China demonstrates the superiority of socialism.
Speech to the symposium hosted by the Chinese Embassy in London for Ambassador Zheng Zeguang to brief on the recently concluded annual ‘Two Sessions’ held in Beijing.
19 March 2026.
Your Excellency Ambassador Zheng Zeguang
Colleagues and Friends
First, on behalf of Friends of Socialist China, I’d like to thank you for your kind invitation to this important symposium.
We have heard a comprehensive and thorough exposition of this year’s Two Sessions and their significance from the Ambassador as well as enlightening insights from other friends in their contributions to our deliberations.
In the few minutes at my disposal, I’d like to make some observations on China’s growth trajectory and situate these in the comparative framework of the situation facing us in our own country.
As we have heard and read, China’s GDP growth rate last year was 5%. And the target set for 2026, the first year of the 15th Five Year Plan, is within the range of 4.5-5%.
Predictably, this has given a fresh impetus to the ‘China collapse’ industry. Perhaps one of the few growth industries still left in the West, its share price boosted by an appropriate front cover of the Economist, about once every four months on average.
Thus, on 5 March, the BBC reported:
“China has cut its annual economic growth target to a range of 4.5%-5%, the lowest expansion goal since 1991 as it grapples with challenges both at home and abroad.
“Beijing aims to reshape its economy as it faces issues like weak consumption, a shrinking population, an ongoing property crisis, global trade tensions and an energy crunch due to the Iran war.”
I feel pretty confident in asserting that one could find an equivalent quote for any year over the last three or more decades.
And the BBC is at the relatively sober end of the scale.
After all, we still have one Gordon Chang presented to us as a China expert. The man who wrote in the introduction to his book, ‘The Coming Collapse of China’, published in 2001:
“The end of the modern Chinese state is near. The People’s Republic has five years, perhaps ten, before it falls.”
Ten years later he acknowledged that his timing had been out – but only by one year.
He is scheduled to make doubtless the same prediction, yet again, as a renowned expert, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas next week.
Looking more seriously at China’s growth and the targets set it is true of course that the years of stellar annual growth in double figures now lie in China’s past.
There are many reasons for this, but I think two of the most important are first that the more an economy grows in size, the more it becomes both more difficult and less necessary to attain high rates of growth, not least in terms of measuring the actual amount of growth in absolute terms.
Secondly, relatedly and above all more profoundly, as President Xi Jinping has repeatedly made clear, the new stage of China’s development does not principally rest on absolute growth but rather on green and sustainable growth, the growth of new high quality productive forces, on enhancing self-reliance, not least in innovation and R&D, and on meeting the increasing needs and aspirations of the majority of the people.
But in assessing China’s growth and the prospects for its economy, it is not inappropriate, not least given the claims and assertions of our media and the observations of many so-called experts, to make some comparison with our own situation.
After all, the British Prime Minister’s website declares:
“Economic growth is the number one mission of the government. Growth will fund our public services, enable investment in our hospitals and schools, and, most importantly, raise living standards for everyone.”
So, how do we compare?
On February 2, EY predicted that UK growth in 2026 would be 0.9%.
On December 30, 2025, PwC put it at 1.2%.
While, on December 1, 2025, KPMG had put it at 1%.
On February 12, the Office of National Statistics reported that the growth rate for Q4 2025 had been 0.1%.
As already mentioned, the more an economy grows, the more one can expect the rate of growth to decline.
However, Georank figures, updated on January 3 this year, list China as the world’s second-largest economy, with a total value of $18.7 trillion. And the UK as the sixth-largest, with a total value of $3.69 trillion.
Perhaps we should, therefore, be a bit less disparaging of China’s achievements and prospects and a bit more modest regarding our own.
Perhaps we should even concede that we have something to learn from China.
It must also be pointed out that all the above projections for UK economic growth predate the February 28 unprovoked launch of the brutal US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran. A war that is already wreaking havoc on the global economy.
The full impact of this on the UK’s prospects remains to be assessed but can only be negative.
After all, a 28 October 2025 press release from HM Treasury stated:
“British business and jobs are set to benefit from a £6.4 billion boost after Chancellor Rachel Reeves helped secure a major two-way trade and investment package during a landmark visit to Saudi Arabia.
“Deepening ties between the two countries in this way will open up more opportunities for businesses, create new jobs and kickstart economic growth that will boost living standards for British people.”
Reeves herself was quoted as saying: “The £6.4 billion package of new two-way trade, business, and investment commitments will turbocharge business opportunity and create thousands of jobs at home – key ingredients for kickstarting economic growth.”
Perhaps not so much now.
What we can see from the calm and measured confidence represented by China’s Two Sessions on the one hand, and our flailing and stumbling from one crisis to another on the other hand, is the veracity and farsightedness of these two observations by Deng Xiaoping, the first from November 1979 and the second from June 1984.
“We believe that socialism is superior to capitalism. This superiority should be demonstrated in that socialism provides more favourable conditions for expanding the productive forces than capitalism does.”
“The fundamental task for the socialist stage is to develop the productive forces. The superiority of the socialist system is demonstrated, in the final analysis, by faster and greater development of those forces than under the capitalist system.”
Thank you for your attention.
