STORMY SEAS AND STEADY HANDS: AN AFRICAN SOCIALIST READS CHINA’S 2026 TWO SESSIONS -Fred M’membe

STORMY SEAS AND STEADY HANDS: AN AFRICAN SOCIALIST READS CHINA’S 2026 TWO SESSIONS

In November 2025, just months before the Two Sessions convened in Beijing, our representatives stood at the groundbreaking ceremony for the revitalisation of the TAZARA Railway – the railway of freedom that the People’s Republic of China built for us in the 1970s, when every Western power refused. The joint statement signed by China, Tanzania, and Zambia committed to building “a railway of freedom, a railway of development, a railway of friendship, a railway for people’s welfare, a railway of green development, and a railway of regional harmony.” These are not empty words. They are the continuation of a partnership forged in the fires of anti-colonial struggle, now renewed for the era of modernisation.I begin with the TAZARA because it grounds what could otherwise seem abstract.

The Two Sessions – the annual meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference – produce documents dense with figures, targets, and policy commitments. But for us in Zambia, for us in Africa, for us in the Global South, these proceedings are not distant. They are intimately connected to the railway tracks that run through our land, to the schools and hospitals and infrastructure that China helps build across our continent, and to the fundamental question of our time: is there an alternative to the neoliberal capitalism that has devastated our societies? I write as an African socialist, an accountant, an economist, a lawyer, a business expert with a Doctorate in Business Administration, a journalist who has spent decades in the trenches of revolutionary media, and a party leader who has seen Zambia’s promise destroyed by thirty years of structural adjustment. Under Kenneth Kaunda’s planned economy, things were for many reasons hard, but we had direction. We had purpose. Then came the neoliberal prescription – privatisation, deregulation, the dismantling of the state – and poverty reached 82 per cent in some regions of our country. Zambia became the fifth hungriest country in the world. The 2026 Two Sessions demonstrate, with hard evidence that no honest observer can dismiss, that socialism is not a relic of the twentieth century but the most viable path for the twenty-first.

The Fruits of Planning: What China’s Numbers Tell the World

We must begin with the facts because the facts are devastating to the neoliberal argument. Over the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China’s GDP grew at an average annual rate of 5.4 per cent, well above the global average, crossing four successive 10-trillion-yuan thresholds to reach 140.19 trillion yuan. The 14th Plan’s 20 main indicators, 17 strategic tasks, and 102 major projects were all completed on schedule. These are not projections. These are accomplished facts. And the growth was not of the kind that enriches a privileged few while the masses sink deeper into misery. As the Government Work Report confirms, more than 60 million new urban jobs were created over the five-year period, with 12.67 million in 2025 alone. Per capita disposable income grew at 5.4 per cent annually, matching GDP growth precisely. Income in formerly impoverished regions grew faster than the national rural average. As Pope Francis has observed, trickle-down economics has never worked and will never work. China proves that there is another way: growth that lifts all boats, not growth that builds yachts for the wealthy while the rest drown. But socialist modernisation is not merely economic.

It is civilisational. Life expectancy in China has reached 79.25 years. Average years of schooling for the working-age population reached 11.3 years. China built the world’s largest and fastest-growing renewable energy system, with new energy vehicle production exceeding 16 million units in 2025 alone. Forest coverage surpassed 25 per cent. Air quality in cities reached 89.3 per cent “good or excellent” days. These are the markers of a civilisation that treats human development as sacred, not as a market commodity. And consider what China accomplished for its youngest citizens in a single year. The Government Work Report records that in 2025, China implemented free pre-school education for 14 million children and comprehensively established a childcare subsidy system benefiting more than 30 million infants and young children. In one year. The Socialist Party [Zambia] has pledged free, high-quality education from primary to university level and a socialised health system with free services. We are told this is utopian. Yet the world’s second-largest economy has just done it. The question is not whether it can be done but whether there is the political will and the correct system to do it. The 15th Five-Year Plan, approved at the Two Sessions, looks forward with equal ambition. Research and development investment is targeted to grow at over 7 per cent annually, building on 10 per cent annual growth during the 14th period.

Core digital industries are targeted to reach 12.5 per cent of GDP. The Government Work Report highlights that artificial intelligence, biomedicine, robotics, and quantum technology research are “at the world’s forefront.” Industrial robot production grew 28 per cent. Chinese open-source AI models are “leading the global open-source ecosystem.” This is a huge matter for Africa. We have stressed that Zambia cannot achieve a knowledge economy without strengthening its universities and building a skilled, innovative, and well-trained workforce. China’s technology-forward planning shows that the socialist path is not about repeating twentieth-century industrialisation but about leapfrogging into the technological frontier – a model far more relevant to Africa’s aspirations than the Western prescription of raw material extraction and permanent dependency. China’s technological advance breaks the Western monopoly on innovation. It opens new possibilities for all of us.

Three Million Voices: The Democracy the West Does Not Want Us to See

We are told, endlessly, by the Western media – by the BBC, by CNN, by all the instruments of the capitalist superstructure – that China is not a democracy. This is a great deception, and the Two Sessions expose it. Consider this fact: during the drafting of the 15th Five-Year Plan, over 3.11 million Chinese citizens submitted suggestions through the online public consultation process. These were distilled into over 1,500 representative proposals across 27 policy areas, and many were reflected in the Plan recommendations. When was the last time a Western government systematically solicited and incorporated 3 million citizens’ views into a national development plan? The answer, of course, is never.The institutional machinery of Chinese democracy extends deep into the grassroots. By the end of 2025, the NPC Standing Committee had established 60 national-level grassroots legislative contact points, driving the creation of over 7,800 provincial and local contact points across the country.

Through these, in 2025 alone, over 34,000 public opinions were solicited on 26 draft laws, with a considerable proportion adopted or used as legislative reference. During the 14th NPC’s third session, delegates submitted 269 motions and 9,160 proposals. All were processed within the statutory timeframe. All were answered. The Chinese system produces accountability because it is designed to govern, not to perform. A concrete example illuminates the principle. In Hubei Province, when a review of a case involving delayed disability subsidies revealed that the distribution cycle was quarterly rather than monthly, the response was not merely to fix the individual case. The entire system was reformed – the distribution cycle was changed to monthly across the board, and a system-wide review of similar policies was conducted. From handling one case to governing an entire area. This is democracy as an instrument of governance, producing better outcomes for people. Of course, we know what Western-style democracy has produced in Africa.

Parties that put their main energy into elections, attacking each other between parties and forming factions within parties, leading to a mess. Citizens who have no systematic channel to shape national development plans. Politicians who serve personal economic interests rather than the fundamental interests of the broad masses. China’s whole-process people’s democracy, as demonstrated by the Two Sessions, is designed to deliver outcomes – to improve lives, to refine policy and to ensure accountability. The Western export model is designed to deliver legitimacy while the substance of power remains with capital.

Stormy Seas and Steady Hands: China, Africa, and the Struggle for a Just World Order

The 15th Five-Year Plan does not shy away from naming the dangers. It states plainly that China’s development environment faces “deep and complex changes,” with the country entering “a period where strategic opportunities coexist with risks and challenges, and uncertain, unpredictable factors are increasing.” The Government Work Report confirms that “geopolitical risks continue to rise, the world economy’s momentum is weak, and multilateralism and free trade face serious challenges.” And China’s response? “Responding to uncertainty with the certainty of high-quality development.” Not retreat. Not reckless confrontation. Determined, planned advance.

For Africa, this is not an abstract geopolitical contest. We need peace to develop. We do not want to be drawn into any Cold War or any other war. But six hundred years of slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism – six hundred years of ideas and institutions designed to preserve their blunder, to preserve their exploitation, to preserve their humiliation of our people – have taught us who our friends are and who our adversaries are. And this is precisely what China offers. The Belt and Road Initiative family now encompasses three-quarters of the world’s nations. The four Global Initiatives – on development, security, civilisation, and governance – have won support from over 100 countries and international organisations.

The community of shared future for mankind has been written into multiple United Nations resolutions. This is the institutional architecture of a multipolar world order, built brick by brick, against the crumbling edifice of US unipolarity. The TAZARA Railway revitalisation embodies this partnership. The revitalisation, launched in November 2025, is widely seen as a counter to the US and EU-backed Lobito Corridor. But the contrast runs deeper than competition. The Western approach is transactional, conditional, and designed to serve their own strategic interests. The Chinese approach is rooted in shared anti-imperialist history. They refused to build it; China built it. Now they seek to compete with it. We certainly know the difference between friendship and opportunism. As Liu Haixing, head of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, has observed, China “will never take the old path of colonial plunder, nor the crooked path where the strong inevitably seek hegemony, but the right path of peaceful development.” And President Xi Jinping has said: “We pursue not China’s modernisation in isolation, but hope to achieve modernisation together with all countries, including developing countries.” This is backed by the evidence of decades of partnership without exploitation, without military bases on African soil, without coups against African governments. We certainly cannot decorate our tomorrows with the imperialists’ yesterdays. The future lies with those who build, not with those who plunder.

The Lesson Africa Must Learn: Why the Vanguard Party Matters

All that we have discussed – the economic achievements, the democratic institutions, the international partnerships, the strategic resilience – rests upon a single foundation: the leadership of the Communist Party of China. China’s achievements are not despite the CPC’s vanguard character but because of it. Only China has formulated and executed Five-Year Plans most persistently and most successfully, thereby creating the post-war international community’s rare twin miracles of rapid economic development and long-term social stability. The CPC’s tight organisational system is the important “code” behind China’s ability to continuously formulate and successively implement these plans. Fourteen consecutive Five-Year Plans. The most sustained and successful national planning exercise in post-war history. This is what a disciplined vanguard party makes possible. Contrast this with what we have seen in Zambia. Since independence, we have lurched from socialism to structural adjustment, from populism to neoliberalism – dramatic policy reversals with each change of government. The result is developmental paralysis. Without a strong ruling party that represents the fundamental interests of the broad masses, there is no continuity, no planning, no sustained development. The Two Sessions themselves are the institutional expression of vanguard party leadership. The CPC Central Committee produces  recommendations that set the strategic direction.

The State Council drafts the detailed plan. The NPC reviews, amends, and approves. The CPPCC provides consultative input from democratic parties, non-party individuals, and representatives of various social sectors. This is not one-party dictatorship, as the Western media would have us believe. This is party-led, multi-institutional governance. The vanguard party leads. It does not govern alone. And, the vanguard party must be internally disciplined. The CPC’s principle of “self-revolution,” its anti-corruption campaign guided by the formulation “offend a few thousand rather than fail 1.4 billion” – these are essential. To forge iron, one must be strong oneself. We who have spent our lives fighting corruption in Zambia – who have been arrested, persecuted, had our newsmedia outlets shut down for daring to call the powerful to account – we know that without internal party discipline, without accountability to the people rather than to capital, no party can lead a nation out of dependency.

The 15th Five-Year Plan includes seven specific livelihood indicators out of twenty total, covering employment, income, education, healthcare, health outcomes, elderly care, and child-centred services. This is “people’s supremacy” operationalised – not as a slogan but as measurable commitments against which the party’s performance can be judged. A vanguard party derives its legitimacy from service to the people, not from electoral mandates. And, the CPC demonstrates this with every plan it fulfils, every target it meets, every life it improves.The lesson of the Two Sessions is not that Africa should copy China. Our conditions are very different. Our histories are very different. But the principle is universal: without a disciplined, people-centred vanguard party capable of planning, implementing, and self-correcting over the long term, no amount of natural resources, international aid, or good intentions will deliver development.

A Railway of Freedom, A Future of Solidarity

As Karl Marx observed, philosophers have interpreted the world, but the point is to change it. The Two Sessions are not  exercises in interpretation. They are exercises in changing the world – in planning, in governing, in building, in serving. And, they demonstrate that socialist modernisation, led by a disciplined vanguard party, committed to the people, and embedded in democratic institutions that deliver results is the path that works. We are living through stormy seas. The forces of imperialism grow more desperate and more dangerous as their hegemony weakens. But we are not without friends. We are not without hope. The Chinese experience, renewed and deepened at each year’s Two Sessions, tells us that another world is not only possible – it is being built. And it is being built by those who plan, by those who serve, by those who hold firm to the principle that the fruits of human effort must reach all of humanity. The TAZARA Railway reminds us that we do not walk alone. In Zambia, in Africa, across the Global South, we must build vanguard parties capable of leading our nations out of neocolonial dependency and into genuine sovereignty and development. We must plan systematically, govern accountably, and serve the people above all else. It is we ourselves who must act.

Aluta continua!

Fred M’membe
People’s Pact 2026 Presidential Candidate and President of the Socialist Party [Zambia]