Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO reports from the start of Kunming’s Belt and Road media forum, where 200 journalists from 71 countries celebrated a new openness and optimism, forged by China’s enormous contribution to global development

THE start of 2023 has seen new anti-trade union legislation that has further confirmed that this is an increasingly authoritarian government intent on ever-tightening restrictions on our right to resist.
The attacks on our right to strike are the latest addition to the long list of reactionary legislation that includes the so-called Public Order Bill and many other attacks.
As Richard Burgon MP recently said, “It’s clear that, faced with mounting unpopularity, the government is curtailing some of the basic freedoms that we have in a democratic society to oppose its decisions: at the ballot box, through peaceful protest and through strike action.”



