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.
However, whilst the development of Marxism proceeds through its national application, every such development contributes to and mutually reinforces the entire corpus of scientific socialism. This is the case be it the contributions of James Connolly in Ireland, Antonio Gramsci in Italy, Jose Carlos Mariategui, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in Latin America, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Kim Il Sung in Korea, or of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping in China, and many other titans of the proletarian movement.
As far back as 1848, Marx and Engels pointed out in the Communist Manifesto:
“The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.”
At the present time, all this expresses itself with particular cogency in the case of Xi Jinping Thought.
Xi Jinping Thought is the most recent example of the application and development of Marxism to the concrete realities of China, and to its revolution, reform, development and modernisation – the current pinnacle in the Sinification of Marxism. It is also Marxism for the 21st Century.
Indeed, these two aspects are inseparable and mutually reinforcing. Just as, in his conditions, James Connolly put it in 1916:
“The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour. They cannot be dissevered.”
This paradigm and dialectical synthesis is particularly reflected in the case of Xi Jinping Thought, when China accounts for over 17% of the world’s population, when it is the world’s second largest economy, when it is rapidly advancing to the centre of the world stage as it realises the nation’s great rejuvenation, as it is the only great power advancing concrete and realistic proposals and solutions to the increasingly acute existential perils facing humanity, and as it now has the longest experience of building socialism of any big country.
As Friends of Socialist China put it in its founding statement:
“We support all states building or aspiring to socialism, and we favour the highest level of unity and friendship between them. We foreground China in particular because its size and level of development give it an objectively critical role in the global transition to socialism. China is the most prominent force pushing for the establishment of a multipolar system of international relations and a new international economic order; meanwhile, it is emerging as the global leader in the struggle to avoid climate breakdown. As such, the continued survival of Chinese socialism is a crucial matter not only for the Chinese people but for all humanity.”
The Institute for Independence Studies has put matters in this way:
“The socialist countries today constitute the collective leadership of the international working class and progressive movements of the world, and Xi Jinping Thought is, in terms of scale and impact on global affairs, currently the most influential ideology emanating from within those countries.”
I speak today both as the Patron of the Xi Jinping Thought Study Group of the Institute for Independence Studies and as a Co-founder and Co-editor of Friends of Socialist China.
According to its Statement of Principles, the institute, “exists to study and propagate ideas of social emancipation and national independence” and on this basis, it began active preparations in August 2020 to form a Xi Jinping Thought Study Group, integrating relevant aspects of its existing work into that process. One formulation that particularly inspired us was that first put forward by Xi Jinping in his report to the 19th Party Congress, that socialism with Chinese characteristics offers a new option for countries that wish to rapidly develop their economies whilst maintaining their independence.
To the best of our knowledge, ours was the first such group to be formally established in any country outside China.
Our main public initiative to date has been the publication of a small book, entitled ‘Pathways to Xi Jinping Thought’. Its title was inspired by Ho Chi Minh’s famous 1960 article, ‘The path which led me to Leninism’.
It primarily consists of reminiscences of veterans of friendship and solidarity with China. Such friendship and solidarity on the part of the authors goes right back to the 1940s. It embraces work with such legendary figures as Dr. WEB Du Bois and Paul Robeson along with participation in the exhilarating heat of the Iraqi revolution. It vividly brings to life the fact that the leadership of Comrade Xi Jinping today represents the inheritance, defence and development of all that is most progressive in the Chinese revolution, and crucially that it has given many comrades renewed faith, reassurance and hence determination regarding the viability and bright future of Chinese socialism and therefore of world socialism and humanity in general.
Summing up some of the key conclusions resulting from our extensive discussions throughout the more than two years in which we worked together on this project, Institute Director, Dr. Hugh Goodacre wrote that it illustrates how, in our view, Xi Jinping Thought provides invaluable lessons for socialists everywhere and enumerated five key aspects, namely:
- The achievements of socialism in China have clearly demonstrated for all the world to see the superiority of the socialist system over capitalism. From being a country subjected to corrupt feudal rule, colonialism and semi-colonialism, and falling behind the times in economic development, socialist China has now eliminated absolute poverty among its population of over 1.4 billion, and built a country rapidly advancing to lead in the world in education, culture and its people’s participation in democratic political life, taking once again its rightful place in the world, and uniquely able to defy imperialism on the global stage.
- Xi Jinping Thought, the ideology of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a new era, is in itself an outstanding demonstration of the fact that not only the paths towards socialist revolution but also the forms taken by the socialist system after that victory are multiform. These paths and forms incorporate the advances made by each country, nation and people in all their social, cultural and intellectual variety.
- We have learnt from our study of Xi Jinping Thought more about building unity in situations where imperialism always has and always will create trouble for socialist advance. As Mao Zedong said, the logic of imperialists in dealing with the people’s cause is to “make trouble, fail, make trouble again, fail again . . . until their doom”. They not only use the evil weapon of racism to divide the working-class, but they also try to make trouble within and between the socialist countries. China is home to 56 ethnic groups, yet its Party and government have successfully sustained the unity of all its nationalities along the socialist path, a unity which the imperialists vainly try to disrupt.
- Studying Xi Jinping Thought not only teaches us that socialists should defy imperialism but also carries the message that the world’s people are increasingly in a position to do so effectively. For now, that China stands tall and firm as the world’s second largest economy, gone are the days when it could be subjected to imperialist blockade and bullying, and it has become uniquely in a position to defy imperialist threats not only on the regional but also on the global stage. At the same time, far from seeking hegemony among the socialist and other progressive countries, it strengthens unity and fraternity among them by holding fast to the principles of equality, mutual respect and non-interference.
- The experience of a century-and-three-quarters of scientific socialist ideology culminating in Xi Jinping Thought has taught us the importance of studying history as an essential task if we are adequately to assess the ideas and policies of the present. The great leaders of socialism from Marx and Engels onwards have always shown that to single out the crucial aspects of present reality upon which to focus in formulating a strategy for socialist advance requires deep study of history. It is precisely through such constant assessment and reassessment of the history and impact of its policies in the course of its revolution and socialist construction that the Communist Party of China has built such depth and richness to its ideological and political tradition culminating in Xi Jinping Thought. And far from limiting his historical perspective to Party history alone, Xi Jinping enriches his writing and teachings with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of references to the 5,000-year history of China and the accumulated wisdom of its literature, constantly subjecting that history and literature to policy-oriented analysis in the search for lessons for the socialist governance of China today.
For its part, Friends of Socialist China conducts its work on a more mass, but still modest, basis. Initially established as an online platform, since our website went live in May 2021, we have to date published more than 2,050 articles. The website has had 182,000 hits in the last year alone and we currently have regular readership in, at the least, double figures in 62 countries and regions.
Whilst we strive to present a broad range of content, we give foremost attention to the propagation and dissemination of Xi Jinping Thought – through publication of the President’s articles and speeches, explaining and promoting all his key global initiatives, and highlighting his tireless diplomatic activity in the spirit and quest of forging a community of shared future for humanity.
Although Friends of Socialist China started life as an online platform, together with my co-founder and editor Carlos Martinez, we soon faced the expectation, demand and need of broad progressive circles that we diversify and expand our work, and we therefore made and continue to make the necessary organisational arrangements to facilitate this. Together with our initial advisory panel, we now have functional committees to organise and develop the work in Britain and the United States, with preparations ongoing in a number of other countries.
We organise regular meetings and social activities, often in collaboration with other progressive organisations, in both countries, along with international webinars. So far, we have organised two annual conferences in London, attended by several hundred people in total, marking the 75th and 76th anniversaries of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Marking the 75th anniversary, we published a co-edited book and a special supplement in the socialist daily newspaper, the Morning Star. Our next book, the first of two projected volumes on China’s world view and global role in the Xi Jinping era, is slated for publication in the first quarter of 2026, while a book prepared by our US comrades, outlining how, ‘China changes everything’ has literally just been published. We have organised delegations and facilitated visits to China, enabling young comrades in their 20s through to veteran comrades in their 70s, to learn both the country’s ‘red history’ as well as its socialist present and future.
In all our activities we always seek to ‘unite all those who can be united’, bringing people together without regard to past or secondary differences, with a view not only to supporting socialist China, but also, in so doing to make our own contribution to, and create the best possible conditions for, the common struggle against imperialism and for socialism of working and oppressed people everywhere, inspired and encouraged by the achievements of China and all the socialist and socialist-oriented countries, and the insights, inspiration and guidance provided by Xi Jinping Thought.
We warmly welcome cooperation with all progressive people in our common cause and sincerely hope to develop friendship and keep contact with all of you.
Thank you again for your invitation and attention.
