Looking to the future with People’s China

Chinese ambassador Zheng Zeguang opens the session

New Communist Party leader Andy Brooks took part in a symposium with the theme of the Communist Party of China and the World at the Chinese embassy in London in July. This is his contribution to the discussion.

by Andy Brooks

The Chinese revolution that established the people’s government in 1949 has transformed the country that was then the poorest in the world. China has now 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. Productivity gains, innovation and consumption needs have become the main drivers of growth. China's manufacturing, innovation and construction now serves the entire world. As China transforms it shares what it has learned with other developing countries facing similar challenges. And equally the communist party, which led and continues to lead the Chinese people’s march to socialism, is always ready to share its knowledge and experience with the rest of the communist movement around the world. 
People's China, under the leadership of its Communist Party, has made remarkable progress in the transformation of a poverty-stricken land into a leading power within a few short decades. It looks forward with confidence to the future and offers friendship and respectful relations to all the peoples of the world. 
From just over 50 members when it was founded in 1921 the Communist Party of China has grown into the world’s largest governing party, leading a nation of more than 1.4 billion people. The founding of the Party in July 1921 was the spark that united the people of China in the struggle against the landlords and capitalist oppressors, as well as Japanese and American imperialism, that led to the proclamation of the People’s Republic in 1949.
The qualitative transfer of society from obsolete capitalism to progressive socialism is the historical mission of the working class. The Chinese revolution was a momentous event – a landmark in world history like the French Revolution, the Paris Commune and the Russian Revolution of November 1917. The steadfast path taken by the Communist Party of China, changing the course of history in the pursuit of national liberation, social justice and the struggle against fascism and war embraces the lofty ideal of communism. The people’s government and the construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics are the products of generations of struggle led by the Communist Party of China. People’s democracy, the people’s democratic dictatorship, reflects the essence of the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism in Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.
We live in turbulent times.  A time of sharpening contradictions — and the primary contradiction in the world today is between United States imperialism and the rest of the world it seeks to dominate. American imperialism fans the flames of war in Ukraine and 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.  
Mao Zedong famously said that imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers but he also warned that they are their most ferocious when their backs are against the wall. This year we’ve seen the Americans land in Caracas to seize the Venezuelan president and drag him off to jail in New York. We’ve seen the treacherous American-Israeli “decapitation” raids on Iran that killed the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic and many other senior members of the Iranian government and we hear the threats to strangle Cuba and anyone else who stands in the way of US imperialism.
But wherever there is oppression there is always resistance. People’s China and the other people’s democracies in the world stood firm with Iran when the Islamic Republic fought back and forced the Americans and their Israeli and feudal Arab lackeys to cease-fire in June. 
On the economic front China has become a beacon of hope for all the peoples of the world struggling to build their own independent economies without imperialist interference. While Anglo-American and Franco-German imperialism use their military and economic might to impose their neo-colonial rule throughout the Global South the Chinese people can, and do, provide the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America with an alternative source of high technology and economic assistance without the odious strings attached that always go with deals with the West. 
And a new spirit of determination is sweeping across the world communist movement. For many years communists in the imperialist heartlands of Europe and North America looked to what many of them called the “Soviet model” and tried to create platforms to rally working people against the imperialists and oppressors. But calls for the re‑establishment of another Communist International were unrealistic. The conditions that led to the establishment of the Comintern in 1919 do not exist today. The experiences of world communist conferences sponsored by the revisionist leaderships in the CPSU after the death of Stalin were not taken into account. The vies of the ruling parties were often ignored. Now the “Brussels” conference has gone and the moribund Solidnet forum looks likely to soon follow. 
But times are changing. The close solidarity, co-operation and growing ideological dialogue and ties between the “five golden flowers of socialism” – that is China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and the DPR Korea – provides a focus for the entire world communist movement and the potential basis for a concrete platform for all the communist and workers’ parties of the world. 
We are all stepping stones to the future that Marx and Engels foresaw – a future now being built in China and the other people’s democracies around the world. 
The Communist Party of China has becoming a rallying point for the world communist movement. We welcome it. Although calls for the re‑establishment of a formal Communist International are premature, a co-ordinated international communist response is needed to rally working people against the imperialists and oppressors.
We must work to restore the momentum for revolutionary change; strengthen co-operation and united action with communist and workers parties around the world; build solidarity with the global anti-war movement and forces for liberation in the Global South to unite the class and march towards a new tomorrow – the world Marx and Engels predicted and a world that will surely come. We see it in China today. We will all surely see it tomorrow.

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.”