Ideology in Contemporary China: Liberalisation, Marxism and the Chinese Communist Party
Date: 13 September 2022
Members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) marching through Tiananmen Square.
Courtesy of Tomohiro Ohsumi (2013): https://flic.kr/p/ehevvw
Tensions between the ‘West’ and China have been increasing rapidly ever since President Xi Jinping’s second term of Presidency. China’s series of military drills around Taiwan after Pelosi’s visit to the Island has gained international attention. According to Chinese foreign spokesman Zhao Lijian, if China’s sovereignty over Taiwan is challenged, ‘the Chinese People’s Liberation Army will never sit idly by’ and ‘strong countermeasures’ will be deployed against any challenges to Chinese sovereignty. The Taiwan issue is the current spotlight, yet conflicts between China and the US go back a long way with both material and ideological factors involved. This article focus on understanding how the CCP is able to sustain its popular base through employing different, or even contradicting ideas, to suit changes in the political atmosphere. This article will first elaborate on how the PRC incorporated consultative elements and promoted systematic reform after the Maoist period. Following that, the Author will explain how the Chinese have retained Marxist-Leninist practice in statecraft and bureaucratic organisation despite having discarded planned economy and class struggle as state policies. Last but not least, the article will touch upon why China reared back to employing Marxist-Leninist discourses and ideological debates in recent years. In general, liberal elements and Leninist ideology are both employed by the Party to increase its popular base of support, and whether the Party endorses the former or latter more depends on international and domestic circumstances.
The Duality of Chinese Governance
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CCP made effort to transform its institutional setting and practices to accommodate international norms. Sinologist Andrew J. Nathan (2003) has put forward the concept of ‘Authoritarian Resilience’ to articulate how the CCP attempts to remain in control after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Nathan proposes that China’s ability to maintain legitimacy rests on its gradual institutionalisation during the reform and opening up. By transitioning from a political entity organized completely under the rule of man, particularly one man, Mao Zedong, to one bounded by formal regulations on the societal level and informal norms at the party level, China has presented itself differently to audiences. Not just to the international world, but to its party members and citizens as well. The appearance that China would adhere to both domestic and international regulations boasts the confidence of both foreign investors and domestic citizens in the Chinese state, which guarantees stability within.
One of the most dominant targets during Jiang and Hu’s period is to carry out administrative reforms. Jiang advocated lower-level democratic elections, while Hu emphasised the construction of a Socialist Rule of Law system in China in the later 1990s. The willingness of the Marxist-Leninist party to establish a formally respected codex of legal norms and to release political power might seem, at least from a Western perspective, that China is moving towards democratization. Nevertheless, although China did embark upon state-party separation during Jiang Zemin’s (1989-2002) and Hu Jintao’s (2002-2012) administrations, it was primarily for operational efficiency. By allowing greater freedom in decision-making and civil discussion, the CCP attempted to expand its base of popular support and re-establish a base for public consensus.
In terms of economic commerce, after the reform and opening up, the Party still presides over the major state as well as private enterprises. They also maintain informal control over the major decisions of large enterprises through party cells. For instance, when Shanghai Petrochemical, a state-invested energy company, was enlisted for investment internationally in the early 2000s, the party’s role was left out of the prospectus of the company despite the presence of Party committees inside the company structure. The Party could then use the board and foreign investors as a scapegoat to make political decisions, such as massively laying off workers in the name of company restructuring. This hidden sense of control, nevertheless, is not limited only to the commercial sector.
On the political level, the practice of ‘One Institution, Two Names‘ allows Party organs to preside over the state institution of the same level, which gives the Party direct control over the functioning of the state. During Hu Jintao’s administration, while the bureaucratic state has been increasingly enlarged, such political reforms are primarily done to advance the efficiency of daily administration. When there are central policy lines that the Politburo deems important and ought to be implemented fully, the Party organs will take charge and allow the state apparatus to function under the will of the Politburo. Hence, leaders of Party cells retain more political power than state officials of the same rank.
For example, in 2007, Zhou Yongkang was appointed the Central Politics and Law Committee Leader of the CCP. Nevertheless, his working responsibilities overlapped with those of Wang Shengjun, the Chief Justice of the Chinese state. If we take a look over the resume of the two, it is clear that Zhou is more politically experienced than Wang. Zhou served as the Sichuan (one of the major provinces in China Proper) Party Committee Secretary and the National Minister of Public Security before returning to Party Central, while Wang only has minor experience in policing and national security management before his ascendancy. These arrangements reflect that the Soviet nomenklatura (secretive appointment) system is still in use in China, as Party cadres are appointed throughout the political and economic realm to oversee the works of technocrats in a top-to-bottom manner. The political practices are inevitably related to the ideological influence of the former Soviet Union and Marxism.
Members of the Chinese Young Pioneers posing in front of the national flag.
Courtesy of Andrej Iliev: https://flic.kr/p/7odd4B
The Importance of the Marxist Tradition in Contemporary Chinese Politics
While it is obvious that land redistribution and communes ceased to exist in China, there are two aspects in which one could observe the robust remaining Soviet Leninist features. First, is the use of Marxist concepts as a contextual demonstration of political power (Zheng, 2010). Ever since the Maoist period, party ideological lines have been used to indicate power struggles within the Party and who is gaining the upper hand. Each leader has developed their own ‘ideological contribution’ to Marxism, which essentially indicates their policy direction.
For instance, Mao Zedong thought, known for its Communist and authoritarian nature, is listed as the guiding principle of Chinese administration in the Party Constitution. At the same time, Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Reform and Opening Up’ and Hu Jintao’s ‘Development with a Scientific Outlook’ also ended up in the Party Constitution, with the latter two emphasising the use of private markets and international commercial exchange to modernise China. It might be puzzling to some as to why two sets of contradictory beliefs could be classified as the same ideology. In simple words, the Party Constitution and Marxist party lines in China are not based on ideological rationability, but simply function as a form of political declaration to establish legitimacy within the Party. It is a form of elitist language used among party members, which allows them to comprehend the current political situation.
The CCP’s right to rule China stems from the idea that Communism is the definitive ideology that could restrengthen China. By being able to offer supplementations to the Chinese Communist doctrine, it verifies one’s status as an ideological pioneer, which demonstrates one’s de facto political dominance. Deng and Hu made use of the Constitution as a way to demonstrate their role in the Party and how their policies also contributed to the great Communist enterprise of China.
Moreover, since discourse shapes the conceptual ability of a person, by embedding politics in Marxist terms, the Chinese consider politics in a devoted materialist mindset. In Mao’s era, class struggle was considered the political priority of the regime, which was a direction that his successor, Deng, disapproved of. While Deng had implemented market reforms and criticized Mao’s line, he nonetheless coined his reforms using concepts of Marxism, labelling China as a country in the ‘initial stages of socialism’ to excuse his pro-capitalist endeavour. Here, we could observe that in the post-Mao era, even though the supreme leader has certain personal beliefs and ideas, they are still bounded by the Party collective when it comes to decision-making.
Mao’s famous theory of Contradiction, known for its brilliant strategic ability to label enemies and gather allies, also remained in contemporary Chinese Politics. Xi Jinping claimed in 2017 that the major contradiction in China has shifted from class differences to the incompatibleness between people’s improving living conditions and inequality. By coining them under Communist terms, the state can legitimately use Leninist measures of collective centralism and the massive state apparatus to deal with the political problems.
Nevertheless, China cleverly manoeuvered the use of language when dealing with the West. If we examine the Chinese Government white papers of the early 2000s, it is not difficult to discover that issues such as human rights and protection of intellectual property etc. are recurring themes, and that the Chinese Government used concrete economic data and principles from the United Nations Charter to support its arguments. Moreover, even though domestic declarations and documents are published using Communist rhetoric, foreign observers have limited access to said documents. The unprecedented economic and societal freedom in China during the 2000s also made it seem that the Communist discourse is only a remnant of the past. Unfortunately, it is soon revealed that optimistic speculations on China’s liberalisation are out of realistic consideration.
Photo of Mao Zedong at the First National Congress of the CCP.
Courtesy of Buster&Bubby (2012): https://flic.kr/p/dns5Gd
Returning to the Leftist Line?
To explain why the direction of Chinese governance reared more towards the traditional Leninist line, one have to examine both international and domestic circumstances. Firstly, China’s speedy recovery after the 2008 Financial Crisis planted doubts among the Chinese administration regarding the robustness of the Western capitalist system. The 2008 Financial Crisis resulted in a decrementing effect on US’ role as THE dominating world power. In a 2009 Pew Research Center poll, 13 in 25 countries polled believed that China will replace the US as a World Power. A similar view was shared by the US National Intelligence Council, predicting that the US dominance would be ‘much diminished by 2025’ (Nye, Jr., 2010). Comparing the GDP figures of the two countries during the mid-2000s, it is not difficult to understand why so many experts and politicians alike deemed that America’s honeymoon phase as a world leader is over. In 2007, China had a GDP growth rate of 14.2%. The figure dropped more than 5% following the Lehman Brothers Financial Crisis in 2008. However, in 2009, China’s GDP growth rate returned to 6.8% from the drop last quarter, and then almost soared back to its original heights in 2010. On the other hand, after recording a 2.5% drop in 2009, the US GDP growth rate only recovered slightly to 2.6% in 2010.
Since the early 2000s, China had been learning from Western experience, especially in implementing economic reforms and how to foster a reputable commercial environment. Nevertheless, the 2008 Incident showed the CCP how fragile the Western neoliberal consensus could be in face of a financial crash. By developing its own Socialist Market Economy and implementing macro-adjustments to the Chinese economy, the Chinese government was able to quickly stabilize the economic decline and make use of state power to boast China’s economy once again. This was a crucial turning point for China’s decision-making, as it demonstrated to the Chinese leadership that their Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, i.e. the mixture of a market and state-controlled economy, is functioning successfully, while the overly privatised economic sectors of the West are vulnerable to external uncontrollable factors. It is under this context that Xi Jinping confidently announced that China has its own ‘China Solution’ in 2017, which China could share with other developing countries to help them overcome economic backwardness and inequality.
Shockingly, this confidence in external affairs and economic management was not shared in the Party’s ability to maintain its rule. As argued by Tsang and Cheung (2022), the increasing economic liberalisation in China resulted in growing disparity and corruption among officials. This brings problems on multiple levels. Firstly, since the CCP’s legitimacy after the reform and opening up largely rests on its ability to advocate economic development and allow the mass to share the fruit of their labour, inequality seriously undermines the Party’s ruling legitimacy. Moreover, increasing corruption and the introduction of businessmen and elites into the establishment weakened the Party’s ideological foundation. Liberal measures also made it difficult for the Party to control the press and shape narratives. It was in this background of shaken legitimacy that Xi Jinping ascended to power, which prompted him to crack down on corruption within the Party and restrengthen party control over the society.
Busy traffic outside the Great Hall of the People, Beijing.
Courtesy of Michael Delli Carpini (2015): https://flic.kr/p/qDBz2R
Epilogue
This article aims to illustrate how the CCP is generally open to the adaption to new political ideas and social norms in case its ruling capacity or legitimacy is being questioned. Both leftist (Leninist) and rightist (liberal) ideas could be understand as conceptual tool kits of the Party. The Party could take liberty in choosing which set of discourses to employ in face of different circumstances. For instance, on the international realm, the Party could resume its recognition over United Nations Conventions and International Law, which provided its arguments with robust legal and moral support. Within the Party, traditional Marxist discourse could be employed, serving as a symbol of power. Similarly, in face of different domestic NGOs, business and social groups, the Party can also utilise suitable ideas in reference to its objectives. Ultimately, ideology serves as an apparatus for governance and a reserve of moral and coersive power that the Party can draw on.
Two Chinese at a party, cosplaying as a Red Guard from the Cultural Revolution and a retro-80s citizen respectively.
Courtesy of Dennis Yang (2006): https://flic.kr/p/r55Lg
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