Abstract

A common way of describing China in today’s media is to claim that it is an “authoritarian, communist regime”; another frequent phrase is that it is “a thriving capitalist country, which is communist only in name”. Common sense tells us that both of these statements cannot be true. Surely it is impossible to have a country which is at once highly centralized and committed to socialist principles while simultaneously embracing the free market? It may be one of these things pretending to be the other, but surely not both at the same time? If, however, we are to get a grasp on how the Chinese system works today, we need to embrace this contradiction and think of China as socialist and capitalist in the same instance

Highlights

  • A common way of describing China in today’s media is to claim that it is an “authoritarian, communist regime”; another frequent phrase is that it is “a thriving capitalist country, which is communist only in name”

  • While the mass line was a top-down bureaucratic structure, it was not, in any stereotypical sense, cold and faceless; rather, it mobilized citizens through a highly emotive campaign in which selfless labour and correct ideological thinking served as a vehicle for striving toward socialist utopia

  • One of the young men wears a T-shirt with Mao Zedong on the front, another with a picture of Argentinean Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara

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Summary

Introduction

A common way of describing China in today’s media is to claim that it is an “authoritarian, communist regime”; another frequent phrase is that it is “a thriving capitalist country, which is communist only in name”. It is impossible to have a country which is at once highly centralized and committed to socialist principles while simultaneously embracing the free market?

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