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Cary Huang

But it won't try to export revolution, says academic

While Marxism is in decline throughout the world, China has taken the lead in the development of the communist ideology, according to a mainland theorist.

Cheng Enfu, executive president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' new Academy of Marxism, said Communist Party leaders had never been so keen to push Marxism forward.

After two decades of economic reforms that have seen the mainland grow richer by abandoning Karl Marx's economic ideas, it was revealed last week that party leaders had pledged 'unlimited' funds for reviving Marxism.

Professor Cheng noted that the party's decision-making central committee issued a document on developing social sciences and philosophy in late 2004, while the Politburo held several meetings last year to study the issue.

'This was the first time in the party's history that the central committee issued a policy document on the development of social sciences,' Professor Cheng said.

Last year, the party launched a campaign among leaders and senior academics to modernise Chinese Marxism, seeking to reconcile obvious contradictions between the government's founding ideology and free-market reforms.

Hundreds of millions of yuan will be spent under the campaign to build more research and education institutes, train more academics and produce new academic papers.

It also would promote research on ways to redefine Marxism to enable it to be used in policymaking amid an increasingly free market environment, Professor Cheng said.

Party general secretary and President Hu Jintao recently presided over a meeting of top leaders to study ways to apply Marxist precepts to the economic modernisation drive. Professor Cheng was one of the two academics invited to lecture Politburo members on the need to modernise Marxism.

The Politburo gathering was one of several held since early last year to examine Marxism's role in confronting what Mr Hu called 'a series of changes, contradictions and problems in all fields'.

Professor Cheng insisted that Marxist theory could still be applied to the problems China was facing in a market-oriented environment, adding that Japanese Marxist economists had been playing a crucial role in Tokyo's policymaking.

'Marxist economists have played a prominent role in the reconstruction of Japan since the end of the second world war by initiating many economic reform programmes,'  he said.

Professor Cheng said Beijing aimed to modernise Marxism by building a theoretical system with Chinese characteristics and style, adding that this would contribute to advance and modernise  the ideology worldwide.

He said China  provided a favourable environment for further development and modernisation of Marxism.

'Firstly, we have provided the world a new economic theory - what is now called the 'socialist market economy',' Professor Cheng said. 'Secondly, China has set a precedent by becoming the first to successfully build a socialist market economic system. And finally, we have advanced the Marxist theory of economics in many areas.'

Professor Cheng is best known on the mainland for his contributions to the advancement of Marxist economic theory and is seen as one of the top representatives of modern Chinese Marxism.

While acknowledging that Marxism has been at a low ebb for the past few decades, he  said the ideology was enjoying a resurgence, noting that left-wing  leaders had come to power in three Latin American countries  recently.

'But Marxism has been marginalised in the western world,'  he said, adding that membership of a radical association of Marxist economists in the United States had dropped from more than 2,000 in the 1970s to about 800 now.

Professor Cheng said the Chinese government would never attempt to export revolution nor seek to become the leader of the global communist movement, as did the former Soviet Union.



China taking the lead to energise Marxist ideology