The relationship of three Spanish parties with Chinese communism and the exception of Vox

Is it normal and acceptable for parties that call themselves democratic to have a friendly relationship with the single party of a totalitarian regime?

Some very different guests: Vox with democrats, PSOE and PP with the CPC
The illegal police stations of communist China in Spain and the silence of Sánchez

The links between the CPC and the PSOE

This Tuesday, August 20, Juan Lobato, leader of the PSOE in the Community of Madrid, met with an important leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), during a visit to the Asian country. At that meeting, Lobato and the rest of the members of the Spanish socialist delegation were received by Liu Jianchao, whom Lobato referred to as "minister of the IDCPC" in an affectionate message of thanks "for his welcome and extensive meeting."

In case anyone doesn't know, the acronym "IDCPC" stands for "International Department of the Communist Party of China", in English, a department headed by Liu Jianchao. By presenting him as a minister from a department with a name that was too long and needed to be summarized with acronyms, Lobato perhaps wanted to avoid people knowing that he was meeting with a leader of the single party of a dictatorship, but the two photos of the meeting that the Spanish socialist leader published were already quite revealing:

In the images we see the CPC flag together with the flag of the People's Republic of China, the official name of that dictatorship. This is not the first meeting between the Spanish socialists and the Chinese communists: in May, María Jesús Montero, First Vice President of the Government and Minister of Finance, received a CPC delegation in another cordial meeting held at the national headquarters of the PSOE. Pedro Sánchez's own party announced the meeting on its official website, publishing these photos of the event:

The relationship between the PSOE and the CPC goes back a long way. In 2006, two years after the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero came to power in Spain, the PSOE and the CPC signed a "Memorandum of Collaboration". Two years later, the PSOE announced a meeting with the CPC "to strengthen their relations". The meeting held in Spain was attended by the then Deputy Secretary General of the PSOE, José Blanco, the Secretary of Organization, Leire Pajín, and the Secretary of International Policy and Cooperation, Elena Valenciano.

In 2009, the PSOE and the CPC held a new meeting in which they agreed to "continue strengthening their relations" , once again with the attendance of José Blanco and Leire Pajín. In July 2011, the PSOE met again with CPC leaders, this time in China , accompanying a delegation from the Party of European Socialists.

In 2012, the Federal Executive Committee of the PSOE issued a report for its 38th Congress in which it indicated the following: "We have strengthened the relationship with the Communist Party of China, establishing a party-to-party relationship, a relationship aware of the differences between our systems."

In July 2015, the official Xinhua news agency of the Chinese communist dictatorship reported on a new meeting between the PSOE and the CPC in Madrid, this time with the participation of the PSOE Secretary General, Pedro Sánchez. The Chinese agency stated the following about this meeting: "Sanchez said that the PSOE attaches great importance to its relations with the CPC, and it is precisely during the PSOE government that Spain and China established the ties of the comprehensive strategic partnership". The PSOE website did not report on this meeting.

The links between the CPC and the People's Party

The PSOE is not the only one of the major Spanish parties that has ties to the CPC. Let us remember that in 2011 the Popular Party (PP) received a delegation from the Chinese single party at its national headquarters in Madrid, a meeting that was attended by Esteban González Pons, then a national deputy of the PP, as we can see in this photo of the meeting published by this party:

In 2013, the then general secretary of the PP, María Dolores Cospedal, signed a memorandum of "understanding, exchange and cooperation" between the PP and the CPC, in a meeting with Wang Jiarui, then head of the international department of the Chinese single party. Cospedal traveled to China accompanied by a PP delegation that included Esteban González Pons, then vice-secretary of Studies and Programs.

In August 2017, the PP held a new meeting in China with the CPC, again with the participation of Esteban González Pons (this is the third time), this time acting as PP spokesperson and first vice-president of the European People's Party group in the European Parliament. This photo of the meeting was published by the PP website.

Furthermore, in May 2024, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, president of the PP of Andalusia and president of the Junta de Andalucía, received Yin Li, member of the political bureau of the Central Committee of the CPC, who the day before had been received by the PSOE in Madrid, as we saw above. The Andalusian president published the photos of the cordial meeting, but said that it was "a delegation from the Political Bureau of China", without mentioning that they were members of the single party of that dictatorship.

The links between Sumar and the CPC through the PCE

On the other hand, Sumar, the far-left coalition that governs Spain together with the PSOE, has links with the CPC through the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), the party to which Vice President Yolanda Díaz and Minister Sira Rego belong. Just as happened before with Izquierda Unida, Sumar functions in fact as a new electoral brand for the PCE.

The relationship between the PCE and the CPC also goes back a long way. In July 2020, "Mundo Obrero", the official newspaper of the PCE, stated: "Enrique Santiago (Secretary General of the PCE) highlighted the strategic importance of the relations between the Communist Party of China and the Communist Party of Spain." This statement was made on the occasion of the inauguration of the "Belt and Road Research and Development Center" (CET), "in order to create synergies and analysis of the most ambitious geopolitical proposal linked to the People's Republic of China."

In October 2019, the PCE published a manifesto entitled "70 years with the People's Republic of China: for peace, freedom, progress and socialism", in which it stated: "The Communist Party of Spain congratulates itself on the seventieth anniversary of the People's Republic, feels the successes of Chinese socialism as its own and sends an emotional greeting to its comrades of the Chinese Communist Party, and to the entire great Chinese nation, whom we wish to accompany in its efforts to achieve the triumph of socialism in the world."

Vox's harsh criticism of communist China

The great exception among the main Spanish parties is Vox, the third most voted party in Spain. This conservative party has not held any meetings with the CPC or with any leader of that dictatorship, to which it has been dedicating harsh criticism. In April 2023, in a speech in Congress, Vox leader Santiago Abascal pointed out:

"It is not normal that 23 of the 25 most polluting cities in the world are in China. And also, we have already asked him on several occasions in this chamber, it would be good for Mr. Sánchez to tell his counterpart from the Chinese Communist Party, his autocratic Chinese counterpart, that they must pay for the global catastrophe they have produced with the pandemic and the concealment of data." (...) "The Asian country intends to become a truly influential actor beyond its borders, even with regard to wars that occur on European soil, such as the invasion and aggression against Ukraine."

In 2020, Abascal had already criticised communist China's responsibility for the pandemic for hiding information: "China is guilty; the Chinese communist government is responsible for the pandemic worldwide." In that parliamentary debate, the president of Vox reproached the PP for its 2013 pact with the CPC: "What are you waiting for to break it?"

In March 2022, Abascal reiterated this criticism of the PP and addressed the other parties, stating: "They have been promoting for decades, in the name of do-goodism, climate religion, stupid pacifism and any other suicidal ideology that has put Europe in the hands of Russian gas, the Chinese industry and the oil of Islamic theocracies."

In April 2024, Vox registered a parliamentary initiative in Congress warning about the activity of the Confucius Institute: "In Spain, the already operational Confucius Institutes have also been the protagonists of incidents of censorship towards the hired staff; propaganda of the communist government that is directly related to the discrimination of political and religious ideas." Vox also denounced that "the international projection of the regime occurs in this type of institutions, always at the service of the propaganda of the Communist Party Chinese, including economic, commercial and even espionage penetration."

A communist dictatorship responsible for several genocides

Let us remember that the CPC has ruled mainland China since 1949 without free elections, in a one-party dictatorship that violates human rights, that has a vast network of concentration camps for political prisoners (the Laogai, the Chinese version of the Soviet Gulag) and that has killed millions of people, in some of the largest genocides in history.

Even today, the CPC dictatorship is committing genocide against the Uyghur people and it ranks 19th on the list of the 50 countries that persecute Christians the most. As for the kind of oppression suffered by citizens living under this dictatorship, it is enough to point out that Communist China ranks 172nd out of 180 countries on the world press freedom list.