Palestine, Venezuela and China, united in the struggle against imperialism

The following is the text of a speech given by Russel Harland, representing Friends of Socialist China’s Britain Committee, at an event held on 15 November at Bolívar Hall in London on the theme Viva Venezuela: stand against fascism, imperialism and war.

Russel argues that the world is entering a historic period of crisis and transformation marked by imperialist violence, economic oppression, and popular resistance. Drawing a line from colonialism to contemporary neoliberalism, he cites the genocide in Gaza as the culmination of imperialism’s lawless depravity, enabled by the complicity of Western governments, including that of Britain.

The speech links Palestine’s struggle against colonial oppression to US attempts to impose regime change on Venezuela, driven by its socialist orientation, its natural resources, and its close friendly relations with China and other countries that refuse to bend to US diktat. In general, the crises we are witnessing form part of the West’s response to the global multipolar shift, driven in large part by China’s rise – a “megatrend” that Western elites increasingly openly cannot prevent or reverse.

The speech concludes that defending working class interests in Britain requires supporting sovereignty and anti-imperialist struggles globally as part of a revolutionary moment demanding systemic change.

Dear friends and comrades,

It is a pleasure to speak with you today as a representative of Friends of Socialist China during what are terrifyingly dangerous times.

From the Monroe Doctrine to the Opium Wars, to the Balfour Declaration and beyond, oppressed and working-class people globally have faced a unified war of subjugation by the forces of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism. Ordinary people around the world have been dehumanised, demonised, oppressed and repressed, and their scope for economic development has been systematically constrained.¹

Yet in the decaying world of neo-liberalism, capitalism’s most brutal guise², the ongoing genocide in Gaza has propelled imperialists to the zenith of their lawless depravity. This is a watershed moment that corresponds with the Communist Party of China’s statement in its new Five-Year Plan, that “internationally, momentous changes of a magnitude not seen in a century are unfolding across the world at a faster pace”.

Palestine, Venezuela and China, shaped by their own histories and political systems, are united in the same struggle to break free from imperialism’s asphyxiating grasp. It is imperative that the Western working class stand with these struggles to usher in a new world to safeguard our own livelihood and oppose endless war.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese posits in her latest damning report published in October 2025, that “the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians must be understood as an internationally enabled crime”. The foundations for this were set in Israel’s decades-long breaches of international law and the denial of essential goods through the blockade of Gaza. These breaches include Israel monitoring and limiting Palestinians’ calorie intake.³

British Prime Minister Starmer is named in the report as being complicit in genocide,on account of his defending Israel’s “right to cut off water and power to civilians”.³ Many other Western leaders have echoed Israeli narratives, shielding it from accountability, while also enabling the weaponisation of aid.³

UNRWA – the primary provider of basic services and food for 1.1 million people at 400 sites amid the genocide – had its warehouses, schools and clinics bombed, with 370 of their personnel killed, while the organisation was also subject to a systematic defamation campaign by the Israeli government, which accused it of essentially being a front organisation for the Palestinian Resistance.³

Israel exponentially tightened its restrictions on aid entering Gaza and, by August 2025, famine was declared, with at least 461 people dying of malnutrition-related causes. In the preceding four months, 2,100 civilians were killed in the process of trying to get food and supplies from the grossly-misnamed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and Israeli forces. These actions are in clear contravention of international law; the International Court of Justice has affirmed the responsibility on an occupying power “to ensure adequate means of survival’of those under occupation”.³

Like Gaza, Venezuela has been primed for intervention through years of unilateral sanctions, which the UN Human Rights Council reiterated in April 2023 were illegal. During Trump’s first presidency in 2017-2021 it is said that a medieval type siege was placed on Venezuela, with starvation sanctions affecting around 6 to 7 million working-class families as food insecurity became widespread. The sanctions were responsible for an estimated 40,000 deaths between 2017-2018 and put hundreds of thousands of chronic patients at risk due to medical shortages.⁴

There are good reasons why the working class in Venezuela have stood firm with the Bolivarian struggle for over 25 years. It is a battle for survival. Despite the hardship, people understand that their lives would be much worse should US imperialism and its proxies succeed.⁵ The Bolivarian Revolution has equipped ordinary people with a feeling of dignity and control exercised through the participatory democracy enshrined in the country’s constitution.

It is worth pondering the distinct changes of the global economy over recent decades. Also, consider that China’s rise can be considered as a “megatrend”, which the ruling elite of US imperialism admit it cannot contain.⁶ Consequently, we have entered a phase of militarism.

In 2024 the question was posed by Professor Danny Dorling – how can a working-class person in relative terms, be no better off in the 2020s than they were in 1913?⁷ Like Dorling,academics David Walsh and Gerry McCartney go some way to answer that question in their study Social Murder? – Austerity and Life Expectancy in the UK.

In 2010 the foodbank provider Trussell Trust operated 35 foodbanks, which increased to 1,300 by 2020, distributing two million food parcels. In 2022 alone, 11,000 people were admitted to hospital for malnutrition. Meanwhile, by 2023 the richest 50 families in Britain had more wealth than the poorest 33 million people.⁸

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, life expectancy was around 36, and 80 percent of the population could not read or write.⁹ However, by 2024, life expectancy had risen to 79 and 97 percent of the population were literate. Equally astonishing, by 2020, 800 million people had been lifted out of extreme poverty, finally eradicating that colonial plague from the country, proving Eduardo Galeano’s assertion correct, that “poverty is not written in the stars; underdevelopment is not one of God’s mysterious designs”.¹⁰

The driving force behind China’s success has been the Communist Party of China, which serves as the vanguard of the working class,¹¹ protected, like the Venezuelan working class, in the country’s constitution.

When Xi Jinping proclaimed that ‘poverty is the root cause of all chaos while peace is the guarantor of development,’¹² he was speaking as the President representing a 5,000-year-old civilisation, with absolute authority on the subject at hand.

References

1. Schutz, E. (2022) Inequality, Class, and Economics. New York: Monthly Press Review. ↩
2. Harnecker, M. (2007) Rebuilding the Left. London: Zed Books. ↩
3. United Nations (2025) Genocide: A collective crime. A/80/492. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. ↩
4. Chavez Alava et al. (2023) A War Without Bombs. Caracas: Venezuela Analysis. ↩
5. Dominguez, F. (2023) Maduro: A decade of continuing Chávez’s socialist anti-imperialist struggle. GFTU. ↩
6. Lauesen, T. (2024) The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism. England: Iskra Books. ↩
7. Dorling, D. (2024) Seven Children. London: Hurst & Company. ↩
8. Walsh, D; & McCartney, G. (2025) Social Murder? Austerity and Life Expectancy in the UK. Bristol University Press. ↩
9. Ellison, G. (2017) Destined For War. London: Scribe. ↩
10. Galeano, E. (1973) Open Veins Of Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press. ↩
11. Zhang Rongchen. (2021) Getting to Know the CPC. Beijing: FLP. ↩
12. Xi Jinping. (2019) The Belt And Road Initiative. Beijing: FLP. ↩