SINOGRAPH China takes a new look at Marxism
By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - The week before the visit of United States President Barack Obama,
the Chinese media were full of hope and expectations: Obama's meeting with
China's leaders would lead to new and higher-level bilateral relations,
newspapers wrote. But it was already clear that, contrary to the ideas of the
foreign press, this would not mean that China was to become a second America.
In fact, on November 14, less than 48 hours before Obama's arrival in Beijing,
the official news agency Xinhua released a long statement in Chinese only
explaining that Xi Jinping, vice president of the state and president of the
Central Party School, had held a conference about the necessity to "actively
encourage
the building of a ruling party study model of Marxism".
Xi, in his speech at the Party School, which was chaired by Li Jingtian, the
executive vice president of the same school, recommended studying socialist
theory with Chinese characteristics and applying the "core values of
socialism".
The school is the highest institution in the country to train officials of the
Chinese Communist Party.
It sounds like a trip back in time, light years away from the wave of freshness
and optimism that seems to blow in the West and in the US around Obama, with
his liberal, charismatic aura.
But it is not an isolated gesture. The strong emphasis on Marxism has been
echoed by headlines in recent months. The current economic crisis places in
question the faith, previously almost blind in China, in the capitalist system.
On November 11, the Chinese edition of Global Times, China's best-selling
national newspaper, led the front page with a report that a BBC survey in 21
countries had found that a majority of people no longer had confidence in
capitalism. (More than 29,000 people in 27 countries were questioned. In only
two countries, the United States and Pakistan, did more than one in five people
feel that capitalism works well as it stands.)
In a sense, China is emerging from decades of reticence about its political
system. On November 13 and 14, immediately before Obama arrived in Beijing,
Zheng Bijian, credited as a political adviser to President Hu Jintao, flew to
Taiwan to take part for the first time in a seminar on political systems. Zheng
was executive vice president of the Party School in the 1990s when Hu was its
president.
It was the first time that a very senior Beijing official had agreed to discuss
the differences between the political systems in China and Taiwan, which have
been a major stumbling block in any potential process of reunification of the
island with the mainland. Taiwan is a parliamentary democracy, and China isn't.
The message appears to be that with the current crisis - which is economic, but
to a certain extent systemic in the US - China is having renewed doubts about
the value of the US and Western system, and is growing cautious.
This does not mean that Beijing will turn back or stop, although it is willing
to explore different directions.
In his speech, Xi coined a new term in China's ultra-coded political rhetoric:
"The ruling party study model of Marxism." The definition is cryptic for people
in the West, but it is still clearly miles away from the days when the party
called itself "Communist Marxist-Leninist".
The indications are that the Chinese are no longer inclined to define their
party as "communist", although they acknowledge a real, not simply rhetorical,
value in the study of Marxism and the "core values of socialism". China is
becoming more convinced and self-confident in its trial reforms of the
political system.
This greater confidence was evidenced in Zheng Bijian's trip to Taiwan. In
essence, the message to the Taiwanese, who might still one day unite with the
mainland, was, "We will certainly change our political system, but your
parliamentary democracy also must reform; otherwise, it risks being derailed
and overwhelmed by demagoguery and populism."
Zheng's position is not without support on the island, where many entrepreneurs
and tycoons are beginning to admire the efficiency and economic success in
mainland China.
China's leaders stress they do not want to export their political model, and
they even ask others not to imitate them but to look for their own development
paths. Still, China's politicians are becoming unwilling to endure lectures on
politics or ethics, given the fact that their system is working today, while
others falter.
In the runup to Obama's visit, all this meant that the message to the visitor
was to keep domestic politics out of big-policy discussions. But it was also a
statement: China is reforming its political system, although it might not be
totally along the lines Washington or the West wants to see.
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