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SCMP Reporter

There is no doubt that China has dumped Marxism, an outspoken economics professor at Peking University said.

Professor Shang Dewen's comments came a day after state media claimed the ideas of Karl Marx remained popular in China on the 184th anniversary of the German philosopher's birth.

Speaking to the South China Morning Post , Professor Shang said economics students at mainland universities were only expected to study Marxism for a maximum of 20 hours during their five years of tertiary education.

'Instead students are urged to focus on micro and macro-economic studies related to international market mechanisms and capitalism theories.'

Those not on economics courses did not have to study Marx at all, he said.

Professor Shang said the so-called Marxism upheld by the Communist Party and President Jiang Zemin was actually the theory propounded by late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and Mr Jiang's Theory of the Three Representatives.

The thoughts of both leaders have been termed as milestones of Marxism in China.

According to the Theory of the Three Representatives, the party must represent the foremost production forces, the most advanced culture and the interests of the masses.

At the annual meeting of the National People's Congress in March, neither Premier Zhu Rongji nor NPC Chairman Li Peng mentioned Marxism in their speeches. They instead emphasised the promotion of Deng's theory and Mr Jiang's Three Representatives as guidance for national development, the professor said.

Professor Shang, an expert on Marxism, said Deng's and Mr Jiang's theories had departed from Marxism and were gradually moving towards democratic socialist theories. 'Jiang and Deng put more emphasis on entrepreneurs, but have not yet disregarded labourers and farmers,' he said, adding the biggest difference between Mr Jiang's theory and that of Western theories on democratic socialism was China's centralised political system.

'China still has 900 million peasants - a loosely organised class - and Chinese leaders think centralised power is needed to rule this class,' he said.

Mr Jiang's theory will be expanded at the 16th Communist Party Congress in October to facilitate the growth of the middle class, but Professor Shang said the changes would not abandon the class struggle as in democratic socialism but would 'dilute' it. In Das Kapital,  Marx argued that capitalists were driven by profit, achieved by grabbing the surplus value created by workers in the production process.

Professor Shang said Marx's labour surplus-value theory had recently been debated by Marxism scholars in China and many believed that Beijing's existing socialist market economy policies contradicted Marx's ideals.

'The socialist market economy is a de facto capitalist market economy. Protests by laid-off workers from state enterprises are worse than those of Western capitalism because China's socialist capitalism has yet to develop a social security net for disgruntled workers,' he said.

He said the admission of talented entrepreneurs to the Central Party School and the possible future incorporation of private business people into the party showed that China's perception of Marx's capitalism as exploitation had changed.



Marxism ditched, says professor