The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 15th May 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 15th May 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
The Middle East truce remains on hold as Donald Trump lands in Beijing for top-level talks with the Chinese leadership. The double blockade of the Persian Gulf continues and the price of oil on the spot market once again soars over the $100 a barrel mark as Iranian patrol boats clash with the American navy for control of the Strait of Hormuz. And the guns continue to blaze in Lebanon as the Hezbollah militia leads the fight-back to drive the Israelis out of their self-proclaimed “buffer zone” in southern Lebanon.
US President Donald Trump arrived in Beijing on Wednesday evening for a state visit to China, the first US presidential visit to China in almost nine years and Trump’s second since November 2017.
Last year Trump thought his tariffs and sanctions would indeed “Make America Great Again” and restore American hegemony over the entire Western world. Now that policy is in tatters with the knock-on effect of his trade war firing the cost-of-living crisis in the USA while the global imperialist camp that the USA once led has been split down the middle by his vacuous threats to take over Canada and Greenland.
The Chinese government opposed the American-led onslaught on Iran from the start, urging both the USA and Israel to cease-fire while their long-standing support for the Palestinians is well-known in Washington and Tel Aviv. But the people’s government is also committed to world peace and is always ready for talks on trade and development.
Trump’s entourage included the CEOs from big US conglomerates such as Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg and Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman. And that clearly was top of the agenda when Donald Trump met the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, this week.
China stands ready to work with the USA to expand co-operation and manage differences in the spirit of equality, respect and mutual benefit, and provide more stability and certainty for a transforming and volatile world. There is broad scope and enormous potential for pragmatic co-operation between China and the USA.
We look forward to deeper exchanges and co-operation between the Chinese and US business communities under the strategic guidance of the two heads of state, making new contributions to the stable, sound and sustainable development of China–US relations, a spokesperson for China Council for the Pro motion of International Trade said on Wednesday. Guided by the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, the two sides upheld the principle of mutual respect, peaceful co-existence and win–win co-operation.
At home millions upon millions of Americans pay the price for Trump’s MAGA madness as the price of petrol at the pump soars along with everything else in the shopping malls. Or as the American communist People’s World put it “in the midst of a week where the president continued to tell Americans what they know are lies about his Iran war and bragged about the multi-billion-dollar ballroom for which taxpayers are footing the bill, his National Economic Director Kevin Hassett declared that there is no cause for worry. Hassett correctly said last week credit card spending is ‘through the roof’, including charges for gasoline and other basic goods and then falsely claimed that this shows a ‘very, very strong’ economy.”
Now, trapped in a war of his own making, Trump clearly hopes to restore his standing at home and abroad in Beijing. Before this pathetic old fraud departed he told reporters that “good things are gonna happen” in China. Trump may well get the trade deals the American ruling class need to boost their flagging economy. Whether they’ll get much out of the Chinese over Iran is, however, doubtful…