Introduction
The object of this article is to outline the reception of Marx in China, i.e. the mainland of China, in the twenty-first century. That is to say, in this article, “Marx” is distinguished from “Marxism,” though of course the former is related to the latter.
From 2000 to 2013, in Chinese academic literature published in the mainland, there are at least 942 books, 3,846 PhD and Masters dissertations, and 24,814 journal articles with “Marx” only in their titles.[1] In addition, in the same period, there was a much bigger volume of political propaganda literature involving Marxism. These numbers shed light on the reception of Marx in China today, but no single short article can cover all such literature.
Today, there are still a few so-called socialist countries among which China is the largest. Since 1949, China has been ruled by a communist party which regards Marxism as the official state ideology. The party plans and regulates discourses on Marxism by means of its official institutions. At present, China has a population of 1.3 billion, and the Communist Party of China (CPC) has more than 80 million members. The Marxism currently expounded by the Party is universally the only politically acceptable Marxism; it is propagandized, justified and applied by official media, as well as educational, scientific and cultural systems, thus becoming very well known to the masses. The Party can tolerate different interpretations of Marxism only if they do not conflict with the Party’s interpretation. Therefore, if one would like to know what the present Chinese people think of Marx, one cannot ignore the Party’s interpretations; on the contrary, one should take the Party’s interpretations as a frame of reference for locating and observing other opinions.
Therefore, this article divides the reception of Marx in twenty-first century China into three main categories according to social influence or the magnitude of their impact on society: first the Party’s interpretations, second the interpretations approved by the Party, and, third the personal interpretations of scholars tolerated by the Party. The distinctions between them, however, are not clear-cut, because not only do those categories have a common ideological foundation, but also because scholars in China usually have to pretend conformity with the Party’s ideological discourse when they articulate their personal interpretations. Beside those categories, this article also discusses some independent scholars’ interpretations of Marx and the workers’ attitude to Marx.
1. The Party’s projected interpretation of Marx
As for the first category, namely the Party’s interpretations, the General Secretary of the CPC has the authority to announce the Party’s opinions. In the 18th National Congress of the CPC on November 8th, 2012, Hu Jintao said in his political report: “The most important achievement in our endeavors in the past ten years is that we have formed the Scientific Outlook on Development and put it into practice by following the guidance of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important thought of Three Represents and by making courageous theoretical innovations on the basis of practices and developing closely interconnected new ideas and viewpoints on upholding and building socialism with Chinese characteristics. The Scientific Outlook on Development was created by integrating Marxism with the reality of contemporary China and with the underlying features of our times, and it fully embodies the Marxist worldview on and methodology for development. This theory provides new scientific answers to the major questions of what kind of development China should achieve in a new environment and how the country should achieve it. It represents a new level of our understanding of the laws of socialism with Chinese characteristics and reaches a new realm in the development of Marxism in contemporary China.”[2]
The main elements of the Scientific Outlook on Development include: (1) taking economic development as the central task; (2) making China strong by developing science and education, training competent personnel and pursuing sustainable development; (3) insisting on taking people first and promoting well-rounded development of the person; (4) promoting economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological progress, ensuring coordinated progress in all areas, and balancing the relations of production with the productive forces as well as the superstructure with the economic base; (5) taking a holistic approach to our work relating to reform, development and stability; (6) upholding the leadership of the Party and socialism with Chinese characteristics in order to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects.[3] Accordingly, in the economic sphere, the main tasks are, domestically, to improve the socialist market economy, change the growth model, and develop both the public and the non-public economy; and internationally, to promote free trade and investment, and oppose protectionism.[4]
It is particularly noticeable that although the political report mentions the financial crisis of 2008, it neither defines it as a crisis of the capitalist system, nor takes the opportunity to argue for the contemporary significance of Marx’s critique of capitalism.
If we ignore some labels such as “Marx” or “socialism” in the report, and just make a textual comparison between the Party’s opinions and Marx’s opinions, it is not easy to find any distinctive connection between them. Moreover, some objectives, such as “improvement of market economy,” “development of the non-public economy” and “promotion of free trade and investment” clearly go against what Marx advocates. However, nor is it easy to absolutely deny any connection between them, because not only does the Scientific Outlook on Development announce its own Marxist genealogical system, but it also uses certain idioms such as “taking people first,” “promoting well-rounded development of the person” and “developing the public economy” that are very similar to Marx’s terms and intentions.
The problem is that, before the reform and opening up in 1978, the CPC believed in another sort of Marxism; this is comprised of elements including uniform public ownership, class struggle, cultural revolution and so on. In those days, especially in the early 1960s, it was condemned as capitalist policy to fix farm output quotas for each household, let alone to approve of a market economy. Until the 1990s, claims such as the “taking people first” (of which a literal translation is “taking the human being as a foundation”) could not avoid being construed as a form of capitalist liberalization. It is thus clear that the Scientific Outlook on Development, like Deng Xiaoping Theory and Jiang Zemin’s thinking on Three Represents, has distanced itself from Mao Zedong’s Marxism, although it inherits many beliefs from Mao.
How does one understand and evaluate such a historic shift in the CPC’s conception of Marxism?
One scholar remarks: “Few outside China would think of China as a socialist, or Marxist, society. Inside China the views vary widely, but few would say, without qualifiers, as the Constitution does, that China is socialist. No one – anywhere – now sees China as a model for socialism.”[5] This remark perhaps conforms to many people’s imagination about socialism, but that depends on what “socialism” is. If it means the ideal state in Marx’s writings, China not only is not socialist now, but also has never been socialist. If “socialism” is taken to designate the real state of China in Mao’s times, the claim both misunderstands and simplifies both Marx’s ideal socialism and Chinese reality. In any case, the use of the term does not indicate “République Chinoise.”[6] The more important thing, however, is that, regarding socialism, both Marx’s theory and Chinese practice are too complicated to be judged simply.
In essence, my understanding is that Marx’s original doctrine has some implicit tension between his ideal ends and the concrete means to attain them. For instance, in their Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels, on the one hand, set up ideal ends such as “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” On the other hand, they designed a radical policy with 10 measures “to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state.”[7] They did not realize any contradiction between the ends and the means, while claiming the necessary connection between them. Unfortunately, however, over nearly a hundred years the CPC’s socialist practice has shown that the centralization of instruments of production in the hands of the state, and the free development of every person, are incompatible. Mao did his utmost to centralize instruments of production, but sacrificed people’s free development. In other words, Mao embraced Marx’s means, but deviated from Marx’s ends. This situation can be called “de-liberalization of Marxism in China”, which means that Marx’s own idea of liberty was negated in Chinese Marxism. In contrast, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao paid more and more attention to people’s free development, and thus no longer pursued centralization. In other words, they gradually recovered Marx’s ends, but had to abandon his means little by little. This situation can be called the “re-liberalization of Marxism in China,” which means that Marx’s own idea of liberty has been recovered to some extent in Chinese Marxism.[8] Because the centralization of productive instruments is a tenet peculiar to Marxism, while the free development of every person is a proposition close to liberalism, the reception of Marx’s means seems more like Marxism than the reception of Marx’s ends. Perhaps because of this, the CPC’s reform and opening up has been questioned by ultra-left Marxists in China and abroad.
At any rate, since the reform of the rigid structures of centralization, China has achieved remarkably fast development and has become the second economy in the world. An overwhelming majority of Chinese people have extricated themselves from hunger and poverty and attained the conditions where they can pursue their own better lives. In the sense that the Party has finally recovered Marx’s ideal ends and abandoned part of his concrete means, the Party has succeeded in representing the “fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of people,” just as it claims[9]. Clearly, because the CPC’s reform and opening up has significantly raised the level of the whole national economy, it can be asserted, at least, that the overwhelming majority of people are objectively closer to Marx’s ideal end than they used to be. Although the new direction has brought about new problems, especially increased social inequality, those problems should not be taken as an argument in defence of the old direction, much less as a reason to defend Mao’s China as a model for socialism. In other words, the success of the CPC’s reform and opening up has made people closer to Marx’s ideal ends but only, arguably, through some non-Marxian means.
As a matter of fact, there are many serious problems in today’s China, among which the most fateful ones are not in economics but in politics. In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels point out that the first step in the revolution by the working class is “to win the battle of democracy.”[10]In Civil War in France, Marx clarifies “universal suffrage” as the fundamental form of proletarian democracy.[11] However, in today's China, the voting franchise every citizen actually possesses is limited to the town and county levels. Even there, citizens are not able to vote directly for executive positions such as mayors but only to confirm the candidates the Party has chosen as deputies to the congresses where the executive members, already chosen by the Party, will be confirmed by deputies. Thus, while there exists a facade of franchise, in reality public power and resources monopolized by the Party have generated broad political privileges for a bureaucratic class, instruments for protecting and increasing vested interests, and breeding rampant political corruption. This is the primary cause of the wide gap between the rich and the poor; and the main root of class conflict and social turbulence. Overall, the political continuity between the CPC in Mao’s time and today is clearly stronger than its economic continuity: for the CPC, political de-liberalization has been greater than economic de-liberalization, while political re-liberalization has been less than economic re-liberalization.
2.The interpretations of Marx approved by the Party
In such a political system in China, most of the study of Marx and Marxism is organized and controlled by the Party. Since the beginning of this century, such organization and control have been given increasing importance. That is to say, in China, the study of Marx and Marxism is planned just as parenthood is planned, even though the economy is no longer planned.
In 2004, the Central Committee of the CPC launched a national project to study and develop Marxist theory. Its major objective was to re-write basic textbooks on Marxism and on major subjects in the humanities and social sciences, so as to incorporate the Party’s updated thoughts into the curriculum, thus remolding students’ conception of Marxism and political identity. For this, the Party chose scholars who were politically reliable and professionally outstanding to constitute different research groups, and invested heavily in their exploration and deliberation. The result was textbooks satisfying the Party, some of which were even required to meet the approval of all the members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC. Currently the most prominent textbooks are Fundamental principles of Marxism[12] and Marxist Philosophy[13]. The former expounds generally Marxist theoretical systems and the latter expounds particularly Marxist theoretical foundations. These textbooks are patchworks of traditional dogmas, updated formulations of the Party’s ideology, and scattered personal opinions of the research group members. While such textbooks met the Party’s political demands, they have no intellectual value.
Each year since 2004, the National Fund for Social Sciences has held an open competition that seeks to heavily fund research projects focusing particularly on the Party’s ideology and policy. In 2013, for example, the first round of the competition approved projects on 60 prescribed topics. These topics are essentially an elaboration of Hu’s political report to the 18th Congress. Each topic may accommodate up to two projects, and each project can be granted 600-800 thousand Yuan. Besides this, there are thousands of projects similar at national and local levels, and at governmental and academic institutional levels. All these projects absorb multiple research groups; success or failure at obtaining such grants has become a very important index for assessing academic achievements. Of recent Chinese literature on Marxism, the most significant part consists of the output of such projects. Clearly such projects are intended to construct a large scale ideological camp, and, accordingly, their outcomes resemble each other very closely.
At the same time, it should be noted that most funds also support non-ideological sorts of research. Essentially, for a scholar in a Chinese academic institution, without a project funded by the government there is no opportunity for promotion. Even this article can count as an outcome of such projects.
3.Scholars’ personal interpretations of Marx tolerated by the Party
In spite of the above-mentioned situation, since the implementation of the reform and opening up, especially since 2000, the Party has gradually shown the capacity to tolerate interpretations of Marx or Marxism irrelevant to the Party’s interests. This treatment contrasts sharply with that before the reform and opening up, when any word and deed deviating from the Party’s will was punished ruthlessly. The treatment before the reform and opening up can be called “de-theorization of Marxism in China,” which means that Marx’s own theoretical spirit was negated in Chinese Marxism; while the treatment since the reform and opening up can be called “re-theorization of Marxism in China,” which means that Marx’s own theoretical spirit has been recovered to some extent in Chinese Marxism.[14] Under this condition of limited toleration, in addition to the promotion of scholarship among the younger generation and the direct influence of Western colleagues, the study of Marxism in China has generated some interpretations deviating from the Party’s ideology. Due to this sort of study, Marx has been rescued from official Marxist ideology, and a number of scholars who want “to approach Marx” or “to return to Marx”[15] have distinguished themselves from the Party’s massive Marxist troops. Though scholars normally have to live within the confines of the institutional system, and perform their respective duties including participation in various projects and the production of official propaganda, some forerunners have risen above this system after all.
As regards theoretical braveness and achievements, Gao Qinghai (1930-2004, from Jilin University) is the most distinguished Marxist philosopher in China. He had been defending his own independent understanding of Marx against dogmatic Marxism until this century, and was continually concerned with the fate of China and the future of humankind. For this reason, during his career as a scholar of Marxism beginning in the 1950s, he was persecuted in political movements nearly every decade. In his old age he published his Collected Philosophic Works in 9 volumes[16] which contributed two elements to the study of Marx in China. On the one hand, he critiqued the Stalinist system of Marxist philosophy, and, secondly, he spared no effort in elucidating Marx’s thoughts on practice. He published an article, “Re-evaluating the Antagonism between Materialism and Idealism”[17] in 1988, in which he advocated that Marx’s practical philosophy transcends the antagonism between materialism and idealism. The paper was the first challenge from a Chinese scholar to the orthodox system of Marxist philosophy, namely, “Dialectic Materialism and Historical Materialism.” Gao contested its sacred status, earning him political persecution. On the other hand, based on Marx’s theory of human development, he developed an innovative theory: Philosophy of Species[18]. In Grundrisse, Marx divides social forms into three categories from the angle of human development: the first is “relations of personal dependence,” the second “personal independence founded on objective dependence,” and the third “free individuality.”[19]According to this framework, Gao dialectically critiques both community-subjectivity in pre-capitalist society and individual-subjectivity in capitalist society, while he advocates species-subjectivity in post-capitalist society and takes it as the essence of Marx’s “an association of free men.”[20] This is the most innovative philosophical idea of humanity among those contributed by Chinese Marxist scholars. After Gao passed away, his students at Jilin University, including Sun Zhengyu, Sun Litian and He Lai, have been promoting his cause, particularly in the area of Marx’s dialectics.[21]
In respect of the depth of scholarly research and examination of Marx’s philosophy, Yu Wujin (Fudan University) is the most outstanding specialist among living Chinese Marxist scholars. His On Ideology[22] is a pioneering monograph on Marx’s thought about ideology as well as on the history of ideology (before and after Marx) in Chinese literature. In this century, he has published several insightful books interpreting Marx’s thought from multiple angles.[23] His most important contribution to the study of Marx is to reveal, by evaluating connections between Marx and Kant, that liberty is the essence of Marx’s conception of practice; he can thus go on to provide a theoretical foundation, faithful to Marx, for the re-liberalization of Marxism in China. Because Yu Wujin has always expressed inopportune interpretations of the work of Marx, especially maintaining the difference between Marx and Engels, he was excluded from the specialist group of the national project studying and developing Marxist theory.
In the course of reflection upon dogmatist Marxism, a number of Chinese scholars have produced innovative accounts of Marx’s ontology. Wang Nanshi and his student Xie Yongkang (from Nankai University) reconstruct Marx’s materialism starting from his concept of practice.[24] Yang Xuegong (Peking University) repositions the revolutionary achievement of Marx’s philosophy by drawing an outline of the history of Western ontology.[25] Wu Xiaoming and Zou Shipeng (Fudan University), among others, manifest the contemporary value of Marx’s philosophic revolution by comparing Marx with Heidegger.[26]
The most important scholarly achievements of Chinese interpretations of Marx in the past two decades were reached by way of intensive reading of texts. A Return to Marx by Zhang Yibing (Nanjing University) can be regarded as the most excellent Chinese monograph on Marx to date. This book is the first successful attempt by a Chinese scholar to examine Marx’s thoughts through the text of MEGA2. The profundity and integrity of this investigation into Marx’s economic texts surpasses its predecessors’ works, and perfectly exemplifies the method of the textual or textological study of Marxism, in stark contrast to the Party’s method: ideological propaganda. Subsequently, Zhang published A Return to Lenin and his student, Hu Daping, published A Return to Engels.[27]This series on “returns” shows characteristics of the research group at Nanjing University.
The textual or textological study of Marx has been promoted in Beijing as Marxology. Three events marked the founding of Chinese Marxology: the first two were the publications of A New Foundation for Marxology by Wang Dong (Peking University) and Hot Issues of Marxism studies by Marxologists Abroad[28] by Lu Kejian (now at Beijing Normal University) in 2006; the third is the convening of the first Forum on Marxology sponsored by Wang, Lu together with Nie Jinfang (Peking University), Han Lixin (Tsinghua University) and others in 2007. In the ideological context of Chinese Marxism, Marxism denotes the “proletarian” and the “revolutionary” while Marxology the “bourgeois” and the “counterrevolutionary”. That these scholars could research Marx under the banner of Marxology shows that, on the one hand, their study of Marx has exceeded the Party’s ideological boundaries, and, on the other hand, that the Party might tolerate some “neutral” study of Marx. Recently, remarkable achievements of this sort include Nie’s Criticism and Construction: a Textological Study of “The German Ideology”[29], and Han’s A Study of “Paris Manuscripts”[30], which are profoundly significant among Chinese monographs focusing on a single work of Marx. In addition, Han and Chen ChangAn (Sun Yat-sen University), took part in the outworking of the compilation of MEGA2; thus they have become the scholars in China closest to Marx’s texts, in particular his unpublished manuscripts.
4.Others
Studies of Marx farther away than “neutral” Marxology from the Party, such as this article and the like published abroad, may not be published in the mainland, because they overstep the limit of the Party’s tolerance. Perhaps such studies can be regarded as an extra category, though their domestic social influence is negligible.
Furthermore, there is an exceptional individual who escapes all the above-mentioned categories, Li Zehou (1930- ), from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Li is the greatest thinker in contemporary China. He has earned an excellent reputation for his comprehensive achievements in various areas including aesthetics, philosophy, ethics, and intellectual history. He also has a sympathetic insight into Marx’s historical materialism. Because of his critique of the official response to the Tiananmen Event in 1989, he was taken as a dissident and forced to immigrate to the USA in 1992. Nevertheless, in recent years, some of his books and anthologies have been permitted to be published though he still lives abroad. In a recent publication, he advocates “dual-ontology,” emphasizing both the primacy of material production and the ultimacy of mental values for the existence of human beings.[31] It appears that his works are more acceptable than himself.
5.A Significant Blank
Marxism is alleged to be the doctrine of the liberation of the proletariat, so it is taken for granted that the working class must receive Marxism. Unfortunately, in fact, most workers are indifferent to Marxism in China today.
Marxism and China met each other apparently but missed each other essentially. When the CPC carried out the so-called proletarian revolution in the first half of the last century, the Chinese bourgeoisie and proletariat were the minority cohorts of the population; the antagonism between them was just beginning. Since the reform and opening up, the CPC itself has recreated the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and their antagonism, by means of the market economy. Now, arguably, China already has the largest population of both the bourgeoisie and proletariat demographically in the world, and even in the whole human history. But it is interesting that the Party defines the current society as socialism with Chinese characteristics rather than capitalism with Chinese characteristics. This really is a historical puzzle in urgent need of resolution.
Nevertheless, because the Party has monopolized the interpretation of Marxism, controlled all the press, and institutionalized the majority of intellectuals, there is no basic foundation for the masses of workers to come to know Marx and Marxism independently. More importantly, because the Chinese masses of workers have heard too much boring Marxist propaganda, and experienced too many painful socialist movements, it is hard for them to be attracted to or by further Marxist discourses. Now that all legal resources of Marxism are offered only by the Party, it is understandable that workers keep Marxism at a distance. For example, in the quite big worker strike which occurred in Dongguan in April, 2014, we cannot find any sign of the class consciousness of the proletariat in a Marxist sense, although some reporters tried to analyse this event from a Marxist perspective.[32]
Undoubtedly, Chinese workers’ independent reception of Marx or Marxism is still a blank, though this blank is significant. However, it is not impossible for Chinese workers to meet Marx again in their own right in the future.
Conclusion
Clearly the Marx received by Chinese people is changing his profile from the singular into the plural. The Marxes in China today can be arranged along a spectrum: the one Marx exists in the Party’s ideological discourses and therefore looks fashionable, and the other Marx exists in some semi-independent scholars’ academic discourses and therefore looks bookish, regardless of the Marxes in the eyes of the dissidents and the masses of workers. The tension between the two extreme receptions of Marx raises a question: must Marx for the Chinese people be received through the Party, or may he be received directly through his writings? Perhaps this will arouse Western readers’ memory of a similar question raised by their ancestors a few centuries ago: must individuals come to know their God through the mediation of the Church, or may they come to know their God directly through the Bible? Unless one realizes and feels this tension, one cannot truly understand the reception of Marx in today's China.
In fact, this analogy is not absolutely new. When I almost finished this paper, I read a book titled Marx and Marxisms which had been published over 30 years ago. Its editor wrote in his introduction: “In a way, the new situation parallels the position in the Christian world in the period during which the Reformation was challenging the claim of the Roman Catholic Church to be the sole authentic interpreter of Christian doctrine. Just as numerous Protestant sects emerged, so the last twenty-five years have seen the emergence of many new versions (and sometimes the re-emergence of some older versions) of Marxism. These versions of Marxism are lumped together under the title of ‘Western Marxism’, as opposed to Russian or Soviet Marxism.”[33] The only difference between his analogy and mine is that the plural reception of Marx had already been realized in the West when he made his analogy; while it remains a wish to a large extent in China, hence my making this similar analogy.
[1]The bibliographic data are from the catalogue-search system of ChaoXing, see http://ss.zhizhen.com/s?adv=%28T%3D%22%E9%A9%AC%E5%85%8B%E6%80%9D%22-T%3D%22%E9%A9%AC%E5%85%8B%E6%80%9D%E4%B8%BB%E4%B9%89%22%29*%282000%3CD%3C2013%29&aorp=a&syear=2000&eyear=2013&size=15&isort=0&x=0_17#searchbody
[2] Hu Jintao (2012: 7-8).
[3] Hu Jintao (2012: 7, 14).
[4] Hu Jintao (2012: 17, 18, 40, 42).
[5] Ware (2013: 136-160).
[6] Ware reads “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” as a socialist slogan, see Ware (2013: 136-160). But I think that this slogan is clearly borrowed from the slogan of the French Revolution, so it cannot be read as Ware does. For details of my argument, see Xu Changfu (2011: 107-121).
[7] See Marx and Engels (1959a: 28-29).
[8] See Xu Changfu (2012: 1-17).
[9] See Jiang Zemin (2002).
[10] See Marx and Engels (1959a: 27-28).
[11] See Marx (1959b: 365-366).
[12] See The Writing Group (2010).
[13] See The Writing Group (2009).
[14] See Xu Changfu (2012: 1-17).
[15] These are two typical slogans whereby the minority of Chinese Marxist scholars distinguished themselves from the majority. They are extracted from the titles of two books. See Chen Xueming and Ma Yongjun (2002); Zhang Yibing (2009).
[16] See Gao Qinghai (1997) and Gao Qinghai (2004).
[17] See Gao Qinghai (1988: 4-9).
[18] Gao Qinghai employs “species” in the same way as the young Marx. See Marx (1988: 77). Also see Gao Qinghai (2004: 95).
[19] See Marx ( 1973: 158).
[20] See Marx (1990: 171).
[21] See Sun Zhengyu (2002); Sun Litian (2006); He Lai (2011).
[22] See Yu Wujin (2009).
[23] See Yu Wujin (2004) and Yu Wujin (2010).
[24] See Wang Nanshi and Xie Yongkang (2004).
[25] See Yang Xuegong (2011).
[26] See Wu Xiaoming (2005); Zou Shipeng (2005).
[27] See Zhang Yibing (2008); Hu Daping (2011).
[28] See Wang Dong (2006); Lu Kejian (2006).
[29] See Nie Jinfang (2012).
[30] See Han Lixin (2014).
[31] See Li Zehou (2011: 232, 234).
[32] See Friends of Gongchao (2014).
[33] Parkinson (1982: 2).
