The Morning Star held its first Wales Conference on Saturday February 15, 2025, at the Cardiff offices of the UNISON trade union, with the theme ‘Which way for Wales? Developing progressive policies’ and a stated aim of setting the progressive agenda in Wales to combat the far right ahead of the 2026 Senedd [Welsh Parliament] elections. The Reform Party led by Nigel Farage is predicted to make a major breakthrough in these elections, with no single party securing a majority. This threat was underlined on the eve of the conference with the election of a Reform councillor in a Torfaen Council by-election – the party’s first such election victory in Wales.
In a full day of discussion, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Keith Bennett spoke in an afternoon session on Wales for peace and anti-imperialism. He was joined on the panel by Betty Hunter, Honorary President of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC); Roger McKenzie, Foreign Editor of the Morning Star; Dylan Lewis-Rowland, National Secretary of CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) Cymru; and Jim Scott, a PARC Against DARC campaigner. (DARC, or Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability, involves plans to build space radar dishes that would allow the United States “to militarily dominate all of space” from Wales and has a key role in the AUKUS project aimed at China. An update on the campaign can be read here.)
With an opening keynote address by Morning Star editor Ben Chacko, the array of speakers included Shavanah Taj, TUC (Trades Union Congress) Cymru General Secretary; Jess Turner, UNISON Wales Regional Secretary; Pasty Turner, UNITE Wales Political Officer; Steve Skelly, RMT Regional Organiser; Luke Fletcher, Plaid Cymru Member of the Senedd; Robert Griffiths, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB); Beth Winter, former Labour MP who recently resigned from the party; Hussain Said from Black Lives Matter; Jo Galazka, UNITE Wales Equalities Officer; Jenny Rathbone, Labour Member of the Senedd; and Mairead Canavan, national executive member for Wales of the National Education Union (NEU).
In his speech, Keith focused on the history of working-class solidarity, people-to-people friendship and sub-national diplomacy between Wales and China and the benefits that could accrue from a revival and strengthening of such links, including in trade, two-way investment, sustainability and the rural economy, and education.
We reproduce the text of his speech below. A preview of the conference and a subsequent report were carried by the Morning Star.
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this discussion on Wales for peace and anti-imperialism.
We established Friends of Socialist China in May 2021 as a platform based on supporting the People’s Republic of China and promoting understanding of Chinese socialism. With China playing an ever more important role in the world, as well as the daily more acute international situation, not least the new Cold War, we believe that the need for an organisation such as ours has never been greater. China is also the most prominent force pushing for the establishment of a multipolar system of international relations and a new international economic order. And it is emerging as the global leader in the struggle to avoid climate catastrophe.
For all these reasons and more, we see the building of people-to-people friendship with China as an important part of the type of overall progressive agenda for peace and socialism that this conference aims to help develop.
The People’s Republic of China has always maintained that there are three types of international relations, defined by the country’s first Prime Minister Zhou Enlai as government-to-government, party-to-party and people-to-people.
Of course, these three strands are inter-related, but they are also distinct and have their own dynamics. And in recent years, along with a renewed emphasis on people-to-people diplomacy, China has also been promoting what it calls sub-national diplomacy. By this they mean engagement with devolved administrations, regional and provincial assemblies and parliaments, and local authorities and local government generally.
Now, in terms of people-to-people friendship and solidarity, on the part of the organised working class in particular, as well as on sub-national diplomacy, Wales already has a good tradition and history which can be inherited and can help to build the future.
In 1983, Cardiff became the first city in the UK to sign a twinning agreement with a Chinese city – with Xiamen, a major port in Fujian province.
In 1987, Swansea signed a friendship agreement with Nantong in Jiangsu province. A double ceremony saw the Welsh red dragon flying over Nantong while in Swansea, then Deputy Council Leader Charles Thomas helped raise the Chinese five star red flag over the Guildhall.
In 2006, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by First Minister Rhodri Morgan, on behalf of the Welsh government, and the municipal government of Chongqing, in the west of China. (Incidentally, the municipal area of Chongqing is approximately the size of Austria, only with a population of 32 million compared to Austria’s 9 million.) This was followed by a formal cooperation agreement, again signed by Rhodri Morgan in Chongqing, during his second visit in 2008. This agreement had originally been proposed by then Vice Premier (and later Premier) Wen Jiabao when he visited Wales in 2000.
In 2014, Bangor University became the first Welsh university to establish a campus in China. Lord Dafydd Wigley of Plaid Cymru was among those present at the signing ceremony.
Turning to the longer history of solidarity, not surprisingly pride of place has to be given to the South Wales Miners’ Federation.
In 1937, it adopted a resolution, which read in part:
“This Council of the South Wales Miners’ Federation, representing 120,000 members, expresses its deep-felt horror at the savage and inhuman massacre of defenceless men women and children in China by the invading forces of Japan.
“We urge the Trades Union Congress Council to make every effort through the International Federation of Trade Unions and other working class organisations, particularly in European countries, Australia, United States and Canada, to adopt a policy of refusing to handle any goods and materials for export to or imported from Japan and to create a worldwide movement to boycott all Japanese goods, until the Japanese have left Chinese territory.”
The next year, while making a donation for the provision of medical supplies to China, it passed the following resolution:
“This Executive Council of the South Wales Miners’ Federation expresses the strongest indignation and protest against the ruthless war of aggression which Japanese imperialism is waging on China, accompanied as it has been by the systematic barbarous and pitiless massacre of the Chinese civil population.
“It hopes that the victories of the Chinese armies over the Japanese armies will continue and that they will have the effect of wearing down and ultimately smashing the power of the Japanese military clique, thus opening the way of peace, freedom and democracy in Japan as well as liberating China from the danger of foreign domination.
“This Executive Council therefore calls upon the members of the South Wales Miners’ Federation to do whatever they can to assist the Chinese people in their struggle, particularly in regard to boycotting Japanese goods and creating a public opinion to force the British government to adopt a more positive policy in aid of China and against the present imperialist rulers of Japan.”
Many of the words and the sentiments in these two resolutions lose none of their poignancy today, speaking as they also do, so clearly to the genocidal war being waged against the Palestinian people, in Gaza and elsewhere, by the Israeli regime, supported and enabled by the United States, Britain and a handful of other countries.
In 1955, some six years after the founding of the People’s Republic, in another instance with very contemporary echoes, Will Paynter, President of the Federation, who was also, of course, a leading member of the Communist Party for many decades, and who had fought with the International Brigades in Spain, submitted a resolution to the delegate conference of the South Wales Area of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which strongly condemned, “the policy now being pursued by the United States government in bolstering up the regime of Chiang Kai-shek in Formosa (Taiwan) and other islands off the Chinese coast. Such a policy can only result in World War threatening the extermination of humanity.”
That same year, Dai Dan Evans, Vice President of the South Wales area of the NUM, represented the union on a delegation of the Welsh National Peace Council to China, “to convey the greetings of Welsh miners to the Chinese people”.
Expressing thanks for the visit, following its return, the chairman of the Chinese miners’ union wrote: “In their report they emphasised the close friendship between the miners and the peoples of China and South Wales.”
Many of these links, even those formed in the early part of this century, may have become somewhat dormant, but they nevertheless provide a basis on which to build. The present situation is not easy. But then it never was. Certainly not in the 1930s with grinding poverty, the threat of fascism and the approach of world war. Nor in the 1950s at the height of the first Cold War.
In reviving and rebuilding such links, right wing press and politicians will no doubt say it’s a waste of money. In fact, that’s probably about the kindest thing they’ll say.
We have to not only face them down. We have to prove them wrong.
Such links can help open a broad range of opportunities – in trade; in two-way investment; in promoting sustainability and the rural economy; and in education – not least with the current Chinese Ambassador being an Alumnus of Cardiff University; among others.
In an interview given to the China Britain Business Council (CBBC) in September last year, Darryn Lewis, Head of Inward Investment for the Welsh Government, said:
“As a small country, Chinese incoming companies will have more direct access to opinion formers and decision-makers within the Welsh Government. Wales has particular strengths in compound semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, medtech, renewable energy and cyber security, and we look for opportunities to promote our strengths… Chinese companies coming to Wales are also taking advantage of the research capabilities of Welsh universities and centres of excellence to advance their technologies and improve their overall capability.”
He adds: “Chinese companies are moving up the value chain and, in many cases, possess core technologies that are world-leading,” and cites the example of HKC, one of China’s big four panel makers and top three display manufacturers, which set up its UK assembly factory in Wales in 2022.
China, it should be noted, is the only country to stage an annual International Import Expo, a far cry from the protectionism and trade wars increasingly gripping the capitalist world. High quality agricultural products are a consistent and growing feature of China’s import wish lists. Olives from Italy, Serrano ham from Spain and avocados from Kenya, are just three examples where exports to China have boomed in recent years.
Clearly there are major and still largely untapped opportunities for Welsh agriculture here. Just last week, I was speaking with an MP from Sinn Féin, who, regarding the huge exports of New Zealand lamb to China, noted that New Zealand and Ireland were actually about equidistant from China. Well, Wales is that bit closer to China than Ireland! Fortunately, the Chinese market is more than big enough to accommodate the produce of farmers from both countries.
Another promising sector for the Welsh rural economy is dairy products, which are becoming increasingly popular with China’s middle-income population, a cohort which is already some 400 million strong.
Of course, I do not imagine that relations with China will be a key issue in the 2026 Senedd elections. But contacts and cooperation that build real friendships and deliver real, mutually beneficial ‘win win’ results can contribute to an overall strategy to win a people’s progressive majority for peace and socialism.
Thank you.
