Marxism Archives - Friends of Socialist China

From Yan’an to the Fifth Plenum: the CPC’s commitment to self-reform

In the following article, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez examines the Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which adopted a resolution on persevering with full and rigorous Party self-governance.

Starting from Mao Zedong’s 1945 conversation with Huang Yanpei on how to escape the historical cycle of rise and fall, Carlos traces the problem of bureaucratism and privilege in socialist states from Lenin’s warnings to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and shows how the CPC’s commitment to self-reform – together with the people’s oversight of government and the mass line – has become a permanent feature of its governance and a profound contribution to the theory and practice of Marxist party building.

This is an expanded version of an article written for CGTN, which appeared on 31 October.

In July 1945, the educator Huang Yanpei visited Yan’an and put a question to Mao Zedong. Throughout Chinese history, he observed, dynasties had emerged only to decay over time – their rulers growing complacent, their bureaucracies bloated, their people alienated. Could the Communists escape this historical cycle? Mao replied that they had found a new path: that of people’s democracy, supervision and accountability. “Only when the people are allowed to supervise the government will the government not slacken”.

Eighty-one years later, the same question was the central theme of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which closed in Beijing on 29 October. The plenum adopted a resolution on persevering with full and rigorous Party self-governance, its communiqué stating that the Party “has found two answers to the question of how to escape the historical cycle of rise and fall”: “the people’s oversight over government and the Party’s self-reform”.

A longstanding challenge

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels famously wrote in the Communist Manifesto that communists “have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole”. Maintaining that unity of interests in practice, over the course of more than a century of socialist governance, has thrown up numerous challenges. How can a ruling communist party prevent the emergence of bureaucratism, corruption and privilege; how can it stay in touch with the masses? It is noteworthy that the plenum communiqué consciously echoes the founders of scientific socialism: “The Party tolerates no corruption, as it has no special interests of its own besides the interests of the working class and the greatest possible majority of the people.”

As early as 1919, just two years after the October Revolution, Lenin was already warning that the new Soviet state faced a serious danger: that reactionary elements were “assuming the colouring of communists and, to succeed better in their careers, procuring membership cards of the Russian Communist Party”. Such people quite clearly had interests separate and apart from those of the working people, namely, increasing their personal wealth and advancing their careers. Lenin’s writings in the final years of his life return again and again to the problem of bureaucracy and to the gap opening up between the party and the masses. In a speech on 30 December 1920 – somewhat ironically, a sharp rebuttal of ideas advanced by Trotsky and Bukharin – he famously said that “ours is a workers’ state with a bureaucratic twist to it”, sometimes translated as “a workers’ state with bureaucratic deformations”.

And indeed, in the last decades of the Soviet Union’s existence, a privileged layer of officials did emerge; there was a certain fusion of wealth and power; and the masses did become alienated. Things reached a point, as Xi Jinping has observed, where the Communist Party’s 19 million members did little to resist the dissolution of their party and state in 1991.

Self-reform in theory and practice

Since the start of the new era in 2012, the CPC has placed the notion of self-reform (a more literal translation is “self-revolution”) at the centre of its work. It holds that a ruling party must subject itself to continuous scrutiny, rectification and renewal, because no external force can do the job for it.

CPC Central Committee sums up experience, sets new tasks and prepares for the 21st Congress

The 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held its fifth plenary session in Beijing from October 26 to 29, 2026.

A detailed communique setting out the work conducted by the plenum was released on its conclusion. Among its key points are:

The Central Committee heard and discussed a report on the work of the Political Bureau, presented by Xi Jinping on behalf of the Political Bureau. They also deliberated and adopted the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Certain Major Issues concerning Persevering with Full and Rigorous Party Self-Governance. Xi Jinping delivered explanatory remarks on the draft Resolution.
Looking back on the Party’s journey since its founding, the Central Committee pointed out at the session that the key to the success of the Communist Party of China in winning one victory after another lies in its pursuit of the high ideal of communism, its dedication to achieving lasting greatness for the Chinese nation, and its commitment to seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation. During each historical period, the Party has attached great importance to its self-governance, had the courage to uphold truth and correct errors, and grown ever stronger by relying on its own efforts and the support of the people to resolve its own problems, ultimately emerging as the strong leadership core in the cause of the Party and the people… During this course, the Party has found two answers to the question of how to escape the historical cycle of rise and fall: the people’s oversight over government and the Party’s self-reform. These are the unique discoveries of the Communist Party of China and will forever stand out in the history of Marxist parties.
Participants at the session gave a highly positive assessment of the great achievements our Party has made in exercising full and rigorous self-governance in the new era. It was unanimously agreed that the Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core demonstrated tremendous political courage and a strong sense of responsibility in confronting the grave situation marked by weak, hollow, and watered-down Party leadership, lax, superficial, and ineffective self-supervision and self-governance, as well as some startling problems within the Party. Staying firmly committed to full and rigorous Party self-governance, the Central Committee introduced the most stringent measures and dedicated continuous efforts to tackle all these prominent issues. As a result, the problem of lax and weak self-supervision and self-governance has been addressed at the root, unhealthy tendencies that had long gone unchecked have been curbed, deep-seated problems that had plagued the Party for years have been remedied, and serious dangers hidden within the Party, the state, and the military have been removed. The Party has thus grown stronger through revolutionary tempering. The endeavors to advance full and rigorous governance over the Party in the new era have broken new ground in the self-reform of our century-old Party and brought about historic achievements and transformations in the cause of the Party and the country. The Party and the people have thus seized the historic initiative in building a great party and a great country.
It was pointed out that as the Party endeavours to supervise, govern, develop, and strengthen itself in the new era, the Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has put forward a series of new ideas, new thinking, and new strategies in response to the major questions of our times — what kind of long-term governing Marxist party we should build and how we should build it, thereby giving birth to Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building. This thought has enriched and developed Marxist theory on party building, and it represents a major achievement in advancing the Party’s theoretical innovation through the integration of the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and its fine traditional culture. It stands as a crystallisation of the practical experience and collective wisdom of the Party and the people.
It was stressed that many favourable conditions are now in place for advancing full and rigorous Party self-governance, while we are also facing many new circumstances and new issues in this endeavour. Profound changes in global, national, and Party conditions have made the Party’s tasks of uniting and leading the people in safeguarding China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests, of uniting and leading the people in promoting reform and development and maintaining social harmony and stability, and of maintaining its advanced nature and integrity even more arduous. All this poses formidable challenges to the Party’s governance and leadership capacity, the quality of its membership, and its resistance against corruption and moral decline under the new circumstances.
It was stated that in persevering with full and rigorous Party self-governance, we must uphold Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development, fully implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, and thoroughly study and apply Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building… [We must] maintain the Party’s vanguard nature and uphold the overall leadership of the Party and the centralised, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee. We must focus on enhancing the Party’s capacity for long-term governance, preserving its advanced nature and integrity, and maintaining its close bond with the people.
In doing so, we will see that the Party always remains a vibrant Marxist governing party that stays at the forefront of the times, enjoys the wholehearted support of the people, and is able to withstand all tests, and that it always remains the strong leadership core of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
We must, therefore, encourage all Party members and officials to uphold the Party’s nature and purpose, raise Party consciousness, have a better understanding of their identity as Party members and the Party’s vanguard nature, and maintain a lifelong commitment to cultivating stronger Party spirit. We must also encourage them to devote efforts to strengthening ideals and convictions, forging strong loyalty to the Party, fostering deep affection for the people, always seeking truth from facts, building moral character, and preserving honesty and integrity. These efforts will help them to be loyal, upright, and responsible and always preserve the true political character of Communists.
It was noted that democratic centralism is the Party’s fundamental organisational principle and leadership system, and its implementation is therefore an inherent requirement for exercising full and rigorous Party self-governance. We must improve and implement the institutions of democratic centralism, giving full play to intraparty democracy while effectively practising correct centralism.
It was noted that taking integrated steps to ensure that officials do not have the audacity, opportunity, or desire to commit corruption is both an important strategy for full and rigorous Party self-governance and a fundamental guideline for our fight against corruption. The Party tolerates no corruption, as it has no special interests of its own besides the interests of the working class and the greatest possible majority of the people.
In an effort to ensure security while pursuing development, we will press ahead with initiatives to see that public services are inclusive, meet essential needs, and provide a cushion for the people most in need, and deliver better results in our work related to workplace safety, disaster prevention, mitigation, and relief, food and drug safety, as well as social stability.
The Central Committee decided at the session that the Party will convene its 21st National Congress in Beijing in the second half of 2027 and stated that this congress, which is to be held at a critical stage for basically realising socialist modernisation and on the new journey toward the Second Centenary Goal, will be a highly important meeting and an event of great political significance for both the Party and the country.

A manifesto, a propaganda force, a seeding-machine: the Long March at 90

In the following article, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez marks the 90th anniversary of the conclusion of the Red Army’s Long March, taking as his starting point Mao Zedong’s description of the march as “a manifesto… a propaganda force… a seeding-machine”.

Carlos traces the road to the Long March – from the Kuomintang’s betrayal of the First United Front and the 1927 Shanghai massacre to the reorientation towards the countryside and the five encirclement campaigns against the Jiangxi Soviet – and recounts the march itself, including the crossings of the Jinsha and Dadu rivers and the seizure of the Luding Bridge. He emphasises that the Long March was also a landmark in the development of Chinese Marxism: the Zunyi Conference brought Mao to the core of decision-making, and the march created a political distance from the Comintern representatives’ dogmatic interpretation of Marxism, laying the deepest roots of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The article concludes that each generation has its own Long March – today walked in the victory over extreme poverty, the drive for scientific and technological self-reliance, and the building of an ecological civilisation – and that, for the Global South, the march remains the great demonstration that a people organised around a clear political project can defeat apparently overwhelming force.

Xi Jinping made a similar point in his speech marking the anniversary on October 22, stressing that “the road of the Long March continues to extend”.

China isn’t imperialist – here’s the proof

Is China simply another imperialist power, differing from the US only in degree? It’s a claim heard increasingly often on the left, from the Communist Party of Greece to Jacobin. This video sets out why that claim doesn’t survive scrutiny.

Working from Lenin’s classical definition of imperialism, Carlos Martinez examines whether China exhibits the super-exploitation of foreign labour that has always been imperialism’s economic core – and finds the opposite: China has been on the receiving end of value extraction by Western capital, not a source of it. The video looks at the real record of the Belt and Road Initiative against the “debt trap” accusation, at China’s strikingly peaceful military record since 1949, and at whether the underlying class dynamics of Chinese society could ever produce an imperialist foreign policy. And it closes by asking what China’s promotion of a multipolar world order means for the long-term prospects of overcoming imperialism altogether.

The video is based on Carlos’s chapter in the newly-released book China’s Foreign Policy and the Making of a Multipolar World, co-edited by Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez, available now from Praxis Press.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tings Chak: Fifty years after Mao – a legacy for changing the current of history

The following article by Tings Chak, Asia co-coordinator of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and an editor of Wenhua Zongheng: A Journal of Contemporary Chinese Thought, marks fifty years since the death of Mao Zedong by asking why young Chinese people are returning to him.

She begins with a television drama made for the 130th anniversary of Mao’s birth, which set out to show not a bronze statue but “a young man their own age trying to figure things out” – and with the fact that Mao’s Selected Works have repeatedly topped the borrowing list at Tsinghua University library. What draws these readers, she argues, is not nostalgia but political method: how to identify the contradictions within a situation, distinguish its surface appearance from its underlying movement, and locate individual experience within wider social forces.

Tings traces that method from “no investigation, no right to speak” through the Communist Party’s 2023 investigation and research campaign to the targeted poverty alleviation drive, in which 800,000 cadres were dispatched to 128,000 villages. She then turns to On Protracted War, written when defeat at Japan’s hands seemed to many the only sober conclusion, and to its relevance for a global left that moves too easily between the conviction that US imperialism is immovable and the declaration that an anti-imperialist multipolarity has already arrived.

Tings developed several of these themes in her contribution to our recent webinar marking the 50th anniversary, organised jointly with the International Manifesto Group, a report of which can be read here. The full text of our co-editor Keith Bennett’s closing remarks to the same webinar is available here.

Michael Roberts: WAPE 2026 – Adam Smith, imperialism and financialisation

The following report by the Marxist economist Michael Roberts covers the 19th Congress of the World Association of Political Economy (WAPE), held at the University of Greenwich in London – a Chinese-initiated academic body that brings together Marxist economists from across the world.

This year’s theme was Adam Smith, 250 years after the publication of The Wealth of Nations. WAPE chair Cheng Enfu of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences argued that Smith has been badly misrepresented by the free-marketeers who claim him: he explained modern economies not through markets alone but through the social division of labour, moral norms and the role of the state. Several papers were devoted to rescuing Smith from neoliberalism. But as Cheng also noted, Smith’s labour theory of value was contradictory – he held that labour creates value while also reverting to a theory based on “factors of production”, and it is the latter that modern mainstream economics kept and the former that it discarded.

Roberts’s own paper, on imperialist exploitation, concludes that under imperialism the poor countries of the world will never close the gap with the Global North – with one exception. On present trends, no BRICS country will reach the current high-income level within twenty years except China, which he projects will get there by 2041 and match the projected rich-country level by 2046. His explanation is that value is persistently transferred from South to North, and that profitability across the Global South is falling faster than productivity is rising, choking off investment. China is the exception because its investment growth is less determined by profitability than that of any other major Global South economy – which is to say, because it is a socialist country with a planned core.

Roberts was also presented with a WAPE award for his significant contribution to Marxian economics.

Amy Yang: Paying tribute to the red flag of the hammer and sickle by learning from the Long March

The following essay by the writer Amy Yang, who publishes on China and socialism on Substack, was written to mark the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. Taking the red flag of the hammer and sickle – its yellow standing for the faith of workers and peasants in a communist future, its red honouring the more than 3.7 million martyrs who died between 1921 and 1949 – as her starting point, Yang argues that the party is best understood through the enduring lessons of the Long March.

She highlights two of these lessons. The first is that Marxism is a scientific method rather than a fixed dogma, and that no single development path suits every country: the early communist movement failed when the Comintern imposed Soviet, city-first strategies on a society that was overwhelmingly based in the countryside. It was Mao Zedong’s strategy – restored at the Zunyi Conference of 1935 – that corrected the error.

The second is that popular support decides victory: the poorly armed Red Army prevailed because it treated ordinary people, and especially China’s ethnic minorities, with discipline and respect.

Yang carries both lessons forward – to China’s reform and opening up, and to its insistence on non-interference and the people’s well-being as the measure of global governance. Each generation, she concludes, faces its own Long March.

A reply to Greg Godels on China’s road to socialism

Greg Godels has published a thoughtful response in ML Today to Carlos Martinez’s recent reply to Jacobin on China and exploitation. Godels argues that the exploitation of the many by the few remains a central driving force of the Chinese economy, and questions whether China’s market reforms and its billionaire class can be squared with a socialist trajectory.

In the article below, Carlos argues that the decisive Marxist question is not simply whether wage labour and surplus value exist, but which class holds state power and in whose interest the economic surplus is directed. On that test – the class nature of the state – China’s billionaires answer to the state rather than command it; its reforms were a conscious strategy to develop the productive forces and build the material basis for a more advanced socialism; and China provably does not participate in imperialist super-exploitation.

Greg Godels has written a considered response in ML Today to my recent reply to Jacobin on China and exploitation. Unlike much of what passes for left commentary on China, Godels writes as a comrade, not a Cold Warrior. He admires the Chinese revolution, insists that China’s fate must be decided by the Chinese people, and closes by affirming that, whatever its difficulties, “it is China’s road”. On all of that we agree. Where we part company is over a question that Godels, for all his fidelity to the classics of Marxism, never quite poses: which class holds state power?

State and revolution

Godels’s central charge is that the debate over China too rarely invokes “the exploitation of the many by the few”, and that when I ask for exploitation to be “contextualised”, I am really relativising and rationalising it. He is right that exploitation belongs at the centre of any Marxist analysis. But there is a second important category that is missing from his account entirely: the class nature of the state.

For Marx and Lenin alike, the question of whether a society is advancing towards socialism was never settled simply by cataloguing the presence or absence of wage labour and surplus value at the point of production. It was settled principally by asking which class holds power, and in whose interest the state directs the economic surplus. This is the whole point of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and of Lenin’s insistence, throughout the period of the New Economic Policy, that market mechanisms within a workers’ state are something categorically different from capitalism under a bourgeois state.

Under the NEP in the Soviet state, private capital, wage labour, rich peasants and market relations all flourished. Lenin did not conclude that the October Revolution had thereby been cancelled. He concluded that the proletarian state would make use of capitalist forms, on its own terms and under its own control, in order to build the material foundations of socialism.

Interview: Fighting spirit has allowed the CPC to survive and adapt over a century

The following is the full text of an interview given by Carlos Martinez, co-editor of Friends of Socialist China, to the Global Times, marking the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC). An abridged version was published by the Global Times on 12 July 2026 as part of a special series of interviews with international scholars reflecting on the party’s century-long journey.

In the interview, conducted by GT reporter Xia Wenxin, Carlos explores the meaning of the CPC’s “fighting spirit”, or “spirit of struggle” – a concept he argues is routinely misread in the West as blind confrontation or factional intrigue, but which in fact flows directly from the dialectical core of Marxism. Struggle, in this sense, is not a mood but a method: the recognition that development happens through contradiction, and that a serious revolutionary party must identify the principal contradiction of each period and mobilise the masses to resolve it.

Tracing this thread from Mao Zedong’s 1945 parable of the Foolish Old Man who removed the mountains through to the present day, Carlos discusses how the same method has allowed the party to survive and adapt across a century that saw so many other revolutionary projects defeated. He examines the CPC’s practice of self-revolution and its unrelenting campaign against corruption; the targeted poverty alleviation drive that lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty; and the fundamental difference between the Chinese dialectical understanding of struggle as productive and the Western view of conflict as terminal.

Finally, he considers how this fighting spirit will be tested on the new battlefields of the 15th Five-Year Plan – high-tech self-reliance under conditions of US containment, the green transition, and the assorted domestic challenges on the road to the Second Centenary Goal of 2049. As he concludes, “on the record of the last 105 years, I would not bet against the CPC and the Chinese people surmounting these new challenges.”

CPC meets Spanish communists

On June 24, Ma Hui, Vice-minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee (IDCPC) met in Beijing with a visiting delegation headed by Jose Luis Centella, President of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE).

The Spanish comrades were visiting China to attend the 2026 Think Tank Forum on National Governance in Developing Countries.

Ma briefed the guests on Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building, noting that it originates from the scientific theory of Marxism, takes root in the fine traditional Chinese culture, and has been nurtured by the great practice of exercising comprehensive and strict governance over the Party in the new era. It has made significant original contributions to the development of the Marxist theory of party building, he added.

Centella said that the Communist Party of Spain stands ready to learn from the CPC’s experience in party governance and discipline, further improve its own theoretical guidance of Marxism and ideological and organisational building, and better explore a development path suited to its national conditions.

What defines the CPC’s 105-year success? – a CGTN Dialogue

The following is a discussion from CGTN’s Dialogue programme marking the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. Broadcast in the wake of Xi Jinping’s anniversary speech – in which he hailed the Party’s 105-year history as the “most magnificent epic” of the Chinese nation – it brings together Xia Lu, associate professor at the School of CPC History and Party Building at Renmin University of China; Carlos Martinez, co-editor of Friends of Socialist China; and Radhika Desai, convenor of the International Manifesto Group.

The panel discusses how to evaluate the CPC’s achievements and governing logic; the role of Marxism – seeking truth from facts, the mass line, and the Party’s capacity for self-renewal – in explaining its longevity and legitimacy; and the distinctiveness of Chinese modernisation. Radhika Desai argues that the Chinese revolution, following the Bolshevik revolution, set humanity on a path to socialism, and that amid a declining capitalism China has become an “ocean of stability”. Carlos Martinez stresses that China’s is a modernisation achieved without colonialism, slavery or war – shattering the Eurocentric assumption that to modernise is to Westernise. Xia Lu reads the Party’s six outstanding qualities through the lens of dialectical and historical materialism, and emphasises the mass line and the Party’s vigilance against detachment from the people.

Carlos Martinez: What would Rajani Palme Dutt have made of contemporary China?

The following is the text of a lecture delivered by Carlos Martinez, author of The East is Still Red: Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century and a co-editor of Friends of Socialist China, marking the 130th anniversary of the birth of Rajani Palme Dutt – theoretician, organiser and, for half a century, one of the foremost Marxist minds in the British movement.

Taking as its starting point Palme Dutt’s 1967 pamphlet Whither China?, written at the height of the Sino-Soviet split and a year into the Cultural Revolution, the lecture asks what this towering figure of British Marxism – who died in 1974 – would have made of the People’s Republic today. Carlos tests Palme Dutt’s critique against the verdict of history: on the Cultural Revolution, on the Theory of the Three Worlds, and on the rival conceptions of peaceful coexistence – finding some of it vindicated, and some of it a product of a European Marxism that struggled to fully grasp a peasant-driven revolution.

Confronted with two stubborn facts – that the People’s Republic still exists while the Soviet Union does not – Palme Dutt, who even in 1967 refused to write China out of the socialist camp, would, Carlos argues, have recognised China as the largest and most developed socialist society in history. He would have recognised that in China it is the state that disciplines capital, not the other way round. The lecture closes with a call to carry forward Palme Dutt’s enduring principle: solidarity with a socialist country under imperialist siege, “irrespective of any differences”.

105 years of the Communist Party of China – true to its principles, firm in its course

The 1st of July 2026, marks the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. To mark the occasion, we are pleased to publish this reflection by Oliver Vargas, a British-Bolivian current affairs commentator working for CGTN in Beijing, written from Yan’an – the revolutionary base where the Long March ended and where the Party made its headquarters through the most decisive years of war and revolution.

Vargas argues that the revolutionary sites of Yan’an are best understood as global heritage sites of the international workers’ movement, whose lessons belong to the peoples of Latin America and the wider Global South. He locates the secret of the Party’s enduring vitality in its tradition of rigorous self-governance and self-reform – a habit written into its DNA since 1921 and raised by Xi Jinping into a systematic doctrine – bound together with its unbroken bond with the people.

China’s success vindicates the project of the global left

The video below is an interview of Carlos Martinez by Jason Smith, for CGTN’s The Bridge to China podcast. Recorded in the lead-up to the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, the wide-ranging conversation covers the nature of China’s economic system, the achievements of Chinese socialism, the state of the left in the West, and the transition to a multipolar world.

Carlos argues that China is best understood on its own terms, as socialism with Chinese characteristics: a fundamentally socialist system with a significant market component, in which the state holds the commanding heights – banking, energy, telecommunications, rail and the top levels of industry – and directs investment through national planning. The presence of markets, billionaires or inequality does not make a country capitalist; what matters is which class holds power, and the ultimate measure is the living standards of ordinary working people.

On that measure, China stands apart: it is the country that has eliminated extreme poverty, effectively ended homelessness, and pursued common prosperity, a world-leading renewable energy build-out and the saving of lives during the Covid pandemic. If China is socialist and succeeding, Carlos contends, that vindicates the project of the global left – which is precisely why the West’s new cold war is aimed at preventing a socialist alternative from succeeding.

The interview surveys the scale of China’s transformation – some 800 million people lifted out of poverty, the “seven guarantees” that underpin poverty alleviation, life expectancy rising from around 35 at liberation to over 79 today, near-universal mortgage-free home ownership, and the most extensive public infrastructure in the world. Comparing China with India – liberated within two years of one another, from similar starting points – Carlos draws out what a revolution and Communist Party-led planning have made possible: sovereign development free of IMF discipline, coherent five-year plans, and the capacity for mass mobilisation, exemplified by the three million cadres deployed in the poverty alleviation campaign.

Turning to the West, Carlos describes the long retreat of the left under the neoliberal counter-revolution – de-industrialisation, the rise of the precariat, and a social peace bought with the super-profits of imperialism that are now drying up. He points to the crisis of confidence deepened by Gaza and to the Corbyn moment as signs that material reality is shifting, and to a growing openness to China – from “Chinamaxxing” and the RedNote migration to the surge in inbound tourism. The dogmatism that still leads much of the Western left to withhold recognition of China’s decidedly socialist achievements, he argues, plays into a US grand strategy whose core is the encirclement and containment of China.

The lesson for developed and developing countries alike, Carlos concludes, is that public ownership is not inefficient but the precondition for any serious industrial policy, that long-term planning beats short-term shareholder value, and that the West must come to terms with an inevitably multipolar world – starting, at a minimum, with adherence to the United Nations Charter.

Storming the heavens – a master class in revolution

The following is a series of five articles, originally published in the Morning Star, and written by Jenny Clegg to introduce her recently published book, ‘Storming the Heavens: Peasants and Revolution in China, 1925-1949 Viewed Through a Marxist Lens’.

Introducing the key themes of the book, which began life as her PhD thesis some decades previously, Jenny notes that: “The first step was to establish the condition of the peasants and the nature of their exploitation so as to identify their revolutionary character. This meant challenging the Western misconception of China as a society of owner-cultivators, farming small parcels of land. In the absence of the large landed estates of European feudalism, it was assumed that traditional China had a peculiar Oriental or Asiatic structure under a centralised bureaucratic state.

“Chinese Marxists, Chen Boda and Chen Hanseng, however, both put the landlord system at the centre as the determining factor in China’s economic stagnation and the peasants’ acute impoverishment. Whilst Chen Hanseng’s focus was on the fusion of the political and economic power of the landlords at the base of society, highlighting the grassroots nature of a revolutionary transformation, Chen Boda’s analysis of monopoly rent highlighted the concentration of land in the hands of a minority, the landlords and rich peasants, with the increasing dispossession and land hunger of the majority of rural households. In so doing, he identified the main force for revolution as the poor and middle peasant majority.”

She goes on to argue that the key question was therefore, given the small size of China’s working class, how was the Communist Party of China (CPC), as a proletarian party, able to lead the revolution?

Here she sees her argument as confronting the misconceptions of both Stalin and Trotsky who interpreted China’s peasant struggle along the lines of the Russian and European model where a rural bourgeoisie and proletariat emerged to challenge feudal power, when rather, as shown by Chen Boda, it was land hunger — subsistence — that drove the rural majority to revolution.

In her second article, Jenny tackles the inter-related questions of was China feudal and what made the peasants revolutionary.

Having noted the work of contemporary Western scholars such as RH Tawney, who saw a way out through reforms, she argues:

“To support the argument of revolution over reform, it was first necessary to establish the centrality of the landlord-peasant relationship with feudal relations as the major constraint of growth. This would then demonstrate the centrality of the peasant movement as the main force in China’s democratic revolution, in a grassroots transformation of Chinese society through radical land reform to completely eradicate feudal relations.

“The problem of the reform approach lies in the failure to identity those power structures and interests hostile to its agenda for change and at the same time to find allies capable of driving reforms forward.”

Jenny further tackles the twin issues of why was capitalism unable to develop in China as it had in Europe and why did peasant rebellions tend to end in failure:

“The answer lies in the way Chinese feudalism was shaped by Asiatic characteristics: while landlords served as mediators between the centralised bureaucratic state and the patriarchal villages, these features served equally to maintain their privileged position from above and below…

“In China then, unlike Europe, where commerce confronted landed interests from the cities, economic power accumulated in the hands of a trinity of urban-based landlord-merchant-officials and the development of market relations instead of releasing peasant independence led to increasing rural impoverishment. A parasitic relationship between town and country suffocated the ‘sprouts of capitalism’ ensnaring a potentially entrepreneurial rich peasantry in feudal relations.

“Imperialism accelerated commercialisation but this only strengthened the landlord economy, while in turn the imperialist powers, to secure the drain of the surplus to the world capitalist core, depended on the landlords both to extract the surplus by extra-economic means and to control the countryside.”

Through trial and error, she concludes, “the CPC came to grasp [that] the forces of revolutionary change were not a rising petty bourgeoise but the impoverished mass of poor and middle peasants, more interested in the confiscation of landlords’ land to meet their needs than in the preservation of private property.”

In her third article, Jenny looks at debates on the role of peasants in revolution starting with Russian revolutionary leader VI Lenin.

She explains that Lenin saw the peasants, as a whole, as a force against landlordism but with the bourgeoisie and proletariat struggling for leadership of the movement. The role of the vanguard proletarian party was then to mobilise the poor peasants so as to pave the way to socialism. For the neo-narodniks on the other hand it was the traditional village organisation, the mir, that provided the basis for a Russian-style socialism, and continues:

“In China, the question of how to build a Communist Party in a country predominantly of peasants with a weak working-class base, is clearly a challenging one to answer. Was Mao just a peasant leader, and the CPC a populist party which rode to power on a wave of peasant unrest, as many in the West, both Sinologists and Marxists, have argued?”

On the contrary: “Mao, following Lenin, was to argue in his early ‘Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society’ (1926) that the peasants were the largest ally of the proletariat. Observing the peasants organising in Hunan just months later, he was the first to grasp the significance of peasant power: although at first their demands for rent reductions were not that radical, he saw, as they paraded the landlords up and down in dunces’ caps, a bold challenge to the authority of landlord power.”

Chinese and Cuban communists hold joint theoretical seminar

The Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) held their seventh theory seminar on December 4 in Beijing, focusing on the practice and experience in promoting socialist modernisation through scientific development planning.

Li Shulei, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, and Gladys Martínez Verdecia, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the PCC and First Secretary of the Artemisa Provincial Party Committee, attended and delivered keynote speeches.

Li noted that this year marks the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Cuba, and that the top leaders of the two parties and countries have exchanged congratulatory messages on this occasion and held two meetings this year, engaging in in-depth discussions on the relations between the two parties and countries.

“These interactions have provided strategic guidance for further strengthening the ironclad friendship and building an even closer China-Cuba community with a shared future.”

He also stressed the need to develop medium- and long-term strategic plans for socio-economic development. In this regard, he explained China’s experience in drawing up five-year plans, which, he said, have a broad basis of scientific development planning.

Gladys Martínez highlighted the role of these exchanges as a mechanism to strengthen bilateral cooperation in the construction of a community of shared future. She pointed out that the meetings allow participants to address, from a Marxist approach, the current challenges of socialism and propose concrete solutions. She further affirmed that the alliance between the two countries reinforces the validity of socialism as a model of development for both peoples.

Martínez denounced the unprecedented tightening of the US economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba, as well as the arbitrary inclusion of the island in the list of countries sponsoring terrorism. In this regard, she thanked China for its constant denunciation of this siege and expressed the island’s gratitude for the support of the Chinese government and people in key sectors such as agri-food, energy and cybersecurity. She further pointed out that both parties constitute an example of solidarity and cooperation in the construction of socialism.

The Cuban delegation began its China visit in the province of Hunan, whose collaboration with the province of Artemisa is emerging as a positive reference for local ties between Cuba and China, with concrete results in agriculture, trade and economic development.

Whilst in Hunan, the Cuban delegation paid tribute to the historical leader of the Chinese Revolution, Mao Zedong, at the monumental complex there in his honour. Martínez said that Cuba welcomes the idea of establishing a twinning agreement between Hunan and Holguín. These regions, which are the birthplaces of the historical leaders of both socialist revolutions, Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong, have potential for collaboration in tourism and mining.

This seminar is the third one of its kind recently held between the CPC and its fellow ruling communist parties in the socialist countries, following those with the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party and the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Also, on December 4, Liu Haixing, Minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee (IDCPC), met with Emilio Lozada García, Head of the International Relations Department of the PCC, who was in China to participate in the seminar.

Liu said, under the strategic guidance of General Secretary Xi Jinping and First Secretary Miguel Diaz-Canel, the special friendly relations between China and Cuba have maintained high-level operation with continuously enriched significance. The two Parties and countries have always supported and helped each other. Regardless of the changes in the international situation, China’s commitment to the long-term friendship with Cuba will not change, its determination to support Cuba’s socialist path will not change, its direction in promoting pragmatic cooperation with Cuba will not change, and its will to defend international fairness and justice and oppose hegemony and power politics together with Cuba will not change.

Emilio Lozada García said, Cuba thanks China for the long-term and valuable support, and appreciates China’s consistent opposition to the US blockade and sanctions against Cuba. The relationship between the two Parties is the cornerstone of Cuba-China relationship. The PCC is willing to strengthen exchanges with the CPC at all levels and in all fields, advance the exchanges between the two Parties in a more systematic and institutionalised manner, and strengthen coordination on international affairs, so as to make due contributions to the development of both countries and to the building of a Cuba-China community with a shared future.

Some observations on our work to study and apply Xi Jinping Thought in an imperialist country

The International Forum of Overseas Studies on Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era was held in Beijing, November 12-13.

Hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), it was organised by the Research Centre for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and the Academy of Marxism (both affiliates of CASS), along with the World Association for China Studies.

Delegates from across China were joined by former government ministers, communist party leaders, scholars and others from numerous countries including:

Vietnam, Cambodia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Türkiye;
South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, and Burundi;
Argentina, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, and Venezuela; and
Russia, Belarus, Serbia, Italy, Spain, Britain, Montenegro, Poland, North Macedonia, Ireland, France, Hungary, and Greece.

Former President of Costa Rica José María Figueres addressed the conference by video.

Friends of Socialist China co-editor Keith Bennett presented a paper, highlighting some of our observations to date on studying and applying Xi Jinping Thought in an imperialist country. The following is the text of his presentation.

I am very pleased to be able to take part in this important international forum of overseas studies on Xi Jinping’s Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and thank the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for their kind invitation.

The basic principles of Marxism-Leninism are universally applicable, as Mao Zedong pointed out long ago. However, they must be applied and developed according to the concrete reality of each country, people, society and nation. Moreover, as Xi Jinping has pointed out, if Marxism is to truly grip the hearts of the masses and become a material force, it also needs to be integrated and combined with a people’s fine traditional culture and civilisational inheritance.

Marxism is international in its relevance, scope and sweep but it is national in its application and development. It is by no means coincidental that the five socialist countries that survived the counter-revolutionary tsunami of 1989-1991 have all not merely inherited Marxism-Leninism as it is but have creatively applied and developed it by integrating it with their indigenous revolutionary traditions and the thoughts of their own revolutionary leaders.

Moreover, life is constantly evolving, developing and changing, so Marxism also cannot stand still. If it did so, it would become ossified, dogmatic and irrelevant. Indeed, it would cease to be Marxism. Only by changing and developing in accordance with the needs and trends of the times can it remain true to its original mission and retain its relevance and scientific veracity. Based as it is on dialectical and historical materialism, Marxism itself needs to be in the vanguard not the rearguard of change and development.

Lao and Chinese communists discuss theory

The Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) held their 13^th Theoretical Seminar, November 10-11, in the Lao province of Champassak. The Chinese delegation was headed by Li Shulei, Member of the Political Bureau, Secretary of the Secretariat, and Head of the CPC Central Committee’s Publicity Department.

Thongloun Sisoulith, LPRP General Secretary and President of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, met with Li on November 11, on the conclusion of the seminar.

President Thongloun warmly welcomed the delegation, noting that the visit represented a meaningful contribution to strengthening the traditional friendship and comprehensive strategic partnership between the two Parties and nations. He emphasised that the visit exemplified the “Four Good” principles of Laos-China relations – good neighbours, good friends, good comrades, and good partners.

The President underscored the importance of the 13th Theoretical Seminar as a significant platform for sharing experiences in Party building, state governance, and national administration. He highlighted that the seminar’s theme was particularly relevant as both Parties are preparing their new five-year socio-economic development plans aimed at advancing socialist development in each country.

For his part, Li Shulei expressed his gratitude for the warm reception and extended congratulations to Laos on the forthcoming 50th anniversary of the founding of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. He also conveyed his best wishes for the success of the 12th National Congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, scheduled for early 2026. He further commended the recent meeting between President Thongloun and President Xi Jinping in Beijing in September 2025, describing it as substantive and forward-looking.

Following his visit to Laos, Li Shulei continued to Vietnam, where he attended the 20th theory seminar between the CPC and the Communist Party of Vietnam.

The following article was originally published by the KPL Lao News Agency. A report was also carried by the Xinhua News Agency.

State President and Party General Secretary Thongloun Sisoulith received a senior delegation from the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by Mr. Li Shulei, Member of the Political Bureau, Secretary of the Secretariat, and Head of the CPC Central Committee’s Publicity Department.

The meeting took place on 11 November 2025 at the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) Central Office in Vientiane. The Chinese delegation visited Laos to attend the 13th Lao–Chinese Theoretical Seminar, held from 10 to 11 November in Champassak Province.

President Thongloun warmly welcomed the delegation, noting that the visit represented a meaningful contribution to strengthening the traditional friendship and comprehensive strategic partnership between the two Parties and nations. He emphasized that the visit exemplified the “Four Good” principles of Laos–China relations — good neighbours, good friends, good comrades, and good partners.

He also commended the close cooperation between the Central Publicity and Training Boards of the two Parties and encouraged both sides to continue enhancing collaboration and information exchange.

For his part, Mr. Li Shulei expressed his gratitude for the warm reception and extended congratulations to Laos on the forthcoming 50th anniversary of the founding of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. He also conveyed his best wishes for the success of the 12th National Congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, scheduled for early 2026.

Mr. Li commended the recent meeting between President Thongloun and President Xi Jinping in Beijing in September 2025, describing it as substantive and forward-looking. He noted that the outcomes of the meeting would provide further guidance for strengthening cooperation between the two Parties and countries.

He expressed confidence that, under the leadership of both Parties, China–Laos relations will continue to deepen, becoming more effective and comprehensive in the years to come.

Chinese and Vietnamese communists discuss the path and practice of socialism in the 21st century

The Communist Parties of China and Vietnam held their 20th theory seminar in Vietnam’s northern Ninh Binh province on November 12 under the theme, “The path and practice of socialism in the 21st century.”

Both parties were represented at Politburo level. The Communist Party of China (CPC) delegation was headed by Li Shulei, Politburo member, Secretary of the CPC Central Committee’s Secretariat, and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, while the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) delegation was led by Nguyen Xuan Thang, Politburo member, Chairman of the Central Theory Council, and President of the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics. Attending the seminar were representatives of ministries, central agencies, and localities, along with scientists, experts, and scholars from both countries, as well as the Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam.

CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping and CPV General Secretary To Lam both sent congratulatory letters to the seminar.

In the letters, the two leaders affirmed the important role of this highest-level theory exchange mechanism between the two Parties, reflecting their strategic vision, close bond, and shared responsibility in safeguarding, applying, and creatively developing Marxism-Leninism in accordance with each country’s realities, as well as demonstrating the high level of political trust between the two Parties and nations.

Xi Jinping said that both the CPC and the CPV uphold and develop Marxism, unswervingly follow the socialist path, and lead their respective countries in socialist construction, facing many of the same or similar issues of the times.

The two parties have carried out in-depth exchanges of experience in governance, jointly explored a socialist modernisation path that suits their national conditions, and worked together to promote the localisation and modernisation of Marxism and the development of the world socialist movement, constantly writing a new chapter of friendship of “comrades plus brothers” in the new era.

He also called for joint efforts to deepen theoretical discussions and academic exchanges, and to jointly enhance their understanding of the laws that underlie governance by a Communist party, socialist construction, as well as the development of human society, so as to provide theoretical support for the socialist cause of both countries and the construction of the China-Vietnam community with a shared future, and contribute to the noble cause of human peace and development.

To Lam affirmed that the CPV stands ready to work with the CPC to further deepen theory cooperation and share experiences in Party building, national development, and social governance, thereby promoting the development of socialist theory in the context of globalisation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, for the benefit of the peoples of both countries and for a brighter future for socialism worldwide.

At a meeting between the two heads of delegations, the host congratulated China on its recent achievements, including the successful convening of the fourth plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee and the adoption of the orientation for formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan. He reaffirmed that Vietnam always attaches great importance and gives top priority to relations with China.

Li affirmed that the CPC firmly believes in and supports the CPV in successfully organising its 14th National Congress, opening a new era of development for Vietnam. He added that China always prioritises the development of relations with Viet Nam in its neighbourhood diplomacy.