ON November 13, 2022, US President Joe Biden met with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The focus of their public remarks was North Korea. ‘For years’, Biden said, ‘our countries have been engaged in a trilateral cooperation out of a shared concern for the nuclear and missile threats North Korea poses to our people’. Kishida concurred, worrying that the tension in the Sea of Japan would continue.
THE first group study session of the CPC Polit Bureau held on October 25 (two days after the conclusion of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China) deliberated on the regulations for strengthening and safeguarding the Party Central Committee's ‘centralised, unified leadership’, and the detailed rules for the implementation of the eight-point decision on work conduct.
ON October 17, Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and president of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, gave a commemorative lecture at the central cadres training school of the WPK on the ‘Orientation of the Building of Our Party in the New Era and the Tasks of the Central Cadres Training School of the Workers' Party of Korea’. The Central Cadres Training School was established in 1946 to train Party cadres to fulfill the immediate tasks of the revolution and Party building under the direct guidance of the Central Committee of the WPK.
IMMEDIATELY after the conclusion of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), on October 25, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC led the first group study session of the Polit Bureau. This was to ‘study, understand and implement’ the guiding principles of the 20th Congress. The meeting emphasised that the tasks set forth by the 20th Congress ought to be implemented in all aspects of economic and social development, by being prepared to face all kinds of complex issues.
THE report adopted in the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is a political declaration and a programme of action for the Party to lead the country in securing new successes for socialism with Chinese characteristics. A resolution adopted in the Congress termed the report as ‘a guiding Marxist document’.
ON October 30, 2022, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) won the second-round of the presidential election in Brazil. The vote, in the end, was tight, with Lula prevailing with 50.9 per cent (60 million votes) over the incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro’s 49 per cent (58 million votes). Lula won decisively in the north and north-east of Brazil, areas that have large populations of Afro-Brazilian and indigenous voters, while Bolsonaro prevailed in the south.
THE 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) that was held from October 16-22, concluded successfully on October 22. Given the important position of China in the world economy, the Congress was eagerly watched. In 2021, China's gross domestic product reached 17.7 trillion US dollars, accounting for 18.5 per cent of the world's total. From 2013 to 2021, it grew at an average annual rate of 6.6 per cent, beating the global average of 2.6 per cent.
THE 22nd International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties (IMCWP) held from October 27-29 at the Havana Convention Palace was attended by delegates from 65 countries from all the continents. ‘United we are stronger’ is the slogan of the event in which representatives of 82 political forces and 31 delegations headed by their presidents or general secretaries participated. The theme of the IMCWP is ‘Solidarity with Cuba and all the struggling peoples.
ON October 15, 2022, aircraft of the United States and Canada air forces delivered military equipment to the Haitian National Police (HNP), which the government of Haiti had previously purchased. This equipment, rushed to Port-au-Prince – Haiti’s capital – came, according to the United States, to ‘assist the HNP in their fight against criminal actors who are fomenting violence and disrupting the flow of critically-needed humanitarian assistance hindering efforts to halt the spread of cholera’.
THE highly anticipated 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) opened on the morning of October 16 at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.