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China -- Politics & government, Socialism -- China, Capitalism -- China, Solidarity, Chinese investments, South America -- Foreign relations, and United States -- Foreign economic relations

China's engagement with global capitalism is driven by the emergence of a statist and private transnational capitalist class. Nevertheless, aspects of China's foreign policy from the Maoist period still echo today. Consequently, elements of third world solidarity and opposition to Western domination continue to exist as China's past is redefined to further its transnational strategies in Latin America and the US. The main Chinese investments in South America have been in energy and infrastructure among the left lead countries of the Pink Tide. In the US, Chinese capital has grown despite heated political rhetoric. This paper will examine how economic ties in South and North America reflect past and present conditions, and if China has initiated a non-Western globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radio broadcasting, Socialism -- China -- History, Government ownership, and Political parties -- History

When socialist China was founded in 1949, led by the Chinese Communist Party and with Mao Zedong as the leader, radio was the most technologically viable medium with little presence of television. As propaganda is the dominant conception mobilized to interpret the role of media in Mao-era China (1949-76), radio is no exception. However, we still do not fully understand how radio worked and the degree to which programming shaped both public and individual life during this era. Addressing these questions is crucial if we are to explore the involvement of radio in modernizing Mao-era China beyond propaganda. Drawing largely upon Chinese material available pertinent to radio in Mao-era China, this article starts by examining the circumstances in which a state-owned radio system was constructed. It then moves on to scrutinize the materiality and forms of listening exercised in Chinese everyday lived reality. It investigates: several radio genres that were prominent during the Maoist era; and; the multiple dimensions that guided radio's production of a socialist subject. Taking the historical context and specific radio practices into account, this article aims to address issues - both theoretical and empirical - to localize the relationship between radio and modernization in socialist China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SOCIALISM, REALISM in literature, POLITICAL parties, WORKING class, REVOLUTIONS, and HISTORY

In this paper, I read the play Red Flag Song (1948) as a window into a moment of missed opportunity in China's revolution, when the Party's re-engagement with the urban working class could have strengthened democratic tendencies within the Party, and when China's critical realist literary tradition could have grounded Chinese socialism in the real-life experiences and aspirations of the grassroots. Written at a time when the Party's control of both industrial and literary productions had begun to tighten, Red Flag Song registered compromise as well as defiance on the shopfloor, and foregrounded two issues as deeply related and fundamental to the making of a New China: work-place democracy as the basis for making China's working class, and realist literature as a means of understanding complexities and pluralities in social upheavals, and of ensuring a humane and democratic socialism. Unfortunately, the visions Red Flag Song carried were never realised in the following years. They remain unfulfilled promises of the Chinese revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SOCIALISM, HISTORY, SOCIALISM & society, SOCIAL change, INTELLECTUALS, WORKING class, TWENTIETH century, and CHINA -- Politics & government -- 1949-1976

The Rectification Campaign of 1957 prompted a vibrant debate about Chinese socialism. This debate contained three analytically distinct perspectives on the intellectual, each corresponding to a specific vision of socialist development. The "legislator" perspective, championed by college students, demanded for intellectuals the right to help to define socialism. Leading intellectuals sponsored the "reformer" view, which argued that intellectuals were vital to improving governance under the Chinese Communist Party. The state's "red-and-expert" ideal demanded intellectuals' devotion to the working class and the acceleration of professional training for members of the working class. These perspectives promoted, respectively, a modernist, a traditionalist and a borderline Gramscian path of development--none of which was embraced by the Mao regime or post-Mao leaderships. Recovering these visions enriches our understanding of Chinese socialism; they offer powerful contrasts to extremes of both a subsequent Maoism and the current widening inequalities, official corruption and abuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CRITICAL theory, MAOISM, and SOCIALISM -- China

In his article, "Rethinking Critical Theory and Maoism," Kang Liu reviews the existing literature in English on the relationship of Critical Theory and Maoism and discusses the need to explore and reconstruct a genealogy of Critical Theory and Maoism within the global context of political, ideological, and intellectual currents and trends. The special issue will focus on three clusters of issues: first, the western invention of Maoism as a universal theory of revolution; second, the reception of Critical Theory in China and its relationship to Maoism; and third, the relevance of Maoism and Critical Theory today. Liu raises the question in the end: can Maoism be seen as a revolutionary universalism, or a nationalist ideology of Chinese Exceptionalism? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CHINESE philosophy, SOCIALISM, and CHINA

The article analyzes the influence of Chinese philosophy and socialism of philosophers Lao Tzu and Mao Tzu Tung in writing of playwright Bertolt Brecht on dialectical theatre. Topics discussed include Brecht's plays "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" and "Coriolanus," works in short stories collection "Keuner Geschichten" and the poem "Gedanken bei einem Flug über die Große Mauer," and implication of the interrelationship between the works.

CHINA -- Politics & government, POLITICAL parties -- China, DEMOCRACY, and SOCIALISM -- China

The author discusses the third plenum of the Chinese government. The author states that the third plenum epitomizes the thought of former chairman of Community Party of China, Mao Zedong based upon socialism, market economy, and one party system. The author mentions that it denounces the Western democratic ideals.

REVOLUTIONS, COMMUNISM -- China, SOCIALISM -- China, and POLITICAL systems

Copyright of Social Sciences in China is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

CULTURAL Revolution, China, 1966-1969, MAOISM -- Social aspects, SOCIAL classes, IDEOLOGY, BUREAUCRACY, SOCIALISM -- China -- History, TWENTIETH century, POLITICAL parties -- History, and HISTORY

The Cultural Revolution arguably was all about class and class struggle, which were enduring motifs throughout the Mao era. But what did class really mean, and how do we situate Mao’s “continuous revolution” in its historical context? Many scholars have argued that Mao’s project of continuous revolution, that is, the Cultural Revolution, was an active attempt to tackle the problem of the bureaucratic institutionalization of the Chinese Revolution and above all to forestall the rise of a new socialist ruling elite. This new-class interpretation of late Maoism and the Cultural Revolution is flawed in two crucial aspects. First of all, it overlooks the manifold ambiguities and incoherencies of the late Maoist ideology of class; and second, it fails to fully comprehend the political and ideological consequences of such ambiguities and fragmentariness as amplified by the specific historical and institutional context in which they were pragmatically received and enacted. This paper begins with a brief discussion of the contradictions and ambiguities of the Maoist discourse of class. It then examines the political and ideological consequences of such ambiguities by focusing on the ramifications of the institutional codification of class in post-1949 China. Artificially constructing and perpetuating a social field of antagonism that had largely ceased to exist by the 1960s, the discourse of the state-imposed class-status system was superimposed upon an emergent language of class critical of bureaucratic inequalities, an inchoate language which became assimilated into the existing class discourse based on a rigid classification of prerevolutionary sociopolitical distinctions. This entanglement of disparate forms of class analysis and practice had profound consequences during the Cultural Revolution, as discourses about old and new class adversaries—each with distinct structures of antagonism and developmental dynamics—became hopelessly confused. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

FAMINES -- China, STARVATION, SOCIALISM -- China -- History, GREAT Leap Forward, China, 1958-1961, ECONOMIC conditions in China -- 1949-1976, and ECONOMICS

This article examines how Deng Xiaoping actively participated in, effectively implemented and strictly supervised Mao's notorious utopian project, the Great Leap Forward, which claimed the lives of tens of millions of Chinese people. The paper will also consider the negative influences of Deng on the political processes of the Chinese Communist Party during the devastating campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SOCIALISM -- China -- History and IDEOLOGY

During the 60 years from the founding of New China, the form of China's socialism has achieved great changes and it realizes a historic leap from "revolution-oriented ideology" to "construction-oriented ideology", to which Mao Ze-dong, Deng Xiao-ping, Jiang Ze-min and Hu Jin-tao has made great contributions. The setting up, improvement and the development of theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the fruit of the great leap, embodying new contents with Chinese elements and with the spirit of the times to scientific socialism of Marxism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IDEOLOGY, RIGHT & left (Political science), ECONOMIC reform, SOCIALISM, LIBERALS, DEMOCRATIC socialism, NATIONALISM, EQUALITY -- Government policy, and MAOISM

The article discusses the ideological divide between the left-wing faction and their liberal opponents within the Communist Party of China (CPC). The author contends that the political struggle within the CPC poses a question for China's future as to whether China will return to egalitarian socialism or move towards democratic socialism. An overview of the political left and right wings of the CPC, including the former's adherence to nationalism under the banner of Maoism and the latter's criticism of communist leader Mao Zedong and push for economic reform, is presented.