Socialism with Chinese characteristics (; ) is a set of political theories and policies of the
Chinese Communist Party
The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...
(CCP) that are seen by their proponents as representing
Marxism
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...
adapted to Chinese circumstances.
The term was first established by
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping also Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Teng Hsiao-p'ing; born Xiansheng (). (22 August 190419 February 1997) was a Chinese statesman, revolutionary, and political theorist who served as the paramount leader of the People's R ...
in 1982 and was largely associated with Deng's overall program of adopting elements of market economics as a means to foster growth using foreign direct investment and to increase productivity (especially in the countryside where 80% of China's population lived) while the CCP retained both its formal commitment to achieve
communism
Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a ...
and its monopoly on political power. In the party's official narrative, socialism with Chinese characteristics is Marxism adapted to Chinese conditions and a product of scientific socialism. The theory stipulated that China was in the primary stage of socialism due to its relatively low level of material wealth and needed to engage in
economic growth
In economics, economic growth is an increase in the quantity and quality of the economic goods and Service (economics), services that a society Production (economics), produces. It can be measured as the increase in the inflation-adjusted Outp ...
socialism
Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...
system
A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its open system (systems theory), environment, is described by its boundaries, str ...
and a
culture
Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...
Jiang Zemin
Jiang Zemin (17 August 1926 – 30 November 2022) was a Chinese politician who served as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1989 to 2002, as Chairman of the Central Mil ...
), Scientific Outlook on Development ( Hu Jintao), and Xi Jinping Thought. According to CCP doctrine, Xi Jinping Thought is considered to represent Marxist–Leninist policies suited for China's present condition while Deng Xiaoping Theory was considered relevant for the period when it was formulated. The system outlines the political system of China.
Development
The term was first used by Chinese leader
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping also Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Teng Hsiao-p'ing; born Xiansheng (). (22 August 190419 February 1997) was a Chinese statesman, revolutionary, and political theorist who served as the paramount leader of the People's R ...
on 1 September 1982 in the opening speech of the 12th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. Deng said "We must integrate the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete realities of China, and blaze a path of our own and build a Socialism with Chinese Characteristics".
Content
Article 1 of the country's
constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed.
When these pri ...
Marxism–Leninism
Marxism–Leninism () is a communist ideology that became the largest faction of the History of communism, communist movement in the world in the years following the October Revolution. It was the predominant ideology of most communist gov ...
Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping, pronounced (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (China), chairman of the Central Military Commission ...
, the leadership of the CCP is "the greatest strength of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics".
* The culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics, according to the 19th CCP National Congress, "originates from the excellent traditional Chinese culture nurtured by the Chinese nation's 5,000-year history of civilization, fusing with the revolutionary culture and the advanced socialist culture created by the Party in leading the people in revolution, construction and reform". It officially aims to "cultivate citizens with ideals, morality, culture and discipline, and develop a national, scientific and popular socialist culture that is oriented towards modernization, the world and the future".
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
socialist
Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...
transformation in which China's economy of low productive force was in a transitional period, a position which
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...
Zhengzhou
Zhengzhou is the capital of Henan, China. Located in northern Henan, it is one of the nine National central city, national central cities in China, and serves as the political, economic, technological, and educational center of the province. Th ...
Conference (2–10 November 1958), for example, Mao said that China was in the "intitial stage of socialism". However, Mao never elaborated on the idea and his successors were left to do this.
After Mao Zedong's death
On 5 May 1978, the article "Putting into Effect the Socialist Principle of Distribution According to Work" () elaborated on the idea that China was still at the first stage of reaching a communist society and that it had not become a truly socialist society. The article was written by members in the State Council's Political Research Office led by economist Yu Guangyuan on the orders of Deng Xiaoping so as to "criticize and repudiate" the beliefs of the communist left. After reading it, Deng himself authored a brief memo saying that it was "well-written, and shows that the nature of distribution by labor is not
capitalist
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...
, but socialist ..ndto implement this principle, many things are to be done, and many institutions to be revived. In all, this is to give incentives for us to do better". The term reappeared at the 6th plenum of the 11th Central Committee on 27 June 1981 in the document "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party since the Founding of the PRC".
Hu Yaobang
Hu Yaobang (20 November 1915 – 15 April 1989) was a Chinese politician who was a high-ranking official of the People's Republic of China. He held the Leader of the Chinese Communist Party, top office of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from ...
, the CCP General Secretary, used the term in his report to the 12th National Congress on 1 September 1982. It was not until the "Resolution Concerning the Guiding Principle in Building Socialist Spiritual Civilization" at the 6th plenum of the 12th Central Committee that the term was used in the defense of the economic reforms which were being introduced.
At the 13th National Congress, acting General Secretary Zhao Ziyang on behalf of the 12th Central Committee delivered the report "Advance Along the Road of Socialism with Chinese characteristics". He wrote that China was a socialist society, but that socialism in China was in its primary stage, a Chinese peculiarity which was due to the undeveloped state of the country's productive forces. During this phase of development, Zhao recommended introducing a planned commodity economy on the basis of public ownership. The main failure of the communist right according to Zhao was that they failed to acknowledge that China could reach socialism by bypassing capitalism. The main failure of the communist left was that they held the " utopian position" that China could bypass the primary stage of socialism in which the productive forces are to be modernized.
On 5 October 1987, Yu Guangyuan, a major author of the concept, published an article entitled "Economy in the Initial Stage of Socialism" and speculated that this historical stage will last for two decades and perhaps much longer. This represents, says Ian Wilson, "a severe blight on the expectations raised during the early 70s, when the old eight-grade wage scale was being compressed to only three levels and a more even distributive system was assumed to be an important national goal". On 25 October, Zhao further expounded on the concept of the primary stage of socialism and said that the party line was to follow "One Center, Two Basic Points"—the central focus of the Chinese state was economic development, but that this should occur simultaneously through centralized political control (i.e. the Four Cardinal Principles) and upholding the policy of reform and opening up.
General Secretary
Jiang Zemin
Jiang Zemin (17 August 1926 – 30 November 2022) was a Chinese politician who served as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1989 to 2002, as Chairman of the Central Mil ...
further elaborated on the concept ten years later, first during a speech to the CCP Central Party School on 29 May 1997 and again in his report to the 15th National Congress on 12 September. According to Jiang, the 3rd plenum of the 11th Central Committee correctly analyzed and formulated a scientifically correct program for the problems facing China and socialism. In Jiang's words, the primary stage of socialism was an "undeveloped stage". The fundamental task of socialism is to develop the productive forces, therefore the main aim during the primary stage should be the further development of the national productive forces. The primary contradiction in Chinese society during the primary stage of socialism is "the growing material and cultural needs of the people and the backwardness of production". This contradiction will remain until China has completed the process of primary stage of socialism—and because of it—economic development should remain the party's main focus during this stage.
Jiang elaborated on three points to develop the primary stage of socialism. The first—to develop a socialist economy with Chinese characteristics—meant developing the economy by emancipating and modernizing the forces of production while developing a market economy. The second—building socialist politics with Chinese characteristics—meant "managing state affairs according to the law", developing socialist democracy under the party and making the "people the masters of the country". The third point—building socialist culture with Chinese characteristics—meant turning Marxism into the guide to train the people so as to give them "high ideals, moral integrity, a good education, and a strong sense of discipline, and developing a national scientific, and popular socialist culture geared to the needs of modernization, of the world, and of the future".
When asked about how long the primary stage of socialism would last, Zhao replied " will be at least 100 years ..eforesocialist modernization will have been in the most part accomplished". The state constitution states that "China will be in the primary stage of socialism for a long time to come". As with Zhao, Jiang believed that it would take at least 100 years to reach a more advanced stage.
Socialist market economy
Deng Xiaoping, the architect of the Chinese economic reforms, did not believe that the market economy was synonymous with capitalism or that planning was synonymous with socialism. During his southern tour, he said that "planning and market forces are not the essential difference between socialism and capitalism. A planned economy is not the definition of socialism, because there is planning under capitalism; the market economy happens under socialism, too. Planning and market forces are both ways of controlling economic activity".
Ideological justification
In the 1980s, it became evident to Chinese economists that the Marxist theory of the law of value—understood as the expression of the labor theory of value—could not serve as the basis of China's pricing system. They concluded that Marx never intended his theory of law of value to work "as an expression of 'concretized labor time. Marx's notion of "prices of production" was meaningless to the Soviet-styled planned economies since price formations were according to Marx established by markets. Soviet planners had used the law of value as a basis to rationalize prices in the planned economy. According to Soviet sources, prices were "planned with an eye to the ..basic requirements of the law of value". However, the primary fault with the Soviet interpretation was that they tried to calibrate prices without a competitive market since according to Marx competitive markets allowed for an equilibrium of profit rates which led to an increase in the prices of production. The rejection of the Soviet interpretation of the law of value led to the acceptance of the idea that China was still in the primary stage of socialism. The basic argument was that conditions envisaged by Marx for reaching the socialist stage of development did not yet exist in China.
Mao said that the imposition of "progressive relations of production" would revolutionize production. His successor's rejection of this view according to A. James Gregor has thwarted the ideological continuity of Maoism—officially Mao Zedong Thought. Classical Marxism had argued that a socialist revolution would only take place in advanced capitalist societies and its success would signal the transition from a capitalist
commodity
In economics, a commodity is an economic goods, good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the Market (economics), market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to w ...
-based economy to a "product economy" in which goods would be distributed for people's need and not for profit. If because of a lack of a coherent explanation in the chance of failure this revolution did not occur, the revolutionaries would be forced to take over the responsibilities of the
bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted wi ...
. Chinese communists are thus looking for a new Marxist theory of development. CCP theorist Luo Rongqu recognized that the founders of
Marxism
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...
had never "formulated any systematic theory on the development of the non-Western world" and said that the CCP should "establish their own synthesized theoretical framework to study the problem of modern development". According to A. James Gregor, the implication of this stance is that "Chinese Marxism is currently in a state of profound theoretical discontinuity".
According to academics Xinru Ma and David C. Kang, socialism with Chinese characteristics is restricted to China itself and focuses on China's own ideology and practices. Ma and Kang write that in its foreign relations with other Global South countries, China does not attempt to export the ideology of Socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Private ownership
The Chinese government's understanding of private ownership is claimed to be rooted in classical Marxism. According to party theorists, since China adopted state ownership when it was a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country, it is claimed to be in the primary stage of socialism. Because of this, certain policies and system characteristicssuch as commodity production for the market, the existence of a
private sector
The private sector is the part of the economy which is owned by private groups, usually as a means of establishment for profit or non profit, rather than being owned by the government.
Employment
The private sector employs most of the workfo ...
and the reliance of the
profit motive
In economics, the profit motive is the motivation of firms that operate so as to maximize their profits. Mainstream microeconomic theory posits that the ultimate goal of a business is "to make money" - not in the sense of increasing the firm ...
in enterprise management—were changed. These changes were allowed as long as they improved productivity and modernized the means of production, thus furthering the development of socialism.
The CCP still considers private ownership to be non-socialist. However, according to party theorists, the existence and growth of private ownership does not necessarily undermine socialism or promote capitalism in China. They argue that
Karl Marx
Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...
and
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels" ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.Principles of Communism'', the proletariat can only abolish private ownership when the necessary conditions have been met. In the phase before the abolishment of private ownership, Engels proposed progressive taxation, high inheritance taxes and compulsory bond purchases to restrict private property, while using the competitive powers of state-owned enterprises to expand the
public sector
The public sector, also called the state sector, is the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, pu ...
. Marx and Engels proposed similar measures in ''
The Communist Manifesto
''The Communist Manifesto'' (), originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (), is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London in 1848. The ...
'' with regard to advanced countries, but since China was economically undeveloped, party theorists called for flexibility regarding the party's handling of private property. According to party theorist Liu Shuiyuan, the New Economic Policy program initiated by Soviet authorities in the aftermath of the war communism program is a good example of flexibility by socialist authorities.
Party theorist Li Xuai said that private ownership inevitably involved capitalist exploitation. However, Li regards private property and exploitation as necessary in the primary stage of socialism, stating that capitalism in its primary stage uses remnants of the old society to build itself. Sun Liancheng and Lin Huiyong said that Marx and Engels—in their interpretation of ''The Communist Manifesto''—criticized private ownership when it was owned solely by the bourgeoisie, but not individual ownership in which everyone owns the means of production, hence this cannot be exploited by others. Individual ownership is considered consistent with socialism, since Marx wrote that a post-capitalist society would entail the rebuilding of "associated social individual ownership".
Revisionism (Marxism)
In Marxist philosophy, revisionism, otherwise known as Marxist reformism, represents various ideas, principles, and theories that are based on a Reformism, reform or revision of Marxism. According to their critics, this involves a significant ...