About a dozen activists from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's Democratic Socialists of America have publicly pledged to "support" and "defend" China, the latest sign of a deepening relationship between the DSA and the Chinese Communist Party.
The signatories, approximately eleven self-described DSA or DSA International Committee members, put their names to a declaration hosted by Friends of Socialist China, a London-based group that has collected 952 total signatures for its pro-Beijing pledge. The New York Post identified the DSA members among the signatories after The Times of London first reported on the list.
The pledge itself leaves little room for ambiguity about its aims. Signatories "resolve to support, defend and build understanding of Chinese socialism" and declare that "the global advance to socialism is indispensable if humanity is to survive and to flourish." The document calls capitalism "totally incapable of solving the problems of poverty and inequality" and "inextricably linked with war, empire, racism, misogyny, alienation, and environmental destruction."
China gets special billing. The pledge explains why in its own words:
"We foreground China in particular because its size and level of development give it an objectively critical role in the global transition to socialism."
The document goes further, calling China "the most prominent force pushing for the establishment of a multipolar system of international relations" and "a global leader in the struggle to avoid climate breakdown." It concludes that "the continued survival of Chinese socialism is a crucial matter not only for the Chinese people but for all humanity."
The pledge is not an isolated gesture. It sits inside a pattern of escalating DSA engagement with Beijing that stretches back years. Internal DSA meeting minutes dating to 2021, obtained by Newsweek and published in January, show members openly discussing repeated trips to China to meet with CCP officials. Those trips were conducted under the banner of "anti-imperialism."
Last year, the DSA launched a monthly seminar on "modern China and lessons for US socialists." A few weeks before that seminar series began, a five-person DSA delegation flew to Beijing to celebrate China's 80th anniversary of the victory against Japan. The growing coziness between the DSA and the Chinese Communist Party has raised alarms even among Democratic leaders worried about the party's leftward drift.
NYC DSA member Dee Knight wrote about the Beijing event in Socialist Forum, and the description reads less like a political observation than a fan letter:
"It was an impressive display of 'unity in multi-polarity' featuring Russian President Putin and Indian Prime Minister Modi, as well as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Beijing buzzed with excitement."
Putin, Modi, and Kim Jong Un. That is the company DSA activists chose to keep, and then celebrated in print.
The DSA's monthly seminar series on China has offered its own revealing moments. The first session included a claim that China has a "strong democracy" with no mention of China's well-documented restrictions on freedom of expression. For an organization that bills itself as a champion of democratic values, the omission is telling. It suggests the seminars function less as education and more as advocacy for a one-party authoritarian state.
The DSA did not respond to The Post's request for comment.
That silence fits a broader pattern. As the DSA has gained ground in Democratic primaries and pushed the party's center of gravity further left, its leadership has grown less willing to answer uncomfortable questions about the organization's international affiliations.
Not all DSA members are on board with the march toward Beijing. The meeting minutes obtained by Newsweek reveal sharp internal division over the organization's relationship with the CCP. One unnamed DSA International Committee member put it bluntly:
"This isn't what I signed up for and I imagine it's not what a majority of members signed up for."
The same member added: "There's no way you can be a part of the organization and promote the things they're doing."
Those objections did not stop the delegation from flying to Beijing. They did not stop the seminar series from launching. And they did not stop roughly a dozen members from putting their names on a pledge that explicitly commits them to defending a communist government's political system. The internal critics were outvoted by the activists willing to act, and the actions kept escalating.
Meanwhile, the DSA's political influence continues to grow domestically. Democratic leadership in Congress has welcomed Mamdani-backed socialists into the fold, even as the organization's foreign entanglements become harder to ignore.
Mayor Mamdani is not personally named as a pledge signatory or a participant in the Beijing delegation. But the DSA is his political home, the party apparatus that built his career and continues to shape Democratic politics in New York City and beyond. The question is whether the party's growing alignment with Beijing will become a political liability, or whether Democratic leaders will continue to look the other way.
The DSA's internal war over China mirrors a broader conflict inside the Democratic Party about how far left is too far. But this is not a disagreement over marginal tax rates or housing policy. This is a faction of an American political organization pledging solidarity with a foreign adversary's governing ideology, and doing so publicly, proudly, and repeatedly.
Friends of Socialist China's pledge page remains live. The DSA's seminars continue. The meeting minutes document a years-long pattern of engagement with CCP officials that shows no sign of slowing down.
When American political activists sign their names to a document declaring that the survival of Chinese communism is "a crucial matter" for "all humanity," voters deserve to know, and the leaders who share a party label with those activists owe the public an answer.
