by Carlos Martinez, published on Friends of Socialist China, June 27, 2025
Friends of Socialist China was among the organisers of a hybrid event in Portland, Oregon (US), held on 22 June 2025, discussing Kyle Ferrana’s important book Why the World Needs China.
In his speech (delivered via Zoom), Carlos Martinez endorsed the central thesis of the book, arguing that China represents a global vision centred around peace, progress and sustainable development; whereas the US and its allies represent a global vision centred around imperialism, hegemony, war, ecocide and chaos.
Discussing recent developments in West Asia, in particular the US-Israeli criminal attacks on Iran and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Carlos highlighted China’s constructive role in the region, including its mediation between Iran and Saudi Arabia and its support for Palestinian unity. He linked the attacks on Iran with the West’s continuing efforts to destabilise China and broader imperialist resistance against a rising multipolar world.
Emphasising the need for global solidarity, Carlos called for building “a global united front composed of the socialist countries, the national liberation movements, the anti-imperialist forces of the Global South, and the progressive forces in the advanced capitalist countries”, for supporting the forces of liberation worldwide, and for supporting the socialist countries – “and particularly China, as the largest and most advanced socialist country, as the country which is at the core of the emerging multipolar system”.
The video of the speech is embedded below, followed by the text.
“Why the World Needs China” is the somewhat provocative title of Kyle’s book.
But in my view the essential correctness of this title is becoming clearer and clearer with every passing day, and specifically with every despicable act of aggression carried out by the United States and its Israeli proxy against the people of Palestine, of Iran, of Yemen and of Lebanon.
As you all know, last night the US military openly joined Israel’s criminal war against Iran, bombing three nuclear facilities. I say “openly joined the war”, because the fact is that the US and its allies been providing weapons, intelligence, logistical support, war propaganda and diplomatic cover from the very beginning – both for this war on Iran and for the genocidal assault on Gaza.
The whole world can increasingly see what the United States and its allies represent, and increasingly the whole world can see what China represents. And these are two vastly different visions of the future of the world, one put forward by the capitalist class in the United States, one put forward by the working class in China.
The US is proposing a Project for a New American Century. This neoconservative notion – originally associated with notorious hawks such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney – has become a consensus position in mainstream US politics, adhered to by all administrations, Republican and Democrat alike. It’s a fundamentally hegemonist, imperialist proposal; a proposal for spreading death and destruction for the sake of projecting the US’s domination of the 20th century into the 21st century.
China on the other hand proposes a Global Community of Shared Future for Humanity. The starting point for this vision is the United Nations Charter; international law; the principles of peaceful coexistence. It’s based on the understanding that humanity only has one home – Earth – and that peace, sustainability and common prosperity can only be built on the basis of solidarity and cooperation. It’s based on an understanding that imperialism, hegemonism and racism are driving humanity not towards common prosperity but common destruction.
We can compare China’s engagement with the West Asia region with that of the United States. Where the US stands for conflict and chaos, China stands for peace and justice.
Within hours of the US’s strikes against Iran’s civilian nuclear energy infrastructure last night, China issued a firm condemnation, pointing out that such actions seriously violate international law. China was joined in this condemnation, by the way, by Russia, Cuba, Venezuela and several other countries; whereas US allies such as Britain, France, Germany and Australia voiced their support for the US’s criminal acts.
In 2023, China mediated a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia – an extremely difficult and complex piece of diplomacy conducted with a view to building peace, stability and cooperation.
From the beginning of the Gaza genocide, China has been a loud and consistent voice in the international community condemning Israel’s onslaught and demanding an immediate, unconditional, unilateral ceasefire and withdrawal.
In 2024, China brought together 14 Palestinian factions – including Hamas, Fatah, the PFLP, the DFLP, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others – in Beijing for reconciliation and to establish a platform for unity in the national liberation struggle. Foreign Minister Wang Yi said of that declaration: “Only when Palestinian factions speak as one can the voice of justice be loud and clear, and only when they join hands and march forward shoulder to shoulder can they succeed in their national liberation cause.”
Moving a bit further East from Gaza, in Iraq, there’s a popular saying: “the US bombs, while China builds”. Take the case of Iraqi schools. The US bombed literally hundreds of schools during the Iraq War from 2003. China is currently building literally thousands of schools in Iraq.
While the US has stopped at nothing to sanction and suffocate Iran, to prevent its sovereign development and to stand in the way of its solidarity with Palestine, the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Iran have steadily deepened their cooperation in recent years.
In 2021, the two countries signed a 25-year cooperation agreement including hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese investment in the Iranian economy – in energy, in infrastructure, transport, digital technology, advanced industry and more. This deal is widely considered as a response to the West’s illegal sanctions, providing a lifeline to Iran.
Iran has joined BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Belt and Road Initiative. It’s very much aligned with the vision of a Global Community of Shared Future.
Actually, this blossoming relationship provides an important clue as to why Iran is being targeted for war and regime change. Well, there are two key reasons, that are themselves related.
First, Iran is the state that has done most to provide support – actual, material support – to the Palestinian people in their heroic struggle for national liberation and to put an end to Israel’s genocide.
Second, Iran is an important component of an emerging multipolar world order, of which China is very much the driving force, and which poses a very real threat to the survival of the imperialist world system.
The reason those things are related, by the way, is that a truly independent, sovereign Palestine would also inevitably be part of a multipolar world, aligned with the forces of peace and progress globally. That’s why the imperialists are so adamant that such a state must never come into existence.
Such a multipolar world has been long in the making. Kyle’s book quotes the China-Russia Joint Declaration on a Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order, from 1997, describing a system of international relations in which “every country has the right independently to choose its path of development in the light of its own specific conditions and without interference from other States. Differences in their social systems, ideologies and value systems must not become an obstacle to the development of normal relations between States. All countries, large or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are equal members of the international community. No country should seek hegemony, engage in power politics or monopolise international affairs.”
This is the world we need, this is the world China is working to develop, and that’s why the world needs China!
What we’re seeing in West Asia, and further afield, is the imperialist world order, led by the US, using ever more desperate measures to fight back against this multipolar trajectory.
I said at a meeting last month about the tariff war that it’s going to fail in both its stated objectives and its real objectives, and that “the obvious concern following on from that is that US imperialism’s next weapon against China may be not be a metaphorical one; that the New Cold War will turn hot.”
This isn’t a matter of policy as such; it isn’t a matter of badly-raised, evil people in positions of power. It’s about the basic economic imperatives of imperialism. As Kyle writes in his book: “In order to grow, the Western bourgeoisie must eventually subdue China. If it cannot do so by subversion, sabotage, and trade manipulation, it will try to do so by force.”
This is what we’re starting to see. The deployment of every kind of weapon against all forces that work against US imperialism, that work against the Project for a New American Century.
And while China and other countries are catching up economically – and while BRICS has overtaken the G7 in terms of economic size, and while China is catching up in terms of science and technology, and while the Global South in particular is increasingly united around a strategy of asserting its sovereignty and putting an end to the 500-year-old system of colonialism and imperialism – the fact is that the US still broadly speaking retains military hegemony.
The US has around 800 overseas military bases. It has hundreds of thousands of troops deployed around the world, as well as every type of sophisticated weaponry. It has military alliances in the form of NATO and AUKUS. It’s at war against Russia, against Iran, against Palestine, against Yemen. It’s deepening its campaign of encirclement against China.
From a standpoint of basic materialism, we can’t ignore the role played by the US’s military hegemony.
And yet we also should’t imagine that this military strength means that our side is defeated and we should simply give up. As Mao Zedong famously said in 1970 in relation to the war then raging in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia: “A weak nation can defeat a strong, a small nation can defeat a big nation. The people of a small country can certainly defeat aggression by a big country, if only they dare to rise in struggle, take up arms and grasp in their own hands the destiny of their country. This is a law of history.”
A global united front composed of the socialist countries, the national liberation movements, the anti-imperialist forces of the Global South, and the progressive forces in the advanced capitalist countries can achieve miraculous things.
And that’s where we come in. We must work to build powerful mass movements in our own countries and engage in that global united front.
We must support the forces of liberation worldwide.
We must support the socialist countries – and particularly China, as the largest and most advanced socialist country, as the country which is at the core of the emerging multipolar system. As Deng Xiaoping said in 1985: “The stronger China grows, the better the chances are for preserving world peace”. In my view this remains very true and very relevant. We have to counter the propaganda war against China, because China is our strategic ally in the pursuit of a better, fairer, more peaceful, more equal, more prosperous, more sustainable world.
And Kyle’s book, Why the World Needs China, is a really important contribution towards these goals.