Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
pass laws to defend private property and introduce bankruptcy regula-
tions that recognize shareholders and relegate the rights of workers?
(Fenby 2009, 675-76)
These are pressing and telling questions. But as tedious and evasive
as the basic answer to the question “Is China still a communist or social-
ist country?” may sound, it really does depend on towhom the question
is addressed and what is meant by “communism.” During the 1960s,
virtually anyone queried on the streets of Beijing or Shanghai
about his or her personal belief in Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong
Thought would have enthusiastically and unhesitatingly affirmed it.
During the heady days of the 1950s and 1960s, the Chinese public was
brimming with confidence in the leadership of the Chinese Communist
Party, and they bought it all—Mao's personality cult, the necessity of
class struggle, the Marxist idea about the five progressive historical
stages of socioeconomic development (slave, feudal, capitalist, socialist,
and ultimately communist societies), and even Mao's insistence that
some of these historical stages (for example, the transition from feudal
society to socialist society) could be leapfrogged in only a few months
through mass movements and the transformative power of political
education.
Today, however, the same query in the same places would likely
produce blank stares. No, of course the overwhelming majority of
Chinese people do not believe in that laotao (old stuff) any more—they
believe in getting rich and, in the process, making China great again. If
the Party can provide the social stability and infrastructural develop-
ment necessary for continued economic growth, then fine, the public
will support the Party and not challenge its rule over China. Thus, in
one sense, in terms of the public acceptance and legitimacy of basic
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, the answer to the question
is an emphatic “No,” China is no longer a communist country. Com-
munist ideology died with Mao in 1976 and was buried in 1978 when
Deng Xiaoping's reforms were announced.
For the Party itself, however, the answer is another matter entirely.
The Party today continues to be communist in purely ideological
terms. That is, it and its members continue to believe in the basics of
Marxism-Leninism. For them, the question is not whether Marx's
theory of the five stages of socioeconomic development are correct—
they are. The question is where along the continuum of these five stages
China is at present. Mao believed that China leapfrogged from feudal
society right over capitalist society during the mid-1950s and was well
advanced into the socialist stage by the late 1950s, perhaps even on the
