China and Venezuela: Building a Great Wall Against Imperialism and Hegemonism
Carlos Martinez, Orinoco Tribune, July 23, 2024 —
The following text is based on a presentation given by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez at a discussion forum titled The Emancipatory Struggle for Independence in Latin America, held on 18 July 2024 at the historic Casa Miranda in London, where the celebrated Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda lived from 1802 to 1810. The event was organised by the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and was hosted by His Excellency Ambassador Félix Plasencia González.
Carlos’s presentation focuses on the relationship between sovereignty and internationalism, and the importance of that dynamic to the ideology of the Bolivarian Revolution. He details the ways in which Venezuela has been a key protagonist of revolutionary internationalism, as well as some of the ways it has been a beneficiary of such internationalism. He explains that Venezuela’s geopolitical positioning “is based on a coherent worldview in which the primary contradiction in global politics is defined as that between US-led imperialism – determined to hold onto its hegemony and to pursue a Project for a New American Century – and the freedom-loving peoples of the world.”
Carlos concludes by discussing the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, first put forward by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1954, and which have since become a basic principle in international relations and a longstanding consensus of the peoples of the Global South. He opines that the five principles recognise a fundamental reality of the current stage of history: that “all the socialist countries, the developing countries, the countries of the Global South, the non-imperialist countries, have a common interest in opposing imperialism; in having the freedom to develop according to their own chosen path and to work towards meeting the needs of their people.” As such, “the five principles establish the norms for a multipolar world”.
The event was also addressed by Francisco Domínguez, secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign and member of the Friends of Socialist China advisory group. A summary of the event appeared in the popular Venezuelan newspaper Últimas Noticias.
Comrade-ambassador Félix Plasencia, friends and comrades, it’s an honour to be here with you this evening.
I would like to speak about a specific aspect of independence, which is: the relationship between sovereignty and internationalism.
To my mind this is a very important part of Venezuela’s political project since the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998. Venezuela has been fierce in defending its sovereignty, and it also has an exemplary record of internationalism and solidarity.
The two things are inextricably linked. And Chávez understood this in a very deep way, that sovereignty and independence are not the same as isolationism. And that to embrace internationalism does not mean to give up your sovereignty.
Indeed the opposite is the case: sovereignty cannot be won, and cannot be defended, outside of the context of the broadest possible unity against imperialism; against those countries that seek to deny others’ sovereignty.
The history of the last century provides ample evidence of this.
In his famous pamphlet on imperialism, Lenin observed that by the beginning of the 20th century, “the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers was completed”. Which is to say, the entire planet had been divided into two: a small number of imperialist countries on the one hand, and a vast number of oppressed countries on the other.
Lenin’s pamphlet was written in 1916. A year later, as you all know, a new factor emerged in global politics: the existence of a socialist country, leading in the following decades to the establishment of a socialist group of countries.
The existence of this socialist group of countries was in turn a powerful boost for the national liberation struggles in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean and elsewhere. These movements were able to win and defend their sovereignty – to struggle against imperialism – through the heroic efforts of their people of course, but combined with the solidarity of other countries, other movements. In the process they created a new group of liberated countries, such that the division of the world back that of a small number of imperialist countries on the one hand, and a vast number of non-imperialist countries on the other.
The brilliant Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh famously stated that “nothing is more precious than independence and freedom.” And the Vietnamese people won their independence and freedom, with the support of the Soviet Union, with the support of China, and with the solidarity of progressive movements and people the world over.
Studying the liberation wars in Vietnam, in Mozambique, in Angola, in Algeria, in Zimbabwe, in Guinea-Bissau, the movements leading these struggles were all profoundly internationalist, all looked for inspiration and support to the socialist countries, and all were grounded in the revolutionary internationalism that forms such a key component of Venezuela’s political ideology, of Chavismo.
Today the example that stands out is that of Palestine. The Palestinians are fighting for their sovereignty, for their independence, for their basic national rights; against colonialism, against racism, against apartheid, against ethnic cleansing. They are taking on a genocidal aggressor in Tel Aviv, backed by genocidal aggressors in Washington and London. But the people of the world stand with them. The entire Global South stands with them and demands their legitimate national rights be restored.
Venezuela as a protagonist of revolutionary internationalism
Venezuela is among the best and most consistent friends of Palestine.
President Nicolás Maduro correctly labelled Israel’s onslaught of Gaza as a genocide on 10 October 2023, long before the true nature of Israel’s brutal campaign was widely understood. He reiterated Venezuela’s unconditional support for Palestinian liberation, demanded an immediate ceasefire, and called for the commencement of peace negotiations towards Palestinian independence.
A few days later, on 15 October, Maduro announced that Venezuela would provide 30 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza, in the form of food and medicine. For a country itself suffering under crippling sanctions and siege, this is a profound act of solidarity.
What’s more, in January, Venezuela issued a statement backing South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
This solidarity is not new. In 2009, in response to Israel’s onslaught on Gaza that year, Venezuela expelled the Israeli ambassador. Chávez commented on television: “The Holocaust, that is what is happening right now in Gaza. The president of Israel at this moment should be taken to the International Criminal Court together with the President of the United States.”
Venezuela has been a major protagonist in calling on the countries of the world – particularly the imperialist countries – to comply with international law. For example it was Venezuela that initiated the Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter – along with China, Cuba, Russia, Iran, the DPRK and a number of other countries – in order to promote multilateralism and to demand an end to the West’s wars, illegal sanctions and efforts at destabilisation.
Initiating ALBA, CELAC and UNASUR, Venezuela has taken the lead in promoting continental integration and mutual support. Here we can very clearly see the dynamic between sovereignty and internationalism: the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean uniting and coordinating in collective defence of their sovereignty, in collective self-reliance, in collective rejection of unilateralism and hegemonism.
While the path of the Latin American ‘pink tide’ has seen some contradictions, diversions and setbacks, looking at the continent in 2024 reveals a very different picture to that which existed before the Bolivarian Revolution. Back then it was only Cuba, fighting valiantly in defence of its independence, in defence of socialism. Nowadays, Venezuela continues on the road to socialism, as do Nicaragua and Bolivia. Brazil has overcome a right-wing ‘lawfare’ coup and is back in the camp of progressive and anti-imperialist nations. Colombia and Mexico have left-wing governments for the first time in living memory – or ever, in the case of Colombia. And Venezuela has shown its support for, and solidarity with, all of these projects.
Venezuela always stands with peoples and countries that are targeted by the imperialists.
When the US and its allies went to war against Iraq, killing a million Iraqis and destroying a country in the process, Venezuela was one of the countries that stood with Iraq. Chávez was one of the few world leaders that had the courage to call George W Bush a war criminal, saying that he a “should be tried and thrown in prison for the rest of his days”.
When NATO carried out its war of regime change against Libya, Venezuela denounced the war in the strongest terms. Globally there was enormous pressure to denounce Muammar Gaddafi, to denounce Green Libya, to participate in the propaganda war against it. Chávez was not someone who succumbed to such pressure. He said: “I am not a coward, I am not fickle… I will remember Gaddafi all of my life as a great fighter, a revolutionary and a martyr.”
When Syria came under threat of regime change in 2011, Venezuela was quick to position itself in solidarity with that country’s legitimate government.
With the launch of Russia’s special military operation in February 2022, Venezuela was one of relatively few countries to immediately understand the underlying dynamics of the conflict – that Russia’s move was an extension of a war that had been going on since 2014, and that the root cause is NATO’s longstanding ambition of undermining, destabilising and dismembering Russia.
And of course, Venezuela in the period of the Bolivarian Revolution has always stood with China.
In 2006, Chávez angered imperialists and liberals the world over by describing the Chinese revolution as “one of the greatest events of the 20th century”, and saying that Chinese socialism is an example countering “Western leaders and governments that claim capitalism is the only alternative.”
Chávez responded to accusations that China is imperialist by saying: “China is large but it’s not an empire. China doesn’t trample on anyone, it hasn’t invaded anyone, it doesn’t go around dropping bombs on anyone.”
Venezuela consistently supports China in international forums, standing up for the One China principle, denouncing the New Cold War, denouncing NATO’s attempts to expand into Asia, denouncing attempts to stir up tensions in the Taiwan Strait, and defending China against disgraceful slanders in relation to Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
So, Venezuela has established itself as a consistently anti-imperialist state; a friend to the oppressed peoples of the world; a friend to the Global South and the socialist countries; a friend to the liberation struggles; a defender of peace and a supporter of the UN Charter and international law.
This positioning is based on a coherent worldview in which the primary contradiction in global politics is defined as that between US-led imperialism – determined to hold onto its hegemony and to pursue a Project for a New American Century – and the freedom-loving peoples of the world. Venezuela positions itself as part of a global movement attempting to bring an end to a 500-year history of colonialism, imperialism and racism.
And in this movement, unity is strength. Nothing is possible without unity around that principal contradiction; around opposing imperialism and building a multipolar world.
Venezuela as a beneficiary of revolutionary internationalism
Venezuela is not just a protagonist of revolutionary internationalism but a beneficiary of it as well.
The support of Cuba has been invaluable. Cuban expertise was indispensable in the project of ending illiteracy in Venezuela.
Misión Barrio Adentro brought Cuban doctors into Venezuelan communities where the mostly white and wealthy Venezuelan doctors trained before 1999 were not willing to work. The result is that Venezuela’s poorest communities had access to professional healthcare for the first time.
As an aside, the expansion of healthcare is a constant theme in socialism: one of the first major campaigns of the Chinese Revolution following liberation in 1949 was to expand healthcare access to the countryside, where 90 percent of the population lived and where, previously, to contract a serious disease was to receive a probable death sentence.
The other socialist and progressive countries in Latin America have also given support to Venezuela when it has been needed. The Brazilian Workers’ Party governments of Lula and Dilma, for example, have always defended Venezuela’s sovereignty and opposed US attempts at interference and destabilisation.
As for China, I think it’s fair to say that Chinese solidarity, cooperation and investment have been essential in helping Venezuela to build its economy, to modernise, to improve people’s living standards, and hence to maintain popular support for the revolutionary process.
President Maduro remarked last year that “relations between China and the Homeland of Bolívar have reached their highest level of mutual trust and collaboration ever.” And when Maduro visited China last September, Xi Jinping assured him that China will continue to firmly support Venezuela’s efforts to safeguard national sovereignty, dignity and social stability, as well as its just cause against external interference.
Returning home from China, having signed an all-weather strategic partnership between the two countries, Maduro announced a new social program focused on fighting poverty and inequality, which will be supported by China’s International Poverty Reduction Centre and which will take on board the relevant lessons from China’s historic and successful campaign against extreme poverty.
So, the China-Venezuela relationship really is, as Hugo Chávez described it, a “Great Wall against American hegemonism.”
Global community of shared future
Last week, the NATO warmongers celebrated the organisation’s 75th anniversary with a summit at which they announced their intention to expand their warmongering and hegemonic activities.
But there was a far more meaningful anniversary recently: at the end of June,
China marked the 70th anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.
These principles, which were first put forward by Premier Zhou Enlai in 1954, and which have since become a basic principle in international relations and a longstanding consensus of the peoples of the Global South, call for the following:
1- Respect for each country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty
2- Non-aggression
3- Non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs
4- Equality and co-operation for mutual benefit
5- Peaceful co-existence
These five principles, which have always served as the basis of Socialist China’s foreign policy, could be argued to have set a foreign policy template for independent, non-imperialist countries. They blazed a trail for countries to manage their differences, to treat each other as equals, to treat each other with respect, and to solve problems through dialogue rather than force.
The five principles also recognise that states with different social systems – capitalist or socialist, imperialist or non-imperialist – will very likely exist for an extended period and therefore must be able to coexist without descending into potentially devastating war.
Further, they recognise that all the socialist countries, the developing countries, the countries of the Global South, the non-imperialist countries, have a common interest in opposing imperialism; in having the freedom to develop according to their own chosen path and to work towards meeting the needs of their people.
Looking at countries such as Venezuela, China, Cuba, Russia, Iran, Nicaragua, Syria, Zimbabwe, Eritrea and the DPRK, it’s immediately obvious that they vary considerably in their economic, social and political systems. And yet they are all in the crosshairs of US-led imperialism, and their continued sovereignty demands collective resistance to that imperialism.
The five principles establish the norms for a multipolar world; in Chávez’s words, a “multicentric and pluripolar world”. A system of international relations where all countries are equal and sovereignty is respected. This is China’s vision too. This is the content of the “global community of shared future” proposed by Comrade Xi Jinping.
Only by uniting, overcoming imperialism and building a multipolar world will humanity be able to solve the enormous challenges it faces: the struggle for peace; the struggle to throw off the shackles of poverty and exploitation; the struggle against climate breakdown; managing the threats and opportunities of artificial intelligence; collectively defending against pandemics and antimicrobial resistance.
The Chinese leadership has described our common goal as building “an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity.”
That’s a vision we can rally around.
So today we celebrate Venezuela’s independence, we celebrate Venezuela’s internationalism, and we join hands towards a global community of shared future for humanity.