SEVENTY-FIVE years after its communist revolution, China is still working to build “an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world of peace and shared prosperity,” minister of the Chinese embassy Zhao Fei told a celebratory anniversary meeting in central London at the weekend.

Friends of Socialist China hosted a day-long conference on China’s revolution in Bolivar Hall on Saturday with support from the Communist Party and Morning Star.

The packed meeting heard from Cuban, Venezuelan and Laotian diplomats, Chinese and British scholars, journalists, revolutionaries and anti-racist activists who discussed Chinese socialism, the new cold war and the rise of the global South.

Zhao told attendees that the Chinese Communist Party remained true to its founding principles, had won “the largest battle against poverty in history” and was determined to pursue a peaceful foreign policy in the face of provocations from the United States.

Internationally, it remained “a beacon of hope and a true friend for all countries still struggling for full independence,” Venezuela’s chargé d’affaires Felix Plasencia pointed out, noting its role in assisting countries suffering from unilateral US sanctions, particularly during the Covid pandemic when the US tried to block medicines from reaching Cuba, Venezuela and Iran.

Together with Cuban ambassador Ismara Vargas Walter, he stressed China’s work to usher in “a new era of international co-operation” in which domination by US imperialism, enforced by the threat of war, unequal trade treaties and punitive sanctions regimes, is replaced by respect for each country’s sovereignty — a model exemplified by the Belt & Road Initiative, which in contrast to loans from the IMF or World Bank provides development funds without political or economic-policy strings attached.

In future “no single nation or bloc of nations will be able to determine the fate of the others,” Walter said.

Sessions challenged common myths about the People’s Republic of China.

In a whistle-stop tour of its history, Friends of Socialist China’s Keith Bennett pointed out that Western perceptions of a contradiction between the revolutionary zeal of the Mao years and the “reform and opening up” period since 1978 were often misleading.

The Mao period was not a disaster for China — “life expectancy rose by a year for each year Mao was in power” and in providing education, basic healthcare and building up national infrastructure of road and rail had laid the groundwork for the spectacular economic growth that has taken place since, he pointed out.

If Mao’s China had been one of the most equal countries on Earth, “it was to a large extent an equality of shared poverty,” prompting the shift to market mechanisms under Deng Xiaoping. But the shift left under Xi Jinping — reflected in a mass social housing programme, stricter curbs on private business and stronger enforcement of workers’ rights — showed that China was now seeking to correct the social problems generated by pursuit of growth at all costs, including wealth inequality and environmental degradation.

Alex Gordon for the Communist Party of Britain looked at the successes of China’s planned economy, slamming Britain’s failed HS2 high-speed rail project, which over a decade provided profits for housing developers from inflated land prices but failed to build the high-speed rail links between Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, London and continental Europe it was planned to do.

“In the decade it took to turn HS2 from a rail infrastructure project into luxury homes opportunities for billionaires, China developed a 40,000-kilometre publicly owned high-speed rail network … China’s latest Fuxing bullet train reaches speeds of 350kmh to slash travel times on the 818.9-mile Beijing-Shanghai route to just four hours,” he pointed out.

He challenged propaganda suggesting China did not respect workers’ rights, saluting the first national agreement on truckers’ terms and conditions in the country negotiated by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions with Logory Logistics this May, covering 3.8 million lorry drivers.

On that note Iraqi communist Ali al-Assam reported back from a summer tour of the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region, confronting the lies of Western media about forced labour and religious persecution.

The packed mosques and calls to prayer of Urumqi and Kashgar reminded him of Iraq or Lebanon, he said, while the treasures of Islamic literature in the region’s public libraries showcased a rich and ancient culture.

Xinjiang was a high-tech hub for the Belt & Road Initiative and there was no trace of forced labour in its 90 per cent mechanised cotton sector — bar that of the robots.

All street signs in the major cities were first in Uighur and second in Chinese, he said, while Communist Party of Britain leader Robert Griffiths recalled his own trips to Xinjiang and the fact that leading Communist Party and municipal leaders were Uighur and addressed their meetings in the language.

Assam’s contribution highlighted China’s increasing scientific and technological lead over the West, something clear in its dominant role in renewable industries globally.

Above all, speakers urged a wider understanding of China’s positive international role, as the leading country in tackling climate change, demonstrating the benefits of a planned economy and in challenging US world hegemony.

The US drive to war with China, to which Britain is signed up, has to be opposed through confronting the lies about Chinese aggression and expansionism, multiple contributors stressed.

US military spending was three times higher than China’s — or 15 times higher per head of population — while Nato together amounted to 75 per cent of all world military spending. If there’s a new arms race, it was clear who was driving it.

China’s position as the only UN security council member with a no-first-use nuclear policy should be appreciated, attendees heard, while the US-British military build-up around China’s coasts should be seen as the aggressive provocation that it is.

Summing up, Griffiths quoted Chinese President Xi Jinping’s observation that “without China, socialism might have retreated to the margins” of world politics following the fall of the Soviet Union.

But instead, China was taking an ever more active role in the international communist movement and was the leading international force in trying to replace imperialism with a multipolar world.

It deserved far greater support across the British left — and the hundreds who attended were urged to do more to confront misinformation and anti-China propaganda designed to soften up the British people for world war.

Friends of Socialist China looks forward to organising more such events — and its anniversary conference was proof this relatively new group has an important role to play in the British left and peace movements.