China’s emergence as an economic powerhouse is a game-changer on a world scale today, with its Belt and Road Initiative, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BRICS+ trade alliance and numerous bilateral trade agreements. China is the top trading partner of over 120 countries and has become an alternative to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and their brutal structural adjustment, deregulation and privatization programs (SAPs). Every international gathering, trade agreement and aid shipment confirms that China is a lifeline for the Global South.
Russia is a country that doesn’t claim to even be building toward socialism. But for survival from the heaviest US-EU sanctions ever imposed anywhere has re-nationalized many industries, the banks, and raw materials. Sanctions on Russia hit their western oriented capitalists the hardest; western franchises and the whole western oriented managerial layer who administered them were wiped out by the west hoping the shock would collapse the government. It didn’t. Meanwhile the remnants of a large communist party pushes hard on holding on to social programs, which are better than anything here in the US.
Our speaker, Sara Flounders, is a longstanding political activist and author based in New York City. She is a contributing editor of Workers World Newspaper and a leader of the United National Antiwar Coalition, the International Action Center, and the SanctionsKill Campaign. She is the co-author and editor of numerous books, including Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 in China and the US, SANCTIONS – A Wrecking Ball in a Global Economy, and the upcoming anthology titled “China Changes Everything.”
Recent articles by Sara Flounders:
- “China – imperialist or socialist?” https://www.workers.org/2025/09/87812/
- “Widening war in West Asia — U.S. stands by as Israel bombs Qatar” https://www.workers.org/2025/09/87924/
- “U.S. threats against Korea in a changing world” https://www.workers.org/2025/07/87097/
