Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Today we interview Carlos Martinez. Welcome to The Bridge, enlightening conversations on world cultures, life, and everything in between. Hey everyone, this is Jason Smith, host of The Bridge podcast from sunny California. If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe. We love The Bridge. Oh yeah.
hey everyone my name is jason i'm originally from sunny california now living in beautiful beijing today with us is carlo martinez author of the east is still red published by praxis press he is co-editor of friends of socialist china which also has a youtube at friends of socialist china you can find carlos on x
at agent underscore of underscore change. That's agent of change. Welcome back to the bridge to China, Carlos. Thanks very much, Jason. Great to be with you bright and early here in London. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. Thank you for getting up early in London for us. You were just in China before we get to geopolitics, which is a storm right now. Why don't we just talk about your trip to China? So where did you go? What did you do? What did you see?
Well, yeah, I was there in China for like three weeks, which is the longest I've been in China. We went to Chongqing, first time for me going to Chongqing, met up with our mutual friend Daniel Dombril, of course, did some kind of red tourism, went to the memorial sites for CPC revolutionaries massacred. There's a couple of big prison massacres that took place just after liberation or just as Chongqing was about to be liberated.
And there's memorial halls, memorial sites set up for them there. So we went there, which was really interesting experience, I have to say. One of the things that was most interesting about it was how seriously China takes that history. Because they were like, we must have seen dozens of busloads of school kids going to this, what I think in most other places would be considered a relatively obscure historical site. But, you know, you've got kids...
busing in, pensioner groups busing in. And there's a sense that people really want to know about and connect to that history. And that's something that kind of binds people together. Went to Jiayuguan, which is very interesting little town, new town just built there in the Gansu Desert from 1958. And it's also the site of the westernmost point of the Great Wall.
But it's really interesting to see the progress that's been made in this small little city population, maybe 250,000. But it's very modern, super clean, super green, great infrastructure like the big cities in China. Three great weeks in China is a
absolutely miserable to be back in London. Well, you know, I have so many questions actually to follow up on that. So what is the purpose of Socialist Friends of China taking a red tourism tour in China? Is this like a fact-finding mission or are you like trying to borrow ideas to bring back home or is it a learning expedition? What would you say that you learned from this and what
How can it be applied in your life as a socialist back home in the West? I mean, the key purpose really is to build understanding of China, to build friendship with China. Most of the people that came on the delegation were going to China for the first time. So there were nine of us from Britain, six from the United States, and more than half were going to China for the first time.
And so the idea was to really give people an understanding of what China is all about. And so that people can come back with a better idea and to spread that understanding. And, you know, everyone that came on the trip is Marxist. They're involved in the left. They're involved in socialist movements where they live.
So the idea is that they should get some inspiration from what China is doing. They can see that it's not this dystopian hellhole, but actually Chinese people increasingly live very well, that the infrastructure in China is way better than it is in London or New York City or anywhere else in the West.
that notions of green development and ecological civilization are taken very seriously. And, you know, it's really one of the very few places in the world where sustainability is built into every aspect of economic planning and, you know, has become part of
people's lives over the past 10, 15 years, you know, to see that the cities are so clean and so green, to see that there are parks everywhere. And I think that's a thing people always find pretty delightful in China, where you go to the parks and there's, you know, they're so well used and so well maintained. And there's dozens of older people out singing revolutionary songs or practicing Tai Chi or dancing or whatever and socializing.
To see that you're to be in massive cities like Shanghai or Beijing or Xi'an and not to see any homelessness. I mean, that's something that is mind blowing for most people from the West, right? So to have all these experiences, get a reasonably holistic understanding of what China is about, and then
to take that back and to counter the anti-China propaganda war that's become so pervasive in Europe and in North America, I think is valuable. I'm just going to have you guess here, but would you say that some of the anti-China propaganda based out of the West is to scare people into being afraid of socialist-like policies?
to make people afraid of socialism. So as long as China is successful, the West will continue to condemn China for false reasons. And that's my opinion. So I'm just wondering if you share that opinion or why do you think that there's so much effort in the West to frame China's successes as frightening? I mean, China has become the number one threat, right? Yeah.
The whole idea of rapprochement with China and investing in China and helping to develop China's economy was that China would, over the course of years and decades, kind of become absorbed into the West's camp.
and that it would fit itself permanently into a US-led global economic hierarchy with the US at the top, its close allies in Europe just a little bit beneath, South Korea and Japan a little bit beneath that, and then China at the bottom, manufacturing plastic toys and T-shirts for Westerners to wear.
And along with that, it would give up on the idea of Communist Party governance. It would give up on the idea of socialism. It would give up on the idea of common prosperity. Certainly, it wouldn't pose any opposition to US hegemony and imperialism and what the West is doing in the world. China is...
much stronger than it was. China's continuing to grow its economy very fast. China's continuing to grow its infrastructure very fast. China's gone from being one of the most backward countries in the world to being a science and technology superpower, right? You know, it's world leading in renewable energy, in supercomputing, in space exploration, in advanced industry, in telecommunications and all of these areas.
You know, people know by now that China's the world's only renewable energy superpower. It's the world's only electric vehicle superpower. So China's come a very long way. China's per capita income is like 13,000 US dollars per year. That's in kind of nominal GDP terms. In purchasing power parity terms, it's more like 20,000. So
And you know yourself that a relatively small amount of money goes a long way in China compared to New York or London. So China's getting stronger. China is the longest lasting socialist country in history now because sadly the Soviet Union collapsed after 70 or so years.
Sorry, 74 years. China, the People's Republic of China has now outlived that. It's the most developed socialist country that there's ever been.
And there's no indication that China is crumbling despite the consistent predictions of a certain Gordon Chang. You know, China's doing very well. China enjoys, you know, the Chinese government enjoys massive support. You know, every survey that's done, including by Western institutions like the Harvard Kennedy Center, shows that China's public support is, you know, 90 to 95%. So the government is popular, popular confidence,
is very high. The economy is doing well, you know, even in a new phase of China's economic growth, where it's focusing more on quality than quantity, it's still growing at about 5% per year, which compares very, very favourably with Britain, which is growing at about 0.1% per year. And you know, here, you can see conditions getting worse all the time, people are living through a cost of living crisis, there's more homelessness,
every year, there's more intense poverty and desperation, psychological illnesses, violent crimes, all of that is on the rise. Whereas China, people continue to live better all the time. So
China poses a threat on multiple dimensions. Ideologically, you know, we were supposed to be at the end of history, right? That's what Francis Fukuyama told us. And we all swallowed it up. You know, what a great narrative. We've achieved liberal democracy, you know, throughout vast swathes of the world. And this is, it's brilliant. It works really well. We're under US leadership. It's the project for a new American century. It's fantastic. And then China comes along and it's actually doing better than us. And it's,
It's like the first country that you can really say is an emerging country. There's lots of talk of emerging economies. As Samir Amin said, China is the only truly emergent country, the only country that has gone from being a very poor country, very technologically backward country, to actually modernising and becoming a science and technology superpower.
on the basis of its own efforts and on the basis of its own worldview and its own ideological framework and its own economic planning system, very much not under the aegis of the United States. One can say that South Korea has become an advanced country, but that's a very specific geopolitical configuration where the United States and Japan have basically sponsored it to become that in order to be like a model of capitalist success in East Asia.
counter the DPRK, to counter the People's Republic of China. So China is succeeding and increasingly people can see that success. Obviously there's a slander campaign against China, there's a propaganda war against China, but people know, people who are interested in the environment know that 60% of the solar energy in the world, 60% of the wind energy in the world is produced in China.
that 95% or so of the world's electric buses are produced in China. People who are interested in the environment know about that. People who care about poverty know that China's achieved, you know, made unprecedented successes in terms of poverty alleviation. You know, the standard World Bank figure is lifting 800 million people out of poverty. You know, it's a mind-blowing figure. So people know about that.
You've got people like iShowSpeed and other YouTubers and streamers coming to China, going to Chongqing, going to Chengdu, going to Shanghai, Beijing, and just blowing people's minds with what they're broadcasting. And people can see all the progress that China's making. So the whole anti-China narrative is breaking down and people can see, okay, there is an alternative. We were told there isn't an alternative. That's the whole kind of,
ideological slogan of neoliberalism summed up is like, there's no alternative. You know, you people have tried your socialism, it doesn't work. Now, you look at Chinese socialism, we're like, well, actually, it does work.
So China poses a threat on an ideological basis. And then on a political and economic basis, China is the core of this emerging multipolarity. One of the key reasons the world is on a multipolar trajectory is because China is very strongly supporting that, including economically and financially,
And that reduces the scope of operation for US-led imperialism. If I'm a country in sub-Saharan Africa looking to provide electricity to my people, I don't have to go to the World Bank anymore. I don't have to go to the IMF anymore. I don't have to go to Western lending institutions. I don't have to accept...
their loan conditionality. I don't have to accept a condition of, okay, well, you can have the money to build your power station or to fight famine or whatever, but you have to accept that your water's gonna be privatized or your education system's gonna be privatized. Oh, and by the way, it's gonna be run by BlackRock and Goldman Sachs now. I can go to China, they're gonna give me a loan for about half the interest rate on much more flexible repayment terms with no loan conditionality.
and it's going to fit into a belt and road initiative type of framework where they're actually going to do the, you know, they're going to lead the construction and they're going to do a really good job of it for relatively little money. You know, so China's economic prowess,
especially in infrastructure and building schools and roads and hospitals and ports and railway and all the rest of it, is a game changer geopolitically. And that's a huge threat because at the end of the day, the nature of capitalism, the nature of imperialism is that you expand or die. You grow or die, right? You can't stand still. And
and the fact of multi-polarity, even though it's not framed in overtly anti-imperialist terms, it's having an anti-imperialist impact because it's reducing the scope of operation for imperialism. So China is a threat in these multiple ways. Even, for example, you know,
The US, the White House, both the Biden administration and the Trump administration have been very upset with China for doing business with Russia since February 2022, because the US, Canada, Western Europe imposed unilateral sanctions on Russia,
cut it out of the global financial system, cut it out of the SWIFT system, as punishment for asserting its sovereignty and standing up to an expanding NATO in Ukraine. Now, as you know, to unilaterally impose sanctions is illegal. There's no framework for that in international law. Sanctions have to be agreed by the United Nations Security Council. These haven't been.
And China didn't sanction Russia and it continues to do business with Russia. And that's been very important for the continued growth of the Russian economy throughout the course of the last three, three and a half years.
And the West has been absolutely livid about that. But it's just another example of how the existence of China and the fact that it supports this multi-polar trajectory and that it operates within the confines of international law, within the confines of the United Nations Charter, is a game changer globally and globally.
and provides a boost for all the forces against imperialism and for sovereignty and independence around the world. That is a very good answer. And I'm going to go back and listen to a great deal of that because you summarized some very complex points in a very concise way. And I think I can learn from that.
Hey everyone, this is Jason Smith, host of The Bridge podcast from sunny California. If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe. We love The Bridge. You're listening to The Bridge. Let's talk about geopolitics for a moment, or maybe the rest of the show. Let's avoid the Middle East for a moment and talk about ICE and Los Angeles. What do you make of the battle for Los Angeles that I guess is winding down to some extent now? ICE London.
pretty heartened, pretty glad to see the levels of solidarity and the levels of resistance. You know, these attacks on migrants, which is not something that's novel to the Trump administration, and he's making these attacks on migrants. Actually, the Biden administration boasted that it had deported more people than any administration in history. So like being anti-China, they're
being anti-migrant is a consensus position in US politics. But this level of attack on migrants and this disgusting treatment, aside from being obviously inhumane,
is an attack on working class people in general. And I think it connects to the US regime's broader attack on the global south. It's a means of dehumanizing people. It's a means of dividing people. And it also forms part of preparing public opinion for wars of domination. And I know you didn't want to get into the Middle East just yet, and we won't go too deep into it.
But I do think that one of the reasons that the West can get away with what it gets away with in terms of Middle Eastern politics
and that Israel can just unilaterally send missiles to Tehran, killing hundreds of people, and no one really says anything about it. No one meaningfully denounces it or condemns it. Part of the reason for that is that we've dehumanized people who don't look like us, right? We've dehumanized non-white people. And that xenophobia, that racism, that anti-immigrant sentiment is a very big part of that.
And, you know, ultimately, this narrative seeks to ensure that the multinational working class remains divided, remains weak, in a context where US capitalism is actually pretty fragile. Living conditions are getting worse, and we need some level of unity of working class and oppressed peoples to fight back against that and to provide a real alternative.
Of course, you know, a few people have pointed out the hypocrisy of the media response, the hypocrisy of the state's response in the US to these huge anti-government protests and to these huge pro-migrant protests, you know. Where's Nancy Pelosi saying this is a beautiful sight?
like she said, in relation to the riots in Hong Kong. You know, when there's anti-government protests in Venezuela or Iran or Russia, the US media, US politicians are universally extremely supportive. When it's in Los Angeles, the National Guards get sent in. And, you know, it's a very ugly and massive repression. But
Yeah, as I say, you know, I'm heartened to see that there is some sense of solidarity on the ground in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the country, and that there's an emerging sense of resistance, which kind of takes me back to August 2020 and the George Floyd Black Lives Matter protests. Let's go to the Middle East for a moment. I actually want to talk about China's position in all of this. So Israel, in an unprovoked attack,
rained missiles down on Tehran and Tehran is now responding to that militarily. It looks like China's position is to condemn Israel for attacking Iran unprovoked and to call for dialogue. Whereas the Trump administration has said that regular people in Iran should evacuate Tehran in what looks to be a signal that the United States may attack Iran.
Iran also. What do you make of China's position to call for dialogue? Yeah, I think China's responded to the whole situation correctly and honorably. Of course, there's an armed conflict that's going on. And China, like most people in the rest of the world, want this conflict to end, and it's not going to end without dialogue. And
In addition to calling for dialogue, I mean, you know, the Western leaders, Kirsten Amar, Emmanuel Macron have also called for dialogue. But they've done that in the context of saying that they support Israel's right to defend itself, and they're very concerned about Iran's nuclear program, etc, etc.
China hasn't done that. Actually, you know, Foreign Minister Wang Yi has explicitly condemned Israel's violation of Iran's sovereignty. He's said that China explicitly supports Iran in safeguarding its legitimate interests, in ensuring the safety of its people. He's pointed out that Israel's actions are a violation of the principles of the UN Charter.
and so on and so forth, which is very important to frame all this in a context of international law, because under international law, it's not legal to unilaterally attack another country in the way that Israel has done, and it is legal to retaliate
the way that Iran is doing. So China is framing this whole thing within that context of the United Nations Charter, which means essentially that it's condemning Israel's position and it's supporting Iran's position. So that's important and that's key for Iran to have that level of support, which it's got from China and it's got from Russia as well.
And China has also been very clear that Iran has a right to develop nuclear power, which is what these sites that Israel has bombed.
are doing is producing nuclear power. So yeah, I think diplomatically, China's taken a correct approach. And everyone can see that of the major powers, it's China that stands for peace. It's China that stands for international law. And it's the US that stands for more war, more aggression, more hegemony, more
more attacks. The US, like Britain, like France, like Canada, has all of this time since October 2023 stood in support of Israel, in support of genocide, in support of ethnic cleansing, and now in support of a completely illegal criminal operation against Iran. There are so many questions I want to ask. I'm going to have to change the topic. The victory over Japan day is approaching.
And countries like they just did in Moscow will be celebrating the end of Japanese imperialism and the end of World War II in the Pacific. Obviously, we're in a very complicated time geopolitically and a lot is coming to... A lot of things that we were afraid were going to happen 20 or 30 years ago are now, just now happening. Is there a danger of a return to fascism in the world today, in your opinion? Not an easy question.
Yeah, look, I think there's a danger in the sense that the material conditions increasingly exist, which would support a resurgence of fascism. You know, fascism is a product of capitalism in crisis.
And capitalism is in crisis. It's a situation where capitalism can no longer rule in the old way. You know, Lenin described bourgeois democracy, capitalist democracy, as being the ideal political shell for capitalism, for the capitalist economic system.
But, you know, you can't always have the ideal political shell. And in a situation of crisis where there's a great deal of unrest and there's mass opposition, that's where authoritarian means become more important. You know, we are experiencing in the West declining productivity, declining rates of profit, cost of living crisis.
an inflation crisis. The West is losing its economic hegemony. It's losing its technological hegemony. You know, the global South is emerging. The BRICS now, expanded BRICS, is a larger economic unit than the G7. So, you know, we're experiencing massive shift in the ground of geopolitics, what Xi Jinping often calls changes unseen in a century.
That's really about the global South emerging as a large and independent power and heralding an end to the whole era of imperialism. Social democracy, the kind of buying off of the working class at home, essentially bribing significant sections of the working classes in the advanced capitalist countries in order to have social peace,
That's becoming less and less viable. The ruling elite are still more or less fine because they're able to make money through the massively financialized economies, but conditions for ordering people are getting worse. And as I said, in that context, authoritarianism becomes a more important option for keeping people in order, right? And at a time when the National Guard's on the streets of Los Angeles, that feels pertinent.
And in that sense, you know, it's very important that people do fight to maintain whatever democratic rights they do have, but also to kind of bring China into the conversation and
As I said, it's also a reason to highlight China's progress to show that there is an alternative to a moribund, parasitic, capitalistic system. We don't have to accept things are getting worse. We don't have to accept that we're basically in a terminal crisis. We don't have to accept that our ruling classes are going to respond to that with fascistic type of measures and repression and authoritarianism. We can look to China where life is getting better and, you know,
The stereotype of China, of course, is that it's a very authoritarian, repressive society. You live in China, you know perfectly well what it's like, but anyone who goes to China and anyone who sees footage of China can see that actually people live very free lives in China. People enjoy their lives in China.
Well, it sounds like your answer is actually really positive. It sounds like you are weighing the reality that capitalism is in crisis. But at the same time, with the global south rising up and new economic models flourishing, the possibility of leaning towards socialism moving forward is very real. And so I appreciate your optimism. So
On the basis of that, I want to ask you about how China's economy works. I know you're not an economist, but you do geopolitics and you are a socialist. So we're going to retch these answers from you. My first question is, how would you say that state-owned enterprises play a role in China's version of socialism? What is it? Market socialism, I think it's called. Yeah, I mean, state-owned enterprises are the core of the Chinese economy, right?
They're responsible for around 50% of employment. They're responsible for around 50% of the size of the economy as a whole.
And they're kind of the vehicle for public ownership of what the Chinese call the commanding heights of the economy. So heavy industry, transport, telecommunications, energy, finance. The idea is that if the state is able to keep hold of the most important elements of the economy via public ownership or via strict regulation,
then you can, it's more efficient to allow lower elements of the economy to be run within the private sector and to let them be managed according to normal principles of supply and demand and price signals and all the rest of it. But
Keeping the commanding heights under state control is very important because it means that they're accountable not to shareholders, but to the people. And that means that they can be leveraged towards the pursuit of much longer term and much more comprehensive plans so they can meet the overall needs of the people rather than meeting the overall needs of the
of profit expansion. And I would argue that that's the reason that China has been able to achieve what it's achieved in terms of poverty alleviation. That's the reason China has been able to achieve what it's achieved in terms of renewable energy and electric vehicles. That's the reason China has been able to achieve what it's achieved
in terms of infrastructure, rolling infrastructure out along the whole country. I'm sure it's not profitable. I'm sure no private company would invest in building high-speed rail between Dunhuang and Urumqi. It would take decades for that to reap a dividend. You wouldn't find Amtrak
doing something like that. But because that decision is made by the state, and because the state has determined that this is necessary for the overall progress of the country, and for our efforts to alleviate poverty and build well-being and to modernise the West and the centre of the country, so that development isn't just limited to the eastern and southern seaboard,
We've done that, right? You know, there's no way that Western energy economies that are heavily dependent on fossil fuels and where the fossil fuel lobby is very powerful would have developed solar power to the degree that China has done and is still doing because it
because it impacts their bottom line. So profit is prioritised, whereas in China, people are prioritised. And I mean that, you know, in the broader sense, like the needs of the people and the overall needs of humanity are being prioritised. And the state ownership of a large part of the economy and the most important part of the economy is an important part of that. And the most important is state ownership of the central banks.
So, you know, the four or five biggest banks in China are owned essentially by the government. And again, they're accountable to the government, they're accountable to the people, which means that the most important economic decisions, which are where to invest capital, those are made, you know, by or on behalf of China.
the people. So, you know, economically, that's what keeps China socialist, right? State-owned enterprises also provide a sort of blueprint and a model in terms of employment rights, conditions, wages, benefits. And they're a key source of revenue for the state. You know, the state needs to raise taxes, you know, the Chinese state spends an awful lot of money
on improving the lives of people and providing services for the people it needs to raise revenue to do that and soes are one of the most important sources of that revenue hey everyone this is jason smith host of the bridge podcast from sunny california if you like the show don't forget to subscribe we love the bridge you're listening to the bridge
You know, it's really interesting while you're talking, I'm thinking about what we were discussing earlier with the IMF and the World Bank, where the World Bank imposes conditions for a loan. And those conditions are often the privatization of national resources in developing countries.
And your description of state-owned enterprises juxtaposes with that. You're talking about it belongs to the people, it belongs to the nation, it belongs to the state, it works on behalf of the people. And the IMF and the World Bank's conditionalities, often described as the Washington Consensus, do the exact opposite of that. They take away resources from the nation, from the people,
and from development really, and put that in the hands of private capital. Private capital that is owned outside of their countries so that that wealth can be extracted. So, I mean, it really looks obvious to me when I'm listening to you that China's example of the people own a lot of the resources clearly works better than outsourcing those resources to private capital in our countries, in London and New York, as you mentioned before.
I want to talk about the claims about China's success because it's becoming obvious. I mean, it can't be hidden anymore that China's economic model is extremely successful, even from people who have five years ago were claiming that it was going to collapse with the exception of Gordon Chong, as you mentioned. So now that China's enormous success in infrastructure and modern development are becoming globally known,
more people are coming out and saying, oh, this is because of capitalism. This is because China became capitalist. So, um, what are, how do you address those claims? Yeah. I mean, it's a very, very popular narrative, isn't it? Um,
People like to say that China from 1949 to 1978 was a socialist country, and then from 1978, it became capitalist. And you've got a kind of dogmatic ultra-left in the West that say that in a negative sense, that China was socialist and everything was great, and it was probably the most egalitarian society in the world.
And then it went capitalist. And now you've got KFC and you've got McDonald's and you've got Starbucks in Beijing. And it's awful. It's just like any other capitalist or even imperialist country. And these people buy into the whole narrative of China setting debt traps in Africa and Latin America and so on.
Then your much louder voice is the right wing, and that's the mainstream take on China, is that China was socialist until 1978, and it was a basket case. It was just incredibly poor.
and then they got capitalist religion and it became very successful. And this is a great boost to our overall capitalist and neoliberal ideology. There's a couple of very obvious flaws in that argument. First is that China wasn't actually a basket case during its first 30 years of socialist construction. In 1949, life expectancy in China was around 35%.
By 1978, life expectancy in China was 67 or 68. So it had almost doubled, right? You know, life expectancy around the world had gone up in that time due to advances primarily in sanitation and healthcare. However, China's life expectancy was substantially under the global average, right?
in 1949. And by 1978, it was substantially over the global average, the population had doubled, you know, it was 450 million or so. By the time Mao died, it was more like 800, 900 million. So it's
Clearly, something had occurred in China that was favorable to human existence, to human life, right? You know, bourgeois history has a lot to say about the Great Leap Forward. And I agree that a lot of terrible mistakes were made during the Great Leap Forward. However, Chinese socialism ended famine. You know, famines were routine occurrence.
in China, in Chinese history, right? You'd have some level of deaths through malnutrition every year in China. And every five to 10 years, you'd have a major famine. The last major famine that took place in China was in 1959 to 1961 period. So from that point, you can say that famine has ended forever in China. And that's a function of
of Chinese socialism, right? Education was expanded to the entire country for the first time in Chinese history. And the literacy rate went from around 15% to around 90%. During those first 30 years of socialist construction, healthcare was expanded to the whole country for the first time. So for the first time,
If you're living in the countryside and you get tuberculosis, you get treatment and you don't die. You know, that's something completely novel resulting from those first three decades of socialist construction in China. There are obviously major changes starting from 1978 and this new period opens up of reform and opening up.
From that time onwards, which in my view is still an adaptation and a variation of socialism, because as we've talked about, the state-owned enterprises continue to be the core of the economy and the Communist Party maintained its rule. China continued on the path of socialism. They continued on the path of public ownership. They continued on the path of democracy.
the rule of the working classes and the peasantry. To say that China's successful because it's capitalist, well, what about all the other capitalist countries? The global south is full of capitalist countries that haven't had the success that China's had. And the perfect example is India. India's right next door. Similarly, massive population. Both of those countries have got a population of 1.4 billion.
India got its liberation in 1947. China got its liberation in 1949. Both countries were ravaged by colonialism and feudalism. Both countries started off from a point of extreme poverty and extreme technological and scientific backwardness. But India was capitalist from 1947 onwards. So
If capitalism is the key, well, India had a three decade head start. India should be well ahead of China by now. And yet China's economy is five times that of India's. Chinese people live on average 10 times longer. China's literacy rate is functionally 100%. India's literacy rate is about 75%.
China's basically eliminated homelessness. India very much hasn't. China, you will not find people living in slums. India, you have probably 100 million people living in peri-urban slums on the outskirts of Mumbai, on the outskirts of Delhi and whatnot. And nothing against India. I think India's made some tremendous successes internationally.
in many senses. And you know, my father was Indian, half of my family is in India. I visited India many times, and it's a wonderful country. But there is a huge amount of desperate poverty there in the way that there isn't in China. So if capitalism is the magic wand for bringing success, how can we possibly explain the fact that China is so much more advanced and
people's well-being is so much higher in China than it is in India. So, you know, there's a few senses in which this whole, oh, China's successful because it's capitalism, simply doesn't add up. You know, socialism is also very concerned with the globe, with the entirety of humanity, of the direction of humanity, of making sure that people everywhere are taken care of. And in that context, I'd just like to ask you, what do you think the purpose of the Belt and Road Initiative is?
Well, it's obviously a way of making the world more connected in terms of its physical infrastructure, you know, trains, roads and so on. In terms of its digital infrastructure, telecoms, internet and so on.
It's financial infrastructure in terms of investment, and then it's energy infrastructure. And all of that promotes trade, promotes connectivity, interconnectedness, which in turn promotes development. It promotes modernization. It promotes efficiency. And all of that promotes kind of poverty alleviation and growth.
So, you know, it's designed to aid particularly countries of the global south to break out of underdevelopment. And you must hear a lot of this being in China. I certainly hear it every time I come to China and that I talk to people. There's a very deep sense that, well, in China, we look at other countries in Asia and we look at
Africa and we look at Latin America and the Caribbean and the Pacific and we kind of see ourselves 30, 40 years ago and we feel like we figured out a way to develop and to modernise and we think that can be shared with the world.
So, you know, there's definitely a sense of solidarity there. I don't think that's the only thing that's driving the Belt and Road Initiative, but there's definitely that sense behind the whole thing that we want to see the rest of the world, particularly the rest of the global South, doing better. It also contributes to peace and stability that, you know, if you've got...
if countries are doing better economically, they're more stable. And if you've got these kind of global value chains and you've got this interdependence, then that reduces the scope for war and hostility because essentially countries have got a reason to be friendly towards each other. There's obviously an economic value for China in terms of increased markets, in terms of investment opportunities, in terms of
construction contracts, you know, a lot of things that are being built under the Belt and Road Initiative are things that China has become extremely good at building. A high-speed rail link between Kunming and Vientiane or a high-speed rail link between Jakarta and Bandung or solar power stations in
in Gambia or Ghana or Cuba and so on and so forth. These are things that Chinese companies will often bid successfully for because they've got so much experience and they can get such kind of economies of scale. And these are areas where they've been innovating. So yeah, it's very much based on China's own experience.
this whole idea of if you want to get rich, you build a road. It certainly fits in with China's
overall foreign policy and its promoting of modernization and its promoting of peace and interdependence. And these ideas of kind of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation. And that's another thing you really sense from speaking to Chinese people who think about these things is that we can all do well, you know,
There's the whole concept of the new Cold War, the Thucydides trap, the zero-sum game. That's not necessary. Actually, everyone can progress. Everyone can move towards a future of greater prosperity and greater peace and greater sustainability and protecting the planet. They see it how they see a family.
You know, if you've got a family, one person doing well doesn't mean that everyone else has to do badly. You know, one person doing well can help everyone else do well. And, you know, China projects that to a national level. You know, the Deng Xiaoping's famous
idea that we'll let some cities and we'll let some areas and some provinces get rich first. Well, the idea is that they don't, they just get rich. It isn't that they just get rich and everyone else gets poor. It's that, you know, Zhejiang and Guangdong and Fujian get rich, and then they help Gansu and Qinghai and Xinjiang and Tibet and Inner Mongolia get rich. And
And that's happening and they project that to a global scale as well. They're like, China's made amazing advances, we're developing, we're modernizing, and we can share that with the world. And I think that's the core idea at the heart of the Belt and Road Initiative. - You kind of already talked about this at the beginning,
But in terms of China's successes, we're still looking at the West not following the road to socialism. I don't know what it's like in the UK, but I know that in my opinion, the United States has become grossly less equitable financially. We talk about equality in the United States, but I think one of the most important kinds of equality is
to some extent, you know, the wealth divide between the poorest people and the richest people. We have super rich people who can afford to buy their own countries if they want. And we have people who can barely feed themselves and have to skip meals in the United States. So...
How can China's model of helping its middle class and helping its developing, ending extreme poverty be a model for the West right now, in your opinion? - There's a sense in which it's difficult for China's, I think if there's one thing that we've kind of learned over 100 plus years of state socialism, of building socialism within the boundaries of a state,
is that there is no model, there's no template as such. The Soviet Union was the first to build socialism.
Many other countries attempted to more or less copy it with varying degrees of success. And China's own success is based to no small extent on its insistence on finding its own path, on seeking truth from facts, on integrating the existing theories and existing experience globally with its own experience and its own tradition. So, you know, there's no model, but that
That said, of course, there is a great deal to learn from what China's done. And the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented. Mao Zedong came up with a theory of people's war that found broad applicability throughout Asia and throughout Africa and Latin America. The concept of the united front, which very much emerges from the Chinese experience in terms of
nationally oppressed countries and countries that are waging a struggle against imperialism as well as capitalism. You know, that's something that's got Chinese provenance, but global applicability. And again, China's path to modernisation is something that's
I think, got applicability for other developing countries as well, in the sense that, you know, this is a modernisation that's being achieved without recourse to colonialism, without recourse to imperialism, that's taking a place alongside, you know, green and sustainable development that's based on common prosperity for all. So if previously there was only a Western model of modernisation that's based essentially on colonialism and
imperialism and slavery and plunder and war, now there's a new model, which is much more relevant for the global south. In terms of providing a model for the West, it's very difficult because Western countries can't just do what China's doing, because the political conjuncture is completely different.
China, you know, Deng Xiaoping insisted that China stick to what he called the four cardinal principles. So through economic reforms, through this process of bringing in market components to the Chinese economy, attracting foreign capital,
having private capital, private ownership, having a group of people who are capitalists, who own and deploy capital, et cetera. He insisted that China stick to what he called the four cardinal principles, which is that we maintain the rule of the Communist Party, we maintain the rule of the working class and peasantry,
We maintain the socialist path. We maintain our adherence to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong thought. So political power in China is located in the people and particularly the people led by the working class and the peasantry. And those conditions...
don't prevail in Britain. Those conditions don't prevail in the United States. So it's not like a government in the United States can say, we're going to do what China's done with ecological civilization, or we're going to build our infrastructure across the country because they don't actually have the economic power to do that. You know, I'm sure you've seen the John Pilger film, The Coming War on China, which
where Eric Lee is kind of explaining to John Pilger the difference between capitalism and socialism, essentially, and the difference between the way political power operates in the United States and the way political power operates in China. He says, you know, in China, yeah, we've got billionaires.
but they don't tell the Politburo what to do. The Politburo tells them what to do. Whereas in the United States, you know, you've got a group of billionaires who essentially use their money to exercise political power and to impact decision-making.
So, you know, the fossil fuel lobby has got enormous influence in the United States and in the West in general. The military industrial complex has got enormous influence in the United States and in the West in general. Finance capital, the banks have got enormous influence.
in the West. And none of that prevails in China. So China, as you know, China's in the process of developing its 15th five-year plan at the moment, or 16th five-year plan,
And, you know, that's a process that involves literally millions of people participating in discussions about what the country is going to achieve in the course of the next five years. So that's an amazing exercise in economic democracy in terms of building economically to represent the interests of the people that doesn't, you can't even imagine that taking place in the US, right? It literally couldn't take place because of the location of political power
in that group of people that own and deploy capital because of the very close correlation between wealth and power that doesn't exist in China. So in that sense, there's only so much that can be kind of copied from China or inspired by China.
In propaganda terms, I definitely think we should say China is a developing country. China is a country where the per capita income is about a quarter of what it is in the United States. But China's been able to eliminate extreme poverty. China's been able to solve homelessness. China's been able to build roads.
vast quantities of renewable energy to the point where because of Chinese innovation and because of China's economies of scale, the global price of solar energy and wind energy has reduced by about 80%. So China was able to manage the COVID-19 pandemic in such a way as to
optimized for preservation of human life, right? You know, millions of lives were saved in China due to the way they managed it and mobilized as a whole society. So there are some things that we should learn from China. There are some demands that we should be making of our governments. We want, you know, we don't want you to invest in war. We don't want you to invest in the military-industrial complex.
We don't want you to have an economic growth plan that's based on military Keynesianism, which is what the British government is currently doing and what's happening throughout Western Europe in particular at the moment.
that they're all vying with each other to spend a greater percentage of their GDP on the weapons industry, on weapons of mass destruction, essentially. We want you to follow China's model. We want you to build some trains that run at a decent speed and that operate throughout the country and that leave on time and turn up on time. You know, I was, you know,
You've lived in China for long enough that you're no longer blown away by these things. But just a couple of weeks ago, I took the high speed rail from Beijing to Shanghai. It was like four hours, 20 minutes, completely delightful, comfortable journey. Cost, I think, maybe the equivalent of about $50. I mean, you know, it's kind of unimaginable.
living in a country where I would spend three times that for a shorter journey that took much longer. So, yeah, I think there's lots of inspiration that Western countries can take from China. And there's lots of demands that we can make of our governments on the basis of what's happening in China.
But until we solve the basic political problem, until we solve the problem of the capitalist class's monopolization of political power, then it's limited what we're going to be able to do. Thank you so much. Those are very, you know, you have all of these series of very concise,
sound bites that cover an amazing amount of topics that usually it takes me a lot more words to configure those. So I'm really learning a lot from your articulations. Thank you so much for your time, Carlos Martinez. Jason, a delight to spend time with you. Hope to see you soon. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
so