In July 2021, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) celebrated the 90th anniversary of its founding with a blitz of propaganda boasting about how the party’s rule had led to a prosperous, confident and happy China. Yet a year later, the discontent among the Chinese masses towards the regime has reached unprecedented levels, while those at the top of the byzantine party-state bureaucracy are showing clear differences about how to proceed. What does this reveal, and what is its significance for Marxist revolutionaries?

In the early hours of Friday 24 June, there was a massive attempt by several hundred migrants to jump the Melilla fence and cross from the Moroccan side into Spain. This resulted in the death of 37 people (so far confirmed), according to a local NGO, with 76 wounded, 13 of them seriously. This incident occurs just a few months after the ratification of the new relations between the Spanish government and the Moroccan dictatorship.