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.
