Page:The Elements of the China Challenge (November 2020).pdf/31

 The CCP’s Communism

In 1954, Mao stated, “The force at the core that leads our cause is the Chinese Communist Party; the theoretical foundation that guides our thinking is Marxism-Leninism.” Daniel Tobin has underscored the continuity of the party’s ideological convictions: “In his first speech to a Politburo group study session as general secretary in November 2012, Xi [Jinping] echoed each of his post-Mao predecessors in insisting: ‘Only socialism can save China, and only Chinese socialism can lead our country to development.’” And only socialism, from the party’s point of view, can confer upon China its deserved role in world affairs. The CCP aims to make China “a global leader in terms of power and global influence,” as Xi stated in 2017, by strengthening socialism as its “path, theory, system, culture.” Following former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, Xi calls this approach “socialism with Chinese haracteristics.”

In governing China, the CCP adheres to familiar features of 20th-century Marxism-Leninism. The party is supreme. It acts on the assumption that the communist end sanctifies all means. It absorbs the state, subordinating the individual to the collectivity. It directs the economy (even as it permits a degree of private ownership and creates limited space for market forces). It controls education, media, culture, and religion. It regularly purges counterrevolutionary forces. It preaches the priority of socialism’s struggle to defeat international capitalism and political freedom. It proclaims the inevitability of socialism’s victory, which, it maintains, the scientific laws of social and economic development guarantee. And it promulgates among the people a rigid ideology from which it tolerates no dissent

Ideological indoctrination is among the party’s paramount concerns. The CCP imposes conformity of thought and action, for example, through the Great Firewall of China, which censors the internet, and a national “social credit” system that rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior. To control information and surveil the population, “Chinese authorities are knitting together old and state-of-the-art technologies — phone scanners, facial-recognition cameras, face and fingerprint databases and many others.” Meanwhile, Xi is determined to put the power of the state behind the one and only legitimate understanding of economics, politics, and international relations. “We will work harder to study and develop Marxist theory,” he vowed in 2017. “We will foster a Marxist-style of learning, and make it regular practice and an institutionalized requirement for all Party members….” Rh