Video Archives - Friends of Socialist China

John Ross: What’s behind the positive Xi–Trump summit?

In a recent interview on India & Global Left, British economist John Ross, senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, discusses the significance of Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States. In his view, the summit was positive mainly for what did not happen: Washington launched no new attack on China. The relative stability between the two countries reflects not goodwill but China’s strength – after Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs ran into China’s counter-measures on rare earths, the US switched to going after other targets.

That approach, John argues, has largely failed. The attempted “reverse Kissinger” to detach Russia from China has gone nowhere; Cuba has not buckled under the oil blockade; and in the war on Iran, “this is a fifteen-round contest and we’re probably up to about round five – but so far Iran’s won all five of the rounds.”

He characterises the New Cold War as, to an extent, the reverse of the first one. The Soviet Union was a military equal of the US but never an economic one, so Washington shifted the contest onto economic terrain. Today China is outgrowing the US and leading in EVs, batteries, drones, biotech and parts of AI, so the US seeks to shift the contest onto military terrain – hence the encouragement of German and Japanese rearmament, the military pressure on Venezuela, Cuba and Iran, and the attempts to stir up trouble in the South China Sea.

The interview also covers the security picture in East Asia, Europe’s self-defeating subordination to Washington, and why the Global South will keep trading with China regardless.

John will be among the speakers at the Socialist China Conference in London on Saturday 3 October. Tickets are available on Eventbrite.

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.

Ma Haide – a bridge of friendship between China and Lebanon

Marking the 90th anniversary of the successful conclusion of the Long March, we recently republished an article from China Today introducing the contributions made at that time by two young Americans, Edgar Snow and George Hatem (Ma Haide).

The below article, which was originally published in The Beiruter, introduces Hatem’s connection to his ancestral home country of Lebanon, with the help of exclusive interviews with his family, unpublished letters, rare photographs and original reporting, and outlines how this connection still helps to form a bridge of friendship between the Chinese and Lebanese peoples.

It recounts how, in an October 1983 letter to family members, Hatem thanks his relatives for the olives they had sent from Lebanon. He asks about Hammana, his family’s hometown. He worries about the civil war then consuming his ancestral homeland. And he sends warm wishes to every member of the family.

“Thousands of kilometers away, the physician revered across China as Ma Haide, the man who helped transform the country’s fight against leprosy and sexually transmitted diseases, and [one of] the first foreigner[s] to become a citizen of the People’s Republic of China, was writing not as a revolutionary or a national hero, but as George, a relative who had never stopped thinking about home.”

Like thousands of Lebanese emigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, Ma Haide’s father, Nahoum Salameh Hatem, left Mount Lebanon in search of opportunity in the United States. Although raised in America, George spent summers in Hammana with relatives, forging a connection to Lebanon that distance would never erase.

After studying at the University of North Carolina, the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the University of Geneva, the newly graduated physician boarded a ship to Shanghai in 1933 with two fellow American doctors. The plan was simple: gain experience, practice medicine and eventually return to the United States.

He never did. Arriving in Shanghai, he opened a dermatology and venereal disease practice. Beyond the city’s modern façade, he soon discovered a different China. Patients suffered from illnesses driven as much by poverty, overcrowding and exploitation as by disease itself, leading him to question not only how to treat illness, but the conditions that created it.

He also met people who would shape his future. Through American journalist Agnes Smedley, he was introduced to Soong Ching-ling, widow of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of modern China, and later to Zhou Enlai, who would become the first premier of the People’s Republic of China.

In 1936, Hatem left Shanghai for the communist base area of Yan’an together with American journalist Edgar Snow, convinced he was going not where life would be easiest, but where a doctor was needed most.

Unlike the many foreigners who passed briefly through Yan’an, Hatem chose to stay. In 1937 he became a member of the Communist Party of China. According to family accounts, Mao Zedong waived the usual probationary period, telling colleagues that Ma Haide had already proven his commitment through his work rather than words. And in 1950, he was one of the first foreigners to become a citizen of the newly-founded People’s Republic of China.

He would serve as Chairman Mao’s personal physician while helping establish medical services for the Red Army, training healthcare workers and building the foundations of a modern military health system and then leading the country’s post-liberation fight to eliminate leprosy. He later described his time in Yan’an as “the happiest, most meaningful and most extraordinary years” of his life.

After decades apart, he finally met his father again in 1962, in the Syrian capital, Damascus, it not being possible for him to visit Lebanon as a Chinese citizen at that time. He was finally able to visit the country in 1974.

The article adds: “His connection to Lebanon did not end with those visits. Decades after his death, it continues to bring China back to the mountain village where his family’s story began.

“‘I was working when two young women approached me speaking English,’ [his cousin Joseph] Rached said. ‘“Is your mother Mary Hatem? Is this Dr. Hatem’s family home?” I said yes. Then they told me, “The Chinese ambassador wants to meet you.”’

“According to Rached, that visit marked the beginning of a tradition that continues today. Every Chinese ambassador appointed to Lebanon has visited the Hatem family in Hammana to pay tribute to Ma Haide… The Chinese Embassy later erected a bronze statue honoring Hatem in the village where his family’s story began, a lasting symbol of the bond between China and Hammana.”

Responding to left criticisms of China’s foreign policy

In this discussion with Radhika Desai, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez confronts the charge, common even on parts of the left, that Beijing does far too little for Palestine, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.

The conversation traces China’s foreign policy from the internationalism of Bandung and the Non-Aligned Movement, through its rapprochement with Washington and entry into the world economy, to its pursuit of a Global Community of Shared Future. Carlos argues that the criticisms rest on a misreading of what China is and what it can do – that a country still in the primary stage of socialism, subject to sanctions, encirclement and technology blockade, is being held to a standard never applied to any other state, and judged against an imagined capacity it does not possess.

He also addresses what China actually does: its consistent votes and vetoes at the United Nations, its material and diplomatic support for Cuba and Venezuela under blockade, its position on Palestinian statehood and the Beijing Declaration on Palestinian unity, and its insistence that unilateral sanctions have no basis in international law.

The video is embedded below, followed by a full transcript.

Transcript

Radhika Desai: Hello, viewers and listeners. Welcome to the Geopolitical Economy interview, a series in which I speak with prominent intellectuals, scholars, politicians, journalists, activists and public figures to illuminate the fast-changing political economy and geopolitical economy of our times.

I’m Radhika Desai and you’re watching Radhika Desai, Geopolitical Economist. Today’s topic is China’s foreign policy towards the United States and the West on the one hand, and the oppressed — and I should say oppressed and embattled — nations such as Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran on the other, in the broader context of rising multipolarity. How should the left make sense of it, particularly given that sections of the left have criticised China for not doing enough for precisely these countries?

I can think of few people better qualified to address this question than Carlos Martinez, who joins me today. Welcome, Carlos.

Carlos Martinez: Hi, Radhika. Lovely to see you. Good to be with you.

Radhika Desai: It’s really great to have you today, Carlos. Let me tell our audience that you are an independent scholar and researcher, co-editor of the increasingly important and influential Friends of Socialist China website, and author and editor of many books on China and on socialism — including the one on China, which is called The East Is Still Red, and the wonderfully titled book on the demise of the USSR, The End of the Beginning. You meant, of course, that this was just the end of the beginning of world socialism.

Is China still socialist?

On 23 July 2026, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez spoke to the Croydon Morning Star Readers and Supporters Group at Ruskin House on the question of whether China is still socialist. Below we reprint the Croydon Communists’ report of the meeting, followed by a video Carlos recorded on the basis of his notes for the talk.

This report was originally published by Croydon Communists on 24 July.

The Croydon Morning Star Readers and Supporters Group were privileged to hear Carlos Martinez last night (23 July) give a masterclass on Chinese Socialism.

For those of us who looked to the former USSR to help build socialism globally only for our hopes to be dashed on the collapse following Gorbachev’s rash and badly implemented Glasnost and Perestroika, the strategy adopted by the Communist Party of China (CPC) can seem over-cautious. As Carlos described, it is slowly and systematically building socialism with Chinese Characteristics, testing policies and rejecting those that do not work. As a result, there have been huge economic advances unmatched anywhere in the developing world. The state continues to serve the interests of the working class and its allies, defending it from the inevitable attacks from capital and slowly and systematically building a better life for its people. Through more than four decades of reform and opening up, the CPC retains its commitment to Marxism. There has been no capitulation to capitalism; and socialists and communists should unequivocally support and defend Chinese socialism. The achievements to date have been huge and there will be more to come. The state of “market socialism” currently arrived at is not the end of the trajectory. Communism, as envisaged by Karl Marx in Capital, is still on the agenda.

Carlos Martinez’s book The East is Still Red – Chinese Communism in the 21st Century (Praxis Press, 2023, £20 – order it from your local bookshop) sets out in much more detail these arguments and the evidence on which they are based. Highly recommended!

To receive advance notice of future public meetings at Ruskin House organised by the Croydon Morning Star Readers and Supporters Group, register your interest at croydonmorningstarrsg@gmail.com.

Young British communist visits Xinjiang: “Not at all what Western media says”

Amar, a 22-year-old activist from London, visited Xinjiang in April 2026, wanting to see the region for himself after years of Western media coverage alleging genocide there. In this interview with Xinjiang Today, recorded in a coffee shop in Urumqi, he describes what he found.

He talks about the ordinariness of daily life in Urumqi, and the surprise of local people that a visitor would think to ask whether their lives are normal at all. He recounts a conversation with a barista about how the region has changed since his childhood – the journey from Urumqi to Kashgar cut from around 40 hours by rail to roughly 11, and the four-day bus trip across the Tianshan Mountains reduced to a few hours by the 22-kilometre Tianshan Shengli Tunnel, the longest expressway tunnel in the world, which opened in December 2025. Infrastructure on that scale, Amar argues, is built because it improves people’s lives rather than because it returns a profit, and would never be undertaken in a society run by a capitalist class.

He also discusses the very different relationship between the public and the police in China compared with Britain, why his family came to see China as a beacon of hope, and what worries and encourages him as a young person facing the prospect of imperialist war.

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.

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.

Socialist Chinamaxxing: How China’s achievements are a product of socialism

On Sunday 12 April, Friends of Socialist China hosted a webinar on the subject of Socialist Chinamaxxing: How China’s achievements are a product of socialism.

In spite of several years of intense propaganda and misinformation about China in the media, large numbers of young people in the West are going through “a very Chinese time in their lives”, not least because they are seeing China’s extraordinary achievements in poverty reduction, technological innovation, ecological protection, infrastructure development and more.

This webinar explored how these achievements are a product of China’s social, political and economic system: socialism. The speakers argued that China’s progress would simply not have been possible within a framework of capitalist rule, and that the country’s experience provides a powerful example of the superiority of socialism in terms of delivering for the people and for the planet.

The speakers were:

Li Jingjing (Journalist and political commentator, CGTN)
Tings Chak (Asia co-coordinator, Tricontinental Institute)
George Galloway (Former MP, leader of Workers Party of Britain)
Danny Haiphong (Geopolitical analyst and journalist)
Ben Norton (Editor, Geopolitical Economy Report)
Chen Weihua (Former China Daily EU bureau chief)
Qiao Collective (Diaspora Chinese media collective)
Ileana Chan (Host of the Global Majority for Peace podcast)
Keith Bennett (Co-editor, Friends of Socialist China)
Chair: Carlos Martinez (Co-editor, Friends of Socialist China)

Embedded below is the full event stream, followed by the individual speeches.

China’s new high quality growth benefits humanity as a whole

The video embedded below is the full recording of an interview and discussion conducted by Jingjing Yang of China Media Group (CMG) with our co-editor Keith Bennett on March 5 regarding issues raised by China’s then ongoing two annual parliamentary sessions of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

Reviewing the achievements of Chinese-style modernisation over the last year, Keith notes that we are living through a dramatic period of history, one in which events move very fast and we are experiencing, as Xi Jinping puts it, changes unseen in a century.

China’s growth is now expressed above all in qualitative terms, with advances in AI, robotics and other fields all contributing to what many people in the world, young people in particular, are describing as “a very Chinese moment” in their lives.

The really important figures in China’s development in the present period are those such as in the growth of renewable energy or in the reduction and elimination of extreme poverty. And China’s work to prevent climate catastrophe benefits people throughout the world. The main themes of the incoming 15^th Five Year Plan provide further evidence that what is good for China is also good for humanity as a whole. The emphasis placed on new high quality productive forces, on robotics, EVs and AI, provide new opportunities particularly for those other developing countries that wish to learn from the Chinese example.

However, all this is unfolding against a capricious and dangerous international environment, as shown not only by the egregious use of tariffs as a weapon of economic warfare but even in the kidnapping and murder of leaders of sovereign states. China’s policies are a factor for stability in this situation but, contrary to what some people seem to imagine, China does not possess a magic wand capable of miraculously solving all problems on the global stage. China’s Global Security Initiative has been welcomed by the overwhelming majority of countries in the world as it is based on shared interests and common benefit. The countries standing against it are few in number, but unfortunately they remain powerful.

Extracts from the interview were shown on CCTV coverage during the Two Sessions.

Interview: Understanding China’s foreign policy

In the video embedded below, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez joins Roger McKenzie for a detailed exploration of China’s foreign policy, its domestic progress, and the geopolitical strategies shaping the 21st century. The two discuss the importance of understanding China’s rise, the global shift towards multipolarity, and the need for solidarity against imperialist pressures.

Some of the key ideas put forward include:

• China’s foreign policy rests on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, first formulated by Zhou Enlai in 1954 and adopted at the Bandung Conference the following year. These principles – mutual respect for sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence – elevate what Lenin conceived as a tactical necessity into a principled theoretical framework. The core insight is that countries with fundamentally different social systems can and must coexist, and that all non-imperialist countries share a common interest in opposing domination and pursuing their own development paths. Today these principles find expression in China’s vision of a community with a shared future for humanity, underpinned by the Belt and Road Initiative, BRICS (which now surpasses the G7 in GDP, population and landmass), the SCO, and the G77. Multipolarity – a negotiated international order in which no single power can impose its will – is not only urgently needed to address existential challenges like climate change and nuclear war, but is, as Samir Amin argued, the necessary framework for the possible overcoming of capitalism itself.

• The United States is not accepting this shift passively. Brzezinski identified the nightmare scenario decades ago: a grand coalition of China, Russia and Iran. US responses have included proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, military encirclement of China through AUKUS and Pacific buildups, unconditional support for Israel, tariff wars, semiconductor controls, the kidnapping of president Maduro, the suffocation of Cuba, the reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine, and now open war on Iran. The US is losing economic and technological primacy but retains overwhelming military power, and the danger is precisely that of a declining empire reaching for military solutions.

• The war on Iran must be understood in this context. It is not about nuclear weapons – nobody believes that. It is not about women’s rights – women’s rights are improving in Iran and deteriorating in the West. It is a criminal attack, carried out by presidential decree without reference to international law or domestic legal process, against a sovereign state that supports Palestinian resistance, maintains public ownership of its energy resources, and is a key node in the multipolar project – a crucial link in the Belt and Road, a member of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and an important energy partner for China. The attack is simultaneously an attempt to seize control of energy flows, to develop strategic chokepoints that could be used against China in a hot war, and to destroy the axis of resistance across West Asia. It is the empire striking back.

• China is supporting Iran to the best of its abilities – diplomatically, economically, and with military cooperation – but does not have the capacity to project military power into the region. Nonetheless, Iran is a fiercely independent country with formidable military capabilities. The US and Israel will not achieve their objectives: they will not install a puppet regime, will not destroy the Palestinian resistance, and will not seize Iran’s strategic position.

• The task for progressive forces in the West is to oppose the war on Iran, oppose the New Cold War on China and the propaganda war that sustains it, and build the broadest possible united front against imperialism, racism and neoliberalism. We are not the vanguard – that role belongs to the socialist countries and the peoples under direct attack. But everyone has a part to play, and we must do what we can to build solidarity and make war untenable for the imperialists.

Interview: Why does the West fear China?

The video below is an interview of Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez by Jason Smith, for CGTN’s The Bridge podcast. In this wide-ranging discussion, touching on a range of issues from the war in Iran to the nature of China’s whole-process people’s democracy, Carlos opines that “democracy” is not an abstract universal but always has a specific class content. What the West calls liberal democracy is more accurately described as capitalist democracy: a system in which the ruling class – those who own and deploy capital – dominates political life, and government is fundamentally oriented towards preserving existing production relations and expanding capital. As Marx observed, the oppressed are permitted once every few years to choose which representatives of the oppressing class shall govern them.

China operates a different democratic model suited to a different social system. The capitalist class cannot organise politically, cannot direct state power in its own interests, and cannot dictate to the government – for example, Huawei does not tell Beijing what to do. The Communist Party, with over 100 million members, is a party of the working class and its allies, obliged to maintain legitimacy by actually delivering – on poverty alleviation, healthcare, pollution control, housing, renewable energy and more. The result, borne out by polling data including a Harvard Kennedy School survey showing 94 percent government approval, is that Chinese citizens report far higher levels of satisfaction with their democracy than citizens of the US or Britain. The Two Sessions – the annual meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference – give concrete institutional expression to this whole-process people’s democracy, translating debates from across society into national policy, including this year’s 15th Five-Year Plan.

The US-China rivalry is not a conventional geopolitical contest between two comparable powers. The US helped integrate China into the global economic order in the late 1970s on the assumption that China would remain permanently at the bottom of the hierarchy – making cheap goods, opening up to Western capital, abandoning its socialist orientation through peaceful evolution. The reality has been entirely different: China is now the world’s largest economy, the leading force in renewables, telecoms, advanced infrastructure and space exploration, and is advancing an alternative model of modernisation that operates entirely outside the paradigm of imperialism – without war, occupation, austerity or the Washington Consensus. That is the real threat: not military aggression, but the ideological and material demonstration that another development path is possible. The hybrid war against China – sanctions, tech controls, military encirclement, demonisation – is aimed at preventing China’s further rise, weakening its global relationships, and ultimately reversing the Chinese Revolution. China, for its part, simply wants to develop and to cooperate.

The multipolar project is in essence a demand that the principles of the UN Charter – sovereign equality, non-interference, peaceful coexistence – be actually observed, not merely invoked rhetorically. The record of US-led imperialism in the postwar period, from the Korean War to the 1953 coup in Iran to the current wars on Venezuela and Iran, makes clear these principles have never been adhered to by Washington. Institutionally, multipolarity means strengthening the UN, building out BRICS, the SCO, the NAM and the G77+China, developing alternative financing, and expanding south-south cooperation backed by China’s economic weight and the Belt and Road Initiative. This project increasingly has institutions, momentum and a trajectory – though it faces the enduring obstacle of US military hegemony and the reckless aggression of a declining empire.

For those in the West who want to engage constructively, the starting point is to resist the war propaganda that saturates mainstream media, tell the truth about China, and actively participate in anti-war movements – making the case for maximum global cooperation on climate, peace and development.

While the US pursues war and hegemony, China pursues peace and progress

On Friday 6 March, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez appeared on the Empire Watch live stream, hosted by Ileana Chan, Sara Vivacqua and João Amorim.

The wide-ranging conversation includes detailed discussion on the criminal US-Israeli war on Iran; how that war is reshaping the multipolar world order; China’s vision of peaceful coexistence; a comparison of the US and China’s military posture; China’s 15th Five-Year Plan; its newly-announced GDP growth target of 4.5 to 5 percent; and the Kenyan state’s illegal detention and torture of Comrade Booker Ngesa Omole.

The full stream is embedded below, followed by a selection of thematic extracts.

Victor Gao: Stop the war on Iran

In an International Manifesto Group webinar held on 1 March, prominent Chinese scholar Victor Gao – Vice President of the Center for China and Globalization – gives a powerful critique of the latest Israeli-US aggression against Iran.

Victor correctly characterises the war launched by Israel and the United States as “a war of aggression and a war of injustice”. He goes on to unambiguously uphold Iran’s right to self-defence:

I listened very carefully to UN Secretary-General António Guterres when he spoke at the Security Council of the United Nations. He condemned the war launched by Israel and the United States against Iran, which I fully support. But he also condemned the military attacks launched by Iran against quite a few countries in the Middle East.

I tend to disagree with Secretary-General Guterres. Why? Because Iran, in my view, has the full right to strike at any military bases, facilities, installations, or military personnel of the United States in other regions in that part of the world—including, for example, in Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, and so on.

Otherwise, it would be completely odd for Iran to be attacked in such an aggressive manner by the United States and Israel, and yet be expected to sit like a sitting duck under such military attacks – attempts to overthrow its government, probably also to destroy its civilisation – while being bound by the futility of not striking at the military facilities and installations in its neighbourhood, which most likely have been used one way or another in launching this ongoing attack against Iran.

He proceeds to reiterate China’s orientation towards peace and its clear interest in seeing an end to hostilities: “China’s imported oil accounts for about 75 percent of the total oil we consume annually. Much of that comes from the Middle East, and much of it needs to go through the Strait of Hormuz. So we have a vested interest in keeping peace in the Middle East rather than seeing the continuation of the war and the deterioration of the situation.”

Victor concludes with a stark warning:

The US and its allies want to expand. They want to take over land, oil, gas and other minerals from the legitimate possession of other countries. They want to violate sovereignty and territorial integrity. They want to impose war – and this will not be the last war. They want to impose war after war against other countries. If we do not unite to put a stop to this aggression and war, I think they will push the situation – not only involving Iran, or the Middle East, but the whole world – into an abyss of turmoil, chaos, instability, and destruction.

The video of the speech is embedded below.

Tariff war: China has outsmarted the US

In the edition of Empire Watch embedded below, livestreamed on 16 January, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez joined Ileana Chan to host a discussion on a number of important geopolitical topics related to China, including China-Iran relations; the impact of the US’s tariff war and the news that China recorded a $1.2 trillion trade surplus in 2025; China’s restrictions on rare earth exports to Japan; Japan’s escalating militarisation and its implications for regional peace; South Korea-Japan relations in the context of US efforts to contain China; and more.

From 42 minutes in, Ileana and Carlos are joined by Lotte Rørtoft-Madsen, chairperson of the Danish Communist Party, for a detailed assessment of President Trump’s threat to invade Greenland, and how this connects to the US campaign to encircle and contain China and Russia.

Jimmy Lai convicted: the truth behind Hong Kong’s US‑backed colour revolution

In the clip embedded below, Ileana Chan of Empire Watch interviews KJ Noh about the recent conviction of Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, which Western outlets have framed as an attack on press freedom. KJ notes that Jimmy Lai was found guilty on two counts of collusion with foreign forces and one count of sedition under Hong Kong’s national security laws following a 156-day trial.

Discussing the political context of the trial, KJ explains that the 2019 Hong Kong riots evolved into an attempted “colour revolution”, backed by the US, and observes that Lai used his media influence and resources to coordinate and publicise this movement. KJ also observes that Lai actively lobbied US officials to apply sanctions against China.

As such, KJ argues that Lai received a fair trial within Hong Kong’s legal system and that his conviction was justified given his involvement in sedition.

The interview expands into a discussion of Hong Kong’s colonial past, with KJ pointing out that Hong Kong under British control was not the model of liberal democracy it is sometimes painted as, but rather an apartheid colony.

China and the West: two systems, two futures

In the video embedded below, Jyotishman Mudiar of the popular India and Global Left channel interviews Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez on a range of topics related to China and global political economy, including: the dimensions of China’s economic progress since 1949; the differences between the first three decades of socialist construction and the Reform and Opening Up period; the differences between Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and capitalism; the definition of socialism; the political system that enables China’s unprecedented progress on poverty alleviation and green energy; the nature of multipolarity; the differences between today’s emerging multipolarity and the inter-imperialist rivalry of the early 20th century; how multipolarity opens a path for advance to socialism; the nature of the current long crisis of capitalism; and the meaning of “changes unseen in a century”.

Martin Jacques and Carlos Martinez discuss Western misconceptions of China

In this episode of Wave Media’s Roughly Chinese podcast, hosted by Mimi Zhu and recorded live in Shanghai in October 2025, Martin Jacques (British academic and author of the bestselling When China Rules the World) and Carlos Martinez (co-editor of Friends of Socialist China and author of The East is Still Red) discuss their motivations for researching and writing about China; the trajectory of Britain-China relations; changing perceptions of China in the West; the long-term crisis of capitalism and its manifestation in an ascendant far-right in Britain; and more.

European Communist leaders discuss prospects for socialism in Beijing

Friends of Socialist China co-editor Keith Bennett recently joined a panel of leaders of European communist parties for a special one hour discussion programme moderated by Pan Deng for CGTN, China’s English language TV station.

Together with leaders from the Communist Party of Finland, German Communist Party, Communist Party (Denmark), Hungarian Workers’ Party and Communist Party of Italy, Keith discussed a wide range of issues, beginning and concluding with perspectives on the biggest challenges facing the world socialist movement today, and its future, while ranging over:

The relationship between discipline and democracy in party building;
China’s whole process people’s democracy and the contrast with bourgeois democracy;
The recent 4th Plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and China’s upcoming 15th Five Year Plan, with their emphasis on putting people first;
The relationship between an efficient market and a well-functioning government;
Rising protectionism and unilateralism in the global economy on the one hand and China’s continued commitment to opening up on the other;
The development of new high quality productive forces and the upgrading of traditional industries;
How to understand and relate to AI and its impact on the working class;
Differences between Chinese and Western modernisation;
Prospects for cooperation between China and the Western countries to tackle the climate crisis;
The trend towards multipolarity and the rise of the Global South, particularly BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation;
The relationship between the Global Governance Initiative proposed by President Xi Jinping and the Charter of the United Nations.

Also featured was a separately recorded contribution from the Communist Party (Switzerland).

The programme was recorded on November 2 and first broadcast on November 4. The participants were in Beijing to attend the 15th World Socialism Forum organised by the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS).

The full programme is embedded below.

Interview: Is China capitalist, socialist or communist?

On 16 October 2025, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez joined Shanghai-based journalist Andy Boreham for a wide-ranging discussion on the topics of anti-China propaganda, China’s record under Mao Zedong, China’s political and economic system since 1978, whether China is socialist, the differences between socialism and communism, and much more.

The video of the conversation is embedded below, and can also be found on the Reports on China YouTube channel.