Assistant general secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions HENRY FOWLER reports on day 1 from the GFTU’s residential Summer School at Quorn Grange Hotel
THE Communist Party of China (CPC) will open its 20th national congress on October 16. While Western media obsess about personalities, gossip and supposed intrigues, a sort of the West Wing meets I, Claudius, overlain with a not very well disguised coating of racist orientalism, this is actually a very serious political event.
How could it be otherwise? The CPC leads a country of some 1.4 billion people, the most populous on Earth. That country is the world’s second largest economy. By some methods of calculation, it may already be the largest.
As the CPC is a proudly Marxist party and leads a country engaged in a long-term socialist project, this five-yearly gathering is naturally of great interest to the communist and socialist movements.
The world’s largest communist party marked its 105th birthday this week — and remains true to its principles and firm in its course, says OLIVER VARGAS
BEN CHACKO welcomes a masterful analysis that puts class struggle back at the heart of our understanding of China’s revolution
STEPHEN BELL reports from a delegation that traced the steps of China’s socialist revolution from its first modest meetings to the Red Army’s epic 9,000km battle to create the modern nation that today defies every capitalist assumption
A chance find when clearing out our old office led us to renew a friendship across 5,000 miles and almost nine decades of history, explains ROGER McKENZIE


