Labour will find increases in the state pension age are unacceptable, just as cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance, personal independence payments and universal credit are — it needs to change direction immediately, writes PCS general secretary FRAN HEATHCOTE
China’s ‘common prosperity’ agenda
China’s rich apparently don’t like it, Western commentators call it suicidal — so what exactly is this ‘common prosperity’ that Xi Jinping is promoting in his third term as leader? In part two of three-part series, JENNY CLEGG explains
China’s immediate priority is to upgrade its technology. Escaping the dead end of trading cheap labour exports for high-end imports means pouring investment into skills and science, innovating new technologies to drive the industrialisation of the future.
CEREN SAGIR reports from the CND fringe meeting during the Labour conference, where speakers slammed a system where £99 billion nuclear arsenal replacement costs are ring-fenced while the two-child benefit cap remains
CND’s Stop the Nuclear Nightmare conference in Glasgow will be an important step towards destroying the false arguments that weapons and war spending will lead to job creation and prosperity, rather than bringing Armageddon closer, writes SIMON BARROW
KIM JOHNSON MP places the campaign in the context of the history of the working-class battles of the 1980s, and explains why, just like Orgreave and the Shrewsbury Pickets before it, justice today is so important for the struggles of tomorrow
REBECCA LONG BAILEY MP writes that it is time not just to adopt policies that will revitalise the lives of workers, but speak honestly and openly about whose side we are on and who the Labour Party is for: the millions, not the millionaires
All the areas that cause working people to feel insecure have to be addressed, through a return to unashamedly pro-worker politics, if the horror of a Farage government is to be avoided, writes IAN LAVERY MP
FIRST mentioned by Mao Zedong in 1953 in China’s transition to socialism, the phrase “common prosperity” was also used by Deng Xiaoping — his call for some to “get rich first” always qualified with the phrase “so that they can help others to catch up.”
Now Xi is taking “common prosperity” as a defining feature of China’s socialist modernisation — at the core of the two-stage plan, laying a basic socialist foundation by 2035 to then advance to modern socialism by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
The gap between rich and poor is to be reduced, but what common prosperity is not is an equalisation of incomes or a radical redistribution from the rich to the poor. Xi talks rather of increasing the incomes of low-income earners and expanding the size of the middle-income group.
More from this author
We cannot understand today’s world without understanding the rise of China – and we cannot understand China without understanding how it was shaped by the second world war, writes JENNY CLEGG
JENNY CLEGG reports from a Chinese peace conference bringing together defence ministers, US think tanks and global South leaders, where speakers warned that the erosion of multilateralism risks regional hotspots exploding into wider war
Western media dismisses the National People’s Congress while ignoring its extensive consultation processes, massive public participation mechanisms, and a tiered structure involving millions of deputies, explains JENNY CLEGG
JENNY CLEGG sets out and then responds to eight key doubts about the Brics+ alliance in light of the developments at Kazan, arguing it represents a significant challenge to US hegemony and provides a path towards a multipolar world
