The adventures of an ideology: Western Marxism in post-Mao China

Politics has a strong impact on Chinese drama. At the end of 1978 a full meeting of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) introduced the period of reform and "opening to the outside world" (duiwai kaifang) under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. In most respects the new policies led to a substantial rise in the standard of living of the people and in the quality and breadth of their culture. Even so, playwrights, artists and intellectuals continued to strain at the restrictions which the CCP still imposed on their work; and there were repressive campaigns to hold them back, for instance the "campaign against spiritual pollution" in 1983 and "the campaign against bourgeois liberalization" at the beginning of 1987, when the liberal CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang was dismissed. In general these periods of greater restriction were followed by a continued and even expanded . liberalization of the intellectual atmosphere. However, Hu Yaobang's death in April 1989 led to enormous and persistent student demonstrations, culminating in the Tiananmen Square massacre of 3–4 June 1989. The CCP claimed to have "quelled a counter-revolutionary rebellion," meaning that it believed it would have been overthrown but for this military action: a highly implausible interpretation, but one which has to be taken seriously in the light of events in Eastern Europe later that year. The 1989 crisis has been followed by an ideological crackdown of far greater proportions than any other in the 1980s; and although the situation has eased since then, it remains very much tenser and less open than during any part of the preceding decade.

Reviews 253 Lawrence R. Sullivan, editor. China Since Tiananmen: Political, Economic, and Social Conflicts. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1995. xx, 331 pp. Hardcover $60.00, isbn 1-56324-538-8. Paperback $19.95, isbn 1-56324-539-6. China's economic reforms since the 1980s and the remarkable changes fhat have taken place thereafter have been attracting fhe world's attention. The suppression ofthe Tiananmen pro-democracy movement of1989, however, resulted in serious setbacks to the country's otherwise thriving surge toward modernization. Again, China was at a crossroads. What course would China follow after the crisis? Lawrence R. SuUivan, a political scientist, has edited a readable book fhat attempts to analyze the ideological and social developments fhat have emerged during the post-Tiananmen period. This volume includes government documents, individual essays, newspaper commentaries, and important speeches by state leaders. Sources include mainly the foUowing: (1) the major propaganda and theoretical organs of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) such as People's Daily, Beijing Review , and Qiushi (Seeking truth); (2) the provincial, regional, and organizational press; (3) individual addresses ranging from fhose ofthe President ofthe CCP to those by well-known inteUectuals; and (4) articles and commentaries from the principal media ofHong Kong and Taiwan. The 109 documents, covering the period from 1989 to 1994, are divided into four sections, each of which focuses, respectively , on political, economic, social and cultural, and science and technology issues. Following fhe briefintroductions to each section by the editor, the entire book is rich in information that is presented in an original way, with opposing views that invite readers to analyze, criticize, and draw their own conclusions. As SuUivan indicates in his introduction, the events ofJune 1989 "peacefully chaUenged die authority of the government . . . [but] the Chinese leadership has been obsessed with maintaining control" (p. xix). In addition to questions regarding the political future ofHong Kong, the Taiwan issue, international protests over human rights abuses in China, the Three Gorges Dam project, the anticorruption movement, and odier related problems, conflicts over how and to what extent the Chinese leadership should further strengthen its authority in the wake of the Tianamen incident remain the central theme. Four monfhs after the Tianamen crackdown, Jiang Zemin, General Secretary offhe CCP Central Committee , addressed fhe crowds who were celebrating fhe fortieth anniversary of the founding ofthe People's Republic ofChina. His statement set the tone for the© 1997 by University post-Tiananmen CCP strategy. Jiang reiterated that "fhe Four Cardinal Principles ofHawai'i Press^e the foundation offhe nation, whereas reform and opening to the outside world are means ofstrengthening the nation" (p. 23). The lesson diat the CCP drew from the 1989 Tiananmen incident, fhe fall of the Berlin WaU, and the col- 254 China Review International: Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 1997 lapse of the Soviet Union was that China could not tolerate the other kind ofreform and the other way ofopening itselfto the outside—bourgeois liberalization and total Westernization. The only way to guarantee smooth sailing in China's socialist construction was to tighten the CCP's control over every aspect of society including the government, die müitary, schools, factories, and villages. Democracy within the CCP was seen only as the basis ofa centralism that served to "safeguard the party's unified fighting power" (p. 57). In order to reinforce this centralism, China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping caUed for the restoration ofthe "fusion ofparty and government"—an obsolete form ofpolitical structure that had existed before China's reforms. Deng's statement, however, was found, by Hong Kong's South China MorningPost, to be contradictory to a speech ofhis in 1941, in which he caUed for the separation ofparty and government and for a higher degree ofmass participation. Obviously, fhe political situation after June 1989 necessitated a shift of strategy in order to secure die absolute power of fhe CCP in directing the reforms nationwide. Interestingly, Deng Xiaoping is here described as a complex man, often contradicting himselfin national policy making. The forty-three documents in diis section also reveal three basic conflicts within the CCP political structure. First, the political climate was largely characterized by conflicts between hard-liners and reformists. The...

Dewey’s philosophy of education was heavily criticized by the Chinese Communist Party in the 1950s, which led many to believe that Dewey’s education was in complete opposition to that of the CCP. However, this study intends to prove that Dewey had a tremendous influence on the early CCP members of the 1920s. Dewey’s Chinese visit closely coincided highly with the time of the reception of Marxism in China and the eventual establishment of the CCP. Both founders of the CCP had close personal relationships with Dewey, and Chen even tried to practice Dewey’s educational ideas in Southern China. As a graduate of a normal school, Mao Zedong also read and practiced Dewey’s educational philosophy. Many other CCP members read Dewey in the 1920s and then became left-wing revolutionaries. Though Dewey himself did not stand with Marxism, his idea that education is an agent of social reform paved the way for Marxism in China in theoretical and practical aspects. When an educational theory is spread abroad, it is often not accepted in a fundamentalist way, but rather in a process of collision and integration with the local tradition.

82 China Review International: Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 1997 Feng Chen. Economic Transition and Political Legitimacy in Post-Mao China: Ideology and Reform. Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1995. xvi, 246 pp. Paperback. Feng Chen's new book, the latest in the political-economy-of-China genre, assesses the impact of China's current economic reforms on the political future of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chen's thesis is simple and straightforward : the reforms tend to undermine the ideology of socialism on which the legitimacy ofthe Communist regime is based. He devotes eight chapters to an analysis of this tendency. In chapter 1, Chen explains that the Communist regime has always depended on ideology for the exercise ofits power. The author views Communist ideology as consisting oftwo components. One involves "fundamental principles"—the fixed core values of the party—and the other "instrumental principles"—the theoretical justifications for changeable public policies (p. 10). In Chen's view, the CCP's incorporation of capitalist ideas into the instrumental principles ofits ideology has created for the regime two possible dire consequences. On the one hand, if the current economic reforms fail, the public would lose confidence in the regime. On the other hand, ifthey succeed, capitalism would replace socialism , thus depriving the regime ofits ideological foundation. In analyzing the fundamental and instrumental principles of Communist ideology , Chen focuses on the changes in China's "ownership system" (p. 21). In chapter 2, the author goes into a brief examination of the pre-reform ownership system by identifying four specific types, as outlined in the 1954 Chinese constitution : the state-owned sector, the cooperative sector, the private sector, and the state-capitalist sector. In consequence ofthe various public campaigns for collectivization since the mid-1950s, public ownership has become the most dominant type and has created a number of "serious problems." And it is these problems, which the author does not identify, that prompted the CCP to launch economic reforms at the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee in 1978. In chapter 3, Chen describes the debates in the ideological circles of the CCP on how to develop theoretical justifications for the economic reforms being implemented. The debates centered on two issues. One of these concerned how to deal with the ideological orthodoxy that prevailed up till 1978, primarily the thought ofMao Zedong. The reformers, with Deng Xiaoping as their champion,© 1997 by University argued that the value of the orthodoxy had to be tested in practice. This argument ofHawai'i Presseventuallyprevailed, with the slogan "seeking truth from practice" becoming the crucible of all Communist ideological statements. A related issue concerned how to justify the use of capitalist methods ofeconomic development in the land of Reviews 83 socialism. The reformers responded with the statement that China was still in the preliminary stage ofsocialism, which was characterized by low productivity, and that the country needed to use capitalist methods to develop fully "the productive forces" before marching into a higher stage ofsocialism. The change in China's ownership system, as Chen discusses in chapter 4, first occurred in the rural areas. It is ofinterest to note that the impetus ofthis reform did not come from a policy reorientation ofthe national government but from a spontaneous initiative by rural communities to resolve the problem of falling production in the communes. Chen reports that the farmers ofthe communes in Anhui Province experimented with a contract system ofproduction that was conspicuously successful and widely emulated. This experiment drew the attention of the Institute ofRural Economy ofthe Chinese Academy ofSocial Sciences and the Ministry ofAgriculture, which, upon extensive research and investigation, recommended the adoption ofthis system. With the approval ofthe CCP's Central Work Conference in 1980, a nationwide Individual Household Contract (IHC) system was adopted. This system continues to recognize public ownership ofagricultural land but grants individual farm households the right to cultivate their plots, to enter into contracts with the government for the delivery of a minimal amount ofproduct, and to retain any additional amount they may produce. The IHC effectively terminated the commune system. Chapter 5 discusses the process of change in industrial ownership. This process , though later than the rural...

The end of the Cold War has seen the revival throughout the world of nationalist sentiments and aspirations. In China, the rapid decay of Communist ideology has led the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to emphasize its role as the paramount patriotic force and the guardian of national pride in order to find a new basis of legitimacy to sustain its role. However, nationalist sentiment is not the sole province of the CCP and its propagandists. One truly remarkable phenomenon in the post-Cold War upsurge of Chinese nationalism is that Chinese intellectuals became one of the driving forces. Many well-educated people - social scientists, humanities scholars, writers and other professionals - have given voice to and even become articulators for a rising nationalistic discourse in the 1990s. This nationalistic sentiment contrasts strikingly to the anti-traditionalism that once dominated Chinese intellectual circles in the 1980s, in spite of the fact that some advocates of this new sentiment are the same people who had a “pro-Western complex” and promoted anti-traditionalism earlier. This article seeks to discover what caused such a dramatic shift by examining the relationship between Chinese intellectuals′ quest for national greatness and the emergence of nationalistic writing in the 1990s. It starts with a historical analysis of the development of antitraditionalism, and goes on to investigate the content of nationalistic argument. Then socio-economic, intellectual and personal causes for the rise of nationalistic writing are explored. The conclusion offers a perspective on continued intellectual debate over nationalistic discourse.

Observing that for both revolutionaries and capitalists, nothing succeeds like success, Russell Jacoby asks us to reexamine a loser of Marxism: the unorthodox Marxism of Western Europe. The author begins with a polemical attack on 'conformist' or orthodox Marxism, in which he includes structuralist schools. He argues that a cult of success and science drained this Marxism of its critical impulse and that the successes of the Russian and Chinese revolutions encouraged a mechanical and fruitless mimicry. He then turns to a Western alternative that neither succumbed to the spell of success nor obliterated the individual in the name of science. In the nineteenth century, this Western Marxism already diverged from Russian Marxism in its interpretation of Hegel and its evaluation of Engels' orthodox Marxism. The author follows the evolution of this minority tradition and its opposition to authoritarian forms of political theory and practice.

This paper aims to show that two eminent Marxists in the 1930s, the Italian Antonio Gramsci and the Japanese Tosaka Jun, shared three important characteristics of so-called Western Marxism: the methodological development of Marxism, the focus on the superstructure, and the pessimism about the impossibility of immediate revolution. Showing that Gramsci and Tosaka shared these characteristics enables us to revisit the framework of “Western Marxism,” which confusingly consists of both theoretical characteristics and geographical criteria. Looking at Gramsci and Tosaka on the same plane allows us to revisit Marxist thought different from the orthodox Marxism in Soviet Russia, and not strictly as a Western, but as a part of potentially global movement of thought.

WANG RUOSHUI, the author of the following two articles on Alienation and Humanism was recently dismissed from the post of Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the PEOPLE'S DAILY. He fell a victim to the campaign for 'eliminating spiritual pollution'. WANG'S crime was not that he was repudiating Marxism-Leninism or even Mao Zedong Thought as defined by the Chinese Communist Party now. He was accused of 'spiritual pollution' because he put forward the theory that the socialist society created new forms of alienation and because he went on to say that socialist societies have neglected the centrality of man. Precisely the same thesis has been put forward by ZHOU YANG. But because ZHOU enjoys greater prestige among China's intellectuals, he was spared punishment. Instead, WANG RUOSHUI was dismissed as a warning to ZHOU. Nevertheless ZHOU has been indirectly criticized for putting forward a 'totally incorrect' interpretation of MARX'S views on alienation and humanism. We are publishing these two articles by WANG in order to let our readers judge for themselves how difficult it is,for China's intellectuals to give their own independent interpretations of some of the major ideas put forward by MARX himself—all this despite the Party's repeatedly declar ed policy of 'letting a hundred schools of thought contend'. 'On the Problem of Alienation' was the title of a lecture delivered by WANG at the PEOPLE'S DAILY journalists' vocational class in June 1980. The translation is by MRS. SHEELA MURTHY, a teacher of Chinese Language and Literature at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. 'Man is the Starting Point of Marxism' was published in a book of the same title. The translation is by the staff of the BBC'S SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS. —EDITOR

This article explored non-Marxist historian Gu Jiegang’s status in Communist China of 1950s. As a renowned intellectual in Republic of China, he left academic legacies based on textual criticism to challenge traditional Chinese historiography. He was highly reputed not only for his eminent academic achievements, but for the patriotic commitments through academic means in Anti-Japanese Wartime. Therefore, since Republican period, he originally conceived features of a patriotic participatory intellectual for public purposes.<BR> However Gu Jiegang confronted quite alien environments after the establishment of the People"s Republic of China in 1949. As a ruling political power, Chinese Communist Party(CCP) had relatively firm control over non-Marxist Chinese intellectuals including Gu Jiegang. So when he resided in Shanghai(上海) of early 1950s, he could not explicitly retain features of active intellectual like Republican period. Although he had no choice but to act like eremite, Gu Jiegang in Shanghai still internally maintained a critical attitude toward the CCP. This status as a critical intellectual was clandestinely revealed in private space for statement like his diary and letters to friends.<BR> Entering government service in Beijing(北京), Gu Jiegang"s status began to change. Under more powerful control of the CCP, he was caught in political maelstroms of late 1950s and couldn’t but work as a knowledge worker rather than critical intellectual. Unavoidably this change increasingly damaged independent values of his diary as a private space for statement. It impressively symbolizes Chinese intellectuals’ fate under the CCP of 1950s.

The political campaigns launched by the Chinese Communist Party in 1981, 1983, 1987, and 1989 to eradicate foreign pollution,1 a noxious byproduct of bourgeois liberalization, can be interpreted in a variety of ways. It is apparent, for example, that in each case the leadership was looking for a way to account for corruption, lawlessness, disorder, alienation, cynicism, and other nagging social problems without having to point to the failings of the Party itself. In the political realm, these campaigns provided opportunities for cultural conservatives to gain temporary strategic advantages over reformers inside the Party who, like their Eastern European counterparts in the 1980s, were eager to dismantle the traditional Stalinist cultural system. These initiatives, some of which were comical and some of which were deadly, can also be viewed as manifestations of Chinese nationalism, as products of the modernization process in a nonWestern environment, and as attempts by the Party/state to achieve greater social control. In spite of the novelty of the terms jingshen wuran and zichanjieji ziyouhua and the uniqueness of social, economic, and political conditions that spawned these ideological and cultural crusades in the 1980s, the image of China as the innocent victim of foreign spiritual pollution is neither new, nor the brain child of post-Mao Chinese Communist theoreticians and propagandists. On several occasions during the late Qing, Republican, and socialist periods, political and intellectual elites sought to mobilize (and manipulate) ordinary people by issuing grave and sometimes hysterical warnings about the dangers of alien cultural contamination. For well over a century it has been politically expedient

Derrida perhaps most interests Chinese Marxist scholars through his way of separating the spirit of Marx from the ‘‘specter’’ of Marx. All those things interpreted by Derrida as ‘‘specters’’ are mainly practiced in China after 1949. Since China’s historical transition began in 1978 those ‘‘specters’’ considered by Derrida include the challenge of economic reform, and economic globalization, and could also include public ownership which has been replaced by multiple owner-ship or stock ownership, as well as allocation according to contribution which has been replaced by allocation according to contribution combined with allocation according to capital investment. The predictable result is that income equality in theory or in practice has now given way to great income difference. These phenomena are opposite to those ‘‘specters’’ of Marx, and they are the targets of the critical spirit of Marx. When Derrida name those things as ‘‘specters’’ presumably this means they could never be actualized. So when those things actually disappeared again, people would like to accept the supposition that they are only ‘‘specters’’ and could not be objectified, while what actually could be practiced is the critical spirit of Marx. It is just the paradox of the ‘‘specters’’ and the spirit of Marx in the actual situation of China that brings it about that Derrida’s deconstructive method interests some Chinese Marxist scholars, especially the younger ones. In order to understand Derrida’s appeal in China better, we need to look at the general situation of Western Marxism in China.

Discussion on innovation of ideological and political theory course teaching at higher vocational schools based on the concept ‘combination of general education and professional education’

From Marxism to nationalism: The Chinese Communist Party's discursive shift in the post-Mao era

As the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) one-hundredth anniversary approached, General Secretary Xi Jinping () called on Party members to 'not forget their original aspirations and firmly remember their mission' (bu wang chuxin, laoji shiming , ).This slogan illustrates the current leadership's focus on Party members' devotion and loyalty to the Party. 1 Regarding party-state officials more specifically, various researchers have noted the increased importance of political criteria in cadre recruitment and discipline under Xi (Li 2018; Snape 2019; Brdsgaard 2019; Doyon 2019).How to interpret the CCP's focus on 'original aspirations' and devotion to the organisation?For some, the current emphasis on virtue and loyalty contrasts with the declining importance given to political criteria in recruiting Party members and officials in post-Mao China (Snape 2019).Until recently, many viewed the Chinese party-state as moving away from being a 'virtuocracy' (Shirk 1982), a promotion system based on one's 1 'Opinion on Deepening and Consolidating the Results of the "Do Not Forget the Original Aspirations and Firmly Remember the Mission" Educational Subject' (' '), Central Office of the Chinese Communist Party, 15 September 2020.

The new economic importance of the Chinese economy has created Chinese expectations that the country will be able to regain a political and cultural position in the world in accordance with this economic status. But for China to become a respected member of world society, one of the most severe obstacles is its, from a western perspective, undemocratic political system. The article describes the lively debate going on among Chinese intellectuals of diverse political-ideological convictions about what kind of democracy should be the model for China’s future political system. The liberally oriented intellectuals want a political system very much like American liberal constitutional democracy, while intellectuals on the left side of the political spectrum want a democracy with a clear socialist basis. Although Chinese intellectuals form a minority in society, these intellectual debates are sure to have influence on both public opinion and opinions and attitudes among political decision makers inside the Chinese Communist Party. Further investigations will have to establish to what degree the perceptions of China's political future and democratization are reflected in the political attitudes among the Chinese in general, and how they are perceived inside the confines of political decision making in the Chinese Communist Party. Only then will it be possible to answer the questions: "What kind of democracy do the Chinese want?" and "What kind of democracy are the Chinese going to get?"