DEW Gunasekera addressing the meeting at the headquarters in Borella

By Shiran Illanperuma

Sri Lankan political leaders from the Communist Party of Sri Lanka (CPSL) and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), joined 10 other political parties in lauding the centenary achievements of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at a virtual conference on Tuesday.

The Communist Party of Sri lanka (CPSL) hosted a multi-party virtual conference from its headquarters in Borella on Tuesday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CPC.

“We in Sri Lanka are having a fitting gathering to mark the great event. Not only all major political streams, but all major ethnic groups are represented at this historic meeting,” CPSL General Secretary G. Weerasignhe said in an introductory speech.

CPSL veteran and former General Secretary DEW Gunasekara conveyed revolutionary greetings to the CPC’s leadership and its nearly 92 million members. He said that the formation of the CPC in 1921, four years after the Russian Revolution, was a milestone in the entry of Marxism into Asia.

Gunasekera praised the CPC for its twenty-eight-year-long struggle which culminated in the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. “In applying Marxism to the concrete conditions of China, the CPC successfully brought about an alliance of anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic forces,” he said.

Gunasekara said that China had embarked on its first five-year plan amidst embargos, sanctions and continued military aggression in Asia. He said the acceleration of globalisation and technological advancement made the CPC re-evaluate the potential of capitalism, and the collapse of the Soviet Union reinforced the need for a new economic strategy.

“The self-critical assessment of the Chinese Communist Party with regard to the lost decades due to left deviationist policies was another salutary theoretical contribution made by the Chinese Communist Party. The three-pronged new economic strategy of planning, market and state intervention has been proved viable and effective by the 40 year accelerated development of the Chinese economy,” Gunasekara said.

He said that the CPC had brought radical change in the balance of economic order and contributed to the rise of Asia. He said that China’s resilience in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, its eradication of poverty, and investments via the Belt and Road Initiative have demonstrated the strength of the Chinese model and earned global admiration.

“All these remarkable achievements were possible due to the dynamic political leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. They have not only sharpened the main contradiction between imperialism and the world community but also intensified the internal contradictions in the imperialist camp,” Gunasekera said.

Tissa Vitarana, General Secretary of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), the oldest political party and first socialist party in Sri Lanka, conveyed fraternal greetings to the CPC. He thanked China for donating doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Sri Lanka, and said that the LSSP wishes to strengthen bonds with the CPC.

“The USA and its allies have unleashed a Chinaphobia claiming that your intention is military conquest, not just trade. The truth is obvious, the USA has 403 military bases around China alone, with over a thousand worldwide. China’s only foreign base is in Djibouti, to fight the Somalian pirates,” Vitarana said.

“The USA cannot tolerate the fact that one of the world’s poorest third world countries in the 19th century is surpassing it. The Third World countries of the collapsing capitalist world are turning to socialist China for leadership,” he said.

“Like you, we want to see an end to capitalism, with its poverty and its perpetual threat to peace, and to join you and other socialist and communist parties to establish socialism globally,” Vitarana said.

The CPSL lobbied post-independence governments to establish diplomatic ties with Communist countries including China. The CPSL aligned with Moscow during the Sino-Soviet split but maintained cordial relations with the CPC thereafter.