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Economic development, Mixed economy, Socialism -- China, and Maoism

It has been 40 years since Deng Xiaoping broke dramatically with Maoist ideology and the Maoist variant of socialism. Since then, China has been transformed. Forty years ago, in 1978, China was unquestionably a socialist economy of the familiar and well-studied 'command economy' variant, even though it was more decentralized and more loosely planned than its Soviet progenitor. Twenty years ago-that is, by the late 1990s-China had completely discarded this type of socialism and was moving decisively to a market economy. China today is quite different both from the command economy of 40 years ago, and from the 'Wild West Capitalism' of 20 years ago. Throughout these enormous changes, China has always officially claimed to be socialist. Does the 'socialist' label make sense when applied to China today? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Afforestation, Tree planting, Forests & forestry -- China, Nature -- Religious aspects, Maoism, History of ecology, and Socialism -- China -- History

This article attempts to cast doubt on prior scholarship regarding Maoist environmental rhetoric regarding forestry, which has tended to characterize it as destructive, militaristic, and irrationally extractive. Against this simplistic portrayal of Maoist rhetoric concerning Chinese forestry and Mao Zedong's attitudes toward nature, this article demonstrates that the rhetoric of forestry and environment in general during Mao's period is scientific, rational, and even constructive regarding tree planting. To demonstrate the rational and premeditated aspect of socialist forestry and environmental history, the article first explores the speeches and writings of Liang Xi, probably the most important forester and bureaucratic forestry official in early socialist China, who advocated tree planting as a way of tackling the problem of the scarcity of trees. During the early 1950s, his firm belief that tree planting could solve the problems of the Yellow River clashed with hydrologists who also aspired to solve China's environmental challenges. Using newspaper reports from the People's Daily , the article then examines the rhetoric of the "Greening the Motherland" campaign launched by Mao in 1956. During this campaign, Mao pushed the Yellow River's tree-planting initiative to a national scale, thanks largely to the foresters' concerted efforts of persuasion. This nationwide campaign required foresters to instill knowledge of tree planting in a broader range of people at the grassroots level as well as to integrate it within the socialist revolutionary discourse. Since various literary sources from the early 1960s reflect this discourse, they provide us with a powerful means for exploring how foresters and writers achieved this goal. [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]

SOCIAL conflict, SOCIALISM, CAPITALISM, ECONOMIC development, CHINA -- Politics & government -- 20th century, CHINA, and CULTURAL Revolution, China, 1966-1969

Over three decades after China ventured onto the market path, the Chinese state's reform programme, which was intended to invigorate socialism, has instead led the country down a capitalist path. This paper situates China's post-Mao transition in the context of the crisis of the party-state during the Cultural Revolution. Using Gramsci's idea of 'passive revolution', it examines the state's tactics of crisis management aiming to contain and neutralise emergent opposition and pressure from below. As the combined result of state repression, ideological appropriation and socioeconomic incorporation, a new reform paradigm emerged to rearticulate popular demands and initiatives to an official socialism centring on economic modernisation and market liberalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

SOCIALISTS, ECONOMIC anthropology, ETHNOLOGY, SOCIALISM -- China, and SOCIAL security

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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.