Thus, it is our heavy but honourable duty to answer the call of our homeland, the socialist China, and join the Long March towards national rejuvenation and a higher stage of socialism.

The Long March has been going on for more than 105 years. Generation after generation, Chinese people inside and outside China have been marching on the arduous but glorious journey towards the red flag with hammer and sickle. As Xi said, “every generation has its own long march, and every generation must see that march through. (每一代人有每一代人的长征路，每一代人都要走好自己的长征路。)” So, what is the most important goal of our long March as Chinese diasporas in the current historical period? And how can we succeed in our Long March?

Our Long March towards national sovereignty

We are living at a critical turning point in human history, borrowing words from Antonio Gramsci: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.”

As the White Empire faces its inevitable decline, it has become more and more desperate and aggressive than ever before, trying to drag the whole world into the abyss with it. It sees China, a major socialist country, as its major enemy, because what China is doing now, i.e, building a new multilateral world and providing the global majority with an alternative development path to neoliberalism, threatens the very existence of the Epstein class.

Given its more than two centuries long genocidal records, it is not an exaggeration to say that China is now facing great external threat from the White Empire. Hence, our current most urgent task is, in my opinion, to defend our national sovereignty against imperialism, as without national sovereignty, national rejuvenation and socialism would be a daydream.

Many may ask, what national sovereignty are you talking about? Isn’t China a fully sovereign country?

• What is national sovereignty?

Some may say political (including territorial) sovereignty and economic (including technological) sovereignty. Undoubtedly, they are very important aspects. However, national sovereignty is way broader than these tangible material aspects. It is also about intangible ideological aspects, cultural sovereignty, as culture is an important terrain for both imperialist domination and anti-imperialist struggles. As said by delegates in the Cultural Congress of Havana in 1968,

“Imperialism operates through a systematic offensive across every dimension of society and culture, including the colonisation of consciousness, control of information, extraction of intellectual labour, ‘brain drain’…(on the other hand), culture is the substance through which liberation is built, creating, in the process of struggle, new subjects, languages, institutions, and knowledge.”

Just like “the economic base determines the superstructure, and the superstructure reacts upon the economic base”, without a relatively stable base of political and economic sovereignty, it would be very difficult to fully achieve cultural sovereignty, while without de-colonising / de-imperialising the culture in one society, it is almost impossible to achieve a high level of political and economic sovereignty.

In other words, when the White Empire expands its political and economic domination towards a third world country, it also silently erodes the cultural sovereignty of the imperialised country by spreading the toxins of “Western culture”. With the imperialised country gradually losing its cultural sovereignty, it becomes more and more incapable of defending itself from Western political and economic influences.

But why do I put quotation marks on “Western culture”? Let us take the U.S for example. They like bragging about their culture: “individual freedom and liberal democracy”.

But freedom for what? Freedom for being over-exploited and even slaughtered by the Epstein class, the owners of the capital? Or freedom for a dignified life with affordable housing, public education and healthcare?

But liberal democracy for whom? For the few, the Epstein class who runs the entire White Empire? Or for the masses, the indigenous people whose land has been stolen for centuries, African Americans whose lives have been constantly wasted by the death machine of the Empire, or the white working class Americans who live from paycheck to paycheck?

I guess the answers are very obvious. The so-called “Western culture”, or in this case “the White Empire’s culture”, is not really a culture, but a cult of capital.

Don’t get me wrong, Europeans had cultures before they started their bloody adventure of colonialism.

But when Europeans invented the notion of “white superior race” versus “non-white (black, brown, and indigenous) inferior race”, when they turned themselves from ordinary people to “white colonisers” on the way to America, when they committed genocides not only to colonised people but also to their native cultures, they have also completely killed their own cultures. Instead, they developed the cult of capital with white supremacist rituals. The traces of the cult can be found everywhere in Western societies, from Hollywood films to mainstream news, from research institutes to NGOs, from McDonald’s to BP gas stations.

In other words, by imposing Western political and economic hegemony over the third world, Europeans have also lost their cultural sovereignty to the capital represented by the Epstein class. Without cultural sovereignty, there is no political and economic sovereignty.

Thus, not only the imperialised peripheries, even the imperialist cores are now completely dominated by the interests of capital, i.e, the Epstein class owning multinational corporations, or as said by my cohost indi, by “White Empire Corporate AI”, with few non-aligned countries like Iran, DPRK, Russia, China as exceptions.

So here comes the second question:

• Is China a fully sovereign country?

Undoubtedly, as a socialist non-aligned country, China has a much higher level of national sovereignty than many other capitalist countries both in the cores and in the peripheries. However, as the tentacles of capital have spanned to every corner of the world, no country is spared from its dominance, including the White Empire itself, the U.S., and China.

Chinese people have gone through a long winding journey to pursue national sovereignty since the beginning of the century of humiliation. To understand China’s current situation regarding national sovereignty, we need to quickly look back to the past.

Since the First Opium War, China has lost most of its national sovereignty. The Western cult of capital with white supremacist rituals also spread in Chinese society. From the comprador class represented by the Kuomintang Party to landless peasants and overexploited workers, everyone had more or less inhaled the toxic gas of “Western culture” and developed a weird syndrome of “self-hatred”, a blind hatred towards China’s traditional culture. A “blind worship of foreign things (崇洋媚外)” prevailed in Chinese society, deeming everything foreign, including “Western culture”, as more desirable and progressive.

To defeat the cult of capital, Chinese people led by a small group of intelligentsia started the anti-imperialist battle with a correct choice of weapon, Marxism. By combining Marxism, the universal truth and guidance for the oppressed masses all over the world, with China’s own material and historical conditions, Chinese people successfully defeated both imperialist powers and reactionary comprador bourgeois class, founded the People’s Republic of China (PRC), reclaiming political and cultural sovereignty.

However, due to the devastating material conditions after two-decades long wars, and merciless Western economic blockades, China was unable to achieve a high level of economic sovereignty until the recent decade, making it rather difficult to fully achieve political and cultural sovereignty.

Firstly, regarding political sovereignty: since its founding, China’s political sovereignty has been constantly threatened by the White Empire. Even today, the regime-change and balkanisation attempt of the imperialist West is still going on. From Tibet (Xizang) Autonomous Region to Xinjiang Autonomous Region, from Tiananmen Square to Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the tentacles of the Epstein class can still be seen in almost all strategically important places in China.

Unfortunately, some of us, Chinese diasporas, are currently consciously or subconsciously helping the imperialist West erode China’s political sovereignty, either by actively joining and supporting separatist campaigns, or by passively spreading anti-China pro-separatist fake narratives.

Secondly, in terms of cultural sovereignty, due to a lack of a stable economic base, in spite of the successful socialist revolution, Chinese people have not managed to completely eradicate the long-lasting aftereffects of this “self-hatred” syndrome.

The “self-hatred” syndrome has manifested itself with two faces.

During the Cultural Revolution, it took on the “ultra-left dogmatic” face, destroying numerous highly valuable cultural heritages, denouncing all Chinese traditions and religions as “backward” and spreading the erroneous understanding of “socialism”, pauperism, i.e., socialism means everyone should be equally poor.

After the Reform and Opening up, it took on the “ultra-right neoliberal” face, praising Western bourgeois cultures and neoliberalism to the sky, calling the strict state control of the market as “dictatorship”, and treating Western fascist culture trashes, like Zionism, Islamophobia, and Racism, as treasures.

It is until the recent decade, when China has finally gained a relatively high level of economic (including technological) sovereignty, that Chinese people have become more able to reject both the “ultra-left” Western Marxist ideologies and the “ultra-right” Western bourgeois ideologies.

Since around 2012, China started making more and more efforts to throw away both bourgeois culture trashes and ultra-left dogmatism, and to develop a Chinese Marxism that truly belongs to all Chinese people through integrating Chinese traditional culture into Marxism.

To cut the bourgeois neoliberal tumours of Chinese society, Chinese government has launched anti-corruption campaign since 2012, sentencing many Chinese capitalists, including most recently the real estate tycoon of Evergrande, Xu Jiayin, to lifelong imprisonment, making China a dangerous country for billionaires and a nightmare for Epstein class, who can get away with children-eating crimes in the White Empire. Moreover, last year, the Cyberspace Administration of China also launched a campaign against worship of money and excessive wealth on Chinese social media, preventing the bourgeois neoliberal tumours from expanding to younger generations.

To cure “ultra-left” dogmatic illness and develop Chinese Marxism, since 2016, countless Chinese scholars in Philosophy and Social Science fields have been working on constructing a sovereign Chinese social science system with Chinese Marxism being the centre, including the Marxist philosopher and educator from Renmin University, Chen Xianda (陈先达), who had dedicated his whole life to Chinese Marxism and published an important and inspiring article “Marxism and Traditional Chinese Culture” in 2015 when he was still with us.

In addition, more efforts are being made recently to promote Chinese Marxism among younger generations. In 2022, Chinese government launched the campaign of “integrating ideological and political courses into primary, secondary, and higher education”, making Marxist education an essential part of the daily lives for Chinese students. Recently, more public investments have been made to promote red-themed tourism, making revolutionary landmarks trendy again for young Chinese, like the Red Building of Peking University (北大红楼), the Former Residence of Li Dazhao (李大钊故居), and the Fragrant Hills Revolutionary Memorial Hall (香山革命纪念馆).

However, this is just the beginning of the Long March towards cultural sovereignty. And the Long March is not without obstacles.

In the leading positions of China’s academic institutions, many scholars are “Haigui” (Returnees, former diasporas), who have studied in the capitalist West in the past and been deeply influenced by neoliberalism. Their neoliberal and pro-capitalist mindset imposes a great hindrance to China’s Long March towards cultural sovereignty.

For example, recently, Zhang Dandan, a professor at Peking University with a PhD in economics from Australian National University, made an “anti-Marxist / anti-socialist” statement that “the flexibility/freedom inherent in flexible employment is, in itself, a benefit. (灵活就业的“灵活 (自由)”本身就是一种福利)”, causing serious public concerns about potential backlashes on labour rights in China.

The example of Zhang Dandan is not an exception. Being constantly exposed to “Western culture”, we, Chinese diasporas, are the weakest link in the entire chain of China’s political and cultural sovereignty. Thus, the key for China to fully achieve its national sovereignty lies with us, Chinese diasporas, the Achilles’ heel of Chinese society.

How can we succeed in our Long March?

So how can we, Chinese diasporas, prevent ourselves from being manipulated by the White Empire and instead become active defenders of China’s national sovereignty?

First and foremost, we must relearn humility.

Under the influence of “Western culture”, many of us have long forgotten what this word means. Many of us believe that we have the right to voice out our personal opinions on everything about China. But in reality, we know almost nothing about our own country, partially because we have not lived there for a long time, partially because no one can really fully comprehend such a vast country with diverse cultures and complex realities. Having touched a leg of a giant elephant does not mean we know exactly what the elephant looks like.

Moreover, due to our internalised white arrogance, we believe subconsciously that we, who have overseas experiences, are more “superior” to Chinese people who have not lived or studied abroad. As a result, we think that we have the right to lecture other Chinese people who, in many cases, are more knowledgeable than us. Without washing the dirt of arrogance out of our minds, we will be forever trapped in the Orientalist and Eurocentric rabbit hole.

Having relearned humility, we will not blindly believe in anti-China propaganda and follow the trend of Western Marxism or neoliberalism. Instead, we will be able to learn about our country with an open mind.

So here comes the second step: to learn about China and Chinese Marxism. Learning can take on different forms. We can read books by Chinese Marxists, listen to news from Chinese media houses, watch Chinese films, travel to China, and even study in China and make friends with ordinary Chinese people.

Once having developed a certain level of sound understanding about our country, it will be time for us to take on two important tasks.

Firstly, we should help defend China and Chinese Marxism against separatist attempts and anti-China / anti-communist propaganda by countering the fake narratives with objective facts and telling the truth to people around the world who are curious about China, especially those in the imperialist West.

Secondly, if we live in the imperialist cores, we should organise ourselves in anti-imperialist groups and do everything within our abilities to support the anti-imperialist movements, because all struggles are interconnected. Our destiny is closely tied to the destiny of our home country, China, and the destiny of China is closely tied to the destiny of the entire imperialised third world. Only when the White Empire finally meets its demise and a new multilateral world is built on its ashes can we Chinese people fully achieve our national sovereignty.

Conclusion

In our current world, many people have negative associations with the term “diaspora”, it can mean traitors of one’s own people and bootlickers of the White Empire. Certainly, it is not completely unjustified that people view us so negatively, as we are perhaps one of the most reactionary groups among our people, a group with the most exposure to “Western culture”, a group in more comfortable material situations than many back home, a group that should have carried on the legacy of our nation but have, until now, not accomplished its mission.

But nothing is constant; the future has not been written. Having lived in the imperialist West can be a curse but can also be a blessing. Many of us, especially after the al-Aqsa flood, have witnessed the ugly face of the White Empire beneath its liberal façade. Many of us, especially in major European and U.S cities, have witnessed the bloody teeth of capitalism beneath its large smiles. Our first hand experiences in the West can help us understand the White Empire better, struggle against it harder, and appreciate our home country, the socialist China, and its culture, the Chinese Marxism, much more. And this can, without any doubt, help us succeed in our Long March towards national sovereignty.

To conclude, I would like to share the poem of Chairman Mao on the Long March:

Of the trying Long March the Red Army makes light; (红军不怕远征难)
Thousands of rivers and mountains are barriers slight. (万水千山只等闲)
The five serpentine ridges outspread like rippling rills; (五岭逶迤腾细浪)
The pompous Wumeng peaks tower but like mole-hills. (乌蒙磅礴走泥丸)
Against warm cloudy cliffs beat waves of Golden Sand; (金沙水拍云崖暖)
With cold iron-chain bridge River Dadu is spanned. (大渡桥横铁索寒)
Glad to see the Min Range snow-clad for miles and miles, (更喜岷山千里雪)
The Three Armies smile after crossing the last passes. (三军过后尽开颜)

In socialist societies, working-class occupations are highly respected. For Chinese people, it is honourable to be workers and peasants, while despicable to be parasitic billionaires in the Epstein class. Chinese workers, whether factory workers or sanitation workers, are all deeply proud of their jobs and their great contributions to their people, their country, and the socialist cause.

Moreover, Chinese workers are probably the most politically influential working class in the world. Around three billion Chinese workers are unionised in the world's largest labour union, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). Many of them are taking an active part in local branches of ACFTU, helping improve the well-being of all Chinese workers. Without their everyday hard work at the forefront of China's labour organisations, China’s recent achievements in reducing inequality and alleviating poverty would have been unimaginable. Their dedication is imperative in China's long march towards a higher stage of socialism.

Huang Baomei, the antagonist of this week's "socialism is built by hard work" story, is one of the around 7 billion Chinese workers, who are making extraordinary contributions to socialism in ordinary occupations. Her story has become a source of inspiration for us, the younger generations of Chinese working-class people.

Huang Baomei, former vice chairman of the trade union of Shanghai No. 17 Cotton Textile Factory—A life dedicated to the Party, the people and the country

原上海第十七棉纺织厂工会副主席黄宝妹—一生听党话 为国作奉献

By Jiang Hongbing (姜泓冰) from People's Daily (人民日报)

"Dedicated to the Party"—this belief accompanied Huang Baomei throughout her life.

Born in 1931 in Pudong, Shanghai, Huang Baomei's childhood was filled with hardship. Before she was 13, she was already working as a child laborer at the Japanese-owned Yufeng Cotton Mill. "Back then, I had to get up at 4 a.m. every day, take a ferry across the Huangpu River in the dark, and go to work at the factory in Yangshupu. I had to stand in front of the spinning machine all day to watch the yarn. I was searched by the factory guards before being allowed to leave after finishing my work, and it was already dark when I got home," Huang Baomei said.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, factories became people's factories, and workers finally became the owners of their factories. Huang Baomei became a worker at the Shanghai No. 17 Cotton Textile Factory. She threw herself into production with boundless enthusiasm. Due to her diligence and outstanding performance, she became a proud member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the age of 21. In 1953, with her exceptional ability to manage 800 spindles single-handedly, she stood out from 550,000 spinning workers in Shanghai and became a model worker of the Ministry of Textile Industry. In 1956 and 1959, she was twice named a national model worker.

For decades afterward, Huang Baomei consistently held herself to the high standards of a Party member and a model worker.

When spinning roving in the factory, broken yarn ends would get caught on the rollers, causing waste—wasted cotton fiber known as "roller waste." In the early days of the People's Republic of China, when the country was still very poor, an ounce of "roller waste" could buy three bowls of white rice. Huang Baomei sought ways to reduce "roller waste." She developed a method of operation called "single-line circulation, double-sided care, and no backtracking," which not only saved one-third of the manpower but also allowed the machines to operate 24 hours a day.

The young Huang Baomei was lively and beautiful, fond of singing and dancing. During a visit to Vienna, Austria, she and her companions appeared in Qipao, attracting a crowd. In 1958, the Shanghai Film Studio began filming the feature film Huang Baomei, directed by Xie Jin and starring Huang Baomei herself. After the film's release the following year, Huang Baomei became a star of that era.

However, Huang Baomei declined invitations to become a professional actress, returning to the textile workshop with great passion. At the age of 26, she was offered a management position in the party, but after only a few days sitting in the office, she solemnly requested to return to the factory. She said, "I am an ordinary worker; textiles are my true calling."

Until her honorable retirement in 1986, Huang Baomei remained steadfast on the production line, dedicating her enthusiasm and talent to factory work.

Serving the people is a never-ending journey. In the new era of reform and opening up, Huang Baomei became known as "Mother Huang". She remained steadfast, braving the storms and forging ahead in the tides of the times.

In the 1980s, Huang Baomei was hired to assist in the Junan Cotton Mill Factory in Qidong, Jiangsu Province. At that time, cotton raw materials and machinery were in short supply. Huang Baomei traveled to Beijing and Qingdao, working tirelessly day and night for the company's development. Three years later, when she left the factory, this small township-run factory was thriving. Huang Baomei never asked the factory for a penny more. In her view, a successful factory provides employment for local textile workers, creating social wealth and ensuring that everyone has high quality clothes to wear.

In the 1990s, Shanghai's textile industry faced downturns. Huang Baomei, who worked for the Shanghai Model Workers Association, a local branch of ACFTU, learned that some model workers' families were experiencing financial difficulties. With the support of the association and friends, she led more than 20 retired model workers to raise funds and established a collective factory. The profit made by the factory is not distributed to its funders, but given to elderly model workers in need.

Time flies, and "Aunt Huang" has become Grandma Huang. Over the years, when people encounter difficulties, they like talking to her and asking for advice.

In 2006, 75-year-old Huang Baomei finally "retired" and returned home, but she still couldn't stay idle. Seeing that the neighborhood committee hadn't been established for three years, she was deeply concerned. "The neighborhood is also a home. The neighborhood committee only has a few members; how can it function without everyone's participation?" Just like when she persuaded her factory workers in her youth, she patiently mobilized her community residents to actively participate in building their community. Together they established the neighborhood committee, replaced old mailboxes, and widened emergency access routes… The neighborhood environment became more beautiful, and relations between residents became more harmonious.

"As Party members, we must strive for the socialist cause in our whole lives," Huang Baomei firmly asserted, and she acted accordingly.

"I am a serious person; if I'm going to do something, I'll do it well." Back then, the Party sent Huang Baomei to study at the East China Textile Engineering Institute (now Donghua University). Before that, she only learned how to read Chinese characters from night school. When she first sat in university classrooms, she could barely understand anything. However she didn’t give up. She participated in classes actively, borrowed notes and did her homework at night. After a year of hard work, she passed all exams and obtained her diploma.

She always put others first. Her family lived in a cramped shantytown for many years, but each time when public housing was allocated, they always gave up their opportunity to those who needed it more. Later, due to the needs of work, the Party organization allocated her an apartment. Six months after moving in, she learned that a coworker's home had been destroyed in a disaster. Without any doubts, she gave her apartment to her coworker. It wasn't until the 1990s that Huang Baomei finally bought the apartment she lives in now and moved in.

When her 70-year-old son was asked, "What is the most important influence your mother has brought to you?", his answer is always "her upright character." He says his mother is generous, doesn't care about personal gains or losses, doesn't back down from difficulties, and directly points out wrongdoings, focusing on the issue, not the person. The family lives in harmony across four generations, and her son and daughter-in-law respect and love her. In 2017, Huang Baomei's family was named one of the "Most Beautiful Families in China."

Huang Baomei has lived her entire life in Yangpu District and witnessed the development and changes of the Yangpu Riverside area. On November 2, 2019, when General Secretary Xi Jinping inspected the Yangpu Riverside, she excitedly told the General Secretary that she is a native Shanghainese who has witnessed the tremendous changes in Shanghai from old China to new China and then to the new era, and felt extremely proud of the Communist Party of China and Chinese socialism. The General Secretary encouraged her to tell young generations more about this, strengthening their confidence in the socialist path.

General Secretary Xi Jinping's words greatly encouraged Huang Baomei, who is in her eighties. As a veteran Party member with nearly 70 years of membership, her greatest wish is to dedicate her life to the development of the country and serving the people. She said, "As long as I can still walk, I will continue to tell the story of the Party and the story of China."

Huang Baomei is a member of the Shanghai "Hundred-Year-Old Ethics Education Lecturer Group" and has given more than 50 free ethics education lectures to nearly 10,000 young people. "Her life story and moral character are a living textbook," many who have attended Huang Baomei's lectures commented.

In 2016, Yangpu District established the "Golden Sunset" Retired Cadre Positive Energy Studio, and Huang Baomei was among the first to join. In recent years, she has given even more lectures. She also works as a "host" on Bilibili's "Old Yangshu Lecture Hall," sharing stories of the Party with the younger generations and inspiring them to stay true to their belief in communism and shoulder their responsibilities.

This May, Huang Baomei was awarded the title of "National Advanced Worker in Caring for the Next Generation." Holding the certificate of honor, she smiled broadly.

The 56 ethnic groups of China demonstrated a high level of unity and solidarity in modern Chinese history, especially during the more than thirty years of anti-imperialist struggle. Without mutual support among all ethnic groups and the great contributions and sacrifices of people from ethnic minority groups, the Chinese people's struggle for national liberation from imperialist rule could not have succeeded.

Now, as the White Empire declines, its aggression is at an all-time high. To wage its last anti-communist war, it spares no effort in spreading separatist propaganda and inciting anti-communist sentiment among China's ethnic minority groups.

Therefore, remembering and learning from the beautiful anti-imperialist history collectively written by all the Chinese people from all the 56 ethnic groups, is more important than ever before. In this week's "the resistance history against imperialism in Southeast Asia", let us pay tribute to this beautiful history together.

Fifty-six ethnic groups raise their bright red flags together—the anti-imperialist history of Chinese ethnic minority groups

56个民族的力量擎起鲜红的旗帜——记少数民族对建立新中国的贡献

By The State Council of People's Republic of China (中国政府网)

On May 4, 1919, in Beijing, Shi Huang (施滉), a Bai (白族) student from Dali, Yunnan, joined over 3,000 students at Tiananmen Square, shouting, "Fight for national rights abroad, punish traitors at home!" That evening, at a student discussion at Tsinghua University, he firmly advocated "united action with all schools," quickly becoming a leading figure during the May Fourth Movement (五四运动).

In Tianjin, Ma Jun (马骏), a Hui (回族) student at Nankai Middle School, and his classmates went to various secondary and higher education institutions to mobilise and organize student demonstrations in support of the patriotic movement of Beijing students. On May 7, he co-founded the Tianjin Student Union, serving as its vice president. On May 22, the Tianjin Student Union organized a general strike of over 10,000 students to pressure the authorities.

Almost simultaneously, Deng Enming (邓恩铭), a Shui (水族) student, led students from Jinan No. 1 Middle School to attend a national humiliation commemoration meeting held in Jinan by representatives from all walks of life in Shandong, and delivered speeches calling on all sectors of society to strike, boycott Japanese goods, and close schools.

In this far-reaching May Fourth Movement, students of all ethnic groups stood at the forefront of the anti-imperialist struggle, leading the new democratic revolution in China!

After the May Fourth Movement, a large number of outstanding members of ethnic minority groups rapidly grew into communist cadres. Ma Jun not only organized the Awakening Society, founded publications, and promoted Marxism, but also established the first Party group in Northeast China; Deng Enming established a communist group in Jinan and became an important party leader.

Liu Songbin, a researcher at the Central Party History Research Office, explained that "people from ethnic minority groups had a revolutionary demand for liberation. In the process of fighting for national liberation, the advanced figures in ethnic minority groups created progressive groups, spread Marxism, and contributed to the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC)and its early work.

In 1921, the Communist Party of China was founded, with Deng Enming becoming the only representative of ethnic minority groups at its First National Congress. That same year, Wang Jun (王俊), a Manchu (满族) worker, became a key figure in the railway workers' union during the Changxindian workers' strike. In 1922, Xiang Jingyu (向警予), a Tujia （土家族) woman, joined the Communist Party of China and began organizing and leading the Chinese women's revolutionary movement. In 1927, Long Dadao (龙大道), a Dong (侗族) man, participated in organizing the Third Armed Uprising of Shanghai Workers.

In Guangxi, a Zhuang (壮族) teenager Wei Baqun (韦拔群) returned to his hometown in 1921 after the CPC was founded to engage in the peasant movement. He organized the "Reform of Donglan Comrades Association" and the "National Self-Defense Army," and launched three attacks on Donglan County, marking one of the earliest armed struggles in the history of the modern Chinese peasant revolutionary movement.

Inner Mongolia was the earliest ethnic minority region to establish Communist Party work. Ulanhu (乌兰夫), along with Duosongnian, Li Yuzhi, and Jiyatai, (多松年、李裕智、吉雅泰) became the first generation of Marxists among the Mongolian people in China. In 1925, four CPC Working Committees were established in Inner Mongolia: Suiyuan, Rehe, Chahar, and Baotou.

In the early days of the Communist Party, people from ethnic minority groups displayed immense political enthusiasm, launching sweeping workers' and peasants' movements across the country. They organized mass revolutionary groups such as trade unions, peasant associations, and women's associations, established self-defense armies to wage armed struggle against imperialism and feudalism, and supported the Northern Expedition.

Fang Sumei, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, stated that

“modern China had long suffered from the bullying of foreign powers, and Chinese people from ethnic minority groups, just like the Han Chinese, faced the danger of national subjugation and extinction. The struggles of ethnic minority groups against exploitation and oppression were a form of national consciousness, part of the Chinese revolution, and significantly contributed to the revolutionary cause of the CPC.”

The birth and growth of the CPC provided strong leadership for the struggles of ethnic minority groups. After experiencing numerous setbacks and failures, they ultimately chose to follow the Communist Party and embark on the correct revolutionary path.

In Xiji County, Ningxia, 72 years ago, natural disasters and man-made calamities plunged the people into misery. From 1939 to 1941, Ma Xichun (马喜春) and Ma Siyi (马思义) led thousands of Hui (回族)people in three uprisings. Due to the overwhelming disparity in strength, the insurgents were driven to the brink of defeat in 1941.

"My heart felt as heavy as if a huge stone were hanging from it. Suddenly, a ray of light pierced the darkness and illuminated my heart. I remembered: those who had witnessed it firsthand had said that the Red Army fought for the poor, and we should join them."

Ma Siyi wrote in his memoir. Since then, Ma Siyi led several hundred men to the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, forming a Hui Muslim cavalry regiment. Under the leadership of the CPC, they continued their anti-imperialist struggle in their hometown area until final victory.

Far away on Hainan Island, at the ends of the earth, the Baisha Uprising Army, composed of the Li (黎族) and other ethnic minorities, led by Li leader Wang Guoxing (王国兴), also chose to join the CPC. Under the leadership of the CPC Qiongya Special Committee, they established the Baisha Central Base Area, and the Wuzhi Mountain area became an important base for the revolutionary struggle on Hainan Island.

As said by Fang Sumei,

“since the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the revolutionary struggle of the ethnic minority groups has been integrated into the nationwide revolutionary torrent against imperialism and feudalism. Without the victory of the ethnic minorities' revolution, the final victory of the national revolution could have not been achieved; without the liberation of the ethnic minority groups, there could be no complete liberation of Chinese nation.”

With unwavering determination, at the most critical moment, the vast majority of ethnic minority groups resolutely stood with the CPC and selflessly supported the Chinese revolutionary struggle.

Revolution is never a smooth journey, but a thorny and arduous one. In the process of the CPC's development and growth, it experienced numerous setbacks and failures, but no matter how perilous the situation, the ethnic minority peoples always fought shoulder to shoulder with the Party.

In October 1927, the Suiyuan Special Branch of the CPC was established in Hohhot. Under the shadow of white terror and extreme hardship, a number of grassroots Party organizations were re-established. On May 1, 1931, the Special Committee conducted a public propaganda campaign. They posted mimeographed leaflets on the streets, exposing the counter-revolutionary crimes of the Kuomintang and arousing the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses. The whole city was in an uproar, and the masses spread the news: The Communist Party is back!

Like Inner Mongolia, after the failure of the Great Revolution, many ethnic minority people actively responded to the Party's call, devoted themselves to the land revolution, participated in armed uprisings throughout the country, created the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and opened up revolutionary base areas, inspiring the revolutionary spirit of the people nationwide.

In western Hubei, in 1929, the Changyang County Defense Corps merged with the People's Self-Defense Corps and guerrillas to form the Sixth Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. The Xiwang Uprising marked the first such uprising in the country, with ethnic minorities as the main body and organized as an army. In this revolutionary force, soldiers of the Tujia ethnic group alone accounted for nearly 52% of the total number of soldiers. The army commander, Li Xun (李勋), the chief of staff, Li Zijun (李子俊), and the political director, Li Buyun (李步云), were all Tujia.

In Guangxi, Wei Baqun, Chen Hongtao (韦拔群、陈洪涛), and others participated in organizing and leading the Baise Uprising and the Longzhou Uprising, establishing the Zuojiang and Youjiang Revolutionary Base Areas. These became the first revolutionary base area established by the CPC in a minority region during the modern Chinese land revolution war. To establish and defend the Zuojiang and Youjiang base areas, Wei Baqun and a large number of other ethnic minority revolutionary martyrs sacrificed their lives. Wei Baqun, along with his mother, son, and more than a dozen others, died, leaving almost no one from his entire family.

Liu Songbin said,

"Ethnic minoritiy peoples are exceptionally simple and honest in their feelings, and exceptionally resolute in their struggles. Once they accepted Marxism, they never wavered."

During those turbulent years, although the various ethnic minority groups lived in isolated and underdeveloped areas, they became close friends of the CPC and its strong supporters in times of crisis.

During the Long March from 1934 to 1936, the CPC and the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army had extensive contact with ethnic minority peoples. They passed through more than a dozen areas inhabited by ethnic minority groups, including the Miao, Yao, Buyi, Tujia, Dong, Yi, Tibetan, Qiang, and Yugur (苗、瑶、布依、土家、侗、彝、藏、羌、裕固), receiving tremendous support from the people from all ethnic groups.

Yang Qing, a researcher at the Central Party History Research Office, said that,

“without the guidance, translation, intelligence delivery, and supply transport provided by the ethnic minority peoples along the way, it would have been unimaginable for the Red Army to traverse the sparsely populated and geographically complex areas and successfully finish the Long March.”

In early May 1935, when the main force of the Central Red Army was crossing the Jinsha River at Jiaopingdu, 36 boatmen of Yi, Dai, and Han ethnicities worked tirelessly for nine days and nine nights to ferry the Red Army safely across the river, ensuring that not a single person or horse was left behind. This allowed the Central Red Army to completely escape the encirclement and pursuit of the Kuomintang army.

In the Ganzi County of the Tibetan (Zang)Autonomous Prefecture, more than 100,000 Red Army soldiers entered the area over a period of nearly 15 months, traversing 16 counties. The Red Army found places to rest and replenish here. The Baili Monastery in Ganzi County, where the renowned patriot Geda Living Buddha (格达活佛) resided, had only 100 lamas, yet twice supplied the Red Army with over 3,500 kg of grain. Danba County, with a population of only 30,000 at the time, raised 170,000 kg of grain for the Red Army between October 1935 and January 1936. Geda Yixian (格达一先), a poor farmer from Badi Township, Danba County, selflessly donated his only cornbread and 1.5 kg of soybeans (his last crop of beans) to the Red Army. He also wove 15 pairs of straw sandals for the Red Army using his own hemp.

Ethnic minority peoples also enthusiastically joined the army. An Dengbang (安登榜), a hereditary chieftain of the Qiang (羌族) ethnic group in Songpan County, joined the Red Army; Kenbeng (肯崩), the Tibetan village chieftain of Jinchuan County, joined the Red Army; and Xiao Fuzhen (肖福祯), an imam from Beichuan County, also joined the Red Army. According to incomplete statistics, during the Long March, 6,900 young people from various ethnic minority groups joined the Red Army in Longshan County, Hunan Province; 12,500 in Guizhou Province; more than 3,000 in Zhaxi County, Yunnan Province; and 55,000 in Sichuan Province. Everywhere, touching scenes emerged of parents sending their sons, wives sending their husbands, fathers and sons, husbands and wives, brothers, and even entire families joining the Red Army.

Facing the aggression and humiliation of imperialism, Chinese people of all ethnic groups united as one, rose up in resistance, and forged an invincible force.

Fang Sumei, a researcher of ethnic minority history, said that,

“one of the outstanding contributions made by ethnic minority groups in the history of the Chinese revolution was their unwavering resistance to separatism and their safeguarding of national unity. This was vividly demonstrated in the War of Resistance Against Japan.”

At a time of national crisis, the Chinese people, including various ethnic minorities, refused to submit to imperialist forces and waged a bloody battle against the Japanese invaders, composing a magnificent and moving epic of national liberation.

Twenty days after the September 18 Incident, Tibetan compatriots in Nanjing established the Kham-Tibetan Hometown Association for Anti-Japanese National Salvation, discussing strategies to resist Japanese imperialism and liberate the Chinese nation. They also used chanting and prayer activities to express their determination to win the anti-imperialist war against Japan. Hundreds of thousands of lamas in major Tibetan monasteries held chanting ceremonies to support the anti-imperialist struggle.

After Japan blockaded the Chinese coastline and the Burma Road in the southwest, Xinjiang became the most important international transport route for China's resistance against Japan. People of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang gathered a large number of vehicles specifically for transport work. The Yufenglong Trading Company in Dihua auctioned off its goods for three days, donating all proceeds to the anti-Japanese war effort; Atikhan (阿提克汗), a woman from Wensu County, donated all 27 silver ingots left by her deceased husband; in August 1939, people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang donated money to purchase 10 fighter planes, named "Xinjiang," and sent them to the front lines of the War of Resistance against Japan to participate in the defense of Wuhan.

As the Japanese attempted to split China and establish a puppet autonomous regime, the Mongolian compatriots on the front lines of the anti-imperialist war consistently waged a tit-for-tat struggle, thwarting the Japanese plot.

On May 24, 1939, the Jizhong Hui Muslim Detachment, an anti-Japanese armed force led by the CPC, was established during the War of Resistance against Japan, with Ma Benzhai (马本斋) as commander. Over six years, the Hui Muslim Detachment fought more than 800 battles, annihilating tens of thousands of Japanese and puppet troops. The Central Military Commission commended Ma Benzhai, and the Jizhong Military Region awarded the Hui Muslim Detachment the title of "An Iron Army That Is Invincible, Unbreakable, Unbreakable, and Unbreakable."

The Northeast Anti-Japanese War, renowned for its arduous struggle, saw many armed forces without unit numbers, organizational structures, names, or records. Many soldiers from ethnic minority groups, including Koreans, Manchus, Mongols, Daurs, Hezhe, and Oroqen (朝鲜、满、蒙古、达斡尔、赫哲、鄂伦春), fought bravely. Korean soldiers comprised all eleven armies of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, with approximately half of the soldiers in the First and Seventh Armies being of Korean descent. Many ethnic minority soldiers sacrificed their precious lives in this arduous and protracted war.

In the struggle against national separatism and the safeguarding of national unity, ethnic minority peoples made significant contributions. China's independence and territorial integrity today are the result of the long-term joint efforts and defense by all ethnic groups.

All ethnic groups, regardless of size, have fought selflessly against Western imperialist powers and contributed significantly to national liberation. Now they have become masters of the new China. A bond of blood has formed among all ethnic groups, with each supporting and helping the others, never abandoning one another.

This is the vision of the Chinese nation for thousands of years: 56 ethnic groups joining hands to develop and progress together, create prosperity and strength, and compose a magnificent chapter in the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation!

Many believe that the show this year will be decisive for the future of folkhem, whether it will return to the left path towards “freedom and democracy” or continue the right path towards “fascism”. Many complain that for some “mysterious” reasons their countrymen suddenly became “bad” people since the 1980s and started supporting the “evil” far-right clowns instead of the “kind” liberal clowns.

Swedes are not the only ones who think so. Just like most Jews believe that settler colonialism in the West Bank done by “socialists” is “opposite” to Zionism, most people in the whole White Empire MNC believe that liberalism is “opposite” to fascism and the White Empire MNC will not become fascist as long as they vote for the liberal clowns.

But can liberalism and fascism really NOT co-exist? Is voting for the liberal clowns really “THE fix” for the fascist problem in the White Empire MNC? To answer these questions, we need to paint a relatively complete picture of fascism, from where it started (the beginning), through where it has mutated (the two mutations), to where it heads towards (now and the near future).

The beginning: The fascist basement of the White Empire MNC

When talking about fascism, most people will immediately think about the Holocaust of Jews and non-Jews (such as Roma and Sinti, communists, people with disabilities, homosexuals, etc) by Nazi Germany during WWII. Using the Holocaust as an example, one can easily identify the central puzzle of fascism among its many other puzzles: “racial superiority”.

The fundamental ideology behind the Holocaust is the belief of Nazi Germany that the “Aryan superhuman (Übermensch)” are superior to other groups of “subhuman (Untermensch)” based on the fake definition of “race”, a concept originally invented by European colonisers to justify their crimes against non-white people in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Following the red thread of “race superiority”, one can easily see the strong connection between fascism and the colonial and settler colonial history of Europeans before WWII. As Frantz Fanon put it sharply,

“But at the level of the individual and human rights what is fascism but colonialism at the very heart of traditionally colonialist countries?”

Indeed, fascism serves as the “moral” foundation for the bloody primitive accumulation of the capitalist West: colonialism is to bring “civilisation” to the “unenlightened” black and brown “subhumans”, settler colonialism is to settle on a land without people but only “human-like animals”, Atlantic slave trade is to buy and discipline “human-like monkeys” to work for the white plantation owners.

How can it be morally wrong if the colonised subjects are not seen as humans with equal intelligence and capability as White Europeans, but subhumans or even animals without agency?

But why are most people in the whole White Empire MNC unaware of fascism before WWII and believe that it appeared for the first time in human history when Hitler and Mussolini came to power?

The answer is rather simple. Because fascist crimes before WWII are not against white people in the White Empire MNC, but black and brown people outside the Empire. Just like in most societies, killing animals is not counted as a serious crime as killing humans; in the White Empire, crimes against non-white “subhumans” are not counted as fascist crimes as crimes against white people (European Jews are also white).

Seeing the world through the white supremacist lens, why should the “more civilised and enlightened” Europeans care about the sufferings of “less civilised and darker” “subhumans” outside their eyesight, especially when they are materially benefited from these crimes?

Furthermore, to take care of the “fragile mental health” of colonisers in the European branches and settlers in the Zionist branches of the White Empire MNC (the U.S, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, later also Israel), the fascist history of colonialism and settler colonialism before WWII is hidden in the underground basements. “Great” efforts have been made to erase memories about the fascist basement.

White dissidents who try to speak out the truth are labelled as “traitors”, indigenous people who try to seek for justice are not even given a microphone, colonised people who try to fight for real national sovereignty beyond barely flag independence are criticised for “holding a grudge against white people just because of some dinosaur history in the distant past”, as if the stolen land has been given back to its indigenous owners, as if the wound of Palestine has been healed from the Jordan river to the red sea, as if (neo)-colonization is already in past tense rather than present tense with a neoliberal flavor, as if the soil can forget the smell of blood, and the river can forget the taste of tears.

As a result of the total ignorance about the hidden fascist basement, people in the White Empire MNC were shocked by the fascist crimes during WWII, as if fascism is a sudden rupture of the supposed-to-be “flawless and civilised” Western “liberal democratic” society.

But in reality, fascism is an imperative ideological base of the capitalist West. The White Empire MNC cannot exist without a certain portion of fascist violence, because, as said by Karl Marx, “capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt”, and the rule of capital cannot always be done peacefully.

The two mutations: liberalism and fascism are partners in capitalist/imperialist crime

• The first mutation in European branches: Liberalism at home, fascism abroad

After WWII, fascist forces in Germany, Italy, and Japan were temporarily defeated. It, however, doesn’t mean the complete eradication of fascism, as the total erasure of fascism requires complete defeat of the White Empire MNC. Fascism just mutated to a new form; it started collaborating with liberalism.

Since the communist forces both in the Soviet Union and in China made great sacrifices and contributions to the anti-fascist wars, the seed of communism started growing rapidly after WWII, both in the European branches of the White Empire MNC and the third world, imposing a serious threat to the global imperialist class.

To prevent the fire of revolution from burning down the European branches, the ruling class of the fascist Empire decided to make some compromises to the white labour aristocrats at home to domesticate them as cross-class allies and to secure their class betrayal against their black and brown peers in the third world.

Thus, the White Empire MNC adopted a good cop, bad cop strategy: liberalism, i.e, social democracy, at home, fascism abroad. This is not an innovation, but a continuation of the old strategy in the colonial era, where fascism was hidden from white Europeans in the basement while golden sausages made with the blood of “subhumans” were served on the delicately decorated dining table on the top floor of the White Empire MNC.

Likewise, the fascist crimes happening after WWII until around the end of the 1970s were kept almost completely out of the sight of the white labour aristocrats in European branches of the Empire so that they could enjoy social welfare programs without feeling any guilt. However, the “liberal social democracy” was built with imperial rents produced by the fascist death machine of the Empire with black and brown lives as inputs.

Liberalism at home was made possible thanks to fascism abroad, specifically the anti-communist “hot” wars in the third world, such as in Vietnam (1955-1973), DPRK (1950-1953), Indonesia (mass murder of communists 1965-1966) etc, and the indirect wasting and cheapening of human lives in newly “flag-independent” former colonies with various neocolonial tools such as CFA Franc, military operations of France in West Africa, the corporate dominance of companies like Shell-BP, LAMCO.

• The second mutation in the whole Empire: the good cop of liberalism and bad cop of fascism

“Unfortunately”, the rosy imperial socialism could not go on forever. The communist threat of the Soviet Union became increasingly insignificant. And the imperial rents of the Empire started diminishing as a result of the continuous anti-imperialist struggles of revolutionary forces in the third world. Without the serious threat of communism, it was time for capital to go on the offensive again. The era of neoliberalism and globalised financial capitalism began.

In this new era, the good cop of liberal social democracy at home stood in the way of the ruling class of the Empire to accelerate capital accumulation. As explained by Torkil Lauesen,

“If transnational capital was to be able to invest and trade globally and to outsource production to countries where wages and working conditions were optimal for accumulation, it had to break free from the grip of the social democratic state and its accomplices—the trade unions”.

Thus, the bad cop of fascism abroad boomeranged back home to the White Empire MNC.

But both cops have similarly important roles to play.

The good cop of liberalism serves as a pressure relief valve. Certainly, it is mainly reserved for the white labour aristocrats to secure their loyalty for the ruling class and enhance the stability of the Empire. But more importantly, when the black and brown working-class people started developing class consciousness and organising themselves due to their worsening material conditions, the good cop of liberalism would come with a big smile and a non-white face to extinguish the fire of class struggle.

AOC and Zohran Mamdani are the best examples of the good cop of liberalism. The sweets they give to the non-white working class people are magical drugs; a little bite can help them forget class struggle completely and feel satisfied with the “capitalist liberal democracy” that steals not only their labour but also their lives.

The role of the bad cop of fascism is rather straightforward: to suppress any forces that attempt to struggle against the genocidal rule of capital. But the main target of fascism has never changed since the beginning of fascist history: the black and brown people. Thus, many white labour aristocrats in the Empire, especially in European branches, have almost no clue about the bad cop of fascism.

The most well-informed ones among them might have read news about some far right nazi groups shooting non-white immigrants, especially Muslims. But they are totally unaware that most “bad cops of fascism” for the non-white working class people are what they view as the “good cops of liberalism”. The policemen, who act as “friends and helpers” when facing white German labour aristocrat women, will act as fascists to kill black and brown teenagers like the 21 years-old Lorenz in Oldenburg, to brutally beat pro-Palestine non-white activists, and to dedicatedly protect Nazi groups on the street as their loyal dogs.

Hence, the good cop of liberalism and bad cop of fascism are two sides of the same fascist coin in the wallet of the Epstein class.

Now and the near future: fascism on the offensive, is there a way out?

Now in the White Empire MNC, the bad cop of fascism is on the offensive. Many in the Empire are perplexed by the situation and blame everything on those “bad” people who voted for the fascist clowns in the last election.

But the increasingly dominant role of the bad cop of fascism is not really a moral issue, but a logical defensive reaction of the Empire to the external threats. The bad cop of fascism, whose major responsibility is to help the Empire out of a crisis, is now on duty because the Empire is lying on its deathbed.

Economically, it is trying to escape the death of capitalism but is doomed to fail. Just as Karl Marx predicted one and a half centuries ago, the death of capitalism is unavoidable, as its internal contradictions are impossible to resolve, especially the inevitable falling rate of profit.

In addition, socialist China is making things worse for the dying Empire. When the White Empire MNC decided to allow China to join the game in the 1980s, they thought they made the best decision ever. China with its vast market, population and natural resources could be THE fix of capitalist crisis for the global imperialist class. However, the Chinese “Elixir of immortality” for the White Empire has proven to be its dangerous poison.

With China significantly raising its wage levels and actively providing technology and economic support to its brother third world countries, it is more and more difficult for the White Empire MNC to maintain its scale and speed of capital accumulation. Moreover, the rapid development of socialist China has shown the world that there is an alternative development path to suicidal capitalism. As a result, Marxism is gradually taking root in the hearts of more and more people both in the Empire and the third world, the worst news ever for the global imperialist class.

Militarily, the White Empire MNC has continuously proven how correct Mao’s view is: imperialism is just a paper tiger. Since its war on Vietnam, it hasn’t been able to secure any significant success despite its brutality and genocidal intention.

Recently, the situation has become even more dire for the Empire. On the east front, the brave people of Iran have not only defeated the Empire and destroyed its military tentacles in West Asia but also cut its lifeline by controlling the Strait of Hormuz. On the west front, the stone lifted by the White Empire, the sanctions against Russia, has not only not defeated Russia, but dropped on its own foot and destroyed the industrial house of the White Empire MNC, Germany.

So, will the threats from outside be able to dismantle the White Empire MNC and completely erase the fascist problem? Very unlikely. As said by a Chinese comrade online, “an egg broken from the outside is food, an egg broken from the inside is new life”; fascism can only be eradicated from inside the White Empire.

But how? If one is patient enough to read everything until now, one should understand clearly that voting for the liberal clowns will not solve the problem, because liberalism and fascism are good partners in the imperialist/capitalist crime serving the same fascist Empire.

The only way out of fascism is through class struggle against the global imperialist class, through agitating and organising the working class people, especially the marginalised workers with an immigration background, forming a united front against both sides of imperialism, i.e, liberalism and fascism, building a parallel system and preparing for armed struggles in the near future. Instead of debating and discussing, it is time to take real actions and do real struggles.

To conclude, I would like to quote from the poem “Difficulties on the Road” by Libai:

“ Life’s journey is difficult, so difficult; with so many branching paths, where do I go now? A time will surely come to ride the great wind and cleave the waves; I will hoist my cloud-white sails and cross the vast sea. (行路难，行路难，多歧路，今安在？ 长风破浪会有时，直挂云帆济沧海)”.

Class struggle against the fascist White Empire MNC is nothing but difficult, especially in the belly of the beast. But just like Libai, we should hold faith in a better future of socialism/communism and be certain that a time will surely come to burn fascism to ashes.

Undoubtedly, without sound leadership, such significant achievements would have been impossible. However, the achievements are fruits of the collective effort of the masses, just as any other progress in human society. Without the hard work of millions of grassroots party cadres, even if China had ten Maos or ten Xis in its government, the achievements China has made in poverty alleviation, inequality reduction, and ecological conservation would have been beyond imagination.

These grassroots party cadres are at the forefront of building socialism. They can work from 9 am in the morning to 9 pm in the evening, or even on weekends if the people need their help. They can be very frugal with themselves, but extremely generous to the people in need. They are Marxists but never view “work” as a negative thing as most Western Marxists do, but rather an honour to serve the people and the socialist cause. Their red spirit and red deeds are the very inspiration for young Chinese people, including myself.

In this week’s “Socialism is built by hard work” series, I would like to share a story of one of the more than 2 million grassroots party cadres: Wu Yaqin (吴亚琴).

Wu Yaqin, recipient of the “July 1st Medal,” is a great contributor to grassroots governance in China

“七一勋章”获得者吴亚琴，中国基层之治的答卷人

By Chen Zhiwen (陈志文) from Jilin News Network (中国吉林网)

The working method of “good consultation on all matters with people (有事好商量)” was included in the 19th National Congress report. The pioneering “Party Building-led, Six-Governance Integration (党建引领、六治融合)” grassroots governance method was recognized as an outstanding community work method nationwide. In 2025, it was included in Jilin Province’s “15th Five-Year Plan.”

These innovative community governance measures have provided models for grassroots governance nationwide. The successful implementation of these measures is inseparable from the dedication of one grassroots party cadre—Wu Yaqin, recipient of the “July 1st Medal.”

Wu Yaqin, First Secretary of the Party Committee of Changshan Garden Community, Tuanshan Street, Kuancheng District, Changchun City, and Honorary Dean of the Jilin Changchun Community Cadre Academy, has promoted her community governance experience throughout the country, training over 100,000 community cadres.

She is known as the “Alleyway Housekeeper (小巷管家)” by the people and praised by the General Secretary for carrying a burning passion.

For over 30 years, Wu Yaqin has been deeply rooted in grassroots communities, boldly exploring and innovating, transforming the dilapidated and chaotic “Longxugou” into a happy community, a “National Model Community for Harmonious Community Building.”

With her hard work and dedication, she has given the best answer to the mission and aspiration (初心) of a grassroots Party member, and forged the “Changshan Model” for grassroots governance in China.

A Flame of Original Mission and Aspiration

In 1995, Wu Yaqin came to Changshan Garden Community from a mid-level management position in a company. Located in a peri-urban area, Changshan Garden Community was plagued by dilapidated infrastructure, poor sanitation, and frequent conflicts. Among its 3,100 households, many were laid-off workers, impoverished individuals, orphans, and elderly living alone.

Faced with this dire situation, Wu Yaqin did not back down.

“The residents’ affairs are of paramount importance. As long as I’m in this community, I will build it into a garden community, enabling residents to live happy lives!”

She has said this in her whole life, and she has lived to her promises in her whole life.

Born into an ordinary working-class family, Wu Yaqin understood the hardships and needs of ordinary people from a young age. On the day she joined the Party, a seed was planted in her heart: to do something practical to serve the people.

From an ordinary Party member to the community Party secretary, for over thirty years, she always remembers where she comes from and where she is going.

“I am a member of the Communist Party of China. The Party has placed me here, and I must live up to that trust.”

She didn’t perform any earth-shattering feats, only her unwavering dedication day after day. She led the way in collecting bricks to repair trash cans, went door-to-door to persuade local residents to demolish illegal structures, and remained patient and kept communicating with the residents once and once again until they fully understood.

Her phone is on 24/7, and residents know her number by heart; her office is always open to residents, a cup of hot tea and a few kind words always able to soothe residents’ worries; she is always busy in the streets and alleys of the community, wherever there is trouble, there she is.

She said, “Residents’ affairs are our parents’ affairs, our brothers’ and sisters’ affairs.” She won hearts of the residents with practical actions, becoming the most trusted and relied-upon civil servant.

A Flame of Innovation

Faced with numerous challenges in the governance of old communities, Wu Yaqin did not give up. Based on reality, she boldly explored and summarized a grassroots governance method of “Party Building Leading, Six-pronged Governance Integration,” which integrates Party building leadership, resident self-governance, service-oriented governance, safe and law-based governance, cultural and moral governance, and social co-governance.

“Only when the Party organization takes root can people’s hearts be united; only when Party members’ hearts are warmed can they step out of their homes to participate in community building!”

In 2002, she pioneered a new approach, accepting the return of 194 retired enterprise Party members to community management at once. She constructed a four-level Party building network system: “Community Party Committee—Grid Party Branch—Building Party Group—Party Member Household,” extending the reach of the Party organization to every building and every unit.

Veteran Party members, wearing red armbands, voluntarily patrol, clean, and mediate disputes; “Party members in action” has become a lasting and vibrant scene in the community.

“The community is the residents’ home, and residents should have the final say in community affairs!”

She innovatively implemented a “four-step deliberation method,” shifting the focus from “making decisions for the people” to “making decisions by the people.”

She led residents in replacing below-standard property management companies with unsatisfactory services three times and established a “Residents’ Affairs Volunteer Service Station,” allowing residents to manage their property independently.

The “four-step deliberation method”—discussing matters readily, urgent matters quickly, difficult matters extensively, and major matters thoroughly—was included in the 19th National Congress report.

Now, there are no posters or cluttered items in the community’s stairwells; every resident is a master of their community.

Peace and safety are the foundation of people’s livelihood, and the rule of law is the soul of governance.

She introduced the “three officials and one lawyer” mechanism to the community, bringing mobile courts to residents’ doorsteps. In 2015, the inheritance case of the elderly widow Ma Qingsheng was heard in the community, filling a case gap in the “Inheritance Law of the People’s Republic of China” and providing a grassroots practice model for the drafting of the “Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China”.

She summarized “twelve methods of civil mediation,” mediating over a thousand civil disputes over more than thirty years, with a 99% success rate. For fifteen consecutive years, the community has achieved the “Nine Zeros Community” goal—zero petitions, zero crime, zero domestic violence, zero drug abuse, zero school dropouts, zero public security cases, zero fraud cases, zero escalation of conflicts, and zero unemployed households.

The core of community governance is service. She established the “Kang Le Zhi Jia Elderly Service Center” to create a 10-minute elderly care service circle. She set up a “Moral Education Base for Minors,” a “Dandelion Youth Home” and “3:30 Classroom,” and helped 93 disadvantaged students complete their studies.

She also helped over 1,000 unemployed people find new jobs and over 100 successfully start their own businesses, transforming the community from one with high unemployment rate to a nationally recognized fully employed community.

She founded a “Senior Citizens’ Canteen,” where meals cost only 5 yuan, and elderly people with mobility issues can enjoy home delivery. She created QR codes for residents over 60 years old in case they get lost.

To respond to the needs of residents in the new era, she explored and implemented a “Seven-Home, Seven-Transformation, Seven-Have” mechanism, building a comprehensive and meticulous service system to ensure that people’s needs are met, and people’s living quality is improved.

Her service-oriented governance has built a “bridge of hearts” between the community and its residents.

On July 23, 2020, when General Secretary Xi Jinping inspected Changshan Garden Community, he fully affirmed Wu Yaqin’s innovative governance and service to the people, praising her for carrying a burning passion.

A Flame Passed On

Over thirty years she has served the people in grassroots communities and gotten numerous honours and praises. She is the National Role Model of the Times, National Outstanding Communist Party Member, National “Alleyway Steward” Star, National Advanced Worker, National March 8th Red Banner Pacesetter, National Most Beautiful Striver.

Despite having nearly a hundred national and provincial honours bestowed upon her, she has never left the community and local residents.

Invited across the country to share her grassroots governance experience and insights, she trained over 100,000 community cadres, allowing the “Changshan Experience” to take root, flourish, and bear fruit nationwide.

She established the “Wu Yaqin Workstation,” developing over 10 training courses, including “Community Governance and Grassroots Party Building,” transforming her daily work into replicable and scalable working methods.

Despite being the role model of community governance, she has never stopped learning and improving herself and her work. At the Yang Jingyu Cadre Academy, she continued the red lineage, integrating revolutionary spirit into every step of grassroots governance; at the Yuan Longping Museum, she reflected on her original aspirations, bringing the scientist’s dedication to the people back to the community and transforming it into motivation for serving the masses.

Inspired by her, community Party members and residents have joined volunteer service teams. Veteran Party members wear red armbands for voluntary patrols, young people actively take on assistance tasks, and even children become “caring older brothers.”

“Party members in action (党员在行动)” is not just a slogan, but a series of concrete individuals and concrete actions.

Her daughter once asked, “Mom, aren’t you tired?”

Wu Yaqin replied,

“Yes, I am, but it’s worth it. As long as the residents still need me, I will keep doing this.”

Now 66 years old, Wu Yaqin is still tirelessly working in the streets and alleys of her community. She often tells young social workers,

“We do work with our hearts. When residents call you ‘Secretary,’ it’s a lifelong trust.”

With over thirty years of dedication and hard work, Wu Yaqin embodies the essence of what means to be a grassroots Party cadre. She is an innovator in grassroots governance in the new era, a practitioner of serving the people, and, more importantly, the residents’ eternal backbone.

As the resistance history against imperialism in Southeast Asia is less known for people outside Southeast Asia, I would like to share some stories on this topic in the following weeks. The first story is about Chinese women's anti-imperialist struggles against fascist Japan.

The term "feminism" has lost its anti-imperialist essence as it is gradually monopolised by white feminists from the petit bourgeois class in the imperialist core. However, one can not be a real feminist without being an anti-imperialist, as patriarchy goes hand in hand with imperialism. The history of revolutionary feminism is also a history of anti-imperialism. Chinese feminists, for example, played a crucial role in the War of Resistance against Japanese imperialism.

Honoring Female Heroes: Learning Loyalty, Faith, and Indomitable Fighting Spirit from their Heroic Deeds

追忆巾帼英烈：从英勇事迹中汲取忠诚信仰和顽强斗志

By Yang Congrong(杨从榕) published on China Military Online

In the epic of the Chinese nation's War of Resistance Against Japan, the brilliance of female heroes shines brightly. In September 1937, the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China formulated the "Outline for Women's Work," requiring the policy of the anti-Japanese national united front to be upheld in women's work, with mobilizing women's strength to participate in the War of Resistance and striving for victory as the basic task of women's work. Under this call, tens of thousands of patriotic women joined the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, and other anti-Japanese armed forces.

In 1939, Comrade Mao Zedong wrote in his inscription for the inaugural issue of the Yan'an-based journal Chinese Women: "Women's liberation, a sudden and powerful force, two hundred million people, striving to be heroes. Men and women side by side, like the rising sun in the east; with this to subdue the enemy, what enemy cannot fall?" He encouraged women across the country to take action and actively participate in the torrent of the War of Resistance Against Japan. He also asserted: "The day when women across the country rise up will be the day of victory for the Chinese revolution." This was an earnest expectation for the active participation of Chinese women in the anti-imperialist struggle and a fervent praise for their important historical role in the War of Resistance.

"But for the sake of spring as vast as the sea, I have no regrets exchanging my cloud-like dress for military uniform." War is cruel, and women are gentle. But facing the enemy, their gentleness is transformed into the sharpness of a blade. During the arduous and protracted years of the War of Resistance Against Japan, countless women either used their pens as swords to awaken their compatriots or dedicated to fighting bloody battles on the forefront, shouldering the heavy responsibility of national liberation with their seemingly frail shoulders. From the forests of Northeast China to the peaks of the Taihang Mountains, from underground struggles to battlefield charges, they wrote a magnificent chapter with their heroic deeds, proving that "women are no less than men."

In June 1938, at a mobilization meeting for the War of Resistance, Comrade Chen Yi raised his arm and shouted:

"Now the Japanese devils have reached our doorstep! Young men and women who are unwilling to be slaves of a conquered nation should go to the anti-Japanese battlefield and fight the devils!"

Having heard this, nineteen-year-old Chen Mo (陈模) was filled with fervor. The next day, she and her three female classmates signed up to join the New Fourth Army. She firmly said, "I am not afraid of death; if I were afraid of death, I wouldn't have come!"

They were daughters, and also warriors. In 1937, the fifteen-year-old Zhang Zhangzhu (张掌珠) changed her name to "Zhang Qian (张茜) (Qian is the Chinese name for madder)" when she enlisted in the New Fourth Army. She was determined not to be a pampered princess under her parents' protection, but to resolutely step from her comfortable home onto the dangerous battlefield. She said, "The roots of madder are red; they can be made into dye to color the world red." From then on, the New Fourth Army gained a female soldier who could write poetry. She wrote with both boldness and romance: "I love this spring of battle, I love this spring's battle." In the target practice assessment at the New Fourth Army's Jiangnan Command, Zhang Qian and four other female soldiers from the headquarters all achieved excellent results.

Su Fei (苏菲), a female soldier in the Zhejiang East Guerrilla Column, was slender and frail. To keep up with the marching troop, she wore out her straw sandals, her feet bleed heavily. A soldier gave her one of his shoes. And so, one shoe each, two hearts united, they marched on with the troop.

They were wives, and also warriors. As the flames of the War of Resistance against Japan ignited, Li Lin (李林), a female instructor of the 6th Detachment of the 120th Division of the Eighth Route Army, resolutely wrote, "Willing to fight and stain my clothes with blood, I vow never to rest until the Japanese invaders are defeated."

Dressed in men's clothing, riding a horse and carrying a gun, she led her troops in a battle against the Japanese army in the Taihang Mountains, ultimately sacrificing her life while covering her comrades' breakout. Just before her death, she wrote a letter to her husband: "The day you left, a strong wind blew. I don't know if you caught a cold; I'm very worried… The enemy is about to launch another encirclement and suppression campaign, but we are prepared and will surely defeat them." These women did not surrender because of their gender; instead, they displayed a courage beyond life itself in the face of adversity.

On the evening of June 2, 1942, the Japanese invaders cautiously approached a cave atop Daoshimao Peak on the eastern slope of the Taihang Mountains. Huang Junjue (黄君珏), the chief accountant and director of the management department of the Xinhua Daily in North China, killed two Japanese soldiers and jumped into a deep valley to cover her comrades' escape from a cave. Her heroic deed fulfilled her vow: "We will never surrender." The day of her sacrifice was Huang Junjue's 30th birthday. Her husband and comrade-in-arms, Wang Moqin, expressed his feelings in a letter to his father-in-law, Huang Youying: "My father-in-law has an immortal daughter, and I have gained a virtuous wife; this is the supreme glory of our nation!"

They were mothers, and also heroes. Zhao Yiman (赵一曼), a female political commissar of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, known for her "red guns and white horses," was a legend in the Northeast. We remember this beautiful name, we also remember her advice to her son:

"My dearest child! Your mother will not educate you with thousands of words, but with actions. After you grow up, I hope you will never forget that your mother sacrificed herself for the country!"

While facing torture in prison, she wrote her final words, "My principles, my beliefs, will never change," expressing her boundless loyalty to the Party.

In the late autumn of 1941, the Japanese troops launched a large-scale attack on the Yimeng Mountains. On November 7th, during a breakout operation, Chen Ruoke (陈若克), a pregnant member of the Women's Committee of the Shandong Branch of the CPC Central Committee, was unfortunately captured. Two days later, she gave birth to a baby in prison, but the Japanese invaders continued to torture her physically and mentally, using the child as leverage to blackmail her. Knowing that Chen Ruoke was weak and unable to feed the child, the Japanese sent a bottle of milk into her cell, hoping to break her psychological defenses. Chen Ruoke did not succumb to the enemy's coercion and enticement; she resolutely bit her finger and fed her child with her blood. Enraged, the Japanese army finally raised their swords, and killed Chen Ruoke and her newborn child.

The unwavering loyalty and courage of these female heroes shine brightly in our hearts. This year (the article was written in 2025) marks the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War. As we commemorate the heroic deeds of these female heroes, we should learn from their unwavering belief and indomitable fighting spirit.

"what do you miss from China?".

Yes, the longer I live in the West,

the more homesick I become.

But except families, food and weather,

what exactly do I miss from China,

the only place on earth that I call home?

I miss the feeling of standing on the muddy earth,

being surrounded with the familiar smell,

a smell peculiar to the third world,

a smell of the workers and peasants,

a mixture of spicy food, sweat and plastic.

For white Europeans it's way too imperfect, way too dirty,

as they are used to the stainless ground of the EU fortress

being cleaned with black and brown children's blood,

and the smell of colonisers' perfume,

which reminds me of the arrogant gaze of my white German managers.

But it's exactly the imperfections what I miss,

as a perfect world is a world built on death,

while an imperfect world is a world built for life.

I miss the imperfect world,

where politics is never about votes,

never about lies and empty promises,

but about real hard work for the people's interests.

When politics works for the people not the capital,

almost everyone from newly born babies to 90 years old grandma,

has access to affordable and high quality public healthcare,

almost every child from central Henan Province to rural Yunan Province,

has access to affordable and high quality public education,

almost every young person from part time teachers to deliver men,

has access to affordable and high quality public housing.

In the West they say,

politics is a game of power, a house of cards,

in China we say,

the most important politics is to win people's heart (民心是最大的政治).

I miss the feeling of belonging to the majority of a society,

being able to show my faith in the hammer and sickle,

without being called "extremist",

being able to speak out my mind,

without having to justify my pro-armed-resistance position,

being able to join a random conversation about West Asia,

without starting a meaningless debate with zionists,

being able to wave the flags of the axis of resistance,

without being questioned why do you support "terrorists".

For Chinese people, or any other free people of the world,

nothing is too complicated in the fights

between the oppressed and the oppressor,

between the colonised and the coloniser,

between the imperialised and the imperialist.

The answer "which side are you on" is clear

everytime we see ourselves in the mirror.

I miss the feeling of being treated as equals,

not being patronised by white liberals

because how come an Oriental girl without agency

knows anything about "democracy";

not being told by white feminists

that Chinese women and queers must be liberated

from the oppressive "dictatorship";

not being lectured by white leftists

on why socialism has failed in China,

and why the No.1 enemy of Chinese workers is

the Chinese government rather than the white empire;

not being annoyed by "progressive" public exhibitions,

praising the reactionary slave(serf)-owner Dalai lama,

advocating the release of the Hong Kong separatist, Gui Minhai,

and using the rising sun flag as the background for Ai Weiwei.

China is not Scandinavia,

a "perfect" utopia built by the imperial socialists

on the dead bodies of our black and brown siblings,

but a third world country full of flaws,

exporing a path towards socialism

and a common prosperous future for the humankind

in an imperfect planet on fire.

And this is exactly what makes me homesick.

In Europe, it is becoming increasingly trendy to call oneself “anti-capitalist”, especially among Western environmentalists. One can hear these self-proclaimed “radicals” talking about how capitalism, especially the fossil fuel industry, is the root cause of our ecological crisis.

Undoubtedly, capitalism is to blame for the existential crisis of humanity, but not exactly in the narrow sense that these Western environmentalists mean–the capitalist relation of production inside the national borders of Western countries.

Instead, for five centuries since European capitalism expanded its tentacles to the rest of the world, the capitalist (and later imperialist) vampire has been living on slaughtering black and brown people and destroying the nature surrounding them.

In other words, the entire history of ecological degradation is a history of (neo)-colonialism and imperialism.

It began when European colonisers came to Africa, Latin America and Asia to set up plantations, degraded the diverse ecosystem into monoculture, reduced the fertile soil to desert, and sucked every drop of natural and human blood.

It accelerated when European colonisers discovered the perfect recipe for mass extinction, i.e, stealing the fossil wealth on the land of non-white natives, and using fossil fuels to lubricate the meatgrinder of (neo)-colonialism and imperialism.

Now it has reached a new stage, or rather the last stage: as the imperialist vampire refuses to die, it is desperately putting up its last struggle and making genocidal attempts to destroy every living thing on the planet with the NATO+ death machine, under the motto of “if I have to die, I will drag you all to hell along with me.”

So, what is the way out?

Many petit-bourgeois Western environmentalists may say, “we know, green capitalism is the way out”. However, this self-contradicting idea has proven to fail after the “Green New Deal” in the EU became a dead cat, and the greenwashing strategy of the bourgeois ruling class became so obvious that even most liberal green party voters cannot deny it any longer.

Many seemingly “radical” Western environmentalists may say, “we know, degrowth / postgrowth is the way out”, although the seemingly perfect third way, the way that according to these “radical leftists” will work much better than both capitalism and actually existing socialism, does NOT even exist in reality. Following the “third way” of “changing the system inside the broken system”, we will return to the square one of green capitalism.

It should not be very surprising for us that solutions proposed by Western environmentalists do not work at all in reality. How can these Western labour aristocrats who are still benefiting significantly from the genocidal system, the root cause of the ecological crisis, be willing to cut the throat of the imperialist vampire and truly solve the crisis? To do so, they have to sacrifice their white-class privileges and commit class suicide, which is apparently for them a higher price than the total extinction of humanity.

Being surrounded by these Western environmentalists every day, I can tell you that they are 100% convinced that their solutions will save humanity, just as they deeply believe that they are the white saviours carrying the “holy mission” of saving “backward” black and brown people.

The over-confidence, or frankly speaking, the delusion of these Western environmentalists is not a coincidence, but a result of Western hegemony. As the tentacles of Western hegemony spread to every corner of our lives, even how we solve crises is dictated by the “civilised” West.

For decades, most internationally recognised environmental and climate research has been from the West, often focusing on whitewashing the crimes of the global imperialist class and manufacturing racist narratives like “overpopulation is the root cause of ecological crisis” (one can get 112,000 results in Google Scholar by searching “overpopulation climate change”).

For decades, Western countries, especially those in Scandinavia, the prime culprits of the ecological crisis, have been bragging about their “great” contributions to sustainable development, while blaming the problem on the “unsustainable development” of major third-world countries like China and India.

For decades, everyone regards Western hegemony in environmental research fields as a “natural” order of things, although we have been standing upside down for way too long to recognise the basic fact that it is insanely undemocratic to let a tiny minority, less than 20% of the world population, to decide how we, the global majority, should or should not solve one of the biggest crises faced by the humanity today.

As the world is on fire and the fire has almost reached an irreversible level, we, the global majority, the natives in the third world and the settler colonial states, should stop continuing this upside-down path chosen by Western environmentalists towards the dead-end of human history, total extinction. We should reclaim the battlefield against ecological crisis.

So, how can we reclaim the battlefield?

As the history of the past five centuries has been a history of ecological degradation caused by Western civilisation for the white minority, to turn the wheel of history 180 degrees around, we need to reclaim the term “civilisation” and build a future for the global majority. Borrowing words used by socialist China, we need to build “ecological civilisation”.

To build “ecological civilisation”, we, the global majority, need to reclaim things that belong to us, in particular energy, food sovereignty and the right to development.

Energy

Nature was impartial and blessed the global majority with plenty of energy sources, especially solar. However, such a blessing became a curse when white Europeans spread their capitalist tentacles to solar-rich regions.

With the help of (neo)-colonial and imperial death machines, white Europeans, the global minority, have been sucking on energy that belongs to the third world for around five centuries, leaving the global majority de-developed and impoverished, reversing the natural order of things.

This upside-down global order of energy is the very origin of ecological degradation. To reverse it, we need to reclaim the energy. But how?

There are two main categories of energy sources: fossil and renewable energy.

Fossil energy like coal, oil, and gas is the favourite energy of the white empire, as it is mostly produced in a centralised way, and hence can be monopolised and used to expand Western hegemony. Until today, most third-world countries still rely on imported fossil energy purchased with U.S dollars, thus being almost unable to escape the stranglehold of the white empire.

In contrast, renewable energy, especially solar energy, is the friend of the free people of the world. No matter how hard the white empire tries, it cannot block the sun. This makes it possible for third world countries like Cuba to survive the genocidal crimes of the white empire, and further to thrive and break free from the white empire’s de-development trap.

Thus, to reclaim the energy, we, the global majority, must develop our abilities to harness renewable energy sources. This is exactly why socialist China decided to develop the renewable energy industry at the beginning of the 21st century. The decision was made not to compete with the capitalist West in the “lucrative” renewable energy industry, as many Westerners may believe, but rather to achieve energy sovereignty and break free from the curse of the imperialist West.

As socialist China, a third world country, has become the global leader in the renewable energy industry, it is not a distant dream anymore for the global majority to reclaim energy that belongs to us.

China is not only providing the global majority with cheap fish like mini-grids, solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, but also teaching other siblings how to fish by actively transferring renewable energy technologies to other brother third-world countries.

Between 2016 and 2025, China has provided training opportunities for more than 10,000 participants from over 120 third world countries in over 300 capacity-building projects to enhance their skills in renewable energy and decarbonization, one of the examples is the Capacity-Building Training Workshop for the China-Ethiopia-Sri Lanka Trilateral South-South Cooperation Project on Renewable Energy Technology Transfer (“中国—埃塞俄比亚—斯里兰卡可再生能源技术转移三方南南合作项目 ”能力建设培训班).

In addition, with the help of the South-South Cooperation Center for Technology Transfer (技术转移南南合作中心), a new solar power generation system for electric vehicles suitable for remote areas lacking grid coverage developed by CAS Qiguang New Energy Technology Research Institute in Chengdu has been successfully transferred to Asian countries such as Laos and Sri Lanka.

But this is only half of the story. Besides building our capacities to harness renewable energy sources, we also need to cut the pipelines of imperialism, i.e, to reclaim fossil energies that belong to our own land.

In the past, the white empire has successfully regime-changed many “left-leaning” governments in the third world who tried to claim the ownership of fossil energies, like in Iran (1953), Libya (2011), Iraq (2003). But the pursuit of national sovereignty is as resilient as grass; “wildfires cannot destroy it completely, and the spring breeze makes it sprout anew (野火烧不尽，春风吹又生)”.

Now, in the Islamic Republic of Iran and Yemen, the spring has come, and the anti-imperialist breeze is gradually blowing away the bloody cloud of the white empire. By reclaiming the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, brave Iranian people and Yemeni people of the Ansar Allah are cutting the fossil pipelines of the imperialist vampire and starving it to death. This winter we will see it struggling on at death’s door.

Food sovereignty

Similar to energy, the global majority was also blessed with abundant fertile land to grow food and feed its entire population. If the Europeans did not embark on the genocidal colonial path, stole the land of the non-white natives, and turned the stolen land from the source of human nutrition into the source of capital accumulation, our mother earth would have no problem nurturing all her children without suffering from ecological degradation.

Take Sri Lanka as an example: before the colonial era, natives on this beautiful island had developed an advanced, sustainable, and self-sustaining agrarian civilisation with collective ownership and large-scale irrigation infrastructures. After the island was colonised by the British, the advanced sovereign agriculture was systematically destroyed to make way for plantation-based export agriculture, the cash cow for the British colonisers.

This has devastating effects on both the native people and the nature they live in. It has stripped native people of food sovereignty and trapped the entire island in the de-development vicious circle. It has also caused great biodiversity loss and irreversible soil erosion, thus significantly increasing the frequency of natural disasters and making native people more vulnerable to the climate crisis.

The extent of deliberate ecological degradation by (neo)-colonisers is unbelievably large, as stated clearly in a paper written by a Sri Lankan scholar P. Wickramagamage,

“the upper catchment areas of the major rivers in the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka had been stripped of the natural vegetation to make way for the plantation agriculture during the British period…the consequences of these actions were immediately visible in the form of accelerated soil erosion, siltation of low lying areas, frequent flooding, drying out of streams, etc. Even after Independence, land clearing continued unabated. Today only small patches of forest are left; even those are not in the critical areas.”

Just as explained by the Sri Lankan scholar above, the genocidal crimes of colonisers did not stop after the island gained flag independence. In recent decades of the neoliberal era, the process of dispossessing native people and destroying nature has been further accelerated by IMF-imposed austerity policies, predatory microfinance and the domination of multinational chemical monopolies. As multinational chemical monopolies expanded their domination over export agriculture in Sri Lanka, the overuse of pesticides has caused an epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology—CKDu since the 1990s, affecting about 400,000 people and killing around 20,000. Moreover, as a result of both export-oriented agriculture and “successful” IMF austerity surgery, one in four native people in Sri Lanka live below the poverty line, and one in five households cannot meet their essential food needs.

Thus, to stop further ecological degradation, the global majority must reclaim food sovereignty. But how?

As most food is produced on land, the first step towards food sovereignty is land sovereignty. In other words, the masses must take over the ownership of land through armed struggles. The significance of land ownership can be clearly observed by the vast differences between the food sovereignty level of socialist third-world countries, where the native people own their land, and that of capitalist third-world countries, where the global imperialist class directly or indirectly owns most of the land.

For instance, socialist China has managed to provide around 20% of the world population with affordable, sufficient, and healthy food by using only around 9% of the world’s arable land. The average consumption of fresh vegetables in China amounts to over 1.5 kilograms per person per day, exceeding the level of consumption in most Western countries.

In contrast, Brazil, with only around 2,7% of the world population and around 4,5% of the world’s arable land, has not managed to completely solve the food security problem. Although the prevalence of undernourishment in Brazil has fallen below 2.5% since 2022, approximately 8 million people in Brazil still face severe food insecurity, and 50 million people still cannot afford a healthy diet.

Certainly, seizing the ownership of land is easier said than done. However, with the Axis of Resistance taking the lead of the anti-imperialist struggles, there is no reason for us to doubt that more and more third world countries will gradually march on this path towards land sovereignty and national liberation.

Nevertheless, as the past experiences of socialist China before the 1970s have shown, having achieved land sovereignty does not necessarily mean that a country will have the capacity to grow abundant food. To fully reclaim food sovereignty in the era of climate crisis, it is imperative to develop industrial capacities and sustainable practices in the agricultural industry.

This is not an impossible task for third-world countries anymore since the third world, with China, Vietnam and Russia leading the way, is gradually reclaiming technological sovereignty in sustainable agriculture. These non-aligned countries are currently taking an active part in supporting other sibling countries to modernise their agricultural industry and reclaim food sovereignty.

For example, both China and Russia are providing technical support for Burkina Faso in agricultural fields. The Chinese agricultural technical assistance team has provided practical farming training and donated agricultural supplies to young participants in Burkina Faso in July this year. Vietnam plans to send experienced experts and technicians to Angola to help conduct field surveys, establish technical demonstration models, provide training, and transfer technologies to local farmers. In addition, in Kenya, integrated farming systems (such as drone-based foliar spraying, soil sensors, drone mapping and precision irrigation) with Chinese precision agricultural technologies are being built based on local climate and economic conditions to reduce pesticide use by 30–50% and lower water consumption by up to 90%.

Therefore, the historical trend of putting things back to the right order is inevitable. Certainly, there is still a long and bumpy way ahead of us until we, the global majority, reclaims the food sovereignty. But as Fidel Castro said, “difficulties will not keep us from moving forward”.

Right to development

Reclaiming the energy and food sovereignty lays the foundation for the development of the third world where most of the global majority live.

I can imagine that once heard the word “development”, many people will immediately say, “ What, ‘development'? “ Isn’t this article about how to solve the ecological crisis? Is the author promoting “green capitalism”?

Many people, especially Western degrowth scholars, do regard development of productive forces as the root cause of the ecological crisis. However, if one looks back to human history, one will realise that no group of humans could degrade the environment to such a significant level until white Europeans de-developed the third world countries using direct or indirect violence.

Before the era of colonialism, countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America had reached a rather high level of development without any severe environmental and climate consequences. It was after white Europeans and their capitalist system with inherent genocidal motives dominated the world that nature started being destroyed on purpose, along with the slaughtering of black and brown people.

In other words, the root cause of the ecological crisis is not development, but rather de-development of the global majority by the imperialist vampire. Thus, to reverse the historical wheel from ecological degradation to ecological civilisation, the de-developed shall be the developed, just like what Frantz Fanon said, “the last shall be the first”.

We, the global majority, must break free from the de-development trap of the imperialist West and find our own path towards sustainable development, or borrowing words from the theory of Chinese modernization, “a model of sound development featuring improved production, higher living standards, and healthy ecosystems”.

Some people may argue that it is impossible to decouple development of productive forces from ecological degradation. However, this is untrue. What is impossible to decouple from ecological degradation is not development, but rather capital accumulation, or, to put it in another way, not development for the people, but rather development for capital.

Why? Let us look at two examples of the most ecologically destructive industries: the military and the Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry.

Regarding the military industry, its purpose in China is to defend national sovereignty and protect Chinese people against aggressions of the imperialist West. In contrast, the purpose of the military industry in the West is to expand its imperial domination and help the Epstein class accumulate more capital.

Thus, while the U.S, the big brother of the imperialist West, is significantly increasing its already vast amount of military spending that accounts for 37% of the global total military spending, China adopts the policy of “moderate investment, rational advancement, and overall restraint (适度投入、理性推进、总体克制)” and maintains the military spending at a stable level of around 1,5% of its GDP, below the global average of 2,5%.

In terms of the AI industry, its purpose in China is to facilitate people’s lives and improve people’s wellbeing, while its purpose in the U.S is to develop non-existent “general AI” that can replace human labour and to pursue an impossible “permanent” class dominance of the global imperialist class over the popular class.

Hence, in China, the devastating ecological impacts of the AI industry have been the top concern. Thanks to public investment in research, Chinese scientists have found solutions to use seawater to cool the data centre and renewable energies to power it. The world’s first subsea data centre with seawater circulation cooling and powered directly by offshore wind has started operating earlier this year in the waters near Lingang, Shanghai.

In contrast, (almost) all data centres in the U.S still use freshwater and fossil energy, as it is simply not profitable for the capitalist ruling class to invest in energy transformation and in research on seawater cooling. As a result, data centres are not only remarkably increasing carbon emissions, but also exacerbating the water shortage problems faced by ordinary working class people in the U.S, with companies like Google wasting 10.9 billion gallons of fresh water on cooling.

These examples show clearly that the reason why “green capitalism” can never work is not that it is technologically impossible to minimise ecological impacts while producing things with high use values for the people, but that the global imperialist class can’t accumulate capital in a for them large enough scale and high enough speed if they have to produce useful things with lower ecological impacts, rather than useless things with higher exchange values and heavy ecological impacts.

Conclusion

Ecological crisis is not a natural phenomenon as the Epstein class wants people to believe, but a white-people-made problem caused by the complete reverse of the natural world order: the majority rules. To overcome this existential crisis, we, the global majority, need to change the upside down world order back to its natural state, reclaim what belongs to us, develop a collective path towards ecological civilisation based on native intelligence, and take the lead in the battle against the imperialist vampire.

A country won’t automatically enter socialism just because the bourgeois ruling class is overthrown. Socialism won’t be achieved until productive forces have developed to a sufficiently advanced level and problems inherited from the old system, the birthmarks of the new system, have been completely solved. This requires hard work and collective efforts of countless comrades in the communist party. Hence the story of socialism is not an epic Hollywood film of superheroes battling monsters, but the mundane daily drama of dedicated ordinary party cadres serving the people.

Although many party cadres are doing hard struggles and making great sacrifices on the front lines of building socialism, their stories remain largely unknown in the world outside China. However, their stories can be a source of inspiration for all free people of the world, especially all anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist comrades.

Therefore, in the new series, “Socialism is built by hard work (社会主义是干出来的)”, I would like to share the stories of ordinary party cadres in the Communist Party of China. This week is about the story of Zhang Guimei (张桂梅), an ordinary rural teacher who founded the first completely free girls’ high school, the Huaping Girls’ High School in Lijiang, Yunnan Province. Her story has deeply moved and motivated many Chinese people including myself.

(The original article is in Chinese.)

“I didn’t collapse; a spirit sustained me”—Story of Zhang Guimei, the “Torchbearer High School Principal”

“我没倒下，有种精神支撑着我”——记“燃灯校长”张桂梅

By: Yunnan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (中共云南省委)

To ignite hope, she heeded the Communist Party’s call, rooted herself in the remote border regions, and dedicated over 40 years of her life to the Party’s education cause;

To ignite hope, she fulfilled her educational mission, keeping pace with the times and battling illness, and established China’s first fully free girls’ high school, helping over 1,800 girls from impoverished mountainous areas realize their dreams of studying in university over the past decade;

To ignite hope, she is willing to be a messenger of happiness, not a mother but even more so, providing a loving haven for children in 136 welfare homes.

She is Zhang Guimei, the outstanding role model embodying General Secretary Xi Jinping’s requirements for a “four-good” teacher (“四有”好老师), an advanced example of party cadres dedicated to the educational poverty alleviation cause, an outstanding representative of women’s contributions to poverty alleviation in the new era, and an excellent people’s teacher who illuminates the dreams of rural girls.

She is the Party Branch Secretary and Principal of Huaping Girls’ High School in Lijiang City, Yunnan Province, and the Director of Huaping County Children’s Welfare Home (Huaping Children’s Home).

In December 2020, the CPC Central Committee and the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee awarded her the honorary titles of “National Outstanding Communist Party Member” and “Role Model of the Times,” respectively. On February 25, 2021, at the National Poverty Alleviation Commendation Conference, she was awarded the honorary title of “National Poverty Alleviation Role Model” by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, with General Secretary Xi Jinping personally presenting her with the award.

• Faith as a Torch: A Spark Illuminates the Distance

With faith in one’s heart, one can go far. Communist Party members fight for the socialist cause of the Party, even at the cost of bloodshed and sacrifice, relying on a belief and striving for an ideal. Zhang Guimei, the “Torchbearer Principal,” is such a person, providing light for the teachers and students of Huaping Girls’ High School, a path under their feet, and light in their eyes, allowing ideals and beliefs to unleash a powerful force to change the world, paving a bright road for girls in mountainous areas to pursue their dreams.

This is the unwavering belief in eradicating poverty. Huaping County is located in the heart of the Jinsha River region, with mountains accounting for 97% of its area. More than two-thirds of the mountains are above 1,500 meters in altitude, and it is home to ethnic minorities such as the Lisu (傈僳族), Naxi (纳西族), and Yi (彝族). Leaving the mountains, changing their destiny, and living a better life has been the dream and aspiration of generations of the people.

The poverty of the mountain people stems partially from their backwardness in mindset and culture. Having spent half her life dealing with education and poverty, Zhang Guimei understands the desires of the mountain children and this region best. In August 1996, Zhang Guimei began teaching at Huaping County Central School. The phenomenon of “a very low proportion of girls” and “many girls disappearing from school” greatly troubled her.

Through continuous home visits, she discovered that farming at home, working away from home, or marrying young were the common fates of most local girls. Faced with the heartbreaking plight of education in mountainous areas, Zhang Guimei believes, “If the education problem of girls is not solved, it will lead to a vicious cycle of impoverished girls—impoverished mothers—impoverished next generation. So, saving one is saving three generations!”

Just as water stirred by a stone makes a sound, so too does a person driven by passion achieve great things. “I’m pulling those girls back one by one, even if it means paying for it myself, I will make sure they get an education!” On that barren land, Zhang Guimei tirelessly sows the seeds of hope for poverty alleviation through education and the creation of a better life, spreading this hope throughout the remote mountain villages of Yunling.

This is a steadfast belief, forged with a lifelong commitment. Faith thrives in the most arduous places; it endures the strongest trials. Losing her mother in childhood, her father in youth, and her husband in middle age, Zhang Guimei also suffered from over 20 illnesses, including osteoma, pulmonary fibrosis, and cerebellar atrophy, experiencing several life-threatening emergencies. While working selflessly, she endured unimaginable emotional and physical pain. How did she overcome these successive blows of fate? With unwavering faith! Difficulties did not defeat Zhang Guimei; instead, they fuelled her self-sacrifice.

Ideals are found in her work; faith is found in her actions. In April 1997, Zhang Guimei was diagnosed with a tumour. With no money for treatment and no relatives or friends to turn to, she decided to conceal her illness and continue teaching her graduating class of junior high students until graduation—a delay that lasted over three months. Later, the school learned of her teaching while being sick and sent her to the hospital for surgery. The tumour removed weighed 2 kilograms and was extremely dangerous.

“I am a teacher, the podium is my life. As long as I have a breath left, I will stand on the podium!” After her story spread, officials and ordinary people at all levels in Huaping County donated money to her. A representative who was attending the seventh Women’s Congress in the county seat also donated the only 5 yuan she had to Zhangguimei for her return trip.

Such acts of kindness greatly warmed her heart and gave her new vitality. People are most grateful when they are in trouble. “Huaping gave me a second life, and I want to do something for Huaping.” From then on, Zhang Guimei’s life became deeply intertwined with the cause of education in mountainous areas. She dedicated herself to illuminating the lives of her students, and with her relentless spirit, she brought about a turning point in the lives of girls in impoverished mountain areas.

Education in impoverished mountainous areas started late, has limited resources and a weak foundation. Kind-hearted people advised her, “Teacher Zhang, the problem of girls dropping out of school is widespread in impoverished mountainous areas, and the Party committees and governments at all levels will gradually address it.” Zhang Guimei responded,

“We can wait, but the children’s growth cannot. They are the future of the nation and the hope of the mountainous areas. The sooner the girls’ high school is established, the fewer girls in the mountains will drop out, and the more hope will be ignited for the development of these areas!”

Education is a fundamental national and Party priority. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, public education in China has been significantly improved, especially in impoverished areas. This is inseparable from the hard work and dedication of countless outstanding teachers like Zhang Guimei. From the border regions to the interior, from rural areas to cities, from mountains to islands, a large number of outstanding teachers, such as Zhang Lili (张丽莉), Li Baoguo (李保国), Huang Danian (黄大年), and Zhang Guimei (张桂梅), have emerged, passing the torch from one generation to the next, improving the quality of education, promoting the all-round development of individuals, and continuously contributing to consolidating the foundation for national rejuvenation and social progress.

• Unwavering Commitment: A Responsibility Builds Dreams

The will of women is undefeatable; even frail shoulders can bear the weight of justice.

In 2007, Zhang Guimei was elected a delegate to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and went to Beijing to attend the meeting. When she heard the phrase “promoting social fairness and justice, and striving to ensure that all people have access to education,” a fervent flame ignited in her eyes. As a Party delegate, “it’s not just an honor, but also a responsibility.”

From nothing to something, she took the responsibility of providing high-quality free high school education to girls in rural areas.

What if girls in mountainous areas couldn’t continue their education after completing basic compulsory education? Zhang Guimei decided to establish a free girls’ high school so that every child in the mountains could receive a fair and high-quality education.

Zhang Guimei vividly remembers the difficulties at the beginning of the school’s establishment: a shortage of funds, difficulties in recruiting students, and rudimentary conditions—no walls, dormitories, toilets, or security guards. To this end, despite her illness, she tirelessly raised funds everywhere. Some people doubted her intention, even calling her a “fraud”. But for the children in the mountains, she chose to silently endure it all, continuing her tireless efforts.

Hard work pays off. On September 1, 2008, through Zhang Guimei’s unremitting efforts, and with the care and support of Party committees and governments at all levels and caring people from all walks of life, the nation’s first completely free girls’ high school was finally completed and officially opened. As long as it’s a girl, as long as she wants to go to school, the girls’ high school welcomes her with open arms. Zhang Guimei was determined: “Since parents trust us and send their children to the girls’ high school, we will definitely educate them well and give them a future.”

Promoting universal high school education, from “having access to education” to “having access to quality education,” the girls’ high school has created one miracle after another.

The children in the mountains have poor academic foundations; how can they achieve good results without strictness, determination, and hard work? Therefore, Zhang Guimei formulated a complete set of strict working systems.

In Zhang Guimei’s view, her “toughness” helps children overcome the obstacles of growth, cultivate a spirit of hard work and perseverance, and enable students to withstand hardships. She emphasizes individualized instruction, explores the educational patterns of students in ethnic minority mountainous areas, and has summarized the “Three-Point, Three-Path Teaching Method”: teachers should discard minor details and avoid trying to cover everything, instead they should focus on solving the key points, difficulties, and characteristics of the lesson; when writing lesson plans and conducting teaching, teachers should understand the author’s thought process and design their own teaching path.

Girls from the mountains can also get into good universities. Within around 10 years since its establishment, without any entrance requirements, the school has achieved a peak undergraduate enrolment rate of 99% and a 100% overall enrolment rate, helping 1,804 girls from impoverished mountainous areas realize their university dreams.

These girls, once impoverished, dropouts, or those who failed the college entrance exam, are now admitted to prestigious universities such as Zhejiang University and Xiamen University, continuing their studies for master’s and doctoral degrees, and shining brightly in their respective fields.

As a teacher and a mother, she provides education with warmth. Watering a tree requires watering its roots; nurturing a person requires nurturing their heart. Zhang Guimei is a principal, a teacher, and a mother; she not only manages academics but also students’ lives and mental well-being.

She makes her “home” in the student dormitory, getting up at 5 a.m. and not resting until after midnight every day, using a small loudspeaker to urge students to get up, eat, and do exercises, and accompanying them during morning reading, classes, and self-study. Next to her bed is another bed reserved for children who need special care.

She is a strict teacher, but also a warm mother who cries with struggling students, possessing the sincerest maternal love. The girls’ high school doesn’t have a dedicated psychologist, so the teachers say, “Principal Zhang Guimei is the psychologist.”

From March 2001, Zhang Guimei worked as a teacher at Huaping County Ethnic Middle School while also serving as the director of the Huaping County Children’s Welfare Institute, washing and bathing the children, cleaning up their bodily waste, buying them toys, and transforming the orphanage into a children’s paradise.

Love is the foundation of education, and a weighty responsibility. At the girls’ high school, most students call Zhang Guimei with respectable names, “Teacher Zhang,” “Mom,” or “Old Lady,”.

More than the act of imparting knowledge, the students and teachers at the girls’ high school feel Zhang Guimei’s love and responsibility deeply. She has done what a mother could do, and even what a mother couldn’t. In the students’ hearts, she is the greatest teacher and the most outstanding mother!

• Unwavering Dedication, a Heart Full of Love for Nurturing New Generations

In April 1998, Zhang Guimei honorably joined the Communist Party of China at Huaping County Ethnic Middle School. For many years, she has taken cultivation of new qualified builders and successors of socialism as her mission.

No matter how times change, the fine traditions remain unchanged.

As she said,

“We must not lose the fine traditions of our Party, nor the spirit of hard work and self-reliance. It is crucial to plant the seeds of red education in the hearts of students.”

Establishing the school on revolutionary traditions and nurturing students with red culture is Zhang Guimei’s educational philosophy and a distinctive feature of the girls’ high school.

Upon entering the girls’ high school’s playground, one’s gaze is immediately drawn to the twelve huge red characters: “Communists Stand Tall and Upright, Passing on the Legacy from Generation to Generation. (共产党人顶天立地代代相传.)” This is the “soul” and “anchor” of Zhang Guimei’s educational philosophy.

For over a decade since its establishment, the school has adhered to the “Five Ones” education: all Party members wear Party badges to work, reaffirm their oath of joining the Party weekly, organize theoretical study sessions weekly, sing a revolutionary song weekly, and watch a red film weekly.

Red culture education has long permeated the words, actions, and spirit of teachers and students, becoming a unique feature of the girls’ high school. Red culture education allows students to more deeply experience socialism and collectivism, inspiring tremendous spiritual motivation.

Through the continuous efforts of Zhang Guimei and other teachers, the girls’ high school has made significant progress in its educational philosophy, teaching quality, management level, teaching staff, and infrastructure. The number of students is increasing daily, and the college entrance examination results are improving year by year.

Over the years, despite the school’s rapid development, changes in her job, and increased personal fame, Zhang Guimei has always upheld the educational mission of teaching and nurturing students’ moral character. In her view, focusing solely on grades is not the way forward for education in rural areas; it is essential to cultivate individuals who will become useful to the socialist cause. She prioritizes moral education, guiding students to set lofty goals from a young age and cultivating girls’ self-respect, self-confidence, independence, and self-reliance.

Success for one student helps support one family and benefits the entire society. Many graduates of the girls’ high school choose related professions such as doctors, teachers, and police officers, actively participating in public welfare and poverty alleviation projects during their studies and work, and dedicating themselves to the construction and development of remote and impoverished areas. Zhang Guimei felt deeply gratified, thinking, “The socialist cause has a successor!”

No matter how time changes, her fighting spirit remains unchanged. For the sake of her students, teachers teach tirelessly, and the entire faculty and staff work diligently. In her more than 40 years of teaching experience, Zhang Guimei battled illness, saying, “I’ll see if God will take me away,” and “I can’t waste precious time on endless medical treatment”; she fought against poverty, turning despair into hope, and the impossible into possible! She is such a person, and everyone admires her from the bottom of their hearts.

This fighting spirit continues at the girls’ high school, unyielding to rain or strong winds. Zhang Guimei once remarked in a deeply moving monologue:

“Some say I’m dedicated to my job, some say I’m crazy, some say I’m doing this for honour, and some simply don’t understand. A person riddled with illness yet not dying, enduring more hardship than a healthy person, male teachers were worn down by me, female teachers cried from exhaustion, running back and forth between two units, yet I didn’t collapse. A spirit sustained me; ultimately, it’s the original aspiration and mission of a Communist Party member that allows me to face this land with a clear conscience.”

She hopes her students will engrave the following oath in their hearts:

“I was born a mountain, not a stream; I aspire to stand atop the peaks and look down upon the mediocre ravines; I was born a hero, not a blade of grass; I stand on the shoulders of giants and despise the lowly cowards. (我生来就是高山而非溪流，我欲于群峰之巅俯视平庸的沟壑；我生来就是人杰而非草芥，我站在伟人之肩藐视卑微的懦夫).”

This self-confidence not only vividly interprets Zhang Guimei’s fighting spirit but also inspires her students to aim high and step onto a broader stage in life.

• Dedication Like a Song, A Lifetime of Passion Forged a Monument

The majestic Jade Dragon Snow Mountain stands tall, the flowing Jinsha River stretches long. For more than 40 years, on the red soil plateau, Zhang Guimei has dedicated herself to the Party, to education, and to the people in impoverished mountainous areas, composing a red plum blossom ode to poverty alleviation through education with her selfless dedication.

She spares no effort in helping her students succeed and become the future of the nation. Her most distinctive characteristic is her unwavering determination; once she sets her mind on something, she will carry it out without compromising, regardless of opposition and difficulties.

To retain her students, she has traveled 110,000 kilometers to visit the homes of over 1,000 students over the years. Where cars cannot reach, she rides horses over mountains, even breaking ribs or collapsing from old ailments on the road, yet she still insists on making these trips every winter and summer vacation. Once, during a home visit, she encountered a student who had dropped out of school to herd sheep. Zhang Guimei patiently persuaded the girl’s parents to bring her back to school.

To shape the character and spirit of her students, she proposed the school motto of “Strength, Diligence, Kindness, Compassion, Courtesy, and Simplicity,” planting seeds of truth and goodness in their hearts and carefully guiding them to emerge from their cocoons and grow strong.

She prioritizes her career above all else, hence her simplicity and purity. Indifferent to fame and fortune, she donated all 200+ awards, trophies, and certificates of honor she received, including “National Outstanding Communist Party Member” and “National Model Teacher,” to the Huaping County Archives, saying,

“Over the years, I’ve only done what I could for the education of girls in mountainous areas, as required by General Secretary Xi Jinping. I’ve only fulfilled the duty of a people’s teacher. These honors don’t belong to me alone; they belong to the Party and the people.”

She adheres to a frugal lifestyle, being extremely thrifty with herself and her relatives, living a life akin to an ascetic. Yet, she used all of her bonuses, salary, and the more than 1 million yuan donated to her for medical treatment to support the school and the children.

Since 2013, despite numerous business trips and home visits each year, she has never claimed a single travel expense. She faced death with equanimity, repeatedly asking the leaders of Huaping County,

“If I were to pass away suddenly, I would like to forgo the funeral and have my ashes scattered directly into the Jinsha River. Could you please advance me the funeral expenses? I want to use this money for the children!”

She comes with a heart full of love, leaving with nothing in return. Facing both worldly success and personal humiliation, she devoted herself wholeheartedly to her work. She clearly distinguished between personal feelings and universal love, and she steadfastly upheld her duty as a teacher. This simplicity and purity are the true colours of a Communist Party member.

Zhang Guimei’s loyalty to the Party and the socialist cause was heartfelt and deeply ingrained in her soul. Less than six months after the school’s founding, more than half of the teachers at the girls’ high school had left, and the school was on the verge of collapse. In the most difficult time, Zhang Guimei convened a meeting of the remaining six Party member teachers and said,

“During the War of Resistance Against Japan, as long as there was one Communist Party member on the front line, the front line would not be lost. Today, with so many of us Party members here, how could we possibly lose this educational front line?”

Afterwards, the teachers painted a large Party flag on the wall of the teaching building and faced it to reaffirm their oath of joining the Party. When they read, “Strive for communism for life,” everyone wept, firmly believing that they could overcome all difficulties and run the girls’ high school well! With everyone united, the girls’ high school had hope again.

The girls’ high school’s establishment and its current success are inseparable from the strong support of the Party and the government. Today, the girls’ high school has become a modern school with complete facilities and a vibrant spirit. During a home visit, a student’s mother held her hand, weeping, and said, “The girls’ high school is tuition-free, allowing our child to attend school. You are a benefactor; we are all grateful to you.” She replied,

“Don’t thank me; I don’t have that much power. The girls’ high school was built with funds from Party committees and governments at all levels. Your dream was fulfilled by the Party, the government, and society.”

General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized,

“Teachers are the foundation of education and the source of its vitality, bearing the heavy responsibility of ensuring the healthy growth of every child and providing education that satisfies the people.”

Zhang Guimei faithfully practices General Secretary Xi Jinping’s thought, resolutely following the Party, devotedly dedicated to education, and selflessly nurturing new generations.

Rooted in the front lines of education in the border regions, she serves as a pioneer in educational reform, a forerunner in poverty alleviation through education, and a guide for student growth. With love and wisdom, she illuminates the life dreams of countless rural girls, demonstrating the noble professional ethics and sense of responsibility of teachers.

However, the anti-fascist struggle is far from over. As fascism is the very ideological foundation of all imperialist and former colonial states and settler colonial (Zionist) states, it can never be eradicated completely without tearing every fabric of imperialism apart.

This is especially evident in the two most infamous fascist countries, Germany and Japan. After their unconditional surrender, fascism continued to exist in these societies in a more cunning guise. The fascist ruling class merely put on a more “civilised” costume, concealing their belief in the “Aryan race” and returned to power. The fascist ideologies simply took on “creative” rhetorics, using “German guilt” to justify Germany’s unconditional support for Zionism, and the “Atomic Bombing victim narrative” to justify Japan’s genocidal war crimes during WWII.

Therefore, it is imperative for our generations to carry on the unfinished mission of fighting against fascism and imperialism.

In this week’s “the fascist history of Japan” series, I would like to share an article by Hunan Daily (湖南日报) translated in English to commemorate the 81st anniversary of Japan's unconditional surrender.

May our planet forever shine with the glory of our great victory—written on the 81st anniversary of Japan's unconditional surrender.

让我们的星球永耀伟大胜利荣光——写在日本无条件投降81周年之际

Source:Hunan Daily (湖南日报)

It has been 81 years since Japan's unconditional surrender.

On August 15, 1945, Japan was defeated and forced to surrender unconditionally. After 14 years of bloody struggle, under the banner of the Anti-Japanese National United Front advocated and established by the Communist Party of China, the Chinese people achieved their first complete victory against foreign invasion in modern times, making a significant contribution to saving human civilization and safeguarding world peace.

Justice triumphed over evil, light over darkness, and progress over reaction. This great victory ended the barbaric acts of Japanese militarism's external expansion, forged the unbreakable legal foundation of the international order after the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War, and etched a major turning point in human history.

History is not a dusty past, but a beacon illuminating the future. Currently, the world is undergoing rapid changes, the international situation is turbulent, and risks and challenges are intertwined. Faced with the dangerous actions of the Japanese ruling class that go against the tide of history, the bottom line of upholding peace and justice cannot be compromised.

The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is historically speaking irreversible. We will absolutely not allow Japanese right-wing forces to reverse history, and we will absolutely not allow Japanese militarism to resurface.

(I) The Unchallenged Post-War International Order

On May 29, 2026, the Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders stood in silent solemnity. Fujita Takakage, Chairman of the Japan Association for Inheriting and Developing the Murayama Statement, bowed deeply before the eternal flame in the memorial hall.

“The crimes committed by the Japanese army against the Chinese people during the war are unforgivable. I hope to face all of this directly. It must be acknowledged, reflected upon, apologized for, and compensated. There is no other way,” Fujita Takakage said, tears streaming down his face.

China was the biggest victim of Japanese militarism and Japan’s war of aggression, the main eastern battlefield of the World Anti-Fascist War, and a core participant in the Tokyo Trials.

"Japan has surrendered!"

The Ta Kung Pao newspaper (大公报), published on August 15, 1945, announced this earth-shattering news with unprecedentedly large font and exclamation marks in the history of Chinese journalism.

That morning, China, the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States simultaneously issued announcements declaring Japan's unconditional surrender. Xinhua News Agency broadcast an urgent telegram, relaying the joy of victory from multiple sources.

That day, in Chongqing, people flooded the streets, spreading the news; in Yan'an, soldiers and civilians beat drums and lit torches; and the soldiers and civilians of the Allied powers in Europe and America also enthusiastically celebrated their shared hard-won victory.

On September 2, 1945, under the supervision of representatives from China and nine other accepting nations, Japanese representatives signed the instrument of surrender, bringing World War II to a close.

From the outbreak of the September 18 Incident in 1931 to Japan's unconditional surrender in 1945, the Chinese people's War of Resistance Against Japan began earliest, lasted longest, faced the most arduous conditions, and suffered the greatest sacrifices in the world's anti-fascist war. At the cost of over 35 million casualties, the Chinese military and civilians tied down more than 50% of the Japanese army's overseas forces. This is an immortal monument in the history of Chinese anti-fascist and anti-imperialist national spirit and in the history of the world anti-fascist struggle.

Massacres, the atrocities committed against civilians, bacteriological warfare against China… The first international prosecutor to investigate the Nanjing Massacre, American George Sutton, meticulously recorded the atrocities committed by the Japanese army during its invasion of China in his diary.

818 court hearings, 419 witnesses testifying, 4,336 pieces of evidence, nearly 50,000 pages of English trial transcripts… From May 3, 1946, to November 12, 1948, the Tokyo Trials delivered a just reckoning on Japan's war crimes, laying the legal foundation for the postwar international order.

Looking back into the depths of time, the historical facts are clear, and the legal basis is intricately linked.

—On December 1, 1943, the Cairo Declaration affirmed the aggressive nature of Japan's fascist war against China and the Pacific War, explicitly stipulating that "all territories Japan has stolen from China, such as the four northeastern provinces, Taiwan, and the Penghu Islands," would be returned to China.

—On July 26, 1945, the Potsdam Declaration was issued, with Article 8 explicitly stating that "the terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out."

—On September 2, 1945, the Japanese government explicitly accepted the Potsdam Declaration in the Instrument of Surrender, pledging to faithfully fulfill its provisions.

—At the 1945 UN Charter Conference, the Chinese representative was the first to sign the UN Charter.

“The UN Charter, the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration, the Instrument of Surrender, and the Tokyo Trial verdicts together form an important component of the foundation of the postwar international order,” said Cheng Zhaoqi, director of the Tokyo Trial Research Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

In today's world, there is only one system, one order, and one set of rules that conform to the general trend of peaceful development: the international system with the United Nations at its core, the international order based on international law, and the basic norms of international relations based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.

On October 24, 1949, on the fourth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, the foundation stone laying ceremony for the UN Headquarters building in New York was held. Among the foundation stones inscribed with the words "United Nations" in English, French, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish, a metal box contains the text of the UN Charter, each word resounding with conviction:

"To prevent future generations from suffering the ravages of war, it is necessary to concentrate efforts to maintain international peace and security, and accept principles and establish methods to ensure that force is not used except for the common good.”

(II) Japan's "New Type of Militarism" Baring Its Fangs

"No more reckless actions by Takaichi!" "Japan must permanently renounce the use of force!"... On July 10, 2026, in Tokyo, Japanese citizens, holding banners stretching for kilometers, protested in front of the National Diet Building, opposing the Takaichi Sanae government's military expansion policies and constitutional revision plans.

Claiming that Japan's war was a "war of self-preservation and self-defense," explicitly refusing to apologise to Asian countries and peoples victimized by its fascist war, and persistently visiting the Yasukuni Shrine which enshrines 14 Class-A war criminals from World War II… Sanae Takaichi, a right-wing politician holding a distorted view of history, becomes Japan's Prime Minister now.

Since taking office in October 2025, the Takaichi administration has aggressively promoted various right-wing agendas and engaged in large-scale remilitarisation.

Japan has drastically increased its defense budget, setting a new post-war record for 14 consecutive years; revised its "Three Principles on the Transfer of Defense Equipment" and its operational guidelines, lifting the ban on the export of lethal weapons; sought to strengthen its domestic and international intelligence capabilities, formally establishing a "National Intelligence Agency" to provide intelligence support for military expansion; attempted to revise its "Three Non-Nuclear Principles," constantly testing the limits of nuclear taboos; and continuously hyped up the fake narrative of "China threat," loudly declaring its intervention in the Taiwan Strait situation, becoming the first Japanese prime minister to explicitly link a "contingency in Taiwan" with a "life-or-death crisis" under which Japan could exercise its right of "self-defense".

Since its defeat in World War II, Japan has consistently failed to eradicate the remnants of militarism and fascism. Some factions have not only failed to reflect on their fascist history but have also expressed extreme "dissatisfaction" with post-war international arrangements.

Currently, right-wing forces in Japan, represented by Takaichi, are attempting to glorify, deny, distort, and rewrite history, revealing their ambition for "remilitarization." The rise of a "new type of militarism" in Japan is an undeniable fact and constitutes a real threat. The actions of Japan's right-wing forces seriously violate Japan's international legal obligations.

Japan should "completely disarm," cease maintaining "industries that could enable it to rearm for war," and must fully adhere to the principles of not accepting, manufacturing, possessing, or proliferating nuclear weapons. These are international legal obligations that Japan must fulfill, and are by no means political bargaining chips.

The actions of Japan's right-wing forces seriously damage international and Asia-Pacific peace and stability.

The world's eyes are discerning. A Japan that actively pursues revision of its pacifist constitution, relaxes restrictions on the export of lethal weapons, and deploys offensive missiles, even if it tries to maintain a facade of a bankrupt "peaceful nation," cannot conceal its true intention to pave the way for military expansion. Japan's frequent interactions with NATO, attempting to introduce external military organizations into the Asia-Pacific region, reveal its blatant provocation of confrontation.

Japan's right-wing forces' attempt to acquire nuclear weapons will damage the hard-won peace and prosperity. People from all walks of life in Japan and civil society groups have expressed disappointment, and many countries have explicitly opposed it.

While whitewashing history and engaging in "remilitarization," Japan is replicating a dangerous historical script.

Insightful figures and mainstream voices in the international community have forcefully pointed out that the current actions of Japan's right-wing forces are a challenge to the UN Charter, a challenge to the post-war international order, a challenge to human conscience, and a challenge to the people of all victorious nations.

In August, immediately after the Japanese government released its 2026 Defense White Paper, which hyped up the so-called "China threat," China lodged a strong protest towards Japan.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova pointed out that Japan's "remilitarization" policy deviates from pacifism, not only further escalating tensions in the Asia-Pacific region but also triggering a new arms race.

Australian Citizens Party National Chairman Barwick commented that a growing trend is emerging within Japan to whitewash its history of aggression while simultaneously engaging in "remilitarization."

"Every year at this time, people who cherish peace remember the heroic struggle of the Allied powers, including China, in defeating Japanese militarism. However, against the backdrop of rampant right-wing forces in Japan, we must warn the world at this juncture—peace is hard-won and deserves to be cherished; Japan, going against the tide of history, will ultimately face historical reckoning."

as said by Wang Chaoguang, Chair Professor of the School of History and Culture at Sichuan University.

(III) Historical Justice and Human Principles That Must Be Upheld

Time marches ever onward, but only the profound and enduring power of justice will forever illuminate reality and illuminate the future.

Regarding the egregious actions of Japanese right-wing forces—who verbally proclaim "peace" and "defense" while their actions recklessly advance towards "remilitarization"—China's stance remains steadfast: Only by facing history can one country gain respect from others; only by learning from history can we forge a shared peaceful future; only by remembering the past can we prevent ourselves from going astray again. Remembering history is not about perpetuating hatred, but about ensuring the eternal ringing of the bells of peace.

A peaceful environment is a nation's most precious condition for development. Former Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama once stated bluntly, "Sending a signal of peace to the world through a pacifist constitution is the proper role Japan should play in the contemporary international community."

"Japan only gained the right to rejoin the international community, join the United Nations, and conduct normal economic, trade, and cultural exchanges and cooperation by accepting a series of post-war legal arrangements and fulfilling its obligations as a defeated nation. Otherwise, all development would be impossible," said Cheng Zhaoqi.

Remembering history is the essential first step to learning from it, eliminating its lingering poison, and avoiding repeating past mistakes.

To understand a nation's present and future, one must understand its past.

In 1931, the question of whether or not Japan could acquire Manchuria was regarded as a life-or-death matter to its survival, and Japan used this as a pretext to launch the Mukden Incident. Subsequently, Japan declared that the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" was a war for Japan's survival, extending its fascist war to the entire Asian continent. The question of whether or not to attack Pearl Harbor was also seen as a life-or-death matter to Japan's survival, thus igniting the fuse of the Pacific War. Launching aggressions to other countries under the guise of so-called "survival crisis" and "self-defense" was a common tactic of Japanese militarism.

For over 80 years since its defeat in World War II, Japan has neither thoroughly eradicated the lingering poison of militarism nor comprehensively and objectively reflected its fascist history in textbooks, nor has it made a promise of never waging war again. Instead, it has cultivated a so-called "victim" persona and promoted a distorted view of World War II history.

As Japanese scholar Shigeo Nasu, who has donated a large amount of historical materials on the Japanese invasion of China to the Museum of Japanese Germ Warfare in Yiwu over the years, worried: "Many Japanese people are unaware of this history. We must do something about it."

The alarm bells have rung; the tragedy must not be repeated.

Sixteen experts from the UN Human Rights Council's special mechanisms issued a joint press release urging Japan to face up to the history of "comfort women" and demanding that Japan earnestly assume its historical responsibility. Singaporean media produced and broadcast the documentary "Unveiling Unit 731: Japan's Secret Human Experiments," allowing viewers to further understand the historical truth. Former Japanese leaders have also publicly stated that if Japan does not examine why it went to war, history will inevitably repeat itself, and the tragedy must not be allowed to happen again.

Japan must deeply and sincerely reflect on its historical crimes, take concrete actions to completely sever ties with militarism, and truly embark on the path of peaceful development.

(IV) Gathering a Powerful Force for Peace and Development

Entering the Museum of the Puppet Emperor's Palace (伪满皇宫博物院) in Changchun, Jilin Province, the clock on the Xingyun Gate is forever frozen at the moment the last Chinese Puppet Emperor Puyi hastily fled this "palace."

The Japanese Kwantung Army planned the September 18 Incident, plundered resources in Northeast China. Faced with historical reconstructions and exhibits in the Northeast Japanese History Exhibition Hall, visitors from home and abroad deeply felt the timeless lessons this site evoked.

"The Japanese aggressors could seize territory and establish puppet regimes, but they could not erase the national identity deeply rooted in the blood of the Chinese people. We want more people to understand the profound suffering inflicted on the Chinese people by Japanese militarist aggression, and to cherish and defend peace together."

as said by Sun Danyumei, head of the museum's guided tour group.

As an important force for peace, justice, and progress in the world, China is willing to work with peace-loving countries and peoples around the world to defend the post-World War II international order and maintain world peace and tranquility.

Protecting shared memories is protecting humanity's shared home.

The legislation establishing the Victory Day of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the National Memorial Day for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre collectively reflects the common will of the Chinese people, demonstrates their firm stance in resolutely safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and highlights the Chinese nation's commitment to opposing retrograde actions, defending human dignity, and maintaining world peace.

Looking at the international community, Russia (former USSR)'s anniversary of the victory over fascist Japan and Germany, North Korea's Fatherland Liberation Day, South Korea's Liberation Day, Singapore's Total Defence Day, each anniversary and commemorative activity conveys to the world the shared aspiration to defend historical truth and maintain peace and development.

When humanity once again faces choices between peace and war, dialogue and confrontation, win-win and zero-sum games, China firmly upholds the banner of peace, development, cooperation, and win-win outcomes.

In early September 2025, General Secretary Xi Jinping, together with foreign leaders from five continents, high-level representatives from relevant countries, heads of international organizations, former political figures, and representatives of international friends who contributed to China's victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression or their bereaved families, commemorated the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War in Beijing, and jointly looked forward to a bright future for human peace and development.

"At all times, we must promote the common values of all mankind, firmly defend international fairness and justice, and ensure that the world is filled with righteousness and a clear sky."

"The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is unstoppable! The noble cause of human peace and development will surely triumph!"

General Secretary Xi Jinping's firm declaration has rallied the international community to stand firmly on the right side of history and on the side of human civilization's progress, jointly creating a better future for humanity.

The trend of the world towards peaceful coexistence is irresistible; those who follow it prosper, and those who oppose it perish. Anyone or any force that overestimates its own capabilities and attempts to rewrite history of aggression, whitewash genocidal war crimes, or revive militarism will ultimately end in failure and face a thorough trial by justice and historical reckoning.

All progressive forces in the world, joining hands for the noble cause of peace and development, will surely ensure that the glory of this great victory shines forever in the annals of human progress!

If one tries to point out the fact that “China is a socialist country”, immediately some Western Marxists will respond, “but how about labour rights in China?”

If one searches “labour rights in China” on Western search engines, one will get countless cases of labour rights violations by the Chinese “authoritarian regime” from various NGOs like Amnesty International, especially in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

If one reads articles from Western mainstream media about “labour rights in China”, one will encounter stories of several famous Chinese labour activists like Han Dongfang and Li Qiang and learn the “hidden secret” of the “ccp” that “the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (中华全国总工会) works with companies and the employees have little power.”, as claimed by The New York Times.

It is indeed “fascinating” to see that the owners and funders of Western tech giants, NGOs and mainstream media outlets, namely the bourgeois ruling class in the imperialist West, are deeply “concerned” about workers’ rights in China, while directly or indirectly slaughtering black and brown workers in other third-world countries without feeling guilty at all.

Does the “baby-eating” Epstein class really care about us, Chinese working-class people? Are their anti-China narratives backed by facts?

As many Western sources about labour rights in China are written from a Eurocentric lens, I would like to share my views on this matter from a Chinese Marxist perspective by focusing on the following three questions:

• Are workers oppressed in China?

• Will Western-style “independent” labour unions help advance the socialist cause in China?

• Whose interests are Chinese Trade Unions representing?

Are workers oppressed in China?

This is probably the number one question many Westerners will raise when it comes to labour rights in China.

In the strictest sense, as almost no country in our current world (the DPRK is probably the only exception) has completely abolished wage labour and entered the higher stage of socialism, labour exploitation exists in almost all countries to varying degrees, including in socialist countries. But this is certainly not why many Westerners ask the question, as from this viewpoint, the question itself “are workers IN CHINA oppressed?” becomes meaningless.

(Some Western Marxists will probably say that no, China, Vietnam, and Cuba are not socialist countries because labour exploitation has not been completely abolished in these countries. This is an extremely erroneous view out of naivety and a lack of real revolutionary practices. Nothing can be more arrogant and messianic than Western Marxists denouncing socialist countries because they have not entered a higher stage of socialism within a few decades due to constant threat and encirclement of the imperialist West, while doing nothing at home to fight against one’s own ruling class, the global imperialist class, the root of all evils. Regarding the question “why China is socialist”, it has been answered clearly in the following sources: the collection of unlearn capital: ‘is China capitalist?’, and the recent article of comrade Yaretzi “Messianic First Worldist Marxism”.)

So, what do Westerners really mean when they ask, “Are workers in China oppressed?” In most cases, they mean “are workers in China more oppressed compared to workers in the West?”.

If one compares figures about working conditions in China and the West, such as wage levels, working hours, and annual leave, one will quickly conclude that workers in China are more oppressed compared to workers in the West. However, this analysis is erroneous in two ways.

Firstly, this comparison is deeply Eurocentric, completely ignoring China’s class position in the globe and unequal exchange.

Workers in China are not living in Disneyland, but rather in a world dominated by the imperialist West. Our world is divided into two classes: the global imperialist class in the cores, and the imperialised popular class in the peripheries. Starting from the first opium war, China has been forcibly put into the latter class, the dominated and dispossessed class. Although Chinese people have overthrown the comprador bourgeois class represented by the Kuomintang (KMT) government, and built a socialist country led by the popular class, China’s class position remains unchanged until today.

As explained clearly by unequal exchange scholars like Samir Amin, Torkil Lauesen and Ali Kadri (more sources in the following two collections of unlearn capitalism: Unequal exchange, multipolarity and the new mood; De-development and imperialism: how can we fight back?), a country’s class position determines a country’s wage level, and correspondingly the overall working conditions of its workers. The differences in wage levels caused by class positions play a fundamental role in unequal exchange, helping the imperial cores collect imperial rents with value created by the imperialised peripheries.

As a country in the semi-peripheries, China has not completely escaped the curse of unequal exchange, and hence workers in China are still forced by the genocidal imperialist world order to accept worse working conditions than their white peers in the imperialist West.

Thus, such a comparison between a country in the peripheries and the imperialist West is as biased as when one compares the grade of a student from an immigrant workers’ family and that of a student from a white upper-class academic family.

Instead, a more just comparison can be made between China and India, as India is also a third world country that has gone through (semi-)colonialism and gained political independence around the same time as China.

According to the World Bank, the gross domestic product (GDP) per person in current international dollars converted by purchasing power parities (PPPs) amounts to 29,333$ in China in 2025, almost three times of that in India, being 11,748$. In addition, the minimum wage level in China ranges from 2070 – 2740 RMB (307 – 406 USD) depending on the provinces, while that in India is much lower, varying from 5280 – 23376 INR (55 – 245 USD), despite the fact that workers have similarly long working hours in both countries, 46,1 hours/week in China and 45,5 hours/week in India.

Furthermore, workers in China enjoy much better social welfare than workers in India. Taking healthcare as an example. In China, the state-led healthcare system provides coverage for over 95% of the 1,4 billion Chinese people, while in India, the largely privatised and decentralised healthcare system leaves around 70 percent of women and 67 percent of men aged between 15 and 49 uninsured and vulnerable to high financial burdens in case of serious illnesses.

Based on these figures, it is crystal clear that workers in China enjoy much better working and living conditions than in other major third-world countries like India. This is not because of some peculiar strengths of Chinese culture, but a result of the socialist economic and redistribution system in China. If the popular class led by the Communist Party of China (CPC) had not seized power and built a socialist state, workers in China would have the same level of poor working and living conditions as workers in India.

Moreover, if one checks the changes of GDP per person in current international dollars over time in China, India, the U.S, and Sweden between 1990 and 2025, one will notice a significant fact that the purchasing power of Chinese people is rising rapidly since 1990s, and even more quickly since 2020s, while the increase in the purchasing power of people in the West is gradually slowing down.

In other words, the gap between the living quality of workers in China and that of white workers in the West is gradually diminishing. This further implies that China is now demolishing the “unequal exchange” prison brick by brick and very soon it will break out of the prison on behalf of the imperialised peripheries for the first time in more than two centuries.

Here comes the second mistake with the analysis above. To conclude that “workers in China are more oppressed than their peers in the West” based on situations at the current time point reflects the Western static way of thinking void of dialectical materialism, rejecting the reality that everything is constantly changing and improving, including the working conditions in China.

Just because China has not completely break free from the “core-periphery” trap now does NOT mean that China will not escape from the curse of the global imperialist class in the foreseeable future, especially when many indicators show that the labour rights in China are constantly improving (more information regarding this on the article by Friends of Socialist China “China marks May Day with tangible gains for working people”.).

Therefore, instead of asking whether workers in China are more oppressed than in Western countries, it is more meaningful to ask whether living quality of workers in China will be improved to a similar level as in the West in the near future. With faith in the superiority of socialism, I have full confidence to say that, absolutely YES.

Will Western-style “independent” labour unions help advance the socialist cause?

Even being given concrete facts about how the lives of ordinary workers in China have been remarkably improved, many Western Marxists will still point out this or that case of labour rights violations and criticise the Chinese “authoritarian” government for not allowing workers in China to form Western style “independent” labour unions.

Yes, it is a matter of fact that in China, all labour unions (Trade Unions) are affiliated with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. This is, however, not, as many Westerners believe, due to the “authoritarian” nature of the Chinese government, but rather because Western-style “independent” labour unions are simply neither suitable nor beneficial for China. It will not help China advance its socialist cause and may even deter China from achieving its ultimate goal, realizing socialism/communism.

• Why are Western-style “independent” labour unions not suitable for China?

Many Western Marxists refuse to recognise the real nature of the current “independent” labour unions in the West. Certainly, such labour unions had their roots in revolutionary movements before WWII. However, after WWII, “independent” labour unions in the imperialist West have become nothing but a circus of domesticated “radical” tigers fed by the ruling class with imperial rents. As long as these white tigers are bribed with the meat of black and brown people in the periphery, they will sit tamely beside their ruling class and never think about revolution anymore, not even in their wildest dreams.

In other words, Western-style labour unions are in reality tools of the global imperialist class to bribe its white labour aristocrats and buy their class betrayal against their black and brown peers in the peripheries. Hence the idea that non-white workers in the imperialised peripheries like China should form such unions is as crazy as suggesting people in the Arctic plant palm trees.

Instead of accusing China for not having “independent” labour unions, Western Marxists should probably ask themselves, “Are our labour unions really independent of the control of the ruling class? Can we take over the state power and smash the genocidal imperialist machine by organising within labour unions?” If they are honest enough with themselves, they will find out that the answer is “NO”.

• Why are Western-style “independent” labour unions not beneficial for China?

There are two main reasons.

Firstly, the “independent” labour unions, or “independent” organisations for labour rights, are in reality perfect tools for the imperialist West to infiltrate and carry out regime change attempts in China. This is why many Western mainstream media, despite being anti-labour-union themselves, advocate for “independent” labour unions in China.

Most, if not all, of these “independent” organisations for labour rights formed by “Chinese” workers are funded by associations affiliated with governments in the imperialist West. The “rights defense” incident of workers at Shenzhen Jasic Company in 2018, for example, was organized by “workers’ centre” (打工者中心), an “independent” organisation for labour rights entirely funded by Western government-funded NGOs. The China Labor Watch, with its base in New York, the U.S, receives funds directly from the U.S. Department of State. The recently dissolved China Labour Bulletin was also funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S government-funded foundation that has spread “freedom and democracy” in many non-aligned countries and ruined countless people’s futures. So, the word “independent” seems to have a rather opposite meaning in the imperialist West.

One may wonder, what would happen if the Chinese government allowed “Chinese” workers to form such “independent” labour unions? Would workers in China get better working conditions? Rather unlikely.

Instead, if the infiltration attempts were carried out successfully, it might lead China to chaos and eventually balkanise China into several small states under the iron boots of the imperialist West. This would significantly devastate the lives of ordinary workers in China. The only Chinese workers who would benefit from this are those traitors bought by the imperialist West who can flee immediately to the imperialist cores with a political asylum visa.

Secondly, it will harm the interests of workers in China if they listen to some Western Marxists and carry out Western-style class struggles through independent labour unions. Why is this the case?

In capitalist countries, it is undoubtedly helpful and important for working class people to carry out class struggles through independent labour unions, to disrupt and damage the industrial production as much as possible (although, as explained above, many labour unions in the imperialist West, especially in Northern Europe, are rather circus controlled by the ruling class and will not carry out such struggles any time soon). This is a correct strategy because in capitalist countries the purpose of industrial production is to help the bourgeois class with capital accumulation, while working class people get almost nothing from their own labour (except labour aristocrats in the West who get imperial rents from their ruling class).

However, the logic that works perfectly in capitalist countries can NOT be applied to socialist countries like China. In China, although there are still private companies and capitalists, the political power is controlled tightly in the hands of the popular class. As a result, the main goal of industrial production is not to accumulate capital for the capitalists, but to improve the living quality of the people. The surplus value created by working class people is eventually transferred to the hands of the socialist government in the form of taxes and payments by the capitalists and used to build infrastructures and expand social welfare program for the interests of people. Thus, it will be counterproductive if workers resort to ways that will interrupt or even damage industrial production to voice their dissatisfactions.

But this does not mean that workers in China have no ways to defend their rights. Apart from letters and visits (信访), there are many other online and offline channels for workers to express their legitimate grievances and demand justice, just to list a few:

through calling 12333, the national public service hotline for social security and labour rights, or 12351, the trade union hotline,

through reporting unpaid wage issues to the government via the “State Council Client” app (国务院客户端), or under the “Eradicating Wage Arrears (根治欠薪)” section on the Official Website of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (人力资源和社会保障部官网),

through directly visiting local labor inspection departments (劳动监察机构) or other relevant departments like department for work safety supervision and administration (安全生产监督管理部门) to file complaints or reports (all governments in all levels are open to the public in China),

through getting free public legal advisory services online (12348 中国法网), or getting legal assistance from the local labor union in the case of labour arbitration.

Whose interests are Chinese Trade Unions representing?

Following the Western “either-or” way of thinking, Westerners, especially those on the left, view all state-led organisations as “authoritarian” and “bad”, just like they call all cops bastards (ACAB). However, the reality can seldom be comprehended by such a linear logic.

While state-led organisations do NOT represent or serve the interests of the masses in capitalist states, i.e, the dictatorship of the bourgeois class, state-led organisations represent and serve the interests of the popular class in socialist states, i.e, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In socialist China, Trade Unions under the leadership of the CPC represents and serves the interests of working class people in China, as stated clearly in the Constitution of the Trade Unions of China (中国工会章程),

“Chinese trade unions are mass organizations of the working class—formed through the voluntary association of workers and led by the Communist Party of China—that serve as a bridge and link connecting the Party with the workforce, act as important social pillars of state power, and represent the interests of their members and the workers… The fundamental function of Chinese trade unions is to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of workers.”

Although many Westerners are still denying the important role Chinese Trade Unions play in improving working conditions for workers in China, the reality proves the opposite.

In the past year, Chinese Trade Unions have launched “concentrated collective bargaining initiatives (集中要约行动)” and issued guidelines to regulate labour rules and algorithms in online platform-based companies to protect the rights of workers in new forms of employment (also known as gig workers in the West) who are exposed to higher risks of exploitation.

In addition, the Trade Unions have helped 12,900 rural workers to recover unpaid wages amounting to 402 million RMB. Furthermore, besides providing services such as health check-ups and “meals of care”, the Trade Unions are continuously optimizing the facilities for workers like “Union Service Stations (工会驿站)” and Rest and Nursing Room for Female Employees.

The importance of Trade Unions has also been proven in various studies in the Past by Chinese scholars. For example, according to Liu Aiyu and Fu Chunhui, once unionized, rural workers in China will earn 23% more in annual labour income and exhibit participation rates in pension insurance and medical insurance that are 3.4 times and 2.9 times higher, respectively. Based on studies carried out by Li Ming and Xu Jianwei, Chinese Trade Unions can raise workers’ wage levels by around 12.75% and reduce working hours by 4.11%.

However, this does not mean that Chinese Trade Unions are void of problems. As pointed out by Wu Jianping in the paper “Forty Years of Trade Union Research in China: A Review of the Basic Trajectory and Characteristics of Domestic Research”, since the current Chinese Trade Unions are a continuation of the trade unions under the planned economy before the Reform and Opening-up, it has inherited the “top-down” style from the old era, functioning as an extension of the government department rather than a bottom-up organization for the masses.

To democratize the Chinese Trade Unions and enhance bottom-up grassroots participation, the current Chinese government under the leadership of Xi Jinping is sparing no effort in reforming the Trade Unions based on the six principles of adherence (六个坚持):

“Adhere to the Party’s overall leadership over the workers’ movement and trade union work; adhere to the fundamental principle of relying wholeheartedly on the working class; adhere to serving the Party’s central tasks; adhere to the political nature, advanced character, and mass orientation of trade union organizations; adhere to serving the workforce as the lifeline of the work; and adhere to the law and the union’s constitution”.

Regarding how to reform and improve the Chinese Trade Unions, Xi Jinping has explained clearly in a collective talk with the new leadership of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions,

“Efforts must be made to strengthen democratic management within enterprises and public institutions, ensure smooth channels for workers to voice their concerns, and guide workers in safeguarding their rights in accordance with the law.

Reform must focus on work at the grassroots level to consolidate the grassroots foundation, stimulate grassroots vitality, and continuously enhance the capacity of grassroots Trade Unions to provide guidance, organization, and services.

Existing organizational foundations must be strengthened, and the coverage of trade union organizations expanded. Innovative working methods should be adopted to provide workers with precise and attentive services.

Trade union officials must practice the Party’s mass line, conduct in-depth research to stay informed of workers’ thoughts and expectations, continuously improve their ability to serve the workforce, and sincerely speak and act on behalf of the workers”.

With the continuous reform and improvement of Chinese Trade Unions, with the further enhancement of the public sector in the Chinese economy, we have all the reasons to believe that the labour rights in China will get better protections in the near future.

Conclusion

Rome was not built in one day; a higher stage of socialism will not be achieved within a few decades, and problems with labour rights in the imperialised peripheries will not be solved completely within a second. However, we, people in the peripheries, especially in socialist countries, are solving these problems and building socialism every day with hard work and hard struggles. If Westerners, especially Western Marxists, really care about us, workers in the peripheries, they should probably stop criticising socialist and non-aligned countries for not being perfect, and start waging class struggles against their own ruling class, the origin of all evils.

The loss of human lives, or to put it more frankly, the massacre on European borders caused by the EU’s genocidal immigration policy has, however, gone unnoticed by Europeans both on the right and on the left.

Even when discussed by some European leftists, such atrocities at the EU borders are viewed as a human rights crisis and violations of European values due to “bad” policies of right-wing political parties. For European leftists, the atrocities at EU borders due to EU’s immigration policy are unfortunate mistakes in the supposedly perfect “democratic” system of Europe, a “civilised” continent famous for its advocacy for human rights. And these unfortunate “mistakes” can be corrected by voting for a “progressive social democratic” party into office.

The erroneous views of European leftists about the EU’s immigration policy have influenced many people with immigration backgrounds in Europe, who hope to get a more “immigrants-friendly” and “pro-Palestine” Europe by voting for the “correct” political party in the next “decisive” election, a message from the organiser of the weekly pro-Palestine demonstration in a major Swedish city last week.

However, this hope is nothing but a mirage in the desert. The massacres at EU borders are not a human rights crisis but rather the continuation of more than two centuries of class wars waged by the global imperialist class against the imperialised popular class in the periphery. And class wars can never be won by reforms and electoral politics.

Immigrants from the periphery supply fresh blood to sustain the vampire of imperialism

To grasp the essence of the EU’s genocidal immigration policy, we need first to recognize the crucial role that the extremely deadly immigration from the imperialized periphery to the imperialist center plays in sustaining imperialism.

• The accumulation of waste at EU borders

Capitalism inevitably creates a reserve army of labour, i.e, surplus labour, especially in the imperialised periphery, as Karl Marx explained in Capital, Vol. 1,

“But if a surplus labouring population is a necessary product of accumulation or of the development of wealth on a capitalist basis, this surplus-population becomes, conversely, the lever of capitalistic accumulation, nay, a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production. It forms a disposable industrial reserve army, that belongs to capital quite as absolutely as if the latter had bred it at its own cost”.

While the imperialist West could successfully get rid of its surplus labour by settler colonialism, countries in the periphery do not have a fourth world to colonise for its surplus labour. So, what solution does the global imperialist class find for the problem with surplus labour in the imperialised periphery? Borrowing the term used by Ali Kadri, structural genocide.

This is indeed the “best” solution for the global imperialist class to kill two birds with one stone, i.e, to get rid of surplus labour, and to accumulate capital in a larger scale and at a higher speed.

As explained by Ali Kadri,

“The de-reproduction of society becomes the principal industry of capital…. It (capital) reduces the life expectancy of social producers relative to the historically determined level, such that over society’s lifecycle, it keeps more of the social product for itself while lessening its outlays on the reproduction of labour”.

In other words, the global imperialist class accumulates capital by de-reproduction in the periphery, i.e, by premature deaths. The quicker human lives in the periphery are wasted by the imperialist vampire, the less value outlays are needed for the reproduction of labour, and hence the more capital can be accumulated by the global imperialist class.

The EU’s immigration policy is exactly one of the most effective ways of structural genocide in the periphery, along with other ways such as imperialist wars, austerity policies, environmental degradation and climate crisis.

The massacre that happened in Ceuta recently is just a tiny corner of the vast genocidal iceberg. Every year, the efficient death machine at EU borders in the Mediterranean and Western African routes is effortlessly wasting around 2000 - 3000 human lives with the help of nature. In 2026, the European imperialist ruling class has made the EU borders even more deadly for immigrants. Despite the declining number of “illegal” immigrants, around 1300 human lives have been slaughtered by the EU’s death machine in the Mediterranean until July. This is not to include immigrants who died on the way to the borders, or who were killed by comprador states in the periphery like Morocco, which help the imperialist West to waste black and brown lives in exchange for “bribery” from the EU.

But why do people still try to cross the borders despite the infamous lethal death machine? What ensures the constant supply of fresh human lives to the EU’s death machine is the completeness of the ways of structural genocide by the imperialist West. In other words, people in the imperialised periphery are almost completely trapped in the vast net of structural genocide made by the imperialist West.

They can only choose how to be killed prematurely, but not whether to be. Among different ways of structural genocide, such as extreme poverty, a lack of medicine and healthcare, food and energy shortages, natural disasters, imperial wars, or the death machine at the EU borders, many young people choose the last one, because there is still a chance to survive, and if they survive, they can get “better” lives in the imperialist cores.

• The miniature of “core-periphery” inside the imperialist cores

After decades of imperial wars and genocides in the imperialised periphery, most people have gradually realised that the imperialist ruling class in the EU cannot care less about the black and brown human lives. But then why are they still allowing some immigrants from the periphery to enter the EU fortress? Even under the rule of the far-right party led by Giorgia Meloni, around 36% of asylum seekers have had their applications recognised.

This is because the imperialist ruling class in the EU needs these black and brown “slave” labourers to feed the super-exploitative imperialist machine. Without these “tame” immigrants from the periphery, the imperialist ruling class has to exploit white labour aristocrats to a much greater extent, which can cause the rise of class consciousness in the “home base” of the ruling class and threaten the stability of the entire empire.

As a result, one can witness two parallel worlds in most European cities, a white world for the labour aristocracy class, (the word “white” here does not refer to skin colour, but rather class position), and a non-white world for the black and brown immigrants, just like a miniature of the world divided into two classes, the global imperial class in the core and the imperialised popular class in the periphery.

There are many examples of such class division. In offices, almost all colleagues are white while all cleaning staff are black and brown immigrants. In gyms, almost all trainers and people training are white, while all cleaning staff are black and brown immigrants. In the “immigrant” districts, like the “förorter” in Sweden or the famous “Neukölln” and “Bahnhofsviertel” in Germany, one cannot see bourgeois townhouses with well-trimmed gardens and Volkswagen cars parked outside, but rather modest four- or five-storey buildings whose precarious conditions can be easily spotted, often with many police observing outside.

This class division is even more obvious in numbers. One can easily distinguish “immigrant” districts from “white” districts by rent levels and property prices. Once more black and brown immigrants move to a certain area, the rent levels will be dragged down as white labour aristocrats with higher income will abandon that district. One can also easily guess if a person has an immigration background based on his/her wage level. While low-wage jobs are mostly done by immigrants, most well-paid parasitic white-collar jobs are reserved for white labour aristocrats. Even for two people doing the same jobs, one can get a higher wage simply by having a European surname, while the other has to satisfy with a lower wage because of his/her Arabic-sounding surname.

These two parallel worlds are not standing side by side, but rather one on top and one at the bottom. Without being buttressed by the non-white world of immigrants at the bottom, the fragile white world of the labour aristocrats would instantly collapse into pieces, which would make these delusional labour aristocrats finally see the reality: their enemies are not black and brown immigrants, but rather their “allies”, the imperialist ruling class. And this would lead to the final death sentence for imperialism.

What is to be done?

So how can we change the dire situations? Many may propose that we should demand the government to implement “immigrant-friendly” policies. But will it work?

Certainly, if a more “progressive” European government implement “immigrant-friendly” policies, some “lucky” immigrants who are allowed to stay in the EU may suffer relatively less and can get a relatively “fairly” paid jobs, while if a European country is ruled by “anti-immigrant” right-wing or far-right parties, these immigrants will be forced to accept even more precarious working and living conditions.

However, no matter how hard one tries to reform the EU’s immigration policy, one still can not change the cruel fact that many immigrants from the periphery will be killed at the EU borders, be deported to migrant prisons in a third country, like the two migrant prisons in Mauritania opened by the “progressive” Spain’s government, and some immigrants who are allowed to stay in the EU will still be super-exploited much more than the white workers by the imperialist ruling class.

Furthermore, the “immigrant-friendly” policies by “progressive” EU governments will cause further de-development of the imperialised periphery by brain-drain. While third world countries spend huge resources educating its young people, it is the imperialist West who gets the fruit, as many young people with skills and qualifications in the periphery are attracted to the imperialist cores due to significantly higher wage levels, although their skills are essential to the development of their own countries.

Thus, no matter how “immigrant-friendly” the immigration policies appear to be, their genocidal nature remains unchanged. Trying to solve the problem with “immigrant-friendly” policies is like trying to cure a flu by only drinking hot water; it will never work and may even worsen the situation.

So, what is the real solution?

Just like one needs anti-virus medicine to cure a flu, we need to deal with the root cause of the problem, i.e, to completely destroy the imperialist West’s vast net of structural genocide supported by the military and financial genocidal machines such as NATO+, IMF, and the World Bank. In other words, the only solution is to completely smash the entire imperial system that the EU is built on and shred every fabric of imperialism.

Only by doing so, all imperial wars by NATO+ countries and their proxies can be stopped, all structural adjustment programs and neoliberal austerity policies can be torn apart, and people in the periphery can finally escape the curse of structural genocide and de-development and start building dignified lives in their homeland instead of being reduced to food for the vampire of imperialism.

So, what is to be done to dismantle imperialism?

As many in the “Marxist bubble” may have already heard a hundred times, we need to organise ourselves in anti-imperialist parties or groups. In the imperialist cores, the level of organisation is, however, far from sufficient and effective. Based on my very limited experience in Northern Europe, the problem lies less in fragmentation among different “left” groups as many Western leftists believe, more in a lack of focus on the following two tasks:

• To build a parallel system as an alternative to the current genocidal imperialist system. This is explained very clearly in the article “Third Worldism & What Western Socialists Are Suppose to Do” so I will not repeat it.

• To organise people with immigration backgrounds to join the anti-imperialist struggles in the imperialist cores. As explained above, people with immigration backgrounds in the imperialist cores are exposed to a higher level of exploitation and class violence and thus possess higher revolutionary potentials. Given their material conditions, it is much easier for them to develop class consciousness and determination to fight against the global imperialist class compared to their white European peers.

  However, many people in this group are currently more or less excluded by many anti-imperialist groups, especially Marxist groups. This is partially because their appearances do not fulfil the criteria for “radical secular left” in the West; for example, they wear hijab and believe in Islam. Moreover, the rather sophisticated language used by many Marxist groups creates barriers for working-class people with an immigration background.

  Failing to organise this group of people can be a great loss for the anti-imperialist movements in the imperialist cores. As Mao said clearly, “we must unite all those who can be united”; an urgent task for anti-imperialist groups in the imperialist cores is to organise people with immigration backgrounds who haven’t gotten chances to learn about revolutionary anti-imperialist ideologies and to become part of the anti-imperialist movements due to their religions and educational levels.

Conclusion

The massacres of immigrants at the EU borders are not unfortunate mistakes of a supposedly perfect system, but rather one of the designed features of the genocidal imperialist system. The system is rotten in its core and can not be reformed from within. Instead of trying to save the rotten EU fortress from burning, we need to completely burn it down and build a new system for life, rather than for death, for the interests of people rather than the interests of capital.

Undoubtedly, Japan was a victim of the U.S nuclear war crime, and the U.S chose Japan as its target partially because it was the only non-white state among the Axis powers in World War II. But this can neither be used to portray fascist Japan as a war victim nor prove that the defeat of fascist Japan was solely thanks to the contributions of the U.S.

Countless historical facts show that just as Nazi Germany could not have been defeated without the great sacrifices of the Soviet people, fascist Japan would not have surrendered so easily without the immense sacrifices of the Chinese people.

To help people outside Southeast Asia develop a more holistic understanding on this matter, I would like to share an article using dialectical materialism to analyse this victory of the anti-imperialist war against Japan in this week's the "fascist history of Japan" series.

Was the anti-imperialist war against Japan won by the U.S and the Soviet Union?

抗日战争是靠美苏打赢的？

By Guangchazhe (观察者)

When discussing the anti-imperialist war against Japan, some people hold a Eurocentric view, arguing that the Chinese people made little contribution to the anti-fascist battles of the World War II. They believe Japan's eventual surrender was thanks to the U.S and the Soviet Union, and had little to do with China.

This is a narrow perspective, focusing only on the war situation in 1944 or 1945. While the US atomic bombings of Japan and the Soviet "August Storm" operation that annihilated the Kwantung Army were undoubtedly the final blows that forced Japan to surrender unconditionally, from an overall perspective of the war, the Chinese front of the anti-imperialist war against Japan lasted the longest and tied down the most Japanese troops.

From the Japanese invasion of Northeast China in September 1931 until the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, China had been fighting Japan alone for ten years without support from the U.S. After the Mukden Incident (September 18 Incident) in 1931, many people and soldiers in Northeast China, along with patriotic generals, launched a struggle against the brutal aggression of Japanese imperialism. "The Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, once it passes through, will never cease to exist," goes the saying. Under extremely unfavorable conditions, the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, led by the Communist Party of China, tenaciously resisted for 14 years, engaging in nearly 100,000 battles, large and small, with the Japanese and puppet troops, eliminating 180,000 enemy soldiers and tying down over 700,000 elite Japanese Kwantung Army troops.

After the outbreak of the July 7th Incident in 1937, the anti-imperialist war against Japan entered the full-scale war phase. During this period, the Chinese army faced a formidable and well-equipped Japanese army, whose personnel quality was far superior to the quality of Japanese troops in the later stages of the war when it had to use large-scale conscription to get enough soliders. In this respect alone, before the U.S's full-scale entry into the war, the Chinese battlefield had already consumed a significant amount of the Japanese army's elite manpower. Data shows that from 1937 to 1945, in eight years, the Chinese army fought 22 major campaigns, over 200 important battles, and nearly 200,000 smaller engagements, killing, wounding, and capturing over 1.5 million Japanese soldiers, accounting for approximately 70% of the total Japanese casualties during World War II. On the eve of Japan's surrender, the Japanese army had 1.86 million troops on the Chinese battlefield, accounting for more than 50% of its total overseas forces. China was constantly resisting the main force of the Japanese army.

Every war is fought on a certain material foundation. A key reason Japan dared to launch a full-scale invasion of China was that its productivity level far surpassed that of China at the same time. However, their greatest fear was getting bogged down in a war of attrition, and history has proven this concern to be justified.

The data speaks for itself. In 1937, Japan's direct military expenditure accounted for 17.6% of its national income, soaring to 34.9% by 1941. The government's finances were consistently in deficit. To ensure military spending, starting in the latter half of 1938, the Japanese authorities proposed a "war-sustaining" strategy in China, resorting to plundering local resources to fund the war effort. However, under the dual pressure of attacks from both the main battlefields and the rear areas, the plundered supplies could only meet about half of their daily living needs.

Furthermore, the imperialist war of aggression against China severely impacted Japanese exports, with trade volume declining by a quarter in 1938. This dealt a heavy blow to the Japanese economy, which relied heavily on foreign resources. In the same year, Japan issued the "Basic Policy for National Spiritual Mobilization," implementing consumer goods rationing. Subsequently, civilian consumption was further reduced, concentrating resources on military industry. By 1941, before the Pacific War, the average Japanese citizen's food ration had dropped to 350 grams per day, forcing them to rely on potatoes and other coarse grains to avoid starvation. In late 1941, Japan took a desperate gamble and launched the Pacific War. Soon, the war situation worsened, maritime supply lines were cut off, and by 1944, almost no consumer goods were available in Japan. Many people were starving and had lost all will to fight.

The war of attrition also created deep-seated political contradictions in Japan. From 1931 to 1945, the Japanese cabinet changed frequently, a total of 15 times, averaging one change per year, yet it was still unable to reverse the tide of the war in China. The war of attrition, which lasted for 14 years, broke Japan, ultimately plunging it into a predicament of military defeat, economic weakness and recession, and political instability.

We all know that the development of things is always determined by internal factors, not the other way around. Affirming China's victory over Japan does not deny the contributions of the US and the Soviet Union. While their intervention accelerated the demise of Japanese fascism to some extent, these were external factors, built upon the foundation of China's ability to drag Japan down. China's cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the nationwide resistance, and the protracted war were simply too much for a small, island nation like Japan to sustain; its defeat was inevitable from the start.

The key variable in history has never been external assistance, but rather the fighting spirit ingrained in the blood of indigenous people, and in this case, the Chinese people. It is wrong to negate China's contribution to the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist war, nor should it diminish the subjective initiative of the Chinese people in resisting Japanese imperialist invasion. Statistics show that during the anti-imperialist war against Japan, Chinese military and civilian casualties exceeded 35 million, accounting for about one-third of the total casualties in World War II. Direct economic losses exceeded US$100 billion, and indirect economic losses exceeded US$500 billion. We paid a tremendous price to defeat the fascist Japan.

Therefore, what truly exhausted, weakened, and ultimately forced Japanese militarism to surrender on the battlefield was the heroic resistance of the Chinese military and civilians. It was also the Chinese military and civilians who, with their flesh and blood, consistently restrained and resisted the main Japanese forces. Without this "Eastern barrier," the pressure on the U.S in the Pacific and the Soviet Union in the Far East would have to increase more dramatically, inevitably bringing a significant negative impact to the war against Nazi Germany. Therefore, the contribution of China's anti-imperialist war against Japan to the victory of World War II should not be overlooked. It not only enabled the Chinese people to achieve victory in their national liberation war but also made an indelible and significant contribution to the victory of the world's anti-fascist war and to the peace and development of humankind.

The Trotskyite organisation, Revolutionary Communist International (RCI), just published a video “Multi-Polarity and Marxism: How Communists Fight Imperialism Introduction” last week, claiming that a Multi-Polar world is nothing but a world dominated by several imperialist powers who are competing with each other, and the true aim of Russia and China behind the concept “Multi-Polarity” is “to secure a seat at the tables (of Western imperialists).”

Their views about “Multi-Polarity” and non-aligned countries like Russia and China are not only erroneous, but also reveal a deeper problem hidden in their way of thinking: Eurocentrism.

Why is this the case? To see through the “radical” appearance of Western Marxists to the “Eurocentric” essence, let us analyse their views using the video of RCI as an example.

Eurocentric view: “imperialism is a universal concept”

The entire criticism of RCI towards “Multi-Polarity” is based on their claim that “major third world countries like China and Russia are imperialists or will become imperialists in the future”. This claim is rooted in Western Marxists’ Eurocentric view that imperialism is a universal concept that can flourish in the whole world.

The question “are China and Russia imperialists?” has been answered in detail in many sources, so I will not repeat it. But I do strongly recommend people who still have doubts about this topic to read the following three articles.

• The accumulation of waste (Chapter 5. US-Led Capital Is the Only Imperialism)

• The Myth of ‘Russian Imperialism’: In Defense of Lenin’s Analyses

• Is the Reform and Opening-up a betrayal of PRC’s anti-imperialist and socialist path?

Instead, I would like to debunk the Eurocentric view that imperialism is a universal concept.

The RCI claims that “a nation can consolidate its dominant position by economic means or by military means. Russia rises today as a military power. Once this is consolidated, it will transform this into equal measures of economic influence.”

Undoubtedly, imperialism would be impossible without military aggression. But not all countries with strong military capacity are imperialists; otherwise, we can call all third-world countries who have developed advanced military forces in order to defend themselves against the imperialist West, like Iran and DPRK, imperialists. If we do so, the concept “imperialism” will lose its meaning and the genocidal crimes of the U.S empire will become as “harmless” as regional conflicts between neighbouring countries.

The prerequisite of imperialism is, as Lenin pointed out, “the dominance of monopolies and finance capital”. In other words, imperialism can only exist in countries where capitalism has developed to a sufficiently advanced level. In the semi-periphery countries like Russia, capitalism is far from highly developed. As Renfrey Clarke and Roger Annis explained,

“export-oriented extractive industries in Russia have major weight in the economy, and Russia has few companies, either private or state-owned, that approach in scale the ‘hyper-corporations’ of the advanced West”.

All these are indicators of a weakly developed capitalism.

But will capitalism develop to an advanced level in Russia in the future?

The answer is clearly NO if one understands the essence of imperialism. Imperialism is a vampire in the imperialist core, i.e, Western countries (including Japan). It can only survive by sucking the blood of people and nature in the periphery and semi-periphery. As the very existence of imperialism relies on the de-development of third world countries, capitalism in these countries will never be able to develop to a similar level as in the imperialist West.

Even after the U.S led imperialism is dismantled, third world countries like Russia will still not become imperialists. There are three main reasons for it.

Firstly, as China’s success shown, the only way for third world countries to break free from the de-development trap and develop their productive forces is socialism with planned economy (e.g. five-year plans). If these countries choose to continue their current neoliberal economic policies, they will only sink deeper in the de-development trap, rather than become imperialist powers.

Secondly, as imperialism always needs a periphery to exploit, if the thesis that “major third world countries can become imperialists in the future” were true, a fourth or fifth world must have existed on our planet for the third world to exploit, which is nothing but fantasy.

Thirdly, as I will elaborate more later, after the imperialist West is defeated, there will finally be spaces for the seeds of socialist revolutions to bloom and eventually overthrow the national bourgeois class in the third world, as the class contradictions are the most intense in the third world and the over-exploited masses in the third world are the ones who have nothing to lose but their chains. This further negates the possibility that imperialism will spread to the third world.

However, without throwing the Eurocentric mindset into the trash bin, Western Marxists can never recognise the fact that imperialism, which has been blooming in the white soil, can never flourish in the whole world, as the condition for its very existence negates the possibility for it to spread to the black and brown part of the world.

Eurocentric view: “multipolarity means dominance by a few imperialist countries”

In the Eurocentric mind of Western Marxists, it is almost impossible to imagine a world beyond dominance. Occupying and plundering other regions and cheapening the lives in the third world have been the one and only way for Europeans to develop, and through a lens of Eurocentrism, the European way is “THE WAY” for the whole world to follow. And hence they draw the conclusion that a multipolar world is nothing but “a world with multiple major imperialist powers competing with each other.”

However, this is a complete distortion of the concept “multipolarity”. The term “multipolarity” itself is an inaccurate translation of what China originally proposed: multilateralism (多边主义).

In the white paper published by the Chinese government in June this year, “More Just and Equitable Global Governance: China’s Principles, Proposals and Actions”, multilateralism is defined clearly as follows:

“The essence of multilateralism lies in extensive consultation on international affairs and collective decision-making among all countries for the future of the world. Countries should pool wisdom through extensive consultation, gather strength through joint contribution, and promote universal interests through shared benefits. They should unequivocally oppose all forms of unilateralism, hegemony, dominance by a few countries, and bloc politics in the understanding that the erection of barriers will only push the world into the abyss of antagonism and confrontation.”

The Western Marxists’ definition of “Multi-Polarity” is exactly what China strongly opposes: “dominance by a few countries”. What non-aligned countries including Russia and socialist China try to build is not a replica of the world before the World War II, but a new world without any form of dominance where no country has the right to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs and use the genocidal war machine to lecture other countries on “freedom and democracy”, where no country has to tolerate the iron boots of imperialist financial institutions like IMF and the World Bank and be forced to implement structural adjustments.

However, without abandoning their cultural heritage, Eurocentrism, Western Marxists will never be able to imagine such a new world built on the principles of mutual respect, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference, mutual benefit, equality and peaceful co-existence.

Eurocentric View: “as long as all people fight against their own ruling class, imperialism will be defeated.”

Western Marxists like those in RCI claim that the only “non-revisionist” way to fight against imperialism is for working class people in all countries, especially in non-aligned third world countries, to first fight against their own ruling class and only after their own ruling class is overthrown, they should fight against the imperialist West, “if we the workers take power in this country (Russia), we can wage a revolutionary war against the kiev regime. And not only will we be far more effective, but we will forge a brotherly bond with the Ukrainian people who are also oppressed by that same regime.”

The reason why Western Marxists believe such a strategy can work is that they regard the imperialist West as the centre of the world and think whatever works in the imperialist West must work in the third world. Undoubtedly, this strategy works theoretically in the imperialist core. Imagine if the working class people in Europe successfully overthrow their own bourgeois ruling class (which will not happen any time soon due to the lack of class consciousness among the labour aristocrats), imperialism can be dismantled easily afterwards. But this works only because the bourgeois ruling class in Western countries is the same as the global imperialist class.

In the non-aligned third world countries, the national bourgeois ruling class is not only not the same as the global imperialist class, but rather their enemy. Hence the strategy that suits white Europeans in the imperialist core will only lead to failure in the third world.

To copy such a Eurocentric strategy in the third world means that one has to stand upside down on one’s heads. In our third world, countless past examples show that the real primary contradiction is U.S led imperialism. Without solving the U.S led imperialism, it is impossible for the masses, regardless of how high their class consciousness is, to successfully carry out class struggles and socialist revolutions. If the masses choose to first focus on secondary contradictions like class contradictions or gender inequality, they will not only never get what they want, but even lose their national sovereignty, which will further weaken their class position in the global context.

For example, protests against the national bourgeoisie in third world countries have provided opportunities for the imperialist West to conduct regime change operations and replace the government with a pro-U.S comprador class. Using this strategy, the U.S has consolidated its political control over many countries in West Asia, North Africa, and Latin America.

Having learned from the past, any sane person can see that if the masses in Russia listened to the Western Marxists and protested against the current Russian government, the Russian government would have been toppled easily by the imperialist West, and the NATO-puppet Ukraine would have won the war effortlessly. And this would not only not lead to socialism in Russia but rather weaken the global anti-imperialist struggle.

Even if the struggles against the national bourgeoisie successfully brought a progressive government into power, facing the threat of the imperialist West, this government has no choice but to surrender to the imperialist financial institutions and continue implementing neoliberal policies in order not to be regime-changed by the imperialist West in the near future. This is why in many third world countries like Nepal, austerity measures and neoliberal policies will continue after the old bourgeois ruling class is successfully overthrown and replaced by a “red revolutionary” government.

Therefore, in the third world, only when U.S led imperialism is dismantled completely, can there be hope for a successful socialist revolution. However, without washing the Eurocentric dirt out of their minds, Western Marxists will never make any effort to analyse and understand the situation of the third world base on real conditions on the ground.

Eurocentric View: “Imperialism can be defeated without support from major non-aligned countries like China and Russia.”

So how to smash the U.S led imperial machine?

Through the Eurocentric lens, Western Marxists make their analysis about the anti-imperialist struggles completely based on the material and historical conditions in the imperialist cores, while ignoring the reality in the imperialised periphery, i.e, the third world. As a result, they have developed a wishful thinking that working class people in third world countries can defeat imperialism without support from major non-aligned countries like China and Russia, “These people say we should lean on Russia and China. We say no. Only the workers and the poor can liberate themselves by taking power into their own hands.”

However, as Mao said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun (枪杆子里出政权)”, one can not defeat the imperialist West only with bare hands, or bare class consciousness of the working class, as these Western Marxists choose to believe. Imperialism can stay alive due to two things: the genocidal war machine and the blood-sucking financial machine. Thus, to kill the imperial vampire, we need equal measures, i.e, strong military capacity and alternative trade and financial systems.

Without the military support and advanced technologies from non-aligned countries like Russia, China, DPRK, without China’s investment and technology transfer in brother third world countries based on the Belt and Road Initiative, without the alternative trade and financial systems like the New Development Bank that are being built by major third world countries, to defeat the imperialist West would be nothing but a daydream for the third world.

For example, as explained clearly in The Coalition for the Elimination of Imperialism in Africa,

“Thanks to their military agreement with Russia, the Burkinabe armed forces have been able to acquire high-tech military equipment which has enabled them to recapture their territory…controlled by NATO-backed and sponsored mercenaries and death squads”.

Another example is that China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) plays an increasingly important role in helping third world countries survive under the illegal unilateral sanctions by the imperialist West. Furthermore, China, as the first third world country that has successfully break free from the “core-periphery” trap, can provide useful insights for brother third-world countries to find an alternative development path to the current neoliberal de-development.

Therefore, it is crystal clear that South-South solidarity is imperative to the global anti-imperialist struggles. By being against South-South collaboration and calling “receiving support from China and Russia” revisionist, Western Marxists are in reality helping the imperialist West to create conflicts and distrust among third-world countries and to weaken the anti-imperialist camp. And this makes them counter-revolutionary, rather than, as they call themselves, revolutionary.

Conclusion

No matter if Western Marxists like it or not, human history is heading towards a multipolar/multilateral world beyond any form of dominance, and the imperial vampire is counting the days left on its deathbed. However, by holding tightly to their colonial cultural heritage, Eurocentrism, these “radical” Westerners are helping the global imperialist class to continue the limited life of the imperial vampire and to delay the coming of a new world at the cost of real human lives in the third world. And this is not only unintelligent, but extremely cruel.

Why does the Western bourgeois ruling class, owners of Western mainstream media, feel so threatened by China’s achievement in poverty alleviation that it has to hide the truth from its working-class people? The answer is simple if one has travelled to Europe or the U.S.

In contrast to China, homelessness has become an increasingly serious problem in the imperialist West. For instance, in Germany, the number of people without housing has jumped to more than 1 million in 2024 and the number of homeless young people and children has almost tripled to over 137,000 between 2022 and 2025. Besides these emotionless numbers, if one travels to major European cities like Hamburg and Barcelona, one will easily become emotional after seeing many homeless people, mostly white (unlike what Western media claim that most homeless people are immigrants), begging and sleeping on the street, no matter whether it’s -10 or 35 degrees Celsius. Even in the “most socialist” Scandinavian country Finland, with unemployment reaching a record level, homelessness has started to increase, and 958,000 people in Finland were at risk of poverty in 2024, out of a population of around 5.6 million.

With imperial rents diminishing, the blood-sucking vampire of the global capitalist system is boomeranging back to its home, the imperialist cores, and the “promises” of the Western bourgeois ruling class to its white workers are proven to be nothing but hot air. While capitalism is struggling in its deathbed, China, a third-world socialist country, shows the world with solid proof that there is a viable alternative to capitalism, Chinese socialism, and it works. And this is indeed “life-threatening” to the Western bourgeois ruling class.

Regardless of how hard these paedophiles on Epstein Island try to hide the truth from their working-class people, they are destined to fail, as “one cannot wrap fire in paper (纸包不住火)”. With more and more Westerners travelling to China after China extends its unilateral Visa-free policy to most Western countries, Western mainstream media is losing its credibility among its people. The claim by the Western bourgeois ruling class that “no matter how bad your situation is, those Chinese ‘peasants’ have it worse” doesn’t work anymore. Many Westerners who have been to China, especially those from the U.S, are asking, “There are no homeless people on the street in China; the Chinese government has lifted all its people out of poverty within less than 80 years. Why cannot our government do it for our people?”

So, why can China, despite being a third world country in the semi-periphery, alleviate poverty and homelessness within a few decades, while the wealthy Western countries cannot? Due to decades long anti-communist propaganda and a lack of knowledge about Marxism, most Westerners attribute China’s achievement to Chinese collectivist culture or “authoritarian one-party system” (although China is a democratic country with 9 parties in total, see my article “About the question ‘is People’s Republic of China democratic?’”).

In reality, the real reason is that China is a socialist country led by a Marxist-Leninist party, the CPC, while Western countries are capitalist countries led by bourgeois liberal parties under the rule of capital. Similar to “only socialism can save China (只有社会主义才能救中国)”, only socialism can save the masses around the globe from poverty and homelessness.

But why is socialism the only antidote to poverty and homelessness? To answer this question, we need to understand how China alleviated poverty from the following three aspects:

• People-centered definition of poverty in socialist China

• Socialism is the key to poverty alleviation in China

• “Poverty alleviation is the starting point for a new life and new endeavors”

People-centered definition of poverty in socialist China

In our world dominated by the capitalist West, everything is commodified and follows the logic of capital, including the definition of poverty. Poverty is defined by the imperial financial institution, the World Bank, with two monetary values in U.S dollars without considering people’s real needs, $3.00 per person per day for low-income countries, $8.30 for upper-middle-income countries. However, can one really escape poverty once one’s income exceeds the poverty line? Not really.

What poverty really means for the masses is much more than low income; it means having no healthy and nutritious food and warm clothes, no roof over one’s head, no electricity and running water, and, furthermore, no access to education and healthcare.

Thus, instead of the capitalist definition, China adopts a people-centred definition of poverty alleviation, “two no worries and three guarantees (两不愁三保障)”, namely poverty alleviation means to free the masses from worry about food and clothing, and to provide people with access to safe housing, public education, and public healthcare. Only when all basic needs of people are fulfilled, when all fundamental conditions of a dignified life are established, a country has truly alleviated poverty for its people.

This people-centred definition is not, as Western mainstream media claim, “a lower poverty benchmark”, but rather the opposite. Based on this definition, many people in the West, especially in the U.S, are still experiencing poverty despite their income being higher than the poverty line since they have no access to public healthcare and safe housing and have to pay back insane amounts of college debts.

Only in socialist countries whose governments representing the interests of people rather than capital, poverty is defined with people’s real needs in mind, and poverty alleviation campaign is carried out not for the sake of good-looking figures, but for the well-being of its people.

Socialism is the key to poverty alleviation in China

Just like the song title “without the CPC, there would be no new China (没有共产党, 就没有新中国)”, without socialism, there would be no successful poverty alleviation in China. Socialism, or more specifically, the socialist economic and distribution system and the leadership of the CPC, are the keys to the success of China’s poverty alleviation campaign.

• Socialist economic and distribution system

Socialist state ownership of land

Most people in the West, even among self-proclaimed communists (Trotskyites), pay very little attention to the question regarding the ownership of land. However, since the very beginning of human civilisation land is the most important resource in human society, as we rely on land to grow our food, build our houses and sustain our lives (it is off the topic here but I want to emphasise that this is also why giving land back to indigenous people is imperative to real anti-imperialist movements in zionist states like the U.S, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). Who owns the land determines who has the economic and political power.

In China, thanks to the land reform (土地革命) carried out by the CPC, the land is taken over from the capitalist class and owned completely by the socialist state representing the popular class.

What this means concretely is that, firstly, all Chinese people with rural Hukou (农村户口), i.e, peasants, own a piece of land, and no capitalists have the right to buy the ownership of land from Chinese peasants like in other third-world countries where capitalists can easily “steal” land from the masses. So, every Chinese peasant, no matter how poor they are, has a roof over his/her head and enough self-grown food to eat. This makes poverty alleviation in rural areas in China much easier than in, for example, India, where many peasants are forced to leave their land.

Secondly, with the ownership of land in urban areas being in the hands of the socialist state, the construction of public housing in a large scale becomes much easier. China has built the world’s largest housing security system, providing over 63 million units of various types of subsidized housing and resettlement housing for more than 150 million people by 2023. Furthermore, by the end of 2024, China has built around 7,2 million new affordable rental housing units for new urban citizens and rural workers.

These public housing units are very affordable even for people with the lowest income. For example, in Shanghai, the most expensive city in China, the rent of a 50 square meter public housing unit for two people is around 2500 RMB. With the minimum wage in Shanghai being 2740 RMB per month, a couple both earning minimum wages can easily afford the public housing unit without compromising other needs like dining out every day (they can even save money for long-term projects if they eat in public community canteen where each meal costs around 10 RMB and is very healthy and delicious). In the case of unemployment or serious illness, one can also delay the rent, apply for a reduction or exemption of rents based on the extent of financial difficulties.

With the government continuously expanding and improving the housing security system in China, almost all low-income people in urban areas have access to high-quality affordable housing nowadays, thus escaping the fate of being homeless and marginalised as their peers in capitalist countries.

Only in socialist countries where the land is owned by the popular class can all the masses have a safe roof over their heads, and homelessness can truly be eradicated.

Key infrastructures in remote areas built by state-owned companies

For many in remote villages in China, poverty is caused by a lack of key infrastructure like electricity, roads and railways. Without electricity, children in villages cannot study in the evening; without roads, people in mountainous areas cannot get to schools and hospitals easily, without railways, people in remote places have fewer opportunities to interact with the outside world and improve the local economy. Thus, one of the key focuses in China’s poverty alleviation campaign is to extend key infrastructures to the most remote corners in China it is as long as there is one Chinese person living there.

Such infrastructure projects are technologically challenging, require huge initial investment, and is significantly less profitable (if not at all profitable), hence, no capitalist countries following the logic of the invisible hand of the market will carry them out. In contrast, in socialist China, these infrastructure projects have been successfully implemented by state-owned companies under the leadership of the CPC.

For instance, to build power grids in the Xizang Autonomous Region with ultra-high altitude and harsh climate conditions is neither technologically easy nor lucrative. However, for the well-being of people in the Xizang Autonomous Region, the socialist state of China is determined to completely solve the electricity shortage problem in Xizang. By the end of 2020, four power transmission and transformation projects, the Qinghai-Tibet, Sichuan-Tibet, Central Tibet, and Ngari power grid interconnection projects, were completed by the State Grid Corporation of China, marking the end of the old era with regular blackouts.

For instance, it may sound insane for many in the capitalist West to drill through a mountain at an average elevation exceeding 3,000 meters with an average temperature level of minus 5,4 degree Celsius to build a tunnel for less than 2% of the country’s population. But since such a tunnel will significantly benefit people living on the other side of the Tianshan mountain and boost the local economy in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, socialist China decided to build it. By the end of last year, the world’s longest highway tunnel, the Tianshan Shengli Tunnel, was successfully built by the state-owned company China Communications Construction Group (中国交通建设集团), shortening the travel time across Tianshan mountain to 20 minutes.

Only in socialist countries where public ownership is the mainstay and the state-owned economy plays a leading role in the nation’s economy, the masses, no matter how remote they are living in, can have access to key infrastructures like electricity and roads, which make a dignified and prosperous life possible.

Village collective economy in rural area

As primitive accumulation in China was mainly done by sacrifices of peasants under the “price scissors” policy (i.e, artificially inflating the prices of industrial goods while suppressing the prices of agricultural products), the inequality between rural and urban areas still persists today, and poverty mainly concentrates in rural areas. One way to alleviate poverty in rural areas is to diversify income sources by developing local businesses.

It is certainly impossible for one single family to start a business given the economic conditions in rural areas. However, as all villages have a collective economy, it is possible for villagers to start a certain business as a cooperative, thus enabling them to jump out of the poverty trap by themselves. This is one key sector of the poverty alleviation campaign. Through the “one village, one product (一村一品)” initiative, over 90% of impoverished rural villages have established their own cooperatives based on local cultural and agricultural conditions.

Joining the cooperatives has not only increased their annual income but also improved their life satisfaction level, as being part of a cooperative allows people in impoverished villages to have more social interactions and higher sense of achievements.

Only in socialist countries where the collective economy is the mainstay in rural areas can the peasants collectively develop the local economy and lift themselves out of poverty.

State-owned welfare jobs (公益性岗位)

Besides a lack of infrastructure and local business opportunities, unemployment is another cause for poverty. To solve unemployment, the Chinese government provides a large number of state-owned welfare jobs for people in impoverished groups, especially those in rural areas. In Gansu province, for example, state-owned welfare jobs have been created for more than 140,000 people in rural areas, helping increase their annual income by 6000 RMB.

(The annual income may sound very little for people in the West, but as all people in rural areas own their own houses and grow their own food, an extra income of 500 RMB per month gives them freedom to travel, buy new clothes or save for long-term projects.)

Only in socialist countries where the state has economic sources to create state-owned jobs can people in impoverished communities secure stable employment.

Socialist distribution system

Another important mechanism to alleviate poverty is the social welfare system, as it enables people without financial means to get access to healthcare, education, public transport, public community canteen, etc. With more and more surplus value being transferred by the capitalists in China to the socialist state in the form of taxes and fees, China has built a relatively complete social welfare system.

For example, to lift people out of the serious illnesses poverty trap, the government has implemented preferential policies for people in impoverished families in the framework of the Basic Medical Insurance for Urban and Rural Residents (城乡居民基本医疗保险) and Critical Illness Insurance for Urban and Rural Residents (城乡居民大病保险) including increasing reimbursement rates, subsidizing insurance fees, and eliminating coverage caps.

In addition, to support elderly people in impoverished families, the government has completed age-friendly home modifications for over 2.24 million families with elderly people, and provides all kinds of allowances such as monthly allowances for the elderly over 80 years old, service subsidies for financially disadvantaged elderly, and nursing subsidies for the incapacitated, which benefit around 49.45 million elderly people in China.

Only in socialist countries where the political power is in the hands of the popular class, the state can demand capitalists to transfer as much surplus value as needed and use values created by the people to improve the well-being of the people.

• The leadership of the CPC

Great contributions of party cadres to poverty alleviation

Without the great sacrifices and contributions of party cadres, the success of the poverty alleviation campaign in China could have been impossible. Over 3 million civil servants have participated in the targeted poverty alleviation initiative. Each of them is responsible for several local communities, helping them identify the root causes of poverty, design and implement customized solutions, and provide all support needed. Over 1800 civil servants, mostly party cadres, have sacrificed their lives during the campaign for the well-being of people and the cause of socialism. Their stories can be found in my previous article “Stories of martyrs in the battle against poverty in China”.

Contributions of capitalists under the leadership of the CPC

Apart from party cadres, another group of people who have contributed to poverty alleviation might be surprising for most people in the capitalist West: capitalists, i.e, owners of private companies, in China.

In response to the call of the CPC, many capitalists in China have taken an active part in the poverty alleviation campaign. By the end of 2020, 127,000 private companies had joined the “Ten Thousand Enterprises Helping Ten Thousand Villages (万企帮万村)” project, providing targeted assistance to 139,100 villages, investing more than 110 billion RMB in industrial development and more than 16 billion RMB in public welfare, and benefiting more than 1.8 million registered impoverished people.

This is not because Chinese capitalists have a Buddha heart, but because capitalists in China have no political power and cannot form a class. They have no choice but to listen to the socialist state, follow the leadership of the CPC, and answer the demand of the government to carry out projects benefiting the masses. Without the leadership of the CPC, capitalists in China would have acted exactly as their peers in capitalist countries, sucking the blood of the working-class people without any guilt.

“Poverty alleviation is the starting point for a new life and new endeavors”

Poverty alleviation project is not something unique in socialist countries; many Western capitalist countries also have it. But what distinguishes poverty alleviation projects in socialist countries from those in capitalist countries is not only the definition of poverty and the mechanisms of poverty alleviation, but also the end goal.

In the capitalist West, poverty alleviation is the finish line. The motivation for Western governments to alleviate poverty is to get good-looking numbers for politicians to brag about in the next election campaign. In socialist China, poverty alleviation is the beginning of a long journey. The motivation for Chinese governments to alleviate poverty is to continuously improve people’s well-being and to leave no one behind in the long march towards communism. As Xi Jinping said, “Shedding the label of poverty is not the finish line, but the starting point for a new life and new endeavors”.

Following the mission of communism, after having solved the absolute housing poverty (住房绝对贫困) and largely eradicated homelessness, the Chinese government is now dedicated to improving the living conditions of Chinese people and solving the relative housing poverty (住房相对贫困). After having reached the goal of poverty alleviation, the Chinese government set up a five-year transition period to continue the support for communities and individuals who jumped out of the poverty trap very recently. Moreover, the next task of the Chinese government in rural areas is, as Xi Jinping pointed out, “to revitalise rural areas and to accelerate modernization of agriculture (乡村振兴，加快农业农村现代化)”.

Conclusion

Capitalist states can never solve poverty and homelessness, and capitalism can never be reformed. Rather than asking “why cannot our government do it for our people?”, people in the West should probably ask “how can we overthrow our bourgeois ruling class and have a socialist government?”. The “social welfare states” in Europe were just pink balloons filled with the blood of the third world, blown up by the global capitalist class under the threat of “communism”. These balloons are flying away one by one and will never come back.

However, the Philippines seems to have a very poor memory. Just as Denmark seems to have completely forgotten the crimes committed by Nazi Germany during World War II and regards Russia as its greatest enemy—even though Nazi Germany could have dominated the whole Western Europe without the great contributions and enormous sacrifices of the Soviet Union—the Philippines has chosen to ally with its former oppressor, Japan, to contain China, although without China's efforts to resist the imperialist Japan eight decades ago, the Philippines might very well have become a Japanese colony.

But forgetting the fascist history of Japan and Germany is a betrayal to our ancestors who sacrificed their lives to defeat fascism, a betrayal to our siblings in West Asia and north Africa who are still suffering from the genocidal crimes of fascists, to our own humanity. Unlike the comprador government of the Philippines who chooses to forget the darkest history of its nation, especially the “Manila Massacre”, we, who stand on the side of life, should never forget or forgive the fascist history.

Since most people outside Southeast Asia may have never heard of Japan's invasion of Southeast Asian countries (excluding China and Korea), like the Philippines, during the World War II, I would like to share a translated article on this topic in this week's "the fascist history of Japan" series.

Japanese aggressions and atrocities in Southeast Asia during the World War II

二战期间日本在东南亚地区的侵略暴行

By Chen Wei (陈伟)

In December 1941, while launching its brutal invasion of China, Japan also began its war of aggression against Southeast Asia. It imposed a nearly four-year-long, extremely brutal colonial rule in the occupied territories that continued until Japan's surrender in August 1945, bringing immense suffering to the people of Southeast Asia.

Japan's well-planned invasion of Southeast Asia

As early as August 1936, the Hirota Koki cabinet established "expansion into the southern seas" as a crucial element of its "basic national policy." In February 1939, Japanese troops occupied Hainan Island, China. In March, they annexed the Spratly Islands.

In the spring and summer of 1940, Japan further solidified its policy of "defending the north and advancing south," making Southeast Asia and other southern regions the main target of its next round of aggression. On April 15, 1940, Japanese Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita declared that Japan and the Southeast Asian region were "connected in both resources and affairs, and their relationship is close," and that the Imperial Government was "deeply concerned about the possibility that the escalating war in Europe might alter the status quo of the Dutch East Indies."

On July 22, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe re-formed his cabinet, and at a joint meeting of the Cabinet and the Imperial General Headquarters, adopted the "Outline for Handling the Current Situation in Adaptation to the Evolution of the World Situation," which, regarding the Southern Policy, proposed that "force may be used if the internal and external situation develops particularly favorably." On August 1, Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka delivered a speech, first proposing the slogan of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." On September 25, Japanese troops occupied northern French Indochina, taking the first step in their "military southward advance." On September 27, the Tripartite Pact between Japan, Germany, and Italy was signed. Subsequently, Japan strengthened its alliance with Nazi Germany and Italy, and on the other hand, alleviated pressure from the north by signing the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact, further accelerating its southward expansion.

Negotiations between Japanese and Dutch East Indies representatives lasted from September 13, 1940, to early 1941. The negotiations ultimately broke down, with Japanese representatives reporting to the government that only through force could the Dutch East Indies become part of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." On July 2, 1941, the Japanese Imperial Conference adopted the "Outline of Imperial National Policy to Adapt to the Changing Situation," proposing to accelerate southward expansion, even at the cost of "war against Britain and the United States." On July 23, Japan signed an agreement with the French Indochina authorities to occupy southern Indochina. On July 28, Japanese military influence expanded into southern Indochina. In response to Japan's southward military advance, the United States established the Far East Command on July 26. From July 25 to 27, the United States, Britain, and the Dutch East Indies announced a freeze on Japanese assets in the three countries. On August 1, the United States imposed a comprehensive oil embargo on Japan.

Given the inevitability of war between Japan and the United States, Japan intensified its war preparations while negotiating with the United States. On September 6, 1941, the Imperial Conference passed the "Key Points for the Implementation of Imperial National Policy," deciding to "complete operational preparations by late October" and "immediately decide to declare war on the United States (Britain and the Netherlands) if diplomatic negotiations have not met our demands by early October." Consequently, the Japanese Army and Navy began intensive war preparations, and the high command of the Japanese military secretly finalized the operational plan to launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the main US naval base in the Pacific.

On October 18, after the warmonger Hideki Tojo formed his cabinet, the Japanese Cabinet and the Imperial General Headquarters held emergency "joint meetings" for several days. The Imperial Conference on November 5 accepted the resolutions of the joint meeting and passed the "Key Points of Imperial National Policy," resolving to declare war on the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands, and to conduct "final negotiations" with the United States, with the attack scheduled for early December. On November 6, the Imperial General Headquarters issued the "Order of Battle for the Southern Operations Army." On November 15, the joint meeting of the Imperial General Headquarters and the government passed the "Internal Plan for Promoting the End of the War Against the United States, Britain, the Netherlands, and Chiang Kai-shek," serving as a guiding plan for the Pacific War. Subsequently, negotiations between Japan and the United States broke down, and on December 1, the Imperial Conference passed the "Proposal for War Against the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands." The following day, the Japanese General Headquarters set the date for the attack as December 8 and issued orders to the army and navy in various regions.

Japan's Gradual Occupation and Control of Southeast Asia

On December 8, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, simultaneously launching a multi-pronged offensive against Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, and the Thai-Burmese region.

On December 4, 1941, the Japanese forces attacking Malaya departed from Hainan Island. This force was the 25th Army, led by Tomoyuki Yamashita, and possessed 799 aircraft. While Britain predicted a direct naval attack on Singapore, Japan opted for a land offensive. On December 8, Japanese forces landed in northern Malaya and seized the airfields. The main force landed north of Singapore. On the same day, the British Far East Fleet was attacked by Japanese warships. On December 10, the flagships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk. Having gained naval and air superiority, Japan rapidly advanced south along the east and west coasts of the Malay Peninsula. Beginning on February 8, 1942, the Japanese launched a naval offensive across the Malay Peninsula against Singapore. On February 15, Lieutenant General Percival, Commander-in-Chief of the British Far East Command, surrendered. After occupying Singapore, the Japanese renamed it "Shonan Island."

On December 10, 1941, the Japanese 14th Army, led by Masaharu Homma, launched a major offensive into the Philippines. Their tactics differed from those used in the Singapore campaign, employing a simultaneous landing from the north and south, aiming to control the archipelago in one fell swoop. With limited US forces in the Philippines, General MacArthur, Commander-in-Chief of the Far East Command, declared Manila an "open city" and withdrew troops to the Bataan Peninsula. On January 2, 1942, the Japanese occupied Manila. On April 9, they occupied the Bataan Peninsula. On May 7, the US-held Corregidor Fortress fell to the Japanese. Thus, the Philippines was occupied by the Japanese.

In the Dutch East Indies, the Japanese captured Borneo in mid-December 1941. In January 1942, they captured the ports of Kalimantan and Sulawesi. On February 14th, they occupied Balimpang in Sumatra. They later captured Bali and Timor. By the end of February, the Japanese Navy had annihilated the combined Dutch, British, American, and Australian fleet. On March 1st, the Japanese 16th Army launched a three-pronged attack on Java. On the 9th, the combined forces of the Netherlands, Britain, the United States, and Australia surrendered. On the 10th, the Japanese occupied Bandung. Thus, the Dutch East Indies fell into Japanese hands.

The Japanese 15th Army, after forcibly invading Thailand from French Indochina on December 8th, 1941, used Thailand as a base to advance north into Burma in early January 1942. On March 8th, the Japanese occupied Rangoon, and British forces broke out northward. In May, the Japanese controlled the entire territory of Burma. After occupying Burma, the Japanese cut off the American aid route to China (the Burma Road) and used the mountainous terrain to create a barrier against a potential American and British counter-offensive from India.

In summary, from December 1941 to May 1942, the Japanese army occupied approximately 150 million people and 3.86 million square kilometers of land in Southeast Asia in about six months.

Japan's Brutal Colonial Rule in Southeast Asia

After occupying Southeast Asia, Japan implemented extremely brutal colonial rule. In February 1942, after the Japanese army occupied Singapore, in retaliation for the support of the Singaporean Chinese for the Chinese resistance against Japan, they launched a so-called "purge operation" against the local Chinese from February 18th to 25th. It is estimated that 100,000 people were massacred.

In the Philippines, Japan arrested a large number of civilians as "hostages" and posted notices stating that for every "attempt to harm Japanese soldiers or civilians," ten "hostages" would be shot. In February 1945, before withdrawing from Manila, the Japanese army carried out a frenzied destruction and massacre; approximately three-quarters of the buildings were burned down, and about 125,000 Filipinos were slaughtered, an event known as the "Manila Massacre."

In May 1942, the Japanese army decided to establish a bacteriological warfare unit in Singapore—Unit 9420 (abbreviated as Unit 9420). Subordinate to the Japanese Southern Army, its headquarters were located in Singapore, with branches throughout present-day Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Burma. It was the largest bacteriological warfare unit of the Japanese army outside the China theater, primarily conducting inhumane and illegal human experiments and bacteriological warfare.

Supporting puppet regimes and implementing policies of appeasement and deception were also common tactics of Japanese colonial rule. For example, in Burma, they recruited "Burmese collaborator" Ba Maw to form a puppet regime, and in the Philippines, they recruited "Filipino collaborator" Laurel to form a puppet regime. In Indonesia and Malaya, Japan adopted even harsher military rule, employing divide-and-rule tactics, and establishing organizations such as the Java Service Association in Indonesia and the New Philippine Service Corps in the Philippines, which cooperated with various levels of government to serve as tools for enslaving the people.

Economically, Japan plundered resources extensively in Southeast Asia. The "Basic Program for the Construction of Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," formulated in July 1942, designated Southeast Asia as Japan's "mining and agricultural base" within the sphere. Large quantities of strategic materials, including rice, oil, coal, tin, nickel, and rubber, were plundered and shipped to Japan. The colonial authorities also excessively issued paper money, imposed public debt, and levied exorbitant taxes. From 1941 to 1945, the amount of unsecured paper money and military scrip issued in Southeast Asia increased from 30 million yen to 19.4 billion yen. Prices in the occupied territories skyrocketed; by the time of Japan's surrender, prices in Rangoon had increased 1857 times.

Japan also forcibly conscripted laborers in Southeast Asia. For example, Javanese workers were transported to other regions for forced labor by so-called "labor associations," reaching 230,000 by 1944. To construct the Burma Railway, Japan conscripted hundreds of thousands of laborers from Southeast Asia, of whom 37,000 to 47,000 died from inhumane labor and abuse.

In conclusion, Japan's atrocities in Southeast Asia are beyond what words can describe. Under the false slogans of "building a new Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" and "establishing a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," Japan carried out colonial rule over Southeast Asia. In essence, it was a collusion between the Japanese colonial authorities and Japanese monopoly capital, supporting local comprador forces and pro-Japanese elements, and carrying out brutal colonial rule and plunder of the people in the occupied territories, with the ultimate goal of serving its fascist war machine.

Undoubtedly, class and wage labour will be abolished on day one if we build socialism in Disneyland where there is neither a birthmark of the old system nor constraints of internal material conditions and external political pressures from the imperialist West. But how about when we build socialism on earth in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country? Can this either-or Western “empty thinking” void of dialectical materialism still work?

To develop a more holistic and objective understanding of this matter, we need to examine the following three questions:

• Why does China need capitalists to build socialism?

• Are Chinese capitalists a bourgeois class with political power?

• What are the concrete contributions of Chinese capitalists?

Why does China need capitalists to build socialism?

This question may sound strange or even incomprehensible to many Western Marxists, as they tend to view China, a third-world country, through the lens of the first world. No one can deny that if China were a Western country in the imperialist core with highly developed productive forces and advanced technologies, China could easily build a classless society without any exploitation and even without an army and police after the people’s revolution. No Chinese people would reject this. Unfortunately, this is nothing but fantasy. So, to understand why China needs capitalists to build socialism, we have to touch the grass and analyse the material and historical conditions after 1949.

The reality that China was a backward country with an extremely low level of productive forces and almost no industries did not change just because the CPC successfully defeated the imperialist Japan and the reactionary bourgeois party Kuomintang (KMT). The material conditions after the founding of the People’s Republic of China even exacerbated the situation not only due to the 22 years of internal war and imperial war, but also because the KMT stole almost all wealth from China and destroyed many remaining industrial facilities when it escaped to Taiwan province.

Given the material conditions in China after 1949, the Chinese government led by the CPC has no privilege to ignore the question of developing productive forces and could not solely focus on the question of the relations of production, as many Marxists in wealthy Western countries tend to do. After completing the three socialist transformations in 1956 and putting the ownership of means of production (e.g., land, bank, energy, etc) into the hands of the popular class, the CPC started tackling the more challenging problem: developing productive forces.

There was no instruction on how to develop productive forces in a backward country like China with almost 90% of its population being peasants. Even the Soviet Union had a higher starting point than China. Party cadres in the CPC are also not magicians who know answers to everything automatically. Together with unpredictable external factors like natural disaster and foreign relations with the USSR, many mistakes were made, and Chinese people paid high costs for these failures in the first two decades after 1956, especially the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

What makes the CPC a popular Marxist party highly supported by Chinese people is not that it never makes mistakes, but that it can correct them. Thanks to the CPC’s criticism and self-criticism, the party learned lessons from past mistakes and eventually found a transitional path towards socialism, i.e, harnessing the strengths of the market and capitalists to develop productive forces and build socialism.

This path is known today as “the Reform and Opening-up”. Many Westerners may believe that this is an idea and a decision of one single person, Deng Xiaoping. But in reality, all ideas, no matter it is called “Mao’s thoughts, Deng’s theories, Xi’s thoughts”- are a result of collective efforts, and all decisions are collectively made by all Chinese people. And “the Reform and Opening up” is no exception. The path is chosen by all Chinese people with the goal of common prosperity. The idea behind it has roots in both the “New Economic Policy” of Lenin and later the thoughts of Mao Zedong on “transformation of capitalist industry and commerce (资本主义工商业改造).

As Mao said clearly in 1953 at the Enlarged Meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee (在中央政治局扩大会议的讲话),

“Even if the bourgeoisie does not accept state capitalism (similar to today’s market socialism in China), there is no other path for them to choose. Even if we do not want to implement state capitalism and collaborate with the bourgeoisie, we also have no other option; we cannot confiscate their property at this stage when we still need them to develop the productive forces.”

Thus, the main reason why China needs capitalists to build socialism is to develop productive forces.

Many in the West may wonder why developing productive forces is so important for Chinese people that we are willing to make compromises to capitalists and to be exploited as wage labourers? I bet such a question will never be asked by people in the third world who have first-hand experiences of underdevelopment and poverty.

Without development of productive forces and advanced technologies, the Chinese state, regardless of how badly it wants, cannot produce enough food, build infrastructure like electricity nets, roads, highways, sewage systems, hospitals, schools, and provide free and high-quality healthcare and education. This was exactly the situation before the Reform and Opening-up, when every Chinese was equally poor and had equally no access to basic things like electricity, asphalt roads, water-flushing toilets, modern cooking stoves, modern medical equipment, schools with qualified teachers, things that are taken for granted in the imperialist West.

Are Chinese capitalists a bourgeois class with political power?

Having understood the necessity of having capitalists in China, many Westerners may still ask, “But why does the CPC allow Chinese capitalists to join the party? Does the CPC still represent the popular class (peasants and workers) when some of its party members are capitalists owning private companies?”

This concern is understandable given how political parties in the West work: regardless of the colour red, green or blue, all political parties are in reality puppets of the bourgeois ruling class, because the political power is completely in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

But this is not the case in China. As stated clearly in the “three represents”, the CPC represents “the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people ( 最广大人民的根本利益)”, i.e, the popular class. Although capitalists are allowed to join the party, they are nothing but a tiny minority, which is not represented by the CPC. Moreover, the political power of Chinese capitalists has been completely expropriated after the socialist transformations in 1956.

Nowadays, they only have limited economic power and are under strict control by the Chinese government led by the CPC. Requirements and expectations for the Chinese capitalists are stated clearly in the “Opinion of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council on Improving the Modern Enterprise System with Chinese Characteristics (中共中央办公厅 国务院办公厅关于完善中国特色现代企业制度的意见)” published in 2024 , and the “Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Privately-Owned Enterprises (中华人民共和国私营企业暂行条例)” published in 1988.

With the political power in the hands of the Chinese popular class represented by the CPC, the Chinese capitalists are often heavily punished for their misbehaviour like tax evasion, environmental violation, and bribery, while the Epstein class, despite having committed way worse crimes than those Chinese capitalists in prison, can continue their vampire lives without being punished at all.

So, why does the CPC allow capitalists to join the party?

Encouraging capitalists to join the party is, in reality, one important way to domesticate capitalists for the socialist cause and prepare the ideological ground for further transition to the higher stage of socialism.

Being a member of the CPC sounds much easier than it actually is. To join the party, one has to prove one’s loyalty to the party, communism, and the Chinese nation. The checking process can last for several years until one officially becomes a party member. After joining the party, one has to attend monthly study groups, join the regular criticism and self-criticism sessions, read study materials assigned by the party, and write reports about all activities above.

In other words, even though many capitalists in China join the party for material benefits or positive images rather than their belief in Marxism, their “capitalist brains” will be washed regularly by Marxist theories once they have joined the party. Furthermore, the social expectation towards a party member is higher than a non-party member. For example, it is expected of capitalists who have joined the party to take more social responsibilities and provide better working conditions for their workers.

In addition, allowing Chinese capitalists to join the party is an effort to maintain the class contradictions at a non-antagonistic level, to make capitalists feel more included and accepted by society.

Different from capitalists in the West with vast generational wealth, the majority of Chinese capitalists came from a peasant or working class background and became rich very recently in the past three decades. Due to this background, they felt mistreated before the rule of party membership was changed: “Why can’t we join the party but our old comrades in the factory can, just because we decided to quit our jobs and start our own business after 1978?”

Changing the rule is exactly a response to the dissatisfaction of Chinese capitalists. As stated in the quotation from Mao above, China still needs capitalists to help develop its productive forces. It is thus important for the Chinese government led by the CPC to maintain healthy relationships with the capitalists. It would be counterproductive, or even harmful for the development of socialism, if Chinese capitalists without political power were treated as “class enemies” in a hostile manner, as mistakes made during the Cultural Revolution.

This is also why capitalists are usually called “entrepreneurs” in China. Giving capitalists a “tame” name is not a sign that the CPC has abandoned its socialist mission and betrayed the revolution, but a well-thought-out act to give some “carrots” for Chinese capitalists to work for socialism while still putting them under the strict “sticks” of the Chinese government.

What are the concrete contributions of Chinese capitalists?

So, what are these domesticated horses contributing to socialism in everyday life? Before listing their contributions, it is worth noting that, just as horses, they only carry out orders of the owner, so China’s economic, industrial and technological achievements are not due to the “kindness” of capitalists, but a result of socialist planning and a socialist redistribution system.

• They help China to develop industrial capacities and build complete industrial chains, especially in key strategic fields. Thanks to their contribution, China has developed its own telecommunications, electric vehicle, and green technology industries.

• By collaborating with universities and other research institutions, they help to develop China’s own advanced technologies and to achieve technology sovereignty. By doing so, they are indirectly contributing to the anti-imperialist cause as they have helped China, a third-world country, to end the technological domination of the imperialist West.

• No matter if they make profits or losses in a certain year, they have to pay all kinds of taxes such as Enterprise Income Tax (企业所得税), Sales Tax (营业税), Environmental Protection Tax (环境保护税), Natural Resource Tax (资源税), etc. And to get the right to use the land owned by the socialist state, they have to pay Land Appreciation Tax (土地增值税). The strict tax system for the capitalists is, in nature, a mechanism to transfer the surplus value exploited from the Chinese working-class people back to the people.

  With tax income increasing, the Chinese government is expanding and improving social welfare systems; for example, universal healthcare insurance has been expanded to cover more than 95% of the Chinese population (over 1,35 billion), 8.7 million new units of affordable rental housing are built for both young people and rural workers, and public compulsory education is gradually extended to high schools and kindergartens.

Conclusion

Just like dogs are domesticated wolves, Chinese capitalists are domesticated horses managed and trained by the CPC in a field designed and built by the Chinese socialist government. Just like dogs still like eating meat, these horses still have the instinct of accumulating capital. But just like dogs can provide both physical and mental care for people, these horses are making great contributions to the socialist cause in China. Having these horses does not make the CPC betray its socialist mission but rather helps the CPC to achieve it sooner.

For most white Swedes across the political spectrum, these vampires are completely invisible, as they were told since they were young that the façade can hang itself magically in the sky thanks to “Western civilisation” and their hard “class struggles”, and the rosy colour is simply a colour of “democracy and freedom”.

However, for us black and brown people, our daily encounters with the white society constantly remind us of the very existence of these bloody vampires, and the bare fact that “Western civilisation” is a meat grinder that grinds black and brown children into capital, “class struggles” are class betrayals of white labour aristocrats forming alliance with white bourgeois ruling class against the entire third world, and “democracy and freedom” are synonyms for national chauvinism and white supremacy.

Examples of daily encounters that reveal the existence of bloody vampires

These daily encounters may seem insignificant, but they are “great” lessons for us black and brown people to learn the logic of settler colonialism, fascism, and imperialism first-hand.

For example, the encounters with the immigration office.

Many Westerners may argue that it is just an “unfortunate” incident that teenagers born and raised in Sweden are deported to their “original” countries that they have never been to due to immigration policy changes.

But it is a matter of fact that the logic of imperialism is deeply rooted in the entire immigration policy in the whole of Western Europe, even in the visa application process for more “privileged” black and brown people with university degrees who simply want to study and work for a while in Sweden. While one can easily get a visa within two weeks with a white passport, black and brown people with “third-world” passports have to wait for months, and many will eventually be denied the visa without any reason after having paid for very expensive visa application fees.

Despite that Western Marxists spares no effort to save face for the imperialist West and deny the notion of “core-periphery”, the immigration policy in European countries like Germany and Sweden teaches all black and brown people every day that the world is divided into two classes, the imperialist core, i.e, the U.S. empire, its Zionist friends and its junior partners in Western Europe and Japan, and the imperialised periphery, i.e, the third world.

For example, the encounters with the strict rules about train tickets.

While in most countries, student discount of train ticket is available for all students (at least for all full-time students), in Sweden, a student discount is only available for one class of students, the class that can afford the membership fee of student unions and has time to take part in student union activities. If students without the membership bought the student ticket, they would get a fine of around 150 Euro, an unaffordable sum for most students.

In other words, with this “clever” definition, student discount becomes mostly a white privilege reserved for students from the white labour aristocracy class, as proportionally there are more students from low-income and/or immigrant families or third-world countries who have neither money nor time to join the student union, although this group of students needs the student discount the most.

This seems to be a minor issue. But behind it hides the fascist logic inherited from Nazi Germany. The strict train ticket rule is not an invention of Sweden, but of Nazi Germany. In 1935, the Nazi regime enacted the “German Criminal Code”, and Section 265a criminalised the unpaid fines for fare evasion. Until today, around 9000 people are imprisoned for not being able to pay train ticket fines every year in Germany. As most people who are unable to pay for the train tickets or fines are poor and/or racialised and/or have disabilities, this “insignificant” law serves as an effective tool for fascism to punish the “inferior” class of people (Untermensch).

And the narrow definition of “student discount” and the heavy fine in case of violation by Skånetraffiken is exactly the Scandinavian “sweetened” version of the German fascist law.

For example, the encounters with the pro-zio.nist state apparatus.

Apart from Sweden’s close and complex military-industrial relationship with Isreal through contracts like the Elbit Systems Agreement, apart from Sweden’s increasing arms export to Isreal, many pro-Palestinian activists with immigration backgrounds face constant unfair treatment by the pro-zio.nist state apparatus.

For example, a Palestinian student, Isra Barham, in Gothenburg was denied Swedish citizenship due to her pro-Palestine activism on campus. Another PhD student, Tesfaye Woubshet Ayele at Stockholm University, lost his supervisor simply because of his pro-Palestine and anti-zionist political stand. And the new “good conduct” law issued in July makes it possible to deny immigrants the residence permit on the ground of “contact with terrorist organisation”, preparing legal ground for the further intensified oppression on black and brown pro-Palestine activists in the near future.

The support of Sweden for the Zionist state Isreal is not a coincidence, but a continuation of the settler colonialism in Sweden, a history that has been deliberately buried in the dust by colonisers.

White labour aristocrats are unaware of their own Zionist, fascist and imperialist history

In the world of white labour aristocrats in Sweden, such encounters are beyond imagination, and the history of settler colonialism, fascism and imperialism in Sweden has long been forgotten. When they hear black and brown people talking about these encounters and the existence of those vampires, most of them will simply turn off their ears and get irritated by how much these “uncivilised” people complain about their “democratic and free” country.

This is exactly the fundamental problem. The main reason why these blood-sucking vampires are still alive is that white labour aristocrats choose to betray their black and brown brothers and sisters and to continue enjoying their comfortable imperial mode of living built by the vampires of settler colonialism, fascism and imperialism. And they can only do so without feeling guilty by deliberately looking away from their own past and present.

Thus, I would like to bring the ugly past and present of Sweden to daylight, showing these white labour aristocrats the hidden vampires behind the rosy façade. Every Western country has similar vampires; some are even bigger than those in Sweden. But I choose to write about the vampires in Sweden because they are less known than, for example, those in Germany, France and Spain.

Swedish settler colonialism

The first wave of Swedish settler colonialism of Sweden can be traced back to the 17th century. From 1638 to 1655, Swedish settlers, together with their Dutch allies, successfully colonised the Delaware Valley and built a settlement called “New Sweden” on the land of native American tribes, causing some tensions between the Lenni Lenape and Mingo tribes. The presence of Swedish settlers continued until 1713.

Alongside settler colonialism, Swedish colonisers also took an active part in the slave trade. The Swedish Africa Company was founded in 1649. Despite having only existed for 13 years, it had established the colony of Cabo Corso (today’s Cape Coast, Ghana), and accumulated a significant amount of wealth by delivering, for example, 500–600 enslaved people to the Dutch colony of Curaçao by 1657.

Moreover, even after 1662, Sweden continued to suck bloody wealth out of the African continent by making “voyage iron”, metal rifle barrels, and shackles used to chain enslaved people for the inhuman slave trade. By the 18th century, Sweden had become Europe’s leading exporter of “voyage iron”. In 1739, about 954 tons of bloody “voyage iron” was shipped from Stockholm and another around 1350 tons from Gothenburg.

One century later, another wave of settler colonialism began. Between 1850 and 1950, around 1.3 million Swedes, approximately 25% of the total Swedish population, immigrated to North America and settled on the land of native Americans.

For three centuries, the Swedish vampire of settler colonialism successfully sucked the first batch of blood out of the African and North American continents, partially completed its primitive accumulation, and got rid of its surplus population, which made it possible for the white labour aristocracy class to demand higher wages, shorter working hours, and better social welfare after World War II. In other words, the first foundation of the Swedish social welfare state is settler colonialism and the slave trade.

Sweden’s support for fascism during World War II

As stated by Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda in 1942, in Mein lieber Reichkanzler,

“Sweden has done more for the German war effort than is generally recognised. Above all, it has in some respects given us substantial support in the war against the Soviet Union – it indeed protects its neutrality, but much to our advantage.”

Apart from the “neutral” support for Nazi Germany to transport more than two million German soldiers and around 100,000 wagons with weapons and munitions on Swedish railways between June 1940 and August 1943, the Swedish capitalist class, like owners of the Grängesberg Company, also supported the war machine of Nazi Germany with iron ore in exchange for gold stolen from Jewish families and other financial benefits. According to Rolf Karlbom, four out of every ten German guns were made with Swedish ore, a significant figure if one considers the small size of Sweden. Capital accumulated from the iron ore trade with Nazi Germany during World War II helped complete the primitive accumulation in Sweden, laying the material foundations for the future social welfare state.

Furthermore, fascist and anti-communist ideologies were deeply penetrated into Swedish society during World War II. The Swedish government not only banned all communist newspapers, but also established many labour camps, like the first Labour Company Storsien set up in 1939 to imprison communists and other trade union activists and force them to dig trenches and build roads as slaves. This prepared the ideological ground for building imperial socialism in Sweden after World War II.

This is just a small corner of the vast iceberg of Sweden’s support for fascism during World War II. This part of history has more far-reaching material and ideological impacts on Swedish society than most Swedes feel comfortable admitting. While many Western leftists are deeply concerned about the rise of fascism in Sweden, fascism has in reality never disappeared in Sweden since the beginning of its settler colonialism.

Sweden’s imperial socialism

After World War II, Sweden started expanding its social welfare system in the 1950s. Until the 1970s, the “Swedish model” became the best example used by the imperialist West to brag about the “superiority” of capitalism over the Soviet Union’s socialism. Even today, some Western leftists regard the Swedish system as “real socialist”, while criticising how “capitalist” and “imperialist” actually existing socialist countries like Vietnam and China are.

Many Swedes choose to believe that the folkhem is a result of hard class struggles and the wealth of Sweden is accumulated through hard work with high productivity. But in reality, social welfare is a bribe from their ruling class, the global imperial class, to buy their loyalty as class traitors of the international working class, and the wealth of Sweden has nothing to do with high productivity.

Without Western imperialism actively cheapening and wasting lives and nature in the third world with both war machines and soft financial weapons, white European countries like Sweden could never have secured their superior class position.

Without the superior class position, white labour aristocrats in Sweden could not have earned ten to fifty times more than their black and brown siblings in the third world, could not have gotten the imperial cake crumbles from their ruling class, i.e, the social welfare and long holidays, and could not have enjoyed their imperial mode of living.

And how about productivity? To paraphrase Ali Kadri, children in West Asia who are shot dead within one second are more productive than white Swedish workers sitting in well-furnished offices. As killing is the most lucrative activity for the global imperialist class, people in West Asia and Africa who actively participate in this bloody activity are the most productive “components” in the capital accumulation process for the Epstein class.

As Torkil Lauesen pointed out, “Sweden is riding the wave of imperialism”. To secure imperial rents for the folkhem, Sweden, despite being “neutral” before 2024, has took active part in imperialist wars in the third world, including the illegal NATO war on Libya that reduced one of the most developed African countries to an open slave market and the two decades imperialist “war on terror” in Afghanistan that turned West Asia, a materially and culturally rich region, into the blood-sucking playground for the Epstein class. To further safeguard its class position in the imperial core, Sweden officially joined NATO in 2024, a decision that has been welcomed by all major political parties; even the “left” party (vänster partiet) has pledged its loyalty to NATO recently.

However, the imperial mode of living of the labour aristocracy class can not continue much longer. With the axis of resistance fighting bravely against the imperialist West and making great progress, with non-aligned countries like Iran, Russia, China, DPRK actively building alternative world order to the current genocidal imperialism, with socialist countries like Vietnam and China breaking free from the “core-periphery” trap and rising their wage levels against the unequal exchange, the imperial cake crumble left for the white labour aristocrats in Western countries including Sweden is gradually diminishing.

Sooner or later, these privileged white workers will face two choices: either following the Epstein class on the path of fascism to the abyss, or changing their side to the side of life and tearing the white empire apart. Which choice they will make depends on if they have enough courage to abundon their class interests and commit class suicide.

Some thoughts on “Swedish model”

Six years ago, when I travelled to Sweden for the first time, I was amazed by the Scandinavian lifestyle, i.e, imperial mode of living. My dad told me that China will never be able to become Sweden. I did not understand. Six years later, having read about unequal exchange and dependency theories, having witnessed countless instances of violence by European countries against the third world, having experienced racism, or more specifically Sinophobia, firsthand, I finally understand what my dad meant.

China, as a third-world country, cannot follow the Swedish model. It has to rely on the sacrifice of its peasants to accomplish primitive accumulation, has to bend down to the Epstein class and allow them to exploit its workers and nature to get advanced technologies and capital investment, and has no “fourth world” to colonise and plunder. That is why China can never become a “perfect utopia” socialist country as many Western Marxists are fantasizing about.

What Sweden has built is imperial socialism for the white folk (people), for the labour aristocracy class; what China is building is real socialism for the yellow people, for the popular class. Just like the Swedish student discount is only for privileged students with a paid membership, the Swedish model is only reserved for white people.

Similar to other colonial or imperialist wars, sexual violence was an “essential” tool for imperialist Japan to conquer local people, break their will to resist, and erase their cultures and history. At least 200,000 women and girls suffered heavily from ruthless sexual violence by the fascist Japanese army during the World War II.

Yet, just as the Zionist state Israel tries to hide its crimes of raping and torturing Palestinian prisoners, the Japanese government not only refuses to officially apologize for the sexual abuses and provide compensation to the victims of the “comfort women” system; it even attempts to completely deny its responsibility for the sexual violence committed by its army in its fascist past.

Denying histories of fascist crimes is to continue these crimes. Until fascism and imperialism are fully defeated, we must never forget or forgive the crimes committed by all zionist and imperialist states. It is our responsibility as anti-imperialists to save these important histories from being buried in the dusts and raise public awareness about these historical lessons.

Thus, I would like to share an article on the history of “Comfort Women” and the story of a Chinese historian, Su Zhiliang (苏智良), who dedicated his entire academic career to this history in this week’s “the fascist history of Japan” series.

(Attention: the following article contains violent sexual scenes, please be mentally prepared if you decide to read or listen to it.)

The most agonizing research, for those “prisoners in hell”

最痛苦的研究，为了那些“地狱里的囚徒”

By Xiao Chunfei and Pan Xu (Xinhua Daily Telegraph)

The semester at Shanghai Normal University has not yet started, and it was quiet. The campus was full of lush grass and sparse forests, but when we came to the statue next to the Wenyuan Building, our hearts suddenly grew heavy:

This is a group of double statues of Chinese and Korean girls. They are sitting on chairs, with their collars pulled open, their hands clenched into fists, their expressions sad and angry, and there is an empty chair next to them.

The inscription on the statue is written in four languages: Chinese, English, Korean and Japanese:

“The ‘Comfort Women’ system specifically refers to the system in which the Japanese government equipped the Japanese army with military sex slaves from 1932 to 1945. As a result, hundreds of thousands of women in China, Korea and other places in Southeast Asia were forced to be Japanese military sex slaves and suffered cruel torture. Violence and death threats are the most painful memories for all women in the world over the past century. The “Comfort Women” Peace Girls Statues of China and South Korea were established to condemn these war crimes, pray for world peace, and comfort the victims who, despite having struggled heroically to seek justice and demand apology and compensation from the perpetrators, have not got justice yet.”

Today, 76 years have passed since the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War, but the “war” against justice for the “Comfort Women” continues.

“Perhaps there is nothing crueller than digging up the history of humiliation of women of one’s own country.”

In 1993, in Shanghai in the midsummer, the asphalt roads were turned into a paste by the sun. A young scholar rode a bicycle from Shanghai Normal University in the southwest corner of Shanghai to Jungong Road in the northeast corner, looking for the secret histories of the Chinese “Comfort Women” abused by Japan that had been hidden for half a century. This field investigation lasted for four years, and a mysterious, terrifying and cruel history gradually became clear.

This scholar is Su Zhiliang (苏智良). In 1998, he published a paper “A Brief Discussion on the Comfort Women System of the Japanese Invaders of China” and in 1999 he published a monograph “Research on Comfort Women”, which aroused attention in the academic world and strong repercussions in Chinese society. He could have quit, but he didn’t. Nearly 30 years have passed, the young scholar in the past has turned gray-haired but is still obsessed with the study of “Comfort Women”.

“Studying the history of ‘Comfort Women’ is painful and the psychological pressure is very high. Perhaps there is nothing crueller in the world than digging up the history of humiliation of women in one’s own country.” Su Zhiliang described “comfort women” as “prisoners in hell.”

In 2000, Su Zhiliang took a victim of the “Comfort Women” system from Nanjing to Osaka to give a lecture. Behind a white cloth at the front desk, this old woman spoke slowly: “I was gang-raped by Japanese soldiers in Nanjing when I was eight years old and suffered inhuman abuse. From then until now, I have to use diapers every day.”

“When I heard this, I burst into tears and couldn’t hold back my tears,” Su Zhiliang said.

Over the past 30 years, this kind of psychological “torture” has occurred repeatedly. From Shanghai to Yunnan, from Northeast China to Hainan, and even overseas, Su Zhiliang searched for clues and collected witness testimonies. Sometimes he listened and cried with the witnesses.

In Su Zhiliang’s book “Research on the “Comfort Women” of the Japanese Army”, he recorded the suffering souls one after another, all of whom he interviewed in person. Opening this book, the testimonies are filled with blood and tears, making people angry and horrified at the same time:

“The Japanese army didn’t treat us as humans; they just treated us as tools to vent their sexual desires and abused us in every possible way. The brutal and continuous rape caused severe damage to my vagina, inflammation of the uterus, and my whole body seemed to be falling apart. I was bedridden. One of my companions was a girl named Chen Youhong. Several Japanese soldiers gang-raped her. She refused to obey, so she was severely beaten and raped. As a result, her uterus ruptured and her blood flowed profusely. She was dying. She passed away tragically due to her injuries two days later...” - Huang Youliang’s autobiography in Lingshui County, Hainan. She was raped by the Japanese army at the age of 15 and forced to become a “comfort woman” at the age of 16.

“I was pregnant when I was first arrested, and the Japanese officers didn’t care if you had a baby in your belly. Only two months after giving birth, I was often taken away by the Japanese soldiers. At that time, I had a lot of milk, so these soldiers would suck my milk dry every time, and then rape.” - the self-report of Zhu Qiaomei, a victim in Chongming, Shanghai. In 1938, she, her mother-in-law, and her mother-in-law’s sister were forced to become “Comfort Women” at the same time.

Many Chinese “Comfort Women” have passed away. Some of the “Comfort Women” were tortured to death, and some committed suicide due to the humiliation. Once they became pregnant, they also died. The book “Research on the “Comfort Women” of the Japanese Army” writes: “Li Yaqian, a girl from the Li ethnic group in Baoting County, Hainan, was captured by the Japanese army and taken to the Nanlin military base to serve as a ‘Comfort Woman’. The Japanese army at this military base had no contraceptive measures. Li Yaqian became pregnant soon after. The Japanese army tied the innocent girl on the slope of Qingxun Village and brutally caesarean her, resulting in the death of both mother and child.”

Although it is painful, the research still has to continue. As Su Zhiliang said,

“this is the responsibility of a historian. The ‘Comfort Women’ system is a great shame in the history of human civilization. I have the responsibility to thoroughly expose the atrocities committed by the Japanese army, to seek justice for the dead and humiliated victims, and to work with people with a sense of humanity from all over the world to conduct a comprehensive settlement of the historical debts that the evil imperialism and militarism owe to the entire humankind!”

The “Comfort Women” system is Japan’s national crime during its imperialist war

Who is the originator of the “comfort women” system? Japanese number one war criminal, Okamura Neji (冈村宁次).

When the January 28th Incident broke out in 1932, the number of Japanese troops in Shanghai reached 30,000. There were many incidents of rape of women in the field by the Japanese army, which aroused severe condemnation from the public in China and other countries.

In order to prevent large-scale rape incidents by the Japanese army from affecting military discipline and combat effectiveness, and to offset external public opinion’s accusations of the brutality of the Japanese army, Okamura Neji, then deputy chief of staff of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force, decided to set up some military prostitutes exclusively for the use of the Japanese army with the approval of the commander of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force, Shirakawa Yoshinori.

The specific person in charge was Naosaburo Okabe, a senior staff officer of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force. The latter recorded in his diary on March 14: “At this time, there were various rumours about soldiers doing everything possible to search for women and being morally corrupt. In order to solve the sexual problems of the soldiers, we started to actively build such prostitute facilities.” After submitting the report, Okamura Neiji approved and immediately called the governor of Nagasaki Prefecture, quickly recruited prostitutes, organized a “Comfort Women” group, and established a comfort station in the Japanese-occupied area of ​​​​Hongkou, Shanghai. During the four months that Okamura Neiji was in Shanghai, the Japanese army established the first batch of comfort stations in Wusong, Baoshan, Miaohang and Zhenru.

In February 1949, when Okamura Neiji was interviewed by reporters on the ship returning to Japan, he admitted: “I was the originator of the extremely shameless comfort women system. During the Shanghai Incident in the seventh year of Showa (1932), As the deputy chief of staff of the dispatched troops, I followed the Navy’s long-established practice of recruiting prostitutes for the comfort troops and applied to the governor of Nagasaki Prefecture to recruit a group of comfort women to provide sexual services for the Japanese army in China.”

Su Zhiliang commented:

“The ‘Comfort Women’ group organized by Okamura Neiji was jointly planned and completed by the upper levels of the Japanese military and the Japanese local government. This is a ‘pioneering project’, in which the fascist war machine insults and tramples on humanity. Of course, this was only the beginning of the subsequent large-scale promotion of ‘Comfort Women’ by the Japanese army.”

After Japan’s all-out war of aggression against China began in 1937, the number of prostitutes in the country was not enough to meet the demand. Japan therefore captured a large number of Korean and Chinese women to serve as “Comfort Women” for the Japanese army, and deployed “Comfort Women” in the Japanese army in a planned and proportional manner.

After the outbreak of the Pacific War, Japan expanded its recruitment of “Comfort Women” to Southeast Asia. Regarding the nationality of the “Comfort Women”, in addition to Japan, they were mainly from Korea, mainland China and Taiwan province, and there were also some women from Southeast Asia and other places, such as Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, indigenous residents, and a small number of women from Russia, the Netherlands and other countries.

As Su Zhiliang points out,

“the ‘Comfort Women’ system is implemented by the Japanese state and its military in order to successfully implement and complete the war of aggression in Asia. It is a collective crime of the military and a national crime of Japan during the war. The victimized women were completely deprived of their mental and physical freedom, suffered sexual violence and abuse all day long, and served as sex slaves of the military. This is a great insult to human dignity and a great violation of human rights.”

“Why is it said that the ‘Comfort Women’ system is essentially a wartime national crime? Because the Japanese government departments, including the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Navy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the police, colonial authorities, and local Japanese governments in various prefectures and counties, were involved in the forced recruitment of women and the establishment of comfort stations. They spared no effort to implement this plan.”

The Japanese army forcibly recruited “Comfort Women” not to reduce rape, but because they were worried that the sexually transmitted diseases caused by a large number of rapes would weaken their combat effectiveness.

During the Nanjing Massacre in 1937, the Japanese army began to rape crazily. Gonorrhea, syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases quickly spread among the Japanese army, weakening its combat effectiveness. At the same time, the Japanese army’s brutal behavior has also been strongly condemned by the international community. In this way, the issue of sex has almost become the primary issue of whether the war of aggression could continue. In view of this, Japanese high-level officials were considering the need to quickly and comprehensively implement the “comfort women” system.

As the commander of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force, Matsui Iwane was most worried about not massacres and rapes, but the order of the army and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. In order to solve the sexual problems of Japanese officers and soldiers and prevent the loss of combat effectiveness due to sexually transmitted diseases, Matsui Iwane decided to imitate Okamura Neji’s plan to recruit “comfort women” during the January 28th Incident.

After the war, Iwane Matsui was hanged as a war criminal, but Neji Okamura escaped legal punishment.

According to Su Zhiliang,

“the root of the Japanese military’s ‘Comfort Women’ system was the Japanese government’s naked militaristic policy starting from the Meiji era, and it was a predatory strategy that exploited the entire country. It made Japanese people proud of their imperialist war and the brutality of the Japanese military. This fascism was the national background that enabled the Japanese military to implement the sexual slavery system that shocked the whole world.”

In 1942, Hideki Tojo was interviewed by American journalist Joseph Douglas. The reporter asked about the Japanese army forcing local women to serve as prostitutes with the army in the occupied areas. Tojo replied: “Women are strategic materials with unique nutrition that are indispensable for victory.”

Yes, in the eyes of the Japanese army, “Comfort Women” were not humans, but strategic materials.

Su Zhiliang stated cleary,

“If we want to give the simplest definition of ‘Comfort Women’, they are Japanese military sex slaves. This shows the irrefutable responsibility of the Japanese government and the Japanese military for the “Comfort Women” issue.”

At present, research on Japan’s crime of forcibly recruiting “Comfort Women” from various countries during its imperialist war is still in its infancy. In the past, there was almost no mention of this. Even the world-recognized works on Japan’s crimes during World War II only stated that “as for Japan, its war crimes lie in the inhumane treatment of prisoners of war.”, while failing to mention the crimes of the “Comfort Women” system.

As stated clearly by Su Zhiliang,

“crimes of the ‘Comfort Women’ system implemented by the Japanese government were huge and heinous, much more serious than being stated by these international works. It is important to conduct an in-depth analysis of the crimes of Japan’s ‘Comfort Women’ system, which will also enrich the international understanding on war crimes and human rights violations.”

How many “comfort women” were there?

How many “comfort women” were there in the Japanese army during World War II?

This is still controversial. Su Zhiliang believes that the number of “Comfort Women” is far more than 100,000 or 200,000. According to him, the scale of the Japanese army’s “Comfort Women” system far exceeds people’s estimates. From the main force to the garrison, small units, and even comfort stations were set up in bunkers on the front line. In addition, previous studies on “Comfort Women” have ignored the issue of “Comfort Women” in China, while only focusing on Korean “Comfort Women”. In fact, China is the country where the Japanese army has stationed for the longest time and deployed the largest number of soliders. Comfort stations were spread across most of China. However, there are no official records of these Chinese “Comfort Women” who were forcibly recruited by the Japanese army.

In fact, the number of victims in China is huge. Everywhere the Japanese army went, they abducted a large number of local women. For example, at the end of 1937, the Japanese army abducted more than 2,000 women in Suzhou, more than 3,000 women were taken away in Wuxi, 20,000 women were abducted in Hangzhou, and 7 comfort stations were abducted in a city in Nanjing. There are 92 comfort stations on Hainan Island, 172 comfort stations in Shanghai, 182 comfort stations in Zhejiang, 208 comfort stations in Shandong, and 295 comfort stations in Hubei. In these six places alone, the number of “comfort women” reaches tens of thousands or tens of thousands.

Judging from the mortality rate of “Comfort Women”, Su Zhiliang pointed out that,

“due to extremely poor living conditions and inhuman torture every day, most of the ‘Comfort Women’ were either tortured and killed by Japanese soldiers, or died of disease and poverty, and some committed suicide because they could not bear the abuse. The mortality rate of ‘Comfort Women’ is quite high.”

The book “Research on the “Comfort Women” of the Japanese Army” lists a large number of examples about high mortality rates of “Comfort Women”: In the summer of 1941, more than 50 Chinese women at the Boao Comfort Station in Hainan refused to receive the Japanese soldiers, so they were pulled to the Tayang Bridge by the Japanese army and killed; in May 1944, the Japanese army captured more than 10 women in Zhuzhou, Hunan. A comfort station was set up, and 8 of them died later; there were more than 300 “comfort women” in the Shilu Comfort Station in Hainan, and after four years of torture, more than 200 people died. When Japan surrendered, only more than 10 survived; the Huangliu Japanese Airport Comfort Station originally had 21 women from Guangzhou, and in the end only 4 women including Huang Huirong were left.

“However, the number of ‘Comfort Women’ did not decrease despite such a high mortality rate, because the Japanese army continued to capture women from various places and countries to replenish,” Su Zhiliang said. He believed that the replacement rate of “Comfort Women” should be between 1:3.5 and 1:4.0. Therefore, after comprehensively studying various historical materials, Su Zhiliang concluded that the total number of “comfort women” is approximately 360,000 to 410,000. The calculation process is: 3000000÷29×3.5=362068 people, 3000000÷29×4.0=413793 people.

According to Su Zhiliang’s research, there are four forms of “Comfort Women” in China: one is the “Comfort Women” officially requisitioned by the Japanese army, who either travelled with the army or stationed in the Japanese army and were managed by the Japanese army. When the army moved, the comfort stations did not move. Secondly, the Japanese army abducted a large number of local women every time they occupied a place. After a short period of time of raping them, they would be killed by the Japanese army completely.

The third type is the short-term “comfort women” requisitioned by the Japanese army. For example, with the cooperation of traitors, the Tianjin Japanese Defense Command once implemented a short-term rotation system of “Comfort Women”. Each batch of 20 to 30 people were forcibly recruited and sent to the comfort station to “work” for about 3 weeks, and then they were released and requisitioned for the second batch. In one year, 350 to 520 Tianjin women were rotated.

Fourthly, when the Japanese military garrison conducted raids across China, they forced Chinese women to accompany them and took them to Japanese military strongholds or bases for long-term rape. Chinese women were reduced to “Comfort Women” for as short as a few weeks or as long as seven years. The Japanese army set up tens of thousands of comfort stations in mainland China. Some of these comfort stations lasted as long as 14 years, and some only lasted a few weeks. The number of “Comfort Women” in a comfort station varied from 1 to 300 - 500. “According to the most conservative estimates, the total number of ‘Comfort Women’ in China is more than 200,000.” Su Zhiliang said.

“The evidence of the crime is irrefutable—Japan cannot deny it!”

Starting from 2016, China, South Korea, and other nations submitted materials to UNESCO, seeking to include the “Voices of ‘Comfort Women’” project in the Memory of the World Register. On October 22 of that year, a “Statue of Peace” honoring Chinese and South Korean “Comfort Women” was unveiled at Shanghai Normal University.

On the same day, the Museum of Chinese “Comfort Women” History also opened at Shanghai Normal University. The museum houses a collection of artifacts gathered by researchers over decades from the sites of former Imperial Japanese Army “comfort stations,” as well as items donated by researchers—such as wartime condoms and “Hoshimikou” (a contraceptive ointment) used by Japanese soldiers, passports used by survivors when traveling to Japan to file lawsuits, and documents and legal complaints related to their overseas testimony and claims for compensation.

“Apologize! Compensate!” These are the anguished cries of Chinese “Comfort Women” survivors—yet, there has been no response.

According to research by the Center for the Study of Chinese Comfort Women at Shanghai Normal University, only 14 victims of the “comfort women” system remain alive in mainland China today, and they are in the twilight of their lives. After they have all passed away, will this history cease to exist?

The answer is no; Su Zhiliang is not fighting alone. The research team he leads has travelled across the country to conduct investigations, compiling research archives through field visits, listening to the oral testimonies of victims, and consulting local chronicles. The centre also helped establish and manage a “Comfort Women Research and Assistance” fund, continuously providing financial support for victims to cover their living expenses, medical care expenses, and funeral costs, while simultaneously advancing academic research.

“We must bear in mind that without justice, human civilization can never progress,” Su Zhiliang says firmly. He is currently having his students compile archives province by province, and asserting, “The evidence of the crime is irrefutable—Japan can not deny it!”

The focus on total annual emissions of each country may seem reasonable for many, as we need to reduce carbon emissions to solve the climate crisis. However, besides the fact that this total annual emissions data used by the West is Eurocentric and biased against third-world countries (see my previous article “Who paid the pipers of Western environmentalists? - Eurocentric criticisms of China regarding climate and environmental issues”), this question “how much carbon a country emits annually” is a wrong question to ask.

To blame countries for emitting too much greenhouse gas in a year without asking a more important question first, “for whom is each country emitting greenhouse gases?” is like blaming an old man in a poor village for killing his sheep without knowing that he had no choice but to kill and eat his sheep to prevent his family from starving to death.

By asking “how much carbon one country emits annually” instead of “for whom are greenhouse gases emitted”, emissions caused by building schools and hospitals in third-world countries become, in the eyes of Western environmentalists, equally bad as emissions caused by building luxurious hotels and mansions;

emissions caused by developing open-source AI for the benefits of all people in the world, especially black and brown people in the third world, become, in the eyes of Western environmentalists, equally, using the words of Naomi Klein, “fascist”, as emissions caused by developing closed-source AI serving the interests of the Epstein class;

emissions caused by military production in Iran, Russia and DPRK to defend their people against the imperialist West become, in the eyes of Western environmentalists, equally evil as emissions caused by the genocidal war machines of NATO led by the U.S empire that have slaughtered countless children in the third world.

In other words, by asking the wrong question, Western environmentalists are equating emissions for people with emissions for capital, just like Western leftists are equating armed struggles of the axis of resistance with genocidal slaughtering of the axis of Epstein class.

So, what is wrong with this “both are equally wrong” worldview? Are not all killings bad? Do not all emissions contribute to global warming?

For pro-imperialist Western environmentalists and leftists, the answer is certainly yes. But for any people who genuinely want to solve the climate crisis and bring long-lasting peace to the world, the answer is NO. And here is why.

For capital, or for the global imperialist class, i.e. the Epstein class, the more greenhouse gases are emitted, the better, and likewise, the more children are slaughtered, the better. This is because their capital accumulation relies exactly on cheapening and wasting lives, and destroying nature, or using the words of Ali Kadri, “capital accumulation is accumulation of waste”.

With more and more greenhouse gases being emitted, with more and more natural disasters happening due to climate crisis, with more and more children and women being sent to the imperialist meat grinder, not only lives in the third world will become cheaper, the imperialist assembly line of wasted lives can also be operated in a higher speed, thus accelerating the speed and expanding the scale of capital accumulation, making these parasites on Epstein island richer and more powerful. Such “fantastic” news for these children-eating monsters!

Following the logic of capital, no politicians in the imperialist West, no matter how green they paint themselves, have real motives to smash the fascist military organisation, NATO, and its war machine, because the genocidal military-industrial complex is a perfect tool to destroy both human lives and nature simultaneously and an efficient machine to turn wasted lives and nature into capital.

Following the logic of capital, no capitalists in the imperialist West, no matter how long and ambitious their ESG reports are, have real incentives to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, because fossil fuels help them not only to effectively destroy the nature, but also put the third world under their absolute dominance, as third world countries were forced to import fossil fuels with U.S dollars to tackle energy shortages.

Following the logic of capital, no governments in the imperialist West, no matter how “social-democratic” and “progressive” they are, have real motivations to call their people to change their imperial way of living, because bribing white labour aristocracy with useless cheap goods produced by black and brown slaves is an essential way for the global imperialist class to both waste lives and natural resources in the third world, and to solve internal contradictions of the zombie capitalism.

In contrast, for people and for the axis of resistance, the fewer greenhouse gases are emitted, the better, and likewise, the fewer innocent people are killed, the better. This is because people and the axis of resistance are on the side of life, understanding the devastating consequences of carbon emissions and killing.

As people's well-being and even their lives are directly affected by natural disasters caused by global warming, they would choose not to emit any carbon if it were possible to develop productive forces and improve the well-being of people without any greenhouse gas emissions. As fighters in the axis of resistance know the pain of losing their comrades and families through first-hand experiences, they would choose not to kill at all if it were possible to defeat the imperialist West without weapons.

Unfortunately, such magical things only exist in Disneyland. For us who live on earth, the only option is to minimise these undesirable consequences, i.e, to reduce carbon emissions as much as possible to solve the climate crisis, and to make missiles as accurate as possible to avoid killing innocent civilians.

Following the logic of people, the government of socialist China is dedicated to developing renewable energy since the beginning of the 21st century. In the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001 - 2005), the Chinese government launched the “863 Program,” allocating 2 billion RMB for research and development (R&D) of electric vehicles. Five years later, in the 11th Five-Year Plan, the Chinese government designated wind and solar technologies as strategic industries and enacted the Renewable Energy Law in 2006 to promote the development and utilisation of renewable energy.

Two decades later, China has not only successfully flattened and even slightly decreased its annual carbon emissions, but also become the largest manufacturer of renewable energy products, providing people in the whole world with affordable and high-quality solar panels, wind turbines, mini-grids and electric cars, reducing carbon emissions in the global energy sector significantly, and furthermore helping the third world achieve energy autarki and reduce dependency on the imperialist West.

Following the logic of the people, the government of socialist Vietnam is committed to promoting agroforestry, aiming to kill two birds with one stone and tackle the climate crisis and rural poverty simultaneously with agroforestry. Vietnamese government started investing in agroforestry research since the 1990s, and implementing the research outputs in fields since the 2000s. By 2011, the government in the Thua Thien Hue province launched a large-scale agroforestry project in the Bach Ma National Park corridor, integrating more than 45 ha of forest gardens with fruit and domestic trees, significantly improving the economic situation of 450 local peasant households.

The development of ecological agriculture in Vietnam sets a good example for other third-world countries, proving that as long as the well-being of people is placed at the centre of decision-making, environmental and climate protection are not self-contradictory with economic development, but rather complementary.

Thus, there is no doubt that if one country emits for capital and represents the interest of the global imperialist class, it will not willingly reduce its carbon emissions, while if one country emits for people and represents the interest of the global popular class, it will spare no efforts in solving the climate crisis. In other words, what exceeds the planetary boundaries and causes the climate crisis is not the desire of the people for a better life, but the greed of the global imperialist class for endless capital accumulation.

To equate emissions for people with emissions for capital is thus a loyal act of pro-imperialist Western environmentalists. By hiding the fact that capital accumulation by imperialism is the number one root cause of the climate crisis, they are defending the class that is leading the whole humanity to extinction, the global imperialist class. Regardless of how many "anti-capitalist" books they write, regardless of how many times they emphasise that they want to solve the climate crisis, they are doing the opposite of what they claim to do: they are pouring fuel onto our burning planet, while blaming black and brown people for the ever-growing fire.