The Communist Party of China and Ideology (original) (raw)

2017, Critical Readings on the Communist Party of China (4 Vols. Set)

The People's Republic of China since 1978 has been called a post-Communist and post-ideological society. And yet, at least in terms of maintaining an institutional network of party schools and think tanks, and a common conceptual language for the political elite within the Communist Party, China continues to put resources and effort into what could be construed as ideological work. What is the function of this, in a society which is undergoing dynamic economic and social reform? Does ideology continue to perform a role in building up cohesiveness amongst the political elite in contemporary China, and if so, how? This article looks at the ways in which ideology is formulated in the key speeches of Hu Jintao and in the institutional and linguistic context of these. Ideology for The CommunIsT ParTy In The 21sT CenTury China has been called a "post-Communist society". Marxism and the other dominant thought forms on which the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) came to power, and exercised that power from 1949, have been buried. It has been described as a system now guided by pragmatism and by simply finding what works to deliver the allimportant economic growth. And yet, the language that elite Chinese leaders of the "fourth generation" use often seems to contradict this. In their use of terms, in the ways in which they frame the world, and in the moral and intellectual justifications that they invoke for policy, there does seem to be ideology. In comments made in early 2012, Party Secretary and President Hu Jintao wrote of the hostile intent of western powers and "their efforts ... to divide us", and referred to the fact that "the international culture of the west is strong while we are weak ... Ideological and cultural fields are our main targets". 1 The CPC puts a lot of effort into crafting its ideological message, in fact, and this is testified by the network of Party Schools across the country, at the central and provincial level, the time devoted to training even the