What does the rise of socialist China offer to the Global South? Relations with China have expanded the choices available to developing countries and there is great hope that such partnerships can support industrialisation. However, meaningful advances in development will not be attainable merely through relations with China. To overcome the profound problems of hunger, unemployment, and insufficient access to healthcare, housing, and education, it is necessary to strengthen national popular projects with broad participation from progressive social sectors.

After the end of the Cold War, socialism suffered significant global setbacks. Despite this, a new wave of socialism has gradually emerged. Through decades of reform and opening up, China has incorporated a market economy into its socialist system. China’s rise has generated tremendous interest in the country’s path of development and the socialist market economy. As capitalism faces its most severe crisis in a century, there are opportunities for a new wave of socialist development.

The world has come a long way since the mid-nineteenth century, when scientific socialism emerged in Europe. Contrary to initial expectations, socialism did not emerge in the developed capitalist countries, but in the underdeveloped colonies and semi-colonies, such as China. Faced with challenges that could not be answered by classical theories of socialism, China had to develop its own solutions. Having attained significant achievements in modernisation, China must now reach a higher level of socialist development and surpass capitalism