Hybrid webinar answers burning questions about socialist China

The Friends of Socialist China – U.S. Chapter, a coalition of anti-imperialist forces, held an incisive hybrid event on Jan. 26, to clarify the international role and domestic policies of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) — to dispel the myriad of misconceptions that pervade the West due to the onslaught of false propaganda that we are forced to consume on a daily basis.

From upper left: Joe Lombardo, UNAC; Holly; Arjae Red; Mick Kelly; Keith Bennett; Sara Flounders; KJ Noh; and Sanyika. Speaker not pictured: Danny Haiphong.

The event was held in person before a packed audience at the Portland, Oregon Central Library.  More than 600 people registered for the Zoom webinar hosted by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). Others watched by FaceBook stream and hundreds more are viewing the program on UNAC and Friends of Socialist China YouTube channels. 

The analysis of the seven presentations, each taking up a different topic, was striking in its breadth and depth. Especially notable was the vast number of established facts about modern China that would have been news even to someone familiar with the political, economic and social organization of the PRC. Some of those facts follow.

Material conditions in People’s China 

During the tenure of Mao Zedong as Chairman of the Communist Party of China (CPC), life expectancy in China grew by one year, every year.  The PRC went from practically the poorest country on Earth to solving the basic problems of feeding, clothing, housing, educating (the vast majority were made literate) and caring for the health of their nearly quarter of the world’s population; the role and social position of women were dramatically improved.

The PRC had about 19% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024, while the U.S. GDP declined to about 14%. From industries like automobiles and ship-building (about 50 times the capacity of the United States) to steel and green technologies, the PRC is leaving the United States behind.

The PRC is one of only four formerly colonized countries or regions to achieve “developed” status. It accomplished this without slavery, without colonization, without war and without invading foreign countries.

China has the longest post-retirement life expectancy — between 18 to 28 years. Blue=collar women workers can retire at age 50 and men at 55. Others retire between the ages of 60 and 63.

Some 70% of Chinese millennials own their own homes. This is twice the rate of the U.S. Between 90% and 96% of Chinese households own their own homes, usually without any debt.

In contrast to U.S. anti-terrorism policy after 9/11, which led to the invasion of multiple countries and acts of genocide through warfare and sanctions, absolutely decimating these countries’ economies, populations and social structures, the Chinese government’s response to terrorist attacks based in part on extremist, fundamentalist religious ideology has been completely different. The PRC recognizes that poverty is the root cause of what leads people to be susceptible to extreme anti-establishment ideas, so poverty alleviation has been its central tactic. 

These kinds of attacks have stopped as a result, and the province of Xinjiang, where many of them were previously concentrated, is now a very safe place. This change was accomplished without anything even remotely close to the “Uyghur genocide” that Western propagandists falsely accuse the PRC of enacting.

China’s socialist economic development 

Xi Jinping, the current leader of the PRC, has consistently said, from practically the first remarks of his first term in 2012, that China’s three stages of socialist development — from the Mao era through the opening-up policy of ‎Deng Xiaoping to the current Xi administration — should not be counterposed to one another but rather should be seen as three parts of a single revolutionary movement, each resting and building on the foundations laid by the others.

In sharp contrast to the U.S., the PRC’s state-owned industries, and to a certain extent even its private corporations, are not driven to extract profit from every transaction. They are liberated to solve real problems and address human needs.

Though China allows private individuals and companies to accumulate vast wealth, those individuals are not able to trade that wealth for political power. This is thanks to the overwhelming influence of the CPC on domestic affairs through two major mechanisms: the presence of party members on boards of directors of private companies and the membership of wealthy capitalist citizens in the CPC (which subjects them to party discipline).

Every top Chinese company is owned by the state — by the people — and not by a handful of billionaires. That includes the banks, oil and gas companies, gold and rare earth minerals companies, insurance companies and the high-speed railroads, among others.  There is a state monopoly of trade in key industries like finance, technology, communications, manufacturing, energy, aerospace and chemicals.

Capitalists from around the world can invest in China and make a lot of profit, but they are prohibited by law from pulling their equipment out if they choose to disinvest. The PRC owns the equipment, and Chinese staff must be trained to operate it. This prevents companies from creating a Chinese “rust belt” like they did in the U.S.

Through its planned economy and state ownership of core industries, the PRC has been able to avoid the economic crises of recessions and depressions that hit all capitalist economies every seven to 10 years. 

China’s economy even weathered the 2008 crisis that brought international finance capital to the brink of collapse. This shows that the global capitalist market is not dominant in the PRC, and billionaires do not drive policy.

The PRC retains public ownership of all land in China, which can be leased for specific periods of time. New construction has to conform to a centralized plan.

The PRC is currently tackling climate change by creating a revolution in sustainable energy transition. China offers renewable energy as an affordable global good; it has the greatest carbon capture project on the planet; it plants a forest the size of Belgium every single year; it is constantly developing new technologies such as molten salt reactors, plasma fusion and nanotechnologies that can reclaim lithium from seawater.

China’s international policies

The PRC’s political and economic relationship with African countries is fundamentally different from the West’s neocolonial model in that it is based on a win-win, cooperative model whose ultimate goal is not resource extraction but rather mutual benefit and which allows for the maintenance of African national sovereignty.

In sharp contrast to the U.S., the PRC does not engage in regime change, destabilization, unilateral sanctions or economic coercion in pursuit of its economic interests abroad. Nor does it have a global infrastructure of military bases (compared with the U.S.’s more than 800 bases around the world).

The Webinar’s speakers included Keith Bennett, a founder of Friends of Socialist China, who spoke on the importance of the Mao era as a foundation for everything that has followed in the PRC and journalist and geopolitical analyst Danny Haiphong, who spoke on the impact of the nascent second Trump presidency and China’s current social and economic policy.  Sanyika from the All African People’s Revolutionary Party dispelled  the lie that China is colonizing Africa and Mick Kelly from Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) told of  China’s thriving  economy and U.S. foreign policy in response. 

Sara Flounders of the International Action Center, explained the sharp difference in which  class – the capitalists or the workers – controls the state and in whose interests.  Journalist and peace activist KJ Noh argued for the PRC’s socialist structure and recent progress on various domestic issues; and Arjae Red of Workers World Party refuted in detail the falsehoods of Western propaganda about Xinjiang. The 2-hour event had time for a short Q&A session and closing remarks from each presenter. The program was co-chaired by Holly of FRSO and Arjae Red.

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