07/20/2025
China and America: For Men to Know Men — by Alice Li
"The modern history of the Chinese people is part of the world history of the previous century that has been marred by the development of the few at the cost of the many, by wars and the loss of human lives, and by dominance and immorality. Yet, it is also part of that wonderful history that has seen the greatest peoples’ struggles for freedom, the cooperation of once colonized nations, and the development of new principled relationships between men. To understand the current changes in the world now coming out of Asia and Africa, we need to understand the tasks and what remained unfinished of that revolutionary history. And in doing so, we are faced with the duty to know our revolutionary legacy so that we may join China and the world not in war, but in peace and brotherhood and answer the shared questions of modernity.
The world is forging new relationships and the American ruling elite faces a crisis of rule as it meets the distrust and contempt of its people. Yet the dying order and its elaborate network of media reporting, universities, and celebrities still continues to be able to stoke disunity and provoke war. What will the American people turn to in this transitional moment in history? Will we follow the narratives of the ruling elite and face the changes in the darker world with hostility? Or will we turn to a different set of relations and take up our responsibility to bring about peace and a new world in becoming? The revolutionary history and example of the Black Freedom Struggle in this country point to a path towards the latter.
In the 20th century, the American ruling elite suppressed not only the freedom struggles of Asia and Africa — in Korea, Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, the list goes on — but also the sympathies of the American people through the 'Red' scare. Yet despite the cost and dominant anti-human ideology, Black America has consistently sought to know and express solidarity with the darker world. In the 1950s, W.E.B. Du Bois was arrested and tried by the state for being a 'foreign agent' for his peace activities towards disarmament and abolishment of the atomic bomb. Yet he continued to visit, learn, and write of the democratic experiments of the Soviet Union and China, stating that the great tragedy of the age was that 'men know so little of men.' Paul Robeson advocated for the freedom of Black America and the unity of Africa. He sang the liberation songs of the Soviet Union and of China. For those activities, the state confiscated his passport for nearly eight years (which prevented him from attending Bandung in 1955). In spite of the persistent demonization of the North Vietnamese and glorification of war as patriotism, Muhammad Ali refused induction into the U.S. Armed Forces — 'my conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America… and shoot them for what?' As a result, he was convicted, fined, stripped of his Heavyweight Title, and suspended from boxing.
Du Bois, Robeson, and Ali were able to see through the fog of the American consensus for war because Black folk in America have seen both the facade and the truth of America. From the days of slavery through the promise of Reconstruction to the Third American Revolution, they have both heard and felt what America said about them — that Black folk are backwards and have no history — and known and strove for who they are — a people capable of building civilization. Through their religion, art, music, literature, and revolutionary history, Black Americans have sought to answer the question of 'What is the human and its relationship to others?' I argue that this profound endeavor and world view has created a new human being, able to see the downtrodden people of the world wherever they are in their struggle for peace and uplift."
Read the full essay: https://avantjournal.com/2025/07/03/china-and-america-for-men-to-know-men/
