Spotlight on China

by Andy Brooks

NCP leader Andy Brooks joined other communists, academics and businessmen at a symposium at the Chinese embassy last month that looked to the future following the conclusion of China’s recent parliamentary ‘two sessions’. This is his contribution to the discussion.

The world spotlight was on China in March. There, in Beijing, the annual legislative sessions of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People's Congress (NPC) was the focus of discussions on the way forward for the people’s government and the 1.4 billion people it represents.  
The ‘two sessions’ are always a significant event in Chinese people's political life, bringing together thousands of deputies and delegates from every corner of the country and all walks of life. Their proposals are aimed at solving everyday issues to build a better life for the people. 
The government’s economic targets and policy priorities for 2025; green issues and artificial intelligence; the digital economy; boosting consumer demand, ramping up investment and enlisting the private sector were all on this year’s agenda. But the debate takes place against a backdrop of domestic pressures and global uncertainty due to Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian Arabs and the continuing conflict in Ukraine.
On climate change the people’s government pledges to reduce energy intensity – a measure of energy consumption per unit of GDP – by three per cent in 2025 while many in the Global South fear the new Trump administration will seriously undermine international efforts to deal with the ecological crisis.
Donald Trump is a climate change denier who serves the interests of the big American oil and gas corporations. “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world,” Trump said during his victory speech, a statement backed by the CEO of the American Petroleum Institute who said that “energy was on the ballot, and voters sent a clear signal that they want choices, not mandates”.
During his first presidential term Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, the 2015 international climate accord that guides the actions of more than 195 countries; rolled back 100-plus environmental rules and opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. The Biden administration reversed some of these measures but Trump has pledged to restore them during his second term. Climate change campaigners believe that this could lead to a rise of an additional four billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – equalling the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan.
But while the Trump team turns its back on scientific opinion People’s China leads the way with its carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals, accelerating the comprehensive green transformation of its economy and society.
China is now an indispensable nation for global climate efforts, says former UN Under-Secretary-General Erik Solheim adding that it is essentially "impossible for the world to go green without China”.
China plays an important role in the global green energy transition, accounting for 60 per cent or more of global production in key green sectors, including solar, wind, and hydropower, as well as electric cars and batteries. The former UN official stressed the need for more investment to tackle climate challenges, saying multilateral platforms, like BRICS, are increasingly significant for addressing climate change.
"BRICS has become very important since that's an avenue for the Global South to come together and lead the world," he said, adding that the initiative will move to countries of the Global South. "The Belt & Road Initiative has recently turned into a major vehicle for green investment in the world, in solar, wind, hydropower and green corridors".
The Chinese communists are striving to achieve lasting world peace, so that all countries can enjoy a peaceful and stable external environment and their people can live a happy life with their rights fully guaranteed to build a world that is free from fear and enjoys universal security. 
This is, of course, a quantum jump from the post-war Soviet policies of “peaceful co-existence” and “detente” that failed to end the Cold War and accelerated the collapse of the USSR. Peaceful co-existence mistakenly believed that the capitalists could be economically beaten at their own game while detente was, in essence, a futile Soviet attempt at achieving nuclear parity with the Americans to divide the world into Soviet and American spheres of influence.
The Biden administration that stoked the flames of war in the Middle East took its last bow by orchestrating regime change in Syria and fermenting unrest in a number of countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America. 
The new Trump administration has changed tack in a bid to end Biden’s proxy war against Russia and establish a new detente with the Kremlin. This decision reflects the needs and demands of the wing of the American ruling class that wants to cut its losses in Ukraine to enable them to strengthen their grip over the Middle East in their efforts to control the entire global energy market. 
Spurning the United Nations some of the Trump team talk a “new Yalta” that would redefine the world into spheres of influence while retaining the lion’s share for American imperialism. At the same time the Trump administration seeks to “Make America Great Again”, largely at the expense of its own allies, and boost American manufacturing through tariffs and protectionism while using secret diplomacy and economic blackmail to achieve its goals.
Both the Russian and American sides are clearly working towards a win-win agreement over Ukraine. If that ends the war with a peace settlement that recognises the rights of the Crimeans, southern Ukrainians and the people of the Donbas to live in the Russian Federation well and good. But secret diplomacy is rarely the best pathway to peace. 
In these turbulent times China is a stabilising force ready to defend world peace. People’s China has taken the lead in helping to build the economies of the Global South while working for peace and harmony throughout the world.
Imperialism fans the flames of war in the Middle East, blocks the return of Taiwan to its Chinese homeland and prolongs the unhappy partition of many countries including Cyprus, Ireland, Kashmir and Korea. China’s perspective, on the other hand, is based on the concept of ‘one country, two systems’ and the principle that ‘a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought’.
The Chinese revolution that established the people’s government in 1949 has transformed the country that was then the poorest in the world. Since then China has risen from being a weak semi-feudal, semi-colonial country to become a force for peace in the global arena with the second largest economy in the world.
People’s China, the fifth permanent member on the UN Security Council, is the only veto-power actively supporting proposals for multilateral nuclear disarmament. Pledging never to be the first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict, China stands for the complete prohibition and total destruction of all atomic weapons.
China, backed by many other countries, has repeatedly challenged the West to implement the entire non-proliferation treaty, signed in 1968, that not only called a halt to nuclear proliferation but also committed the signatories to work towards universal nuclear disarmament.
The struggle to abolish nuclear weapons is crucial for the survival of humanity. But central to averting a Third World War is the need to eliminate the causes of war. And that is why communists have always understood that the struggles for peace and socialism are indivisible. The Chinese communists are striving to achieve lasting world peace, so that all countries can enjoy a peaceful and stable external environment and their people can live a happy life with their rights fully guaranteed to build a world that is free from fear and enjoys universal security. 

China’s next steps in 2025

Ambassador Zheng opens the seminar

by New Worker correspondent

NCP leader Andy Brooks joined other communists, academics and businessmen at a symposium at the Chinese embassy last week that looked to the future following the conclusion of the annual meeting of China’s highest civic bodies. There, in Beijing, the annual legislative sessions of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People's Congress (NPC) was the focus of discussions on the way forward for the people’s government and the 1.4 billion people it represents.  
The ‘two sessions’ are always significant events in the Chinese people's political life, bringing together thousands of deputies and delegates from every corner of the country and all walks of life. Their proposals are aimed at solving everyday issues to build a better life for the people. 
Ambassador Zheng Zeguang said that given the evolving international and domestic landscape this year's Two Sessions attracted even greater attention and carried profound significance.
The Two Sessions demonstrated the Chinese people's confidence, resolve, and their spirit of unity and readiness to take action. They also projected China's main economic and social development targets and outlined a series of important policy measures. 
The Chinese leadership made it clear that challenges arising from reform and opening up can only be solved by pressing ahead with reform and opening up, demonstrating a firm determination to address the risks and obstacles on the path ahead. The Two Sessions also highlighted the unique advantages of China's political system. They serve as a vivid practice of  ‘whole-process people's democracy’ under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.   
The British representatives at the symposium acknowledged that with increasing global uncertainties and instabilities, the current international landscape is undergoing its most profound changes since the end of the Second World War. 
As Andy Brooks noted “the new Trump administration has changed tack in a bid to end Biden’s proxy war against Russia and establish a new detente with the Kremlin. This decision reflects the needs and demands of the wing of the American ruling class that wants to cut its losses in Ukraine to enable them to strengthen their grip over the Middle East in their efforts to control the entire global energy market. 
“Spurning the United Nations some of the Trump team talk a “new Yalta” that would redefine the world into spheres of influence while retaining the lion’s share for American imperialism. At the same time the Trump administration seeks to “Make America Great Again”, largely at the expense of its own allies, and boost American manufacturing through tariffs and protectionism while using secret diplomacy and economic blackmail to achieve its goals.
“Both the Russian and American sides are clearly working towards a win-win agreement over Ukraine. If that ends the war with a peace settlement that recognises the rights of the Crimeans, southern Ukrainians and the people of the Donbas to live in the Russian Federation well and good. But secret diplomacy is rarely the best pathway to peace. 
“In these turbulent times China is a stabilising force ready to defend world peace. People’s China has taken the lead in helping to build the economies of the Global South while working for peace and harmony throughout the world”.

Socialism, the Choice of the Chinese People

Ambassador Zheng Zeguang opens the seminar

On 23rd November, the Chinese Embassy in London held an online symposium on the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th Communist Party of China Central Committee, where Ambassador Zheng Zeguang delivered a keynote speech. Andy Brooks, General Secretary of the New Communist Party of Britain, Robert Griffiths, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, Ella Rule, Chair of the CPGB (ML), Martin Jacques, a renowned expert on China, and Stephen Perry, Chair of the 48 Group Club, spoke at the event.

    Also present were Professor Martin Albrow, a fellow at the Academy of Social Sciences in London; Sir Martin Davidson, Chair of the Great Britain-China Centre; and representatives of various other political parties, experts, scholars and representatives from the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party. This is Andy Brooks’ contribution to the discussion.

First of all, I would like to thank the organisers for allowing me to say a few words at this seminar focusing on the major achievements and historical experience of the Communist Party of China (CPC) over the last 100 years of its existence.
    For a communist party to have survived for 100 years is, in itself, something to celebrate. To have led the Chinese people to victory is another. To raise the millions upon millions of the Chinese people out of poverty to build the modern socialist society that we see today is a third. And this is only the beginning of the march of progress in the 21st century.
    Feudal China was once the workshop of the world. When the people’s government was established in 1949 China had the lowest standard of living in the world. Today China can now not only feed, clothe and educate its people, but also provide consumer goods and living standards for working people unimaginable before liberation. China has a modern expanding economy that has withstood the current global capitalist crisis to once again become the workshop of the world and is sharing its prosperity through the Belt and Road Initiative that spans the globe.
    One-hundred years have passed since the foundation of the CPC on 23rd July 1921. China has risen from being a weak semi-feudal, semi-colonial country to become a force for peace in the global arena with the second largest economy in the world.
    In the past China’s wealth was the preserve of a ruthless, feudal ruling class. These days China’s wealth is being used to finally eradicate the last vestiges of poverty, raise the standard of living of everyone in the people’s republic, and help the development of the Third World through genuine fair trade and economic assistance.
    This is the glorious achievement of the CPC which led the resistance that defeated the Japanese imperialists and the reactionary Chinese warlords and politicians in the pay of American imperialism, to establish the people’s government on 1st October 1949.
    Discussion is a luxury communists can afford and as we join our Chinese comrades in celebrating their hundred years of victory, we can ask ourselves many questions.
    The collapse of the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies in eastern Europe led to calls in some communist quarters for a new communist international – calls that are still made from time to time in some parts of the movement. But we cannot restore what has gone before us without first understanding why it failed in the first place. And that understanding cannot come from reading books or simply trying to transpose one experience to another.
    Chinese communists always stress that socialism with Chinese characteristics cannot be exported and that their revolution is not a model for others to copy slavishly. But we very rarely, at least in Western Europe, ask ourselves why?
    The answer in part is based on the struggle of the Chinese communists to overcome dogmatism and sectarianism to eventually build a people’s democracy in their own way, to serve the needs of the working people of China.
    Commenting on the rise of the bourgeoisie in France, Marx famously said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. Communists too can make mistakes, but unlike the bourgeoisie we consciously try to learn from past mistakes in order to avoid future ones.
    In Europe, the mistake was clearly to elevate slavishly what was believed to be the ‘Soviet model’, even though few Western communists even really understood what the Soviet Union actually was. The Soviet Union wasn’t a ‘people’s democracy’ in the sense we understand it now. It was a unique state based on Soviet power, and whilst its economic structures could be imitated – as they were after a fashion in eastern Europe – the Soviet political system could not.
    Following the Soviet victory in the Second World War, the revolutionary upsurge that followed led to the establishment of people’s democracies throughout Eastern Europe on the same basis as the people’s democratic dictatorship was established in China in 1949. The question was how long would this transition take?
    In the beginning, people’s democracy was seen as a lengthy process. Initially it was believed that the length of the road to socialism would depend upon the development of social and economic factors in each individual country. But Cold War tensions led to the rapid incorporation of most of the European people’s democracies into a Soviet economic and military bloc, which later proved incapable of withstanding the counter-revolutionary pressures of the 1980s. The Chinese communists clearly believe that the transitional period, at least as far as their immense country is concerned, will be a lengthy process. But it is a socialist process.
    Any hopes that imperialists held that China was ‘going down the capitalist road’ were dealt a severe blow at the 2019 Congress of the CPC, where Xi Jinping reminded delegates that: “Socialism with Chinese characteristics is socialism, not any other ‘ism’. Both history and our present reality tell us that only socialism can save China – and only socialism with Chinese characteristics can develop China. This is the conclusion of history, the choice of our people.”