During the period of the new democratic revolution, the Chinese Communists with Comrade Mao Zedong as the main representative united and led the people to fight bloody battles and persevere, defeat Japanese imperialism, overthrow the reactionary rule of the Kuomintang, complete the new democratic revolution, establish the People’s Republic of China, and realise national independence and the people being masters of the country that the Chinese have dreamed of since modern times. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, they united and led the people to be self-reliant, work hard to make the country strong, carry out the socialist revolution, eliminate the feudal system of exploitation and oppression that had lasted for thousands of years, establish the basic socialist system, and promote socialist construction, thus bringing about the most extensive and profound social changes in the history of the Chinese nation, making great achievements in socialist construction, making China a major country with important influence in the world, and accumulating important experience in socialist construction in a country with a very backward level of social productive forces like China.

“During his difficult and brilliant fighting career of several decades, Comrade Mao Zedong made indelible historical contributions to the Chinese nation and the Chinese people and made glorious historical contributions for thousands of years.

“Comrade Mao Zedong led the people to initiate the historical process of Sinicising Marxism. Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary practice. The basic tenets of Marxism have universal applicability, and only when they are integrated with the realities of various countries can the powerful force of truth be displayed. Comrade Mao Zedong said:

“”The great strength of Marxism-Leninism lies in the fact that it is linked to the specific revolutionary practice of various countries. As far as the Communist Party of China is concerned, it is necessary to learn how to apply Marxist-Leninist theories to China’s specific environment.””

Mao Zedong Thought, Xi explained, “is the creative application and development of Marxism-Leninism in China, the correct theoretical principles and summation of experience of China’s revolution and construction that have been proven by practice, and the first historical leap in the Sinicisation of Marxism. Comrade Mao Zedong applied dialectical materialism and historical materialism to all the work of the proletarian political party, and formed a stand, viewpoint, and method with the distinctive characteristics of the Chinese communists in the protracted and arduous struggle of China’s revolution and construction, which were embodied in the three basic aspects of seeking truth from facts, the mass line, and independence and self-determination. This is the living soul of Mao Zedong Thought. Mao Zedong Thought is the precious spiritual wealth of our party and will guide our actions for a long time.”

Having outlined the development of Mao’s thinking on party building, Xi noted that: “After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Comrade Mao Zedong actively explored the laws governing the building of the ruling party, stressed the need to always maintain a modest and cautious style, guard against arrogance and rashness and work hard, be highly vigilant and make efforts to prevent corruption and degeneration of party members and cadres, and resolutely punish corruption, and so on, thus accumulating preliminary experience in party building under the conditions of being in power.”

Xi further explained how, “in 1956, China basically completed the socialist transformation of the private ownership of the means of production, basically realised the public ownership of the means of production and distribution according to work, and established a socialist economic system,” adding that the “socialist system established under the leadership of Comrade Mao Zedong, which is rooted in the land of China, conforms to China’s national conditions, and embodies the aspirations of the people, is incomparably superior, and has not only played an important role in promoting socialist revolution and construction, but has also laid the fundamental political premise and institutional foundation for all development and progress in contemporary China.”

He also outlined Mao’s contributions to the building of a people’s army: “Comrade Mao Zedong led the people to create a new type of people’s army that was invincible. Without a people’s army, the people have nothing. Comrade Mao Zedong was the first to propose and lead the work of armed struggle and the creation of a people’s army. In the course of the extremely arduous revolutionary war, he systematically solved the problem of how to build the revolutionary army, with the peasants as the main component, into a new type of people’s army with a proletarian nature, strict discipline, and close ties with the masses of the people. He laid down the sole purpose of the people’s army to serve the people wholeheartedly… [and] the principle that the party commands the gun… The people’s army personally created by Comrade Mao Zedong has become an armed force loyal to the party and faithfully carrying out revolutionary political tasks, an army that completely and thoroughly struggles for the Chinese people, and a strong pillar for ensuring national independence, people’s happiness, and national defence consolidation.”

In summary: “Comrade Mao Zedong dedicated his life to the party and the people, leaving behind the lofty spiritual demeanour of future generations. Comrade Mao Zedong has displayed a great revolutionary leader’s far-sighted political vision, unswerving revolutionary conviction, extraordinary courage to open up new ground, perfect art of struggle, outstanding and superb leadership ability, pure feelings for the people, open-minded and broad-minded realm, and fine style of arduous struggle, and has won the love and admiration of the whole party and the people of all nationalities throughout the country.”

However, Xi continued: “Socialism is a completely new cause in the history of humanity, and since China is carrying out socialist revolution and construction on an extremely backward basis, there is no ready-made experience to draw on, and it is difficult to completely avoid twists and turns and mistakes of one kind or another on the road ahead… It cannot be denied that Comrade Mao Zedong made detours in the exploration of the road of socialist construction, especially the serious mistake of launching and leading the ‘Cultural Revolution’. Our party has made a comprehensive appraisal of Comrade Mao Zedong’s historical merits and demerits, and his achievements are the first, his mistakes are second, and his mistakes are the mistakes made by a great revolutionary and a great Marxist.”

Before going on to detail China’s present situation and tasks, Xi emphasised:

“The best way to commemorate Comrade Mao Zedong is to continue to push forward the cause he started. Comprehensively promoting the construction of a strong country and the great cause of national rejuvenation with Chinese-style modernisation is the central task of the whole party and the people of all ethnic groups in the new era and new journey. This is the unfinished business of Mao Zedong and other revolutionaries of the older generation, and it is the solemn historical responsibility of the contemporary Chinese communists. On the new journey, we must not forget our original aspiration, keep our mission firmly in mind, strengthen historical self-confidence, grasp the historical initiative, and continue to push forward the grand cause of Chinese-style modernisation.

“It is necessary to fully arouse the historical initiative of all the people. The people, and only the people, are the driving force behind the creation of world history. Chinese-style modernisation is the cause of all Chinese people, and we must closely rely on the people and gather the infinite wisdom and strength hidden in the people in order to continuously create new historical achievements. We must adhere to the basic viewpoint of historical materialism that the people are the fundamental driving force for creating history, uphold the people’s status as the main body, fully respect the people’s expressed wishes, the experiences they create, the rights they have, and the roles they play, and take the safeguarding, realisation, and development of the fundamental interests of the broadest masses of the people as the starting point and end goal of all our work, so that the fruits of modernisation can benefit all the people in a more equitable way.”

In analysing the present situation in China, Xi stressed once again the absolute necessity of continuing and not relaxing the struggle against corruption:

“Corruption is the greatest cancer that endangers the party’s vitality and combat effectiveness, and the anti-corruption struggle cannot cease for a moment. It is necessary to persist in promoting the integration of not daring to be corrupt, not being able to be corrupt, and not wanting to be corrupt, deepening the treatment of both the symptoms and the root causes, and systematically treating them, continuing to maintain a high-pressure posture of punishing corruption, resolutely investigating and dealing with corruption where political and economic problems are intertwined, resolutely preventing leading cadres from becoming spokesmen and agents of interest groups and powerful groups, deepening the rectification of corruption in areas where power is concentrated… and resolutely winning the battle against corruption by fighting a tough and protracted battle, so as to ensure that our party will never change its quality, colour, or taste.”

And he concluded:

“Today, the great cause pioneered by Mao Zedong and other revolutionaries of the older generation is thriving, the great ideals they pursued are becoming reality, and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is showing unprecedented bright prospects. Let us unite more closely, seize the day, fight tenaciously, follow the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and forge ahead bravely for the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation in an all-round way with Chinese-style modernisation!”

The below version of Comrade Xi’s speech was released by Xinhua News Agency and published in Chinese by People’s Daily. It has been machine translated and lightly edited by us. It is anticipated that an authorised English-language translation of the speech will be published in due course.

Comrades and friends

Today, with great reverence, we solemnly assemble here to commemorate the 130th anniversary of the birth of Comrade Mao Zedong, the main founder of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the People’s Republic of China, and the great leader of the Chinese people of all nationalities.

China marks the 130th birthday of Chairman Mao Zedong

The Chinese people commemorated the 130th birthday of Chairman Mao Zedong, the founder of New China, which fell on December 26, in numerous ways, from solemn gatherings at the highest level to countless informal and spontaneous gatherings throughout the country.

On the morning of December 26, Cai Qi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee presided over a symposium in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, Chinese President, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, delivered an important speech. Xi emphasised that:

Mao was a great Marxist, and a great proletarian revolutionary, strategist, and theorist.
He was a great trailblazer in adapting Marxism to the Chinese context, and laid the groundwork of China’s socialist modernisation.
He was a great patriot and national hero in modern Chinese history and the core of the Party’s first generation of central leadership.
He was a great man who led the Chinese people to change their destiny and the nation as a whole, and
A great internationalist who made significant contributions to the liberation of oppressed nations and the cause of human progress worldwide.

Mao Zedong Thought, the Chinese leader added, is the precious spiritual asset of our Party and will continue to guide what we do for a long time to come. The best way to commemorate Mao is to continuously advance the cause he initiated.

Xi pointed out that Mao devoted his life to achieving national prosperity, rejuvenating the Chinese nation, and promoting people’s well-being. He led the people in starting the historical process of adapting Marxism to the Chinese context, forging the great, glorious, and correct Communist Party of China, founding the New China with the people enjoying the status as masters of the country, creating an advanced socialist system, and building a new model of people’s army that is invincible. He made indelible historical contributions to the Chinese nation and the Chinese people and made shining contributions that will go down in history.

Xi further emphasised that Comrade Mao Zedong dedicated his entire life to the Party and the people, leaving behind a lofty and inspirational spirit for future generations. Comrade Mao, as a great revolutionary leader, demonstrated far-sighted political vision, firm revolutionary conviction, extraordinary courage to blaze a new trail, perfect art of waging struggle, outstanding leadership, deep concern for the people, an open and broad-minded demeanour, and an exemplary work ethic of hard endeavour. As a result, he earned the love and respect of the entire Party and people of all ethnic groups. Comrade Mao’s noble spirit will forever be a motivating force inspiring us to forge ahead.

On the new journey, he continued, we must never forget our original aspiration and founding mission, be confident in our history, and take historical initiative to continuously advance the great cause of Chinese modernisation.

Chinese modernisation, Xi noted, is the cause of the Chinese people, and we must closely rely on the people, pool the inexhaustible wisdom and strength inherent in the people, and fully motivate the historical initiative of the people. It is crucial to adhere to the fundamental viewpoint of historical materialism that the people are the fundamental driving force in creating history, uphold the people’s principal position, take it as the fundamental purpose of our work to defend, realise and develop the fundamental interests of the vast majority of the people, so as to ensure that all the Chinese people share the achievements of modernisation in a more equitable manner. Efforts should be made to establish systems that ensure the people’s status as masters of the country, improve the mechanisms that uphold social fairness and justice, focus on ensuring and improving people’s well-being, follow the mass line in the new era, always maintain a close connection with the people, accept criticism and supervision from the people, always breathe the same air as the people, share the same future, and stay truly connected to them, in order to provide the most reliable, profound, and sustainable source of strength for advancing Chinese modernisation.

Xi emphasised that reform and opening up is a major reason why China is able to catch up with the times, and it is the key move that determines whether Chinese modernisation will succeed and went on to stress the need to continuously liberate and develop the social productive forces and unleash and enhance social vitality. It is imperative to adapt to the new trends of the times, meet the new requirements of development, and fulfil the new expectations of the people, he said.

Xi pointed out that Chinese modernisation is the socialist modernisation led by the CPC. Only by always staying alert and determined to tackle the unique challenges that a large party like ours faces, and by strengthening the Party more vigorously, can we ensure that Chinese modernisation advances through waves and storms, and steadily moves forward.

It is important to continue to take coordinated steps to see that officials do not have the audacity, opportunity, or desire to become corrupt, so that the Party can remain true to its original aspiration and mission, and at the forefront of the times, and always stay vibrant and vigorous. By doing so, we can ensure that the Party will never change its nature, its conviction, or its character.

Cai Qi, chairing the meeting, noted how affectionately General Secretary Xi, in his important speech, had looked back upon the great practices of Comrade Mao Zedong in leading China’s revolution and construction, and how he has recognised the monumental achievements Comrade Mao Zedong made for the Chinese nation and Chinese people. He went on to note that Xi had proposed explicit requirements for commemorating Comrade Mao Zedong with concrete actions and with efforts to push ahead with the magnificent cause of Chinese modernisation.

Before the symposium, Xi Jinping and other leaders visited the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall where, in accordance with the Chinese custom denoting the highest respect, they bowed three times to the seated statue of Comrade Mao Zedong, and then proceeded to pay respects to his remains.

A further symposium marking the 130th anniversary of the birth of Mao was held in Beijing from December 26-28. At the opening ceremony, Cai Qi stressed the importance of honouring the monumental achievements made by Comrade Mao Zedong, passing on his thought and lofty spirit, advocating the great founding spirit of the Party, and making greater progress in theoretical studies. Cai called on social scientists and theoretical researchers to produce more high-quality research findings in the study of Mao Zedong Thought.

Probably the largest gathering held around the country was that in Mao’s birthplace, Shaoshan, where more than 110,000 people from around the country gathered, with spontaneous mass celebrations and commemorative activities beginning on the afternoon of December 25.

The Chinese newspaper Global Times quoted a middle aged woman from Yunnan province in south-west China as saying that she was surprised and excited to join tens of thousands of people singing, dancing, reciting poems, and waving flags on Mao Zedong Square at midnight.

Another impressive point for her was the large number of young people present. “I used to think that only middle-aged people and the older generation felt strongly about Chairman Mao. It wasn’t until I arrived here that I realised there are so many young people who respect and remember the stories about Chairman Mao,” she said. “Our younger generation is full of vitality and hope.”

The paper further reported a 21-year-old college student as having animated discussions with the older generation on the square. He defined his feelings for Mao Zedong as “sublime faith.”

“As young people of the new generation, we have never forgotten Chairman Mao’s contributions to the Chinese people,” he told the Global Times. “It is our responsibility as young people to inherit the Chairman’s revolutionary spirit and become the backbone of China.”

He added that some Western media and politicians have interpreted young people’s worshipping Mao Zedong as representing a narrow nationalism, but he rejected this saying:

“Our feelings for Chairman Mao are not narrow worship, but a hope to inherit his idea that ‘the world belongs to the people.’ The ultimate ideal is world harmony. How could this be a form of narrow nationalism?”

On the morning of December 26, visitors from across China, gathered in Shaoshan, were served a free breakfast of birthday noodles, recalling that the Chairman had never celebrated his birthday in his lifetime, simply eating a bowl of noodles. They then gathered again at Mao Zedong Square, where a flower laying ceremony was held, and everyone present bowed to Mao Zedong’s statue, followed by the many thousands of people singing together the revolutionary song “The East is Red,” written in praise of Mao Zedong.

The following articles were originally published by the Xinhua News Agency and Global Times.

Symposium held to commemorate 130th anniversary of Comrade Mao Zedong’s birth, Xi delivers important speech

BEIJING, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) — On the morning of Dec. 26, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held a symposium at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to commemorate the 130th anniversary of Comrade Mao Zedong’s birth. Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, Chinese president, and chairman of the Central Military Commission, delivered an important speech. He emphasized that Mao was a great Marxist, and a great proletarian revolutionary, strategist, and theorist. He was a great trailblazer in adapting Marxism to the Chinese context, and laid the groundwork of China’s socialist modernization. He was a great patriot and national hero in modern Chinese history, and the core of the Party’s first generation of central leadership. He was a great man who led the Chinese people to change their destiny and the nation as a whole, and a great internationalist who made significant contributions to the liberation of oppressed nations and the cause of human progress worldwide. Mao Zedong Thought is the precious spiritual asset of our Party and will continue to guide what we do for a long time to come. The best way to commemorate Mao is to continuously advance the cause he initiated.

Li Qiang, Zhao Leji, Wang Huning, Ding Xuexiang, and Li Xi, all members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, and Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, attended the event. Cai Qi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, presided over the symposium.

In his speech, Xi pointed out that Mao devoted his life to achieving national prosperity, rejuvenating the Chinese nation, and promoting people’s well-being. He led the people in starting the historical process of adapting Marxism to the Chinese context, forging the great, glorious, and correct Communist Party of China, founding the New China with the people enjoying the status as masters of the country, creating an advanced socialist system, and building a new model of people’s army that is invincible. He made indelible historical contributions to the Chinese nation and the Chinese people, and made shining contributions that will go down in history.

Xi emphasized that Comrade Mao Zedong dedicated his entire life to the Party and the people, leaving behind a lofty and inspirational spirit for future generations. Comrade Mao, as a great revolutionary leader, demonstrated far-sighted political vision, firm revolutionary conviction, extraordinary courage to blaze a new trail, perfect art of waging struggle, outstanding leadership, deep concern for the people, an open and broad-minded demeanor, and an exemplary work ethic of hard endeavor. As a result, he earned the love and respect of the entire Party and people of all ethnic groups. Comrade Mao’s noble spirit will forever be a motivating force inspiring us to forge ahead.

Xi stated that advancing the building of China into a strong country and realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through a path to Chinese modernization is the central task for the entire Party and people of all ethnic groups on the new journey in the new era. This is an unrealized cause of the older generation of revolutionaries such as Mao Zedong, and is the solemn historical responsibility of contemporary Chinese communists. On the new journey, we must never forget our original aspiration and founding mission, be confident in our history, and take historical initiative to continuously advance the great cause of Chinese modernization.

Xi emphasized that Chinese modernization is the cause of the Chinese people, and we must closely rely on the people, pool the inexhaustible wisdom and strength inherent in the people, and fully motivate the historical initiative of the people. It is crucial to adhere to the fundamental viewpoint of historical materialism that the people are the fundamental driving force in creating history, uphold the people’s principal position, take it as the fundamental purpose of our work to defend, realize and develop the fundamental interests of the vast majority of the people, so as to ensure that all the Chinese people share the achievements of modernization in a more equitable manner. Efforts should be made to establish systems that ensure the people’s status as masters of the country, improve the mechanisms that uphold social fairness and justice, focus on ensuring and improving people’s well-being, follow the mass line in the new era, always maintain a close connection with the people, accept criticism and supervision from the people, always breathe the same air as the people, share the same future, and stay truly connected to them, in order to provide the most reliable, profound, and sustainable source of strength for advancing Chinese modernization.

Xi Jinping: Integrate the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and the best of its traditional culture

The following is the text of a speech given by Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, at a meeting on cultural inheritance and development in June 2023, at which he comprehensively set out his views on the integration of Marxism with China’s specific realities and especially the best of its traditional culture, which is now being known as the “two integrations”.

Xi notes that:

“The traditional Chinese culture encompasses a multitude of significant concepts, including social ideals of pursuing the common good for all and achieving universal peace; governance principles of regarding the people as the foundation of the state and governing by virtue; traditions of striving for great unity in the country and ensuring unity amid diversity; values of dedicating oneself to self-cultivation, family management, state governance, and peace for all and shouldering one’s duties to secure the future of the nation; aspirations of embracing the world with virtue and cultivating integrity; economic principles of enriching the people and improving their lives and pursuing the greater good and shared interests; ecological ideas of promoting harmony between humanity and nature and the coexistence of all living things; philosophical thoughts of seeking truth from facts and combining knowledge with action.”

Explaining that Chinese civilisation is distinguished by its continuity, he adds that Chinese people’s deep-rooted sentiments for the motherland and profound sense of history constitute an ideal for upholding great unity and provide spiritual support for guiding the Chinese nation through countless hardships on the path to national rejuvenation.

He also refers to the creativity of Chinese civilisation, saying that it “places stress on discarding the outdated in favour of the new and making progress on a daily basis… The creativity of Chinese civilisation determines that it upholds tradition without clinging to the past and respects ancient wisdom without reverting to archaic thinking. It also determines that the Chinese nation is fearless in facing new challenges and embracing new things.”

It is also inclusive:

“Rather than replacing diverse cultures with a single monoculture, Chinese civilisation endeavours to integrate various cultures into a shared tapestry.”

Next, Xi Jinping turns his attention to the significance of the two integrations with Marxism, explaining that:

“Given the profound foundations of our venerable 5,000-year-old civilisation, the only path for pioneering and developing Chinese socialism is to integrate the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and the best of its traditional culture (‘two integrations’). This systematic conclusion has been derived from our extensive explorations of Chinese socialism. We have always emphasised integrating the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and have now officially brought forward the integration of the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s fine traditional culture. As I once stated, without the 5,000-year-old Chinese civilisation, where would the Chinese characteristics come from?”

Mutual compatibility, he insists, is the fundamental prerequisite:

“The ‘two integrations’ is not a far-fetched proposition. Despite their distinct origins, Marxism and traditional Chinese culture exhibit remarkable congruence. For instance, the social principles of pursuing the common good for all and acting in good faith and being friendly to others resonate harmoniously with the ideals and convictions of communism and socialism; the governing concepts of regarding the people as the foundation of the state and governing by virtue align seamlessly with the political principle of putting the people first; and the practices of discarding the outdated in favour of the new and ceaselessly pursuing self-improvement correspond faithfully to the revolutionary spirit of Communists. Marxism sees the essence of man from the angle of social relations, while in Chinese culture, people are defined by their relationships with their family, their country, and the world. Both reject the notion of viewing humans as isolated entities.”

“Integration,” he further explains, “extends beyond mere juxtaposition; instead, it creates a new, organically unified cultural entity. On one hand, Marxism entered China with its advanced theories, giving a new lease of life to Chinese civilisation with its truthfulness. It ushered China into the modern era, revitalising and modernising Chinese culture. Traditional concepts such as regarding the people as the foundation of the state, all regions sharing common customs and practices, all things living side by side, and enriching the people have transformed to modern ideas of pursuing democracy, forging a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation, maintaining harmony between humanity and nature, and striving for common prosperity.”

This integration has reinforced the foundations of China’s socialist path:

“The path of Chinese socialism is fundamentally socialist, grounded in Marxism. The essential socialist elements in Chinese culture provide an intellectual foundation for the embrace of Marxism in China. The path of Chinese socialism is continually broadening, and our determination to remain on this path is unwavering.”

In the concluding part of his speech, Xi Jinping points out that: “Under the guidance of Marxism, we must adeptly integrate the past with the present, draw on successful foreign experiences, make informed choices through dialectical reasoning, and develop the new from the old, therefore achieving a seamless fusion of traditional and contemporary cultures.”

The speech was originally published in Chinese in Qiushi Journal, theoretical organ of the Communist Party of China, issue 17 of 2023. This official English translation appeared in Qiushi’s English language edition, issue 5 of 2023.

Today, we convened a meeting on cultural inheritance and development. Preceding this event, I visited the newly built China National Archives of Publications and Culture and the Chinese Archaeological Museum at the Chinese Academy of History and found them exceptionally insightful.

To establish both the Chinese Academy of History and the China National Archives of Publications and Culture was a decision of great significance made by the CPC Central Committee. The Chinese nation boasts a legacy spanning millions of years of humanity, ten millennia of culture, and five thousand years of civilization. My visit to these two places helped deepen my appreciation for the time-honored Chinese culture and the profound depth of Chinese civilization. Only through a comprehensive and deep understanding of the history of Chinese civilization can we more effectively promote the creative transformation and development of the best of the traditional Chinese culture, vigorously push forward the progress of socialist culture with Chinese characteristics, and cultivate a modern Chinese civilization.

Culture is fundamental to a nation’s foundation and future. Recently, I have consistently pondered the major issue of promoting China’s socialist culture and developing a modern Chinese civilization. This is precisely the reason that led us to convene this meeting today. Here, I would like to address three key points.

I. Developing a profound understanding of the defining characteristics of Chinese civilization

The traditional Chinese culture encompasses a multitude of significant concepts, including social ideals of pursuing the common good for all and achieving universal peace; governance principles of regarding the people as the foundation of the state and governing by virtue; traditions of striving for great unity in the country and ensuring unity amid diversity; values of dedicating oneself to self-cultivation, family management, state governance, and peace for all and shouldering one’s duties to secure the future of the nation; aspirations of embracing the world with virtue and cultivating integrity; economic principles of enriching the people and improving their lives and pursuing the greater good and shared interests; ecological ideas of promoting harmony between humanity and nature and the coexistence of all living things; philosophical thoughts of seeking truth from facts and combining knowledge with action; the mindset of understanding multiple perspectives and seeking harmony through the middle way; and communication approaches of acting in good faith and being friendly to others. These concepts collectively shape the defining characteristics of Chinese civilization.

Chinese civilization is distinguished by its continuity

Chinese civilization is the only great, uninterrupted civilization that continues to this day in a state form. This unequivocally affirms the cultural identity and robust vitality of Chinese civilization as it has responded to challenges and broken new ground through self-development. Chinese people’s deep-rooted sentiments for the motherland and profound sense of history constitute an ideal for upholding great unity and provide spiritual support for guiding the Chinese nation through countless hardships on the path to national rejuvenation. This continuity inherently dictates that the Chinese nation will follow its own path. If not through the prism of its extensive history of continuity, one would not be able to understand ancient China, contemporary China, let alone China of the future.

Chinese civilization is distinguished by its creativity

Chinese civilization places stress on discarding the outdated in favor of the new and making progress on a daily basis. It embodies both profound depth and dynamic forward surges. Continuity doesn’t mean being stagnant or inflexible; on the contrary, it represents a history marked by creativity-driven progress. The Chinese nation embraces the ethos of self-renewal, as an ancient saying goes “improve oneself in one day, do so from day to day, and there will be daily improvement.” This spirit propels the Chinese nation’s sustained material, cultural-ethical, and political advancement, allowing it to stand tall and firm as one of the most prosperous and powerful civilizations throughout a long historical period. The creativity of Chinese civilization determines that it upholds tradition without clinging to the past and respects ancient wisdom without reverting to archaic thinking. It also determines that the Chinese nation is fearless in facing new challenges and embracing new things.

In Xi Jinping’s China, is Chairman Mao back?

Marking the 130th anniversary of Comrade Mao Zedong’s birth, Morning Star editor Ben Chacko published this thoughtful response to the Western media scare stories about President Xi Jinping leading a “reversion to Maoism.” Ben points out that this theme “is inseparable from a wider narrative in which China is becoming more adversarial and threatening” – a narrative which is being used to justify an escalating New Cold War on China.

Ben observes that there has been significant continuity from one leadership generation to the next in terms of China’s overall political trajectory and goals, and “the idea post-Mao China decisively broke with Mao is not one which has ever been accepted by Chinese leaders.” The pursuit of an advanced socialism is core to the whole history of the CPC. “Though most Western observers assumed China’s theory of the ‘primary stage of socialism’ was merely an excuse for continued Communist Party rule over a capitalist country, Xi’s policies conform precisely to what the party said it was intending to do all along.”

Nonetheless, Ben recognises that with a renewed emphasis on common prosperity, with the crackdown on corruption and excessive wealth, and with China’s growing voice and influence on the world stage, there are certain parallels between Xi Jinping’s leadership and that of Mao Zedong. “If Xi echoes Mao, it is perhaps because the questions which absorbed the Chairman, from wealth differentials to China’s role as a leader of the decolonisation movement, are as acute today as they were 50 years ago: with the rise of the global South possibly a greater challenge to imperialism even than the Soviet Union was.”

Ben concludes:

When the histories of how the historically brief supremacy of the West came to an end are written, it seems a fair bet that both Mao and Xi will have starring roles.

BOXING Day marks 130 years since the birth of Chairman Mao — a revolutionary whose significance seems all the greater now given the rise of China.

China’s alleged reversion to Maoism under President Xi Jinping is a recurring theme in Western media. A year ago the Guardian was quoting the US-based academic Hu Ping on how Xi was “increasingly reverting to Mao” on domestic policy; outlets from the New York Times to Al Jazeera have referred to Xi as “the new Mao.”

China is certainly celebrating Mao this winter. A new film, When We Were Young, will depict his student years; a TV series, Kunpeng Strikes the Waves, will tell the story of his early activism and discovery of Marxism. The “kun” and “peng” are mythological creatures, or one creature, since the kun, a huge fish, transforms into the peng, a huge bird, whose flight, in the Taoist classic the Zhuangzi, causes storms lasting months and churns up the sea for hundreds of miles around: an indication of how great an impact Mao is deemed to have had on China’s history.

Xi himself has promoted the “back to Mao” narrative. Shortly after his election to a third term leading China’s Communist Party last year, he took the politburo on a high-profile visit to Yan’an, the communist base area after the Long March of the 1930s, from which Mao directed much of the civil war, received Western admirers such as Edgar Snow, and which became a sort of prototype Red China before victory on a national scale in 1949.

In Western depictions, this is inseparable from a wider narrative in which China is becoming more adversarial and threatening.

Where a generation ago it was portrayed as having embraced capitalism, now the leading capitalist countries see it as an enemy its communist character is hyped up.

How real is the shift? Ofcom in 2021 revoked its state broadcaster CGTN’s right to broadcast in Britain, saying it was “ultimately controlled by the Communist Party.” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin noted drily that Britain “knew clearly the nature of our media from CGTN’s first day of reporting in the UK over 10 years ago” and that “China is a communist country led by the Chinese Communist Party” — it was Britain, not China, that had changed its attitude.

A lot of the mainstream narrative about China is frankly nonsense. A politically motivated growth in US sanctions, obediently copied by London and Brussels, is used to claim Xi’s China has turned in on itself and is economically isolated.

But it is under Xi that China has become the biggest trading partner of two-thirds of countries and under Xi that the Belt & Road Initiative has replaced the World Bank as the largest lender of development finance worldwide.

The contributions of Mao Zedong to Marxism-Leninism

The following article by J Sykes, originally published in Fight Back! to coincide with the 130th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth, discusses Mao’s profound contributions to Marxism-Leninism.

The author notes in particular Mao’s writings on philosophy, which explore and develop Marx’s dialectical and historical materialism. “On Practice teaches us that theory must be grounded in practice, in our experience in production, class struggle, and scientific experiment… On Contradiction is a manual on the practical application of dialectical materialism.” Mao’s works on revolutionary strategy, and particularly the theory of protracted people’s war, are “applicable broadly to large, semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries fighting for national liberation and socialism.” Mao’s theory of the mass line remains “the key to the fusion of Marxism with the working class movement.”

Sykes observes that Mao developed his ideas together with his contemporaries, and that we still “have a lot to gain from studying the works of Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Chen Yun, and Deng Xiaoping.” Sykes also makes the crucial point that the CPC today carries forward the legacy of Mao Zedong and that “today, Xi Jinping continues to lead the Chinese people in applying Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions.”

Many of these themes are explored in Sykes’ valuable book, The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism.

December 26, 2023 marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of the great leader and teacher of the Chinese revolution, Mao Zedong. This is an excellent occasion to review Mao’s contributions as one of the principal theorists of the science of revolution, Marxism-Leninism.

Mao Zedong always stressed that it is the masses who make history, but like all Marxists he recognized the importance of leadership in revolutionary change. As the leader of the revolution in China, Mao made innumerable practical contributions both to the Chinese Revolution and to the international communist movement as a whole.

Mao led the Chinese Revolution to victory in establishing new democracy and socialism, thus liberating the Chinese people from feudalism and imperialism. Under Mao’s leadership, the Chinese people carried out land reform, industrialized and modernized their productive forces, and went from a backward, semi-colonial and semi-feudal country dominated by domestic warlords and plundered by foreign imperialists, to a powerful, independent country, where the working class wields state power for the betterment of the people.

After the death of Stalin in 1953 and the rise to power of Khrushchev in the Soviet Union in 1956, Mao led the struggle against modern revisionism in the international communist movement, upholding and defending the revolutionary essence of Marxism-Leninism.

“The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as a dogma, but as a guide to action,” wrote Mao. “Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution.” Indeed, Mao Zedong’s leadership united practical struggle with revolutionary theory, and Mao always emphasized the importance of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice. For Mao, Marxism was always a science, driven by the practical demands of the Chinese revolution, and a weapon of class struggle, to be used to overthrow the old society and build a new world.

The theory of Mao Zedong is likewise universally applicable, and we should study it closely. As Lenin said, Marxism has three main components: philosophy, political economy, and scientific socialism. Mao wrote important texts contributing to our understanding of each of the aspects of Marxism-Leninism, as well as important works on revolutionary strategy.

Xi Jinping Thought can justly be acclaimed as Marxism for the 21st Century

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, together with various institutions under its umbrella, including the Academy of Marxism and the World Socialism Research Centre, organised the 13th World Socialism Forum in Beijing, November 28-30.

Numerous Chinese delegates, including leading members of the Communist Party of China, scholars, researchers and students of Marxism, and others, were joined by scholars and political and social activists from around the world. They included leaders, representatives and members of communist parties and other left-wing parties and organisations from many countries, including Cuba, Vietnam and Laos; Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Turkiye, Lebanon, Syria, Japan and Australia; South Africa, Zambia, Ghana and Kenya; Peru, Argentina, Brazil and the USA; and Russia, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Britain, France, Switzerland, Finland and Cyprus.

Friends of Socialist China was represented by our co-editor Keith Bennett.

Following the main conference in Beijing, the international delegates were divided into two groups which travelled respectively to Shandong and Fujian provinces.

The following is the text of the speech given by Keith at the conference at Fuzhou University. Citing VI Lenin, JV Stalin, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping, Keith touches on the relationship between socialist countries and the struggle for socialism on a world scale and proceeds to analyse how this relates to President Xi Jinping’s concept of a shared future for humanity and especially the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Keith also delivered a similar paper (slightly abbreviated due to time constraints) at the forum in Beijing.

Dear Comrades

First, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Academy of Marxism of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and to Fuzhou University, along with all the organisers and co-organisers, for their kind invitation, excellent arrangements and generous hospitality.

I would also like to join our comrade from the Communist Party of the USA, who spoke a little earlier, in saying how inspiring it is to see so many young students here today and, in particular, so many young women students. Seeing you all brings to my mind what Chairman Mao said to the Chinese students in Moscow in 1957 – that the future of China and the world belongs to you and that our hopes are placed in you.

It is not by chance that we meet here in the People’s Republic of China, the world’s leading socialist country, to discuss the prospects for world socialism.

It is also very significant that we are joined here by representatives of the heroic socialist nations of Vietnam and Laos, and I take this opportunity to again warmly congratulate our Laotian comrades on yesterday’s 48^th anniversary of the victory of their revolution.

In his Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Question, written for the Second Congress of the Communist International on June 5, 1920, Lenin wrote that, “proletarian internationalism demands, first, that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a world-wide scale, and, second, that a nation which is achieving victory over the bourgeoisie should be able and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital.”

In his talk with African friends on August 8, 1963, Comrade Mao Zedong said: “The people who have triumphed in their own revolution should help those still struggling for liberation. This is our internationalist duty.”

In his talk with former President of Tanzania Julius Nyerere on November 23, 1989, Comrade Deng Xiaoping said: “So long as socialism does not collapse in China, it will always hold its ground in the world.”

The international China and Marxism symposium in Istanbul

The Turkish journal Teori ve Politika (Theory and Politics) organised an international symposium on China and Marxism in Istanbul on November 18. Aiming to understand and discuss Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and the Communist Party of China (CPC’s) approach to Marxism, the conference featured a total of 16 papers in four languages.

The opening speeches were delivered by 90-year-old Korkut Boratav, one of Turkey’s most prominent Marxist economists, and Qian Xinyi from the Chinese Embassy in Ankara.

In the first session, Marxism’s Conception of Socialism and China, speakers included Professor Tang Ming from the Central China Normal University and Carlos Martinez from Friends of Socialist China.

Carlos compared China’s reform and opening-up with perestroika and glasnost in the former Soviet Union, highlighting the significant differences between the USSR and China in economic (dramatic and continual improvement in the living standards of the Chinese people), political (not allowing the capitalists to organise as a class) and geostrategic (long period of peace and security) aspects.

Another session featured Azad Barış from HEDEP (the People’s Equality and Democracy Party of Turkey), Yu Weihai, Director of the Central China Normal University, Ben Chacko, Editor of the Morning Star, and Maher Al-Taher from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Yu Weihai highlighted the dramatic change in the international communist and workers movement after the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to a more pluralistic, independent, diverse, and egalitarian reality. Ben Chacko stated that challenging the narrative that China poses a threat to the global order requires demolishing lies about China posing a military or security threat to the West and examining whether China’s rise is that of a new aspiring hegemon wanting to replace the US.

Comrade Maher Al-Taher, who was welcomed with strong feelings and expressions of solidarity, argued that the perception of Marxism as a dogmatic and unchangeable whole is wrong, emphasising the need to deepen Marxism in the specificity of each country and adding that the Chinese experience is a creative example of this.

The following report was originally published in the Morning Star.

On a stormy and rainy weekend in Istanbul last month, an international symposium entitled China and Marxism was organised by the Teori ve Politika (Theory and Politics) magazine. The symposium aimed to understand and discuss Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and the Communist Party of China (CPC’s) approach to Marxism, featuring a total of 16 papers in four languages.

The opening speeches were delivered by 90-year-old Korkut Boratav, one of Turkey’s most prominent Marxist economists, and Qian Xinyi, the Undersecretary of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China. Boratav expressed that the most prevalent form of the relations of production in Chinese society is capitalist, but questioned whether these are dominant relations due to the established forms of public ownership surrounding them.

He stated that the future cannot be guaranteed but emphasised that the bourgeoisie does not hold power in China and their attempts to seize power have been thwarted by the CPC. Qian Xinyi highlighted that Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is a natural outcome of China’s particular conditions.

In the first session, Marxism’s Conception of Socialism and China, speakers including Professor Tang Ming from the Central China Normal University, Carlos Martinez from Friends of Socialist China, Sungur Savran from Revolutionary Marxism, and Metin Kayaoğlu from the Teori ve Politika magazine presented their papers.

Tang Ming divided China’s socialist transformation into two periods: Mao, and Deng and post-Deng periods. Savran emphasised that the biggest challenge that led to the collapse of really existing socialisms in the 20th century was the corruption that developed around the swelling bureaucratic class and that the same challenge is being faced today in China.

Martinez compared China’s reform and opening-up with perestroika and glasnost, highlighting the significant differences between the USSR and China in economic (dramatic and continual improvement in the living standards of the Chinese people), political (not allowing the capitalists to organise as a class) and geostrategic (long period of peace and security) aspects.

Kayaoğlu pointed out different approaches within Marxist literature regarding the relationship between productive forces and relations of production referencing Lenin and Kautsky and made precise that despite the autonomy of political forces, the laws of the production maintain themselves.

In the second session, Economy, Politics, and Society in China, speakers including Fatih Oktay from Özyeğin University, Chen Feng from Shandong University — School of Marxism, Jülide Yazıcı from the Teori ve Politika magazine, and Hu Zongshan from Central China Normal University presented their papers.

Oktay provided a brief and clear presentation on the history of China’s reform, emphasising the need for stronger steps toward a socialist formation to ensure the country’s socialist future. Dr Chen Feng stated that the development of rural areas is one of the most important tasks for China as a modern socialist country. Yazıcı argued that CPC is leading an experiment of transition from capitalism to advanced socialism, that it is inevitable in a transition period that certain capitalistic mechanisms maintain themselves, and that what is important is the CPC’s ideological and political insistence on Marxism. Hu Zongshan diagnosed three challenges ahead of China’s modernisation: the Two Huangs Trap related to national governance, yhe Middle Income Trap, and the Thucydides Trap.

In the third session, China in the World, speakers including Çağdaş Üngör from Marmara University, historian Kamuran Kızlak, historian Vijay Prashad from TriContinental, and Mehmet Yılmazer from the Yol magazine delivered their speeches.

Üngör discussed whether the China model could be exported to the world, attributing the interest in China to the quest that emerged in the world following the 2008 crisis. Kızlak provided an informative presentation on China, the US and Soviet relations during the reform era, concluding with a focus on the CPC’s conception of Confucianism. Prashad, questioning Biden’s rhetoric of “Chinese aggression,” highlighted that Nato forces in the Asia-Pacific are more aggressive in foreign policy, and that China, unlike the United States, has adopted a no-first-use nuclear policy which means that China will not fire a nuclear weapon before anybody else.

Yılmazer emphasised that the US strategy focuses on preventing the strengthening of Russia-Europe relations, hindering the development of Russia-China relations, and limiting China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific.

In the continued session with the same title, speakers including Azad Barış from HEDEP (People’s Equality and Democracy Party), Yu Weihai, Director of the Central China Normal University, Ben Chacko from the Morning Star newspaper and Maher Al-Taher from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, presented their talks.

Azad Barış stated that in the new world order, there are no clear boundaries between ideologies, and China’s success against imperialism strengthens the struggles of oppressed peoples.

Yu Weihai highlighted the dramatic change in the internationalist movement after the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to a more pluralistic, independent, diverse, and egalitarian organisation of international movements. Chacko stated that challenging the narrative that China poses a threat to the global order requires demolishing lies about China posing a military or security threat to the West and examining whether China’s rise is that of a new aspiring hegemon wanting to replace the US.

Maher Al-Taher, welcomed with strong solidarity feelings, argued that the perception of Marxism as a dogmatic and unchangeable whole is wrong, emphasising the need to deepen Marxism in the specificity of each country and that Chinese experience is a creative example of this.

In the closing speech, Elif Nur Aybaş from the Teori ve Politika magazine reminded us that the critique of Eurocentrism in the 20th century provided an opportunity to recognise the political agency of oppressed peoples.

She expressed a preference for considering the Chinese experience as a critique of Eurocentrism from within Marxism, and emphasized that Marxists in other parts of the world have the duty of learning from this experience. Teori ve Poltika announced that the video recordings of the symposium will be made available for viewing in the near future, and the speeches will also be published as a book.

Marxian Ecology, East and West: Joseph Needham and a non-Eurocentric view of the origins of China’s ecological civilisation

We are pleased to reproduce the below article by John Bellamy Foster, editor of the prestigious socialist journal, Monthly Review, who is also professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, concerning the contributions of the late Dr. Joseph Needham (1900-1995) to the understanding of the deep roots of China’s views on an ecological civilisation in particular and the dialectical nature of much of traditional Chinese philosophy and culture more generally. The article is especially important in that, whilst the contribution of Needham, who, at the time of his death was described by Britain’s Independent newspaper as “possibly the greatest scholar since Erasmus”, to the understanding of science and civilisation in China, the title of his monumental, multi-volume, lifelong work, remains known in some relevant academic circles, for example through the work of the Needham Research Institute, and somewhat more generally through a popular biography by Simon Winchester, his lifelong Marxism, and his significant contributions to Marxist theory, have been all but forgotten.

Bellamy Foster begins by posing the question as to why the most developed version of ecological Marxism is to be found today in China and argues:

“The answer is that there is a much more complex dialectical relation between East and West with respect to materialist dialectics and critical ecology than has been generally supposed, one that stretches back over millennia.”

He further explains that:

“Materialist and dialectical conceptions of nature and history do not start with Karl Marx. The roots of ‘organic naturalism’ and ‘scientific humanism,’ according to the great British Marxist scientist and Sinologist Joseph Needham (李約瑟), author of Science and Civilisation in China, can be traced to the sixth to third centuries BCE both in ancient Greece, beginning with the pre-Socratics and extending to the Hellenistic philosophers, and in ancient China, with the emergence of Daoist and Confucian philosophers during the Warring States Period of the Zhou Dynasty.”

In ‘Within the Four Seas: The Dialogue of East and West’, a 1969 book by Needham, the author noted “the absolute alacrity with which ‘dialectical materialism’ was taken up in China during the Chinese Revolution… The Marxian materialist dialectic, with its deep-seated ecological critique rooted in ancient Epicurean materialism, was in Needham’s view, so closely akin to Chinese Daoist and Confucian philosophies as to create a strong acceptance of Marxian philosophical views in China, particularly since China’s own perennial philosophy was in this roundabout way integrated with modern science. If Daoism was a naturalist philosophy, Confucianism was associated, Needham wrote, with ‘a passion for social justice.'”

Bellamy Foster further notes that: “The Needham thesis, as presented here, can also throw light on the spurious proposition, recently put forward by cultural theorist Jeremy Lent, author of The Patterning Instinct, that the Chinese conception of ecological civilisation is derived entirely from China’s own traditional philosophy, rather than being influenced by Marxism. Lent’s argument fails to acknowledge that ecological civilisation as a critical category was first introduced by Marxist environmentalists in the Soviet Union in its closing decades, and immediately adopted by Chinese thinkers, who were to develop it more fully.”

He acknowledges that, “of course, the Needham thesis may seem obscure at first from the usual standpoint of the Western left”, one reason being a “deep Eurocentrism characteristic of contemporary Marxism in the West, associated with the systematic downplaying of colonialism and imperialism.”

But, also citing the work of the late Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin, Bellamy Foster quotes Needham as explaining that “the basic fallacy of Europocentrism is therefore the tacit assumption that because modern science and technology, which grew up indeed in post-Renaissance Europe, are universal, everything else European is universal also.” However, Bellamy Foster continues:

“Marxist thought and socialism in general have always been radically opposed to Eurocentrism, understood as the ideology of Western colonialism. This is as true of Marx and Frederick Engels, particularly in their later years, as it was of V.I. Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. In the twentieth century, moreover, the impetus for revolution shifted to the Global South and its struggle against imperialism, generating in the process new Marxist analyses in the works of figures as distinct as Mao Zedong, Amílcar Cabral, and Che Guevara, all of whom insisted on the need for a world revolution.”

Whilst it is possible to point to traces of European ethnocentrism in some of Marx’s early work, Bellamy Foster notes that, by the late 1850s, he had “become increasingly focused on the critique of colonialism, actively supporting anti-colonial rebellions, and progressively more concerned with analysing the material and cultural conditions of non-Western societies.” This was “further facilitated by the ‘revolution in ethnological time’ with the discovery of prehistory and the rise of anthropological studies, occurring in tandem with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.” In this regard, Bellamy Foster draws a line of demarcation with the recent influential work, ‘Marx in the Anthropocene‘ by the Japanese Marxist Kohei Saito.

Bellamy Foster draws out the connection between Needham’s pioneering work and Xi Jinping’s thoughts on this issue, citing Chinese scholar Huang Chengliang explaining that “the theoretical origins of Xi Jinping’s thought on Ecological Civilisation can be traced to five sources: (1) Marxist philosophy, integrating “the three fundamental theories of ‘dialectics of history, dialectical materialism and dialectics of nature’”; (2) traditional Chinese ecological wisdom on “[human]-nature unity and the law of nature”; (3) the actual historical context of ecological governance in China in response to the ecological crisis; (4) struggles to develop a progressive and ecological model of sustainable development; and (5) the articulation of ecological civilisation as the governing principle of the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

He concludes:

“In Xi’s analysis, the traditional Chinese emphasis on the harmony of humanity and nature, or the view that ‘the human and heaven are united in one,’ is wedded to Marxian ecological views with a seamlessness that can only be explained in terms of Needham’s thesis of the correlative development of organic materialism in both the East and West, with Marxism as the connecting link. From this perspective, the Chinese notion of ecological civilisation, due to its overall theoretical coherence and coupled with China’s rise in general, is likely to play an increasingly prominent role in the development of ecological Marxism worldwide. As Needham wrote: ‘China has in her time learnt much from the rest of the world; now perhaps it is time for the nations and the continents to learn again from her.’”

This article, first published in Monthly Review, is based on a talk presented online to the School of Marxism, Shandong University, in Jinan, in March 2023 and was revised and expanded from an original published version, printed in International Critical Thought, a journal of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Ecological materialism, of which ecological Marxism is the most developed version, is often seen as having its origins exclusively within Western thought. But if that is so, how do we explain the fact that ecological Marxism has been embraced as readily (or indeed, more readily) in the East as in the West, leaping over cultural, historical, and linguistic barriers and leading to the current concept of ecological civilization in China? The answer is that there is a much more complex dialectical relation between East and West with respect to materialist dialectics and critical ecology than has been generally supposed, one that stretches back over millennia.

Materialist and dialectical conceptions of nature and history do not start with Karl Marx. The roots of “organic naturalism” and “scientific humanism,” according to the great British Marxist scientist and Sinologist Joseph Needham (李約瑟), author of Science and Civilization in China, can be traced to the sixth to third centuries BCE both in ancient Greece, beginning with the pre-Socratics and extending to the Hellenistic philosophers, and in ancient China, with the emergence of Daoist and Confucian philosophers during the Warring States Period of the Zhou Dynasty.¹ As Samir Amin indicated in his Eurocentrism, the “philosophy of nature [as opposed to metaphysics] is essentially materialist” and constituted a “key breakthrough” in tributary modes of production, both East and West, beginning in the fifth century BCE.²

In Within the Four Seas: The Dialogue of East and West in 1969, Needham noted the absolute alacrity with which “dialectical materialism” was taken up in China during the Chinese Revolution and how this was treated as a great mystery in the West. Nevertheless, the sense of mystery, he contended, did not extend in the same way to the East itself. He wrote: “I can almost imagine Chinese scholars,” confronted with Marxian materialist dialectics, “saying to themselves ‘How astonishing: this is very like our own philosophia perennis integrated with modern science at last come home to us.’”³ The Marxian materialist dialectic, with its deep-seated ecological critique rooted in ancient Epicurean materialism, was in Needham’s view, so closely akin to Chinese Daoist and Confucian philosophies as to create a strong acceptance of Marxian philosophical views in China, particularly since China’s own perennial philosophy was in this roundabout way integrated with modern science. If Daoism was a naturalist philosophy, Confucianism was associated, Needham wrote, with “a passion for social justice.”⁴

The Needham convergence thesis—or simply the Needham thesis, as I am calling it here—was thus that Marxist materialist dialectics had a special affinity with Chinese organic naturalism as represented especially by Daoism, which was similar to the ancient Epicureanism that lay at the foundations of Marx’s own materialist conception of nature. Like other Marxist scientists and cultural figures associated with what has been called the “second foundation of Marxism,” centered in Britain in the mid-twentieth century, Needham saw Epicureanism as providing many of the initial theoretical principles on which Marxism, as a critical-materialist philosophy, was based.⁵ It was the similar evolution of organic materialism East and West—but which, in the case of Marxism, was integrated with modern science—that explained dialectical materialism’s profound impact in China.⁶