Mr Hakainde Hichilema is leading a huge delegation to China. Let them see and understand what socialism with Chinese characteristics has achieved in all areas of human endeavour for the Chinese people and all humanity.

Today in most of our poor countries poverty looks intractable – impossible to end.

In our time it is only China that has truly managed to eradicate extreme poverty. And it is important to try to understand how and why China managed to achieve it.

As Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research aptly put it,

China’s achievement “is neither a miracle nor a coincidence, but rather a testament to its socialist commitment”.

It is a result of the socialist work that has gone on in the country since 1949. It is a product of the work of the Communist Party of China’s targeted poverty alleviation campaign that took place under President Xi Jinping, which included the participation of 800,000 cadres in surveys carried out in 2014, the dispatching of three million cadres who went to live in poor villages for at least two years, and the 1,800 cadres who died during the fight against poverty.

This enormous transformation, led by the CPC, re-established the party’s moral authority and brought the issue of socialism and social justice to the centre of Chinese poverty eradication discussions. It drew from the campaign-style governance of the Mao Zedong era.

The programme created a new rural infrastructure to eradicate extreme poverty that included raising to a very high level the participation of villagers in public affairs through their village committees.

Clearly, it is the principle of socialism and the socialist infrastructure – especially the CPC – that enabled China to eradicate extreme poverty. It will therefore be very difficult for the Chinese path to extreme poverty eradication to be seen as a model to be adopted by other countries unless these countries also ground their programmes on a socialist footing.

Extreme poverty in China was not eradicated by cash transfer schemes, it was eradicated by a socialist commitment to take ideas, such as dignity, and realise them in the world. It is socialism and only socialism that can help us eradicate extreme poverty.

We therefore urge Mr Hichilema to take advantage of this state visit and learn more about socialism so that he can understand us better and what our cause is all about.

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party