Despite decades of wars and occupations of countries abroad, the U.S. faces a global challenge it is unable to contain. This challenge is multifaceted, but three things stand out:

One is the relentless resistance of the people of Palestine and West Asia in elevating their struggle for a free Palestine. 

A second is the challenge from socialist China’s resistance to U.S. capitalist domination of the global economy.

The third is a growing awareness among young people that they have no future under capitalism, with its unchecked environmental catastrophes and its ready acceptance of fascist politicians. 

A key challenge for the party and the movements we are part of is how to encourage young activists and workers to develop a more global outlook when it comes to capitalism and imperialism and to see why socialism offers the solution.

Demands are important

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is the most popular demand for Palestine and one that gets the most pushback from the Zionists. This demand doesn’t just raise opposition to the ongoing genocide in Gaza — it supports the future goal for Palestinians. Demands are important.

As we oppose the threat of imperialist war against China, we need to raise awareness about transformation and resulting gains made by socialism in China.

Imperialist propaganda puts an equal sign between the U.S. and China as “superpowers” — as if they are both capitalist countries. Corporate media pundits and politicians promote the lies that “China is repressive, that their economy is failing, that there is widespread unemployment, no opportunities for young people, etc.” It’s like they are looking in a mirror where what is reflected back are the conditions in the U.S., not China.

This propaganda is all part of the ongoing and growing U.S. military campaign against China going back to the “Pivot to Asia” designed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton under President Barack Obama in 2011. Since then both bourgeois parties have played a part, maintaining the deployment of troops to the Pacific with U.S. military bases encircling China.

Trump’s tariffs against China are just a continuation of this.

The tariff struggle has laid bare the fundamental differences between the economies of the U.S. and China. Trump’s “grand encirclement” strategy of using tariffs to isolate and weaken China is backfiring, forcing him to pull back the threatened 145% tariffs on China.

According to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump hoped to pressure Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and India to follow the U.S. and “approach China as a group.” That strategy failed. Trump’s tariff threats, trade war and other aggressive policies are uniting much of the world against the United States.

On May 4 it was China, along with Japan, South Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations which issued a joint statement to “Strengthen Regional Financial Cooperation.” Meanwhile, China is even deepening its cooperation with European countries — on top of already existing alliances like BRICS.

Two simple facts say a lot: 

• China is the number one trading partner of two-thirds — over 120 — of the world’s countries.
• U.S. imports and exports now comprise less than one-fifth of global trade. The days of U.S. trade dominance have passed. [In 2024 it was 17%; in 1990 it was 20.5%; in 1960 it was 43.3%.]

The U.S. ruling class wants to isolate China, but it will end up isolating itself.

The U.S. has a dying and increasingly chaotic capitalist system, prioritized by the drive for profits. China, on the other hand, has a planned economy, first using the expertise of western technology to reach a stage of development that could meet its people’s needs, but increasingly developing its own technologies that have allowed them to raise the living standards for everyone.

Although there are individual capitalists in China, it is a system based on socialism — where production benefits the majority, not just a handful of billionaires.

It is essential to see China as a socialist country and recognize the importance of defending it from U.S. threats of war. Rather than just looking in the past for examples of a revolutionary movement to emulate, young activists, and all workers, need to look to China as an example of an ongoing revolution that makes more progress possible.

In his May 13 article “Trump’s Tariffs and the New Cold War on China,”  Carlos Martinez notes: “China’s rise disrupts the whole imperialist system. It gets in the way of the relationship the U.S. wants to have with the rest of the world, whereby it can design the global economic and financial system in its own interests.” (SocialistChina.org)

As we witnessed at the start of NATO’s 2022 war in Ukraine, China’s rise offered a way for Russia to neutralize unilateral sanctions. China’s economy provided countries alternatives to dependency on conditional loans from the IMF and World Bank.

China’s socialist system mobilized vast resources for major undertakings to meet people’s needs — whether dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic or reducing the impact of global warming by moving away from reliance on fossil fuels. China’s economic growth is at the point where it’s now a science and technology powerhouse, a global leader in telecommunications, in advanced manufacturing, in infrastructure construction, in space exploration, in supercomputing, in quantum computing, in renewable energy, in electric vehicles and many other fields.

While we can turn to China as an example of the superiority of socialism, Trump’s failed tariff war isn’t the only weapon the imperialists are willing to use against China. The Biden administration and now the Trump regime have never hidden their intent to try to encircle China militarily, even discussing using nuclear weapons.

History tells us that economic wars can quickly turn into militarized wars. Our party’s task is to stop this from happening.

Defend socialism!