An Interview with Eli Friedman on Transnational Solidarity and Left Internationalism

Workers at Foxconn Technology Group, Zhengzhou, Henan province. PRC. 2019. Source. 

Eli Friedman is a Professor of Global Labor and Work at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. He authored “China in Global Capitalism” (Haymarket 2024), “The Urbanization of People: The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City” (Columbia 2022) and “Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Postsocialist China” (Cornell 2014). His research is primarily concerned with how China’s rapid ascent in the global economy has impacted workers and labor politics, both domestically and internationally.

The Monitor spoke with Dr. Friedman on the question of transnational solidarity and Left internationalism in our current moment of global turn toward isolationism and authoritarianism.

Diego Ge: Thank you for talking with us today. I want to start from a point you make in your recent book, China in Global Capitalism, that the Left should commit to a position of ‘neither Washington nor Beijing’ at our moment today. Should the internationalist Left cooperate with state policies targeting their rival state: e.g. sanctions against China by the United States, or Chinese criticism of U.S. involvement in foreign wars?

Eli Friedman: That’s a great question; it is important and challenging. My baseline—and one that I think is shared by many activists—is that no state, whether the United States, China, or any other state, deserves uncritical support. States are large and complex entities, often acting across purposes internally. It’s not only possible but necessary to acknowledge that they can simultaneously do both good and bad things. The point is not to support a state’s actions just because it opposes a rival; rather, we need to operate from a set of ethical and political principles that allow us to critique states consistently and orient our forms of practical engagement.

So, we can think about this in relation to the question of the repression of Uyghurs in China, as well as the genocide in Gaza. They are different in important ways, but they both raise concerns central to progressive politics: Islamophobia, state violence, and genocide. In the case of Xinjiang, while access to information is limited, there is overwhelming evidence—available now for several years—of gross human rights violations, including internment, coerced labor, and forms of state violence that no progressive should endorse.

Where things get complicated, especially for those of us who are U.S. citizens, is in how we interact with the American state’s engagement with the oppression of the Uyghur population. Near the end of the first Trump administration, the State Department labeled what’s happening in Xinjiang as genocide. I agree with that assessment—not because I share political grounds with Mike Pompeo, but because the evidence points to a state-led effort to suppress Uyghur fertility, destroy cultural practices, separate children from families, and eliminate the Uyghur identity—policies that aim to end the Uyghur people as we know it.

But the next step is asking: what is the U.S. government doing with that assessment? And what are the ways in which this is also straightforwardly hypocritical? We can start by looking at how the American government is actually totally okay with similar kinds of actions when it is being carried out by states that it is geopolitically aligned with. For instance, we can look at India’s repression of Muslims in Kashmir—because India is a strategic ally. The genocide label becomes a geopolitical tool to contain China rather than a genuine defense of human rights.

So, we don’t need to reject a claim just because it comes from the American state—but we should recognize when that state fails to act on the principles it invokes. The U.S. government does not uphold a consistent standard that values human dignity and opposes state violence.

When we look at Gaza, the situation is even more stark. The violence there is overtly eliminationist. Tens of thousands, including women and children, have been killed. Israeli officials have openly declared intentions to deprive the population of food, water, and medicine—and they’ve followed through. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have enthusiastically supported this, completely eroding any moral high ground the U.S. might claim on issues like minority rights or anti-Muslim violence.

Interestingly, in this case, China has taken the “correct” position—at least rhetorically. The Chinese government has called for a ceasefire, endorsed a two-state solution, and publicly opposed Israel’s war on Gaza. We can question whether a two-state solution is still viable, but the point is: they’ve adopted the right stance in this instance. And just because I have deep critiques of the Chinese government doesn’t mean I should reflexively reject its position here. That would be intellectually unserious. Even broken clocks are right twice a day.

That said, China is not taking steps that would really put its own interests at risk to stop the war. Despite being Israel’s second-largest trade partner and heavily invested in Israeli infrastructure, ports, and tech, Beijing has not leveraged any of its influence. Its opposition remains purely rhetorical. Whether or not it could actually force a change is debatable, but it’s clearly prioritizing economic interests over taking meaningful action.

The bottom line is this: we must develop and apply our own political principles, independent of state positions. We should use these principles to critique any state—whether it’s the U.S., China, or anyone else—when they violate fundamental rights and values.

DG: It reminds me of the commentary I saw right after the Tucker Carlson interview with Ted Cruz, where many people said, “I never thought I’d agree with Tucker Carlson.” I think it is important to identify where people are coming from with their arguments. Would you say the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the United States is another example?

EF: This was a specific measure the U.S. took in response to credible allegations of forced labor and broader human rights violations. I actually think it’s reasonable for a state to say, “We’re going to prevent our corporations from profiting from forced labor.” In that sense, the policy is unobjectionable—potentially even positive.

But the crucial follow-up question is: what happens to those supply chains? If U.S. companies are removing Xinjiang- or Uyghur-linked labor from their operations, where are they relocating production? And will the U.S. apply the same level of scrutiny if those supply chains move to places like India, which also has a documented history of forced labor? The form may differ, and it might not be as systematic as in Xinjiang, but it’s still present.

This suggests that the U.S. policy isn’t driven by a principled opposition to forced labor itself, but by geopolitical strategy. If forced labor simply shifts to a geopolitical ally and continues there, then the underlying system remains intact—and the policy does nothing to challenge that foundation.

DG: The Trump administration has cut funding form many American institutions that have traditionally done the work of ‘democracy promotion’ and humanitarian aid around the world, including the USAID, Radio Free Asia, Voice of America, the National Endowment for Democracy, etc. What do you make of these cuts?

EF: This is another case where we need to approach the state with complexity. The American state is capable of immense imperial destruction, but it has also supported life-affirming initiatives. Often, as with institutions like USAID, those elements are deeply interwoven.

The history of USAID is complicated and problematic—both for Americans and for people around the world—because the agency is often tied directly to U.S. imperialism. This can manifest in overt military contexts or in economic forms, such as development projects that claim to teach sustainable farming, only to mandate the use of American-made inputs, seeds, and fertilizers. These are coercive forms of economic dependence cloaked in aid.

This kind of entanglement needs scrutiny and critique. If someone aligned with a progressive agenda were in charge, USAID could be restructured to eliminate or reduce its more coercive and imperial elements.

At the same time, USAID has also built essential infrastructure for distributing food, medicine, and aid to impoverished regions—many of which are impoverished precisely due to U.S. actions, whether direct or indirect. Whatever the causes, the material reality in 2025 is that millions of people depend on these services. Eliminating them overnight would be catastrophic. We’re already seeing estimates of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, at risk of death as a result of these destructive budget cuts. Anyone who considers themselves progressive—who supports the flourishing of human life—should be horrified by this. Even if you disagree with how USAID is structured or what it’s done historically, dismantling it in this way is not the path to meaningful reform.

The situation of Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and similar outlets is related but somewhat different. These can be critiqued as propaganda tools; they don’t openly challenge U.S. policy. That’s true. But they also resemble platforms like NPR—still state-funded (well, not anymore), but with some degree of editorial autonomy. Or at least they did, before their funding was cut. A more productive reform might have been to push them further toward independence while maintaining public support, reducing their alignment with U.S. geopolitical interests.

Despite their flaws, these outlets have served as important sources of information for people worldwide—including in China. So again, there are valid critiques of what they’ve done and how they’ve been implicated in American foreign policy—but their elimination doesn’t serve anyone meaningfully.

Finally, it’s important to underscore that the dismantling of USAID and these media institutions marks a major break from post–World War II U.S. foreign policy. For decades, American empire operated under the banner of a liberal, rules-based international order. That approach often masked coercion with soft power. What we’re seeing now is the abandonment of even that pretense. The funding cuts don’t reflect a turn inward or to neutrality—they’ve been redirected straight into expanding U.S. warmaking capacity. What’s left is not a recalibrated foreign policy, but a stripped-down, militarized version of empire.

DG: Another example we could look at here is the case of Myanmar, where in the absence of USAID and hit with a severe earthquake, a lot of communities did not receive any assistance; Chinese aid was being funneled to the military junta, and it did not flow to those in opposition-controlled areas. Do you see China filling the gap in the short or long term? Is saying that closing USAID is a ‘gift to China’ the best approach to criticize the move?

EF: It really rubs me the wrong way when people describe the shutdown of USAID as a ‘gift to China’. Not because geopolitics aren’t important—they clearly are; they shape our lives in fundamental ways—but because the framing is so off. If your starting point in evaluating a policy is “who’s winning the geopolitical game of chess?” rather than “millions of people might die,” then something’s gone wrong.

Geopolitical analysis should ultimately be in service of a broader question: What conditions are most likely to support human flourishing? That’s a very different inquiry from simply asking whether China or the U.S. is ahead. The dismantling of USAID—its food distribution, medical relief, and disaster response capacity—is unequivocally bad for humanity. Now, if China steps in and fills that gap, providing aid where the U.S. retreats, that’s welcome. Frankly, I don’t care who delivers the assistance—as long as people get what they need.

But I’m not optimistic that China will step in effectively, or that it will develop a superior model for global development. There are structural and political reasons for that. Domestically, there’s little appetite—either among the general public or the Communist Party leadership—to spend tens or hundreds of billions on foreign aid. It’s simply not popular. China’s approach to aid has largely been tied to the Belt and Road Initiative, which prioritizes market-based investments intended to replicate the development model China followed over the past 40 years. That might work in certain places, but it’s unlikely to produce the same outcomes on a global scale. The Chinese path isn’t easily replicable for a range of political, economic, and historical reasons.

That said, one could imagine an entirely different world—an alternate universe—where the U.S. and China compete not over military dominance or resource extraction, but over who can do more good. Imagine a scenario where both powers invest in public health infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa, racing to provide access to vaccines, essential medicines, and food security. That kind of competition—one focused on winning hearts and minds through actual material support—would be a net positive for the world. But that’s not the world we live in. Today, the contest is over military bases, rare earth extraction, and energy dominance—even as China’s transition to renewables slightly shifts the terrain.

So, at the end of the day, we need to be clear about our point of departure. Whether China or the U.S. “wins” is irrelevant in itself. What matters is what they’re actually doing—and how that impacts the lives and dignity of people around the world.

DG: When we talk about U.S.-China competition, a common framing is that it’s a competition between a liberal democratic West and an authoritarian China. Do you think the concept and discourse of authoritarianism are helpful in academia or beyond when we talk about China in the West?

EF: Authoritarianism and democracy are rough categories. They are useful concepts, but ultimately approximations. They can help us understand the world, but I don’t think anyone still believes the dominant U.S. geopolitical narrative—that America represents liberal democracy and the free world against the authoritarianism of China. Some might have clung to that framing in 2024, but at this point, it’s a joke. The United States is no longer a functioning democracy, and that becomes more obvious by the day.

But your question points to something deeper. Even during the peak of globalization, when the U.S. still maintained formal democratic practices—elections, relatively independent courts, press protections, and so on—the idea of contrasting a “free” America with an “unfree” China was always misleading. Yes, China is authoritarian in that it is a one-party state and lacks basic civil liberties like freedom of speech and association. But that binary misses the profound economic entanglement between the two countries.

When you approach the issue through a lens of political economy rather than the framework of a typology of political regimes, it becomes clear that America is directly implicated in the very authoritarian practices in China that the American state claims to be against. Since the Carter and Reagan administration, and especially under Bill Clinton, the U.S. promoted a policy of “engagement” with China. This meant relocating capital from the U.S. and other Asian economies into China. As a labor scholar, I’ve studied this process for two decades. American corporations either directly entered China—like in the auto industry—or restructured supply chains through East Asian intermediaries to benefit from China’s repressive labor environment.

They took advantage of authoritarianism. Land could be seized from peasants. Workers had no rights to strike or organize independent unions—the right to strike was removed from China’s constitution in 1982, in anticipation of this model of economic development. Those who protested or challenged management could be jailed. These conditions directly benefited U.S. corporations, even as American officials publicly condemned the same authoritarian practices they relied on for profit.

So even when the “authoritarian vs. democracy” distinction had more descriptive value regarding state forms, it failed to explain the real relationships between societies in which forms of democracy and forms of authoritarianism are intermingled in important ways.

There’s another layer here, especially under the Biden administration, which has revived Cold War-style rhetoric. The U.S. is once again casting itself as the leader of a global alliance of democracies confronting authoritarian regimes like China. Biden held a Summit for Democracy in Washington, D.C., inviting many authoritarian leaders—India’s Modi, the Saudi monarchy, and others.

This isn’t surprising to anyone familiar with U.S. foreign policy in the 20th century, in which the United States has long undermined democracy: overthrowing elected governments in Iran, Chile, and elsewhere; isolating revolutionary regimes like those in Cuba or China; and aligning with dictators when convenient. China does the same. It maintains friendly relations with democracies like South Korea (the South Koreans are undermining their own democracy without Chinese help) while also working with Myanmar’s military junta. These aren’t strictly ideologically driven alliances—both powers are pragmatic.

So, back to the original question: do the concepts of authoritarianism and democracy still matter? I think they actually are important, and we should demand democracy, with the understanding that democracy is a dynamic process instead of a trait inherent to a particular state, ethnicity or race. Democracy isn’t inherent to a nation or an ethnicity, despite what some in the West or proponents of “Asian values” might suggest. The idea that certain peoples “can’t do” democracy is both racist and historically inaccurate.

Holding onto a commitment to democracy means challenging authoritarianism wherever it appears: in governments, workplaces, unions, or community institutions—whether in a self-declared democracy or not. That should be our baseline.

If that’s our guiding principle, we can develop strategies for democratization wherever we are. In China, maybe a multi-party system isn’t immediately feasible, but there are still openings to push for more democratic practices locally. And in the U.S., I don’t think anybody needs to be convinced that there are ways that we can make this polity more democratic than it is right now. There’s no shortage of opportunities to build something better from the ground up.

(Part 2 of this interview coming soon.)

Diego Ge is a former intern for China Focus at The Carter Center and studies Political Science and International Comparative Studies at Duke University.

The views expressed in this article represent those of the author(s) and not those of The Carter Center.