More than 400 pages of the book by journalist, photographer and Sinologist Adriano Madaro are an attempt to decipher the mystery of China's rapidly increasing role in the modern world. The author begins the story from ancient times in order to find in it the roots of the economic and social breakthrough that the country has made in recent years. Bombora Publishing House will release the book "Eternal China" on March 20. Izvestia publishes a fragment of this work in which Madaro reflects on the transformation of Marxist ideas in China — and how the country naturally came to harmony between socialism and capitalism, which took root behind the Great Wall and yielded incredible results.
Socialism in Chinese
Anyone who is at least somewhat familiar with China inevitably thinks about the influence of centuries-old philosophical traditions on the formation and development of political ideology, which is not easy to understand. In the past, for almost the entire second half of the 20th century, the "two Romans of communism" — Moscow and Beijing — accused each other of dogmatism, which led to loud breaks between Mao and Khrushchev, Brezhnev and their associates, who, depending on the degree of disagreement, were called first revisionists, then social imperialists, and finally just renegades. The disputes officially ended only in 1989 with the arrival of Gorbachev and the collapse of the USSR in 1991, while China had been carrying out its own reforms for more than 10 years, independently updating the great theme of the 20th century — Marxism.
This is a minefield that you need to tread carefully, carefully checking each step so as not to be blown up by the shells.
When Deng Xiaoping's reforms began in 1978, the great and heroic people of the Soviet Union were still paralyzed by the regime.
Things have turned out differently in China. Not without mistakes, but the result was different: the Chinese Communist Party carried out its own reforms using an inventive tool — socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Since its founding in 1921, the CPC has been notable for the Sinification of Marxist thought. In the triad of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the inclusion of socialist doctrine in a more complex and in some respects sophisticated Chinese ideological "laboratory" immediately manifested itself.
The thought brought from Europe was perceived and studied not as an abstract dogma, but as a matter that needed to be mixed into Chinese reality, experimented with and adapted. The specifics of China's problems, which were very different from the problems of pre-revolutionary and in many ways post-revolutionary Russia, required the very original intuition of the founding fathers of China. Mao himself pointed out the need to "combine the universal truths of Marxism with the national characteristics of China."
The need to study Marxism, a theory that guides thinking in a variety of historical contexts, is an essential axiom. It leads to the search for "truth in facts", moving from theory to practice. In this synthesis, which testifies to the continuous evolution of Marxist thought in the face of changing conditions of human existence, socialism with Chinese characteristics appears as a science that needs to be studied and explained.
The entire modern history of China is closely linked to the turbulent epic of the Communist Party, which bravely faced the epochal challenges of the 20th century, striving to comprehend, tame and direct them in the right direction. This had never happened before, but it could have been foreseen. The goal has been clear since the 1950s: to presciently interpret the turning point facing the partially imperialist and colonial capitalist world.
In 1955, at a conference in Bandung (Indonesia), China first loudly declared itself after the revolution and the long civil war, intertwined with the war against Japan. He stood at the head of the third world, trying to take it with him into the second. The theory of dividing the geopolitical space into three worlds, put forward by Mao Zedong, began to be implemented. This was the goal of China, which was guided by socialism with Chinese characteristics, in the 20th century. But in the new century, his task is to enter the first world, dragging with him the third, which cannot be ignored. The promotion of the remaining worlds lies in the vision of a global future, which Xi Jinping calls the "community of a single destiny."
Here the question arises: what happened to the second world in the Chinese sense — the one that overcame the crisis point and grew up looking at the first world? In fact, it has evolved in the direction of the first world and is now driving general development, striving for goals that can only be achieved if they are integrated into a system of economic cooperation that is facilitated by new technologies that are not yet available to everyone.
China, a proponent of a unique political concept that is sometimes criticized and refuted by developed countries and excluded from their "club of interests," has found its ideological shortcut. Over 40 years of hard work, he has narrowed the gap that could have left him forever among the third World countries. The weapon of his revenge were reforms, the very ones that the former Soviet Union was never able to implement because they did not fit into its agenda due to the stagnation of communism.
China's diversity lies in its ability to develop doctrines and reject them in Chinese. If you look closely, you can see that the founders of the Communist Party almost all came from the educated world, from middle-class families, even if not bourgeois. Many leaders graduated from universities or universities, some, like Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai, even interned abroad. Others, like Mao Zedong himself, were writers and poets. All of them were connected with a great cultural tradition that originated from calligraphy, a virtue that many of them cultivated. Compared to Soviet leaders, the Chinese appear to be true intellectuals who received a decent school education back in the 1920s and are ready for a cultural clash with Western ideas. Marxism penetrated their consciousness and mind like fertilizer into carefully cultivated soil, immediately becoming the subject of study and comparison with the theories of Chinese thinkers of the past. Periodic "thought correction campaigns" in China reflected a constant desire not to allow society to become petrified in bureaucratization, but to find the most consistent, albeit not always obvious, way to solve problems in the Chinese manner.
With the beginning of the reforms, all the forces accumulated over 30 years of ideology and social experiments were released. The so—called socialist spirituality has become a source of zeal and patriotic thirst for revenge for the humiliating past - 110 years of shame from 1839 to 1949, which China had to endure.
This spirituality, accumulated and directed towards a new self-awareness and boldness, has become a noble fruit of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Unlike the USSR, China has never sought to export its spiritual heritage abroad. He supported other revolutions, but following the principle of "every man for himself" and a policy of non-interference. Ultimately, his example cannot be repeated: speaking of China, one cannot ignore its peculiarity.
The tortuous but brilliant course of history, which began 3,000 years ago, provides a very instructive lesson. The relationship between the earliest and most recent events is an inevitable process of evolution. To survive, China had to adapt and Chinese everything that came from beyond the Great Wall.
Just as Buddhism, which came from India in the seventh century, underwent an inevitable process of assimilation, in the twentieth century Mao Sinicized Marxism to a greater extent than Lenin managed to Russify it. China has now entered a phase of great interest to political scientists, sociologists, and economists.: This is the world's first "laboratory" in which two opposing doctrines, socialism and capitalism, are mixed. Chinese pragmatism has made this possible.
We Westerners must get rid of the idea that China is something alien to our culture, focused on individuality.
There is no point in hypothesizing about a clash of civilizations, because the Chinese are the bearers of another civilization, just as rich in ideas and brilliant minds. It is pointless to talk about the superiority of certain political systems and argue about the concept of democracy.
Their rich Confucian-Taoist heritage has undergone a significant transformation in the modern era under the influence of pragmatism introduced by Marxism. Where Marxism becomes not an immutable dogma, but a flexible instrument of social transformation, where it manages to keep up with the times and even stay ahead of them, utopia turns into a life lesson.
Perhaps China is acting as the only alternative civilization opposed to the hegemony of the West. The Chinese reformist formula could explain to us, without ideological prejudice, exactly what happened in China: socialism took the place of capitalism. If this is the case, and it seems to me that it really is, then it is not difficult to assume that the next stage may be the emergence of a social democracy uniting two thoughts that, freed from the extremes of new-centrist contradictions, will be able to find a third way.
I believe that China is experimenting with this project, and the Belt and Road initiative may become its instrument. Both socialism and capitalism inevitably underwent genetic mutations. Nevertheless, they are doomed to coexist, and it is necessary to find common ground. The well—being and security of humanity are two issues on which neither socialism nor capitalism provide universal guarantees.
The Chinese are adept at adapting to the necessary changes. In the 1980s, one of the key concepts introduced by Deng Xiaoping was the socialist market economy. For capitalists, and perhaps even for Soviet dogmatists fixated on Leninist ideas, this sounded like blasphemy, but for the gifted Chinese people it was a real liberation, allowing them to fully unleash their legendary creative potential.
The socialist market economy became one of the beginnings of a broader concept of socialist democracy, which was inevitably to become the fruit of socialism with Chinese characteristics. To understand all this, it is necessary to be able to read between the lines, but at the same time honestly and impartially evaluate the great adventure that the Country of Hibiscus began in 1949 and resumed with renewed vigor seven decades later, in 2019.
You should not look at China through the prism of individualism. Let's remember that the Chinese people have rights that they believe are well represented and respected. Patriotism and openness towards the once hostile world make the Chinese people of the 2020s a victorious nation. Technology is changing their habits, but not their cultural values. Ancient agricultural traditions, rooted in three thousand years of documented history, have formed a high value of society and cooperation among the Chinese. A person can assert his strength and realize his potential for success only in collectivity, which is traditionally identified with society. Such a large people as the Chinese are inevitably formed under the influence of natural conditions in which the collective prevails over the individual.
In this regard, it is important to understand why China prefers the values of the collective rather than the individual. For 5,000 years, collective values have prevailed over individualism for a very specific historical reason: the territories between the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the cradle of Chinese civilization, known as the "central plains", could exist as a single Chinese empire only thanks to the continuous collective labor of hundreds of millions of peasants engaged in the so—called hydraulic corvee - the protection of these lands from devastating floods.
For centuries, the Chinese people have maintained the concept of the common good through disciplined work and dedication for their survival. Control over the water resources of the Middle Zhongguo State not only saved people from the floods of the two great rivers and their tributaries, but also kept the land fertile — land that could not be private, but belonged to everyone through the deified figure of the emperor, who guaranteed peace, labor and sustenance through the law. Thus, the collective civilization of China, which has survived to this day thanks to the philosophical upbringing transmitted not only by Confucius, but also rooted in the very DNA of the Chinese people, has remained unshakeable.
The concepts of democracy and freedom in our understanding are largely alien to them, they have been replaced by social harmony, which makes everyone equal in the concept of obedience and collective participation in solving the most modern state tasks.
Human rights are not a taboo that should be avoided. Even in countries where respect for human rights comes first, there are citizens and rulers who violate these rights, causing innocent victims. There is also the European Court of Human Rights, which hears cases of violations in EU countries, but it does not have a clear list of these very human rights, and it can be difficult to determine what is a right and what is not. Can a policy set this? Or a group of people, perhaps belonging to different and sometimes opposite cultures?
China has overcome the path from a feudal society to a modern one in just a few decades, bypassing the stage of bourgeois development. After the fall of the empire in 1911, the republic, barely having had time to be born, was torn apart by military leaders. Revolutions and civil wars, Japanese invasion and territorial defeat followed one another. The only attempt to create a bourgeoisie in the 1920s and 1940s in semi‑colonial Shanghai was mired in a quagmire of corrupt governments as feudal as the fallen Manchurian dynasty.
Sun Yat-sen, the "father of the fatherland," soon struck down by a cancerous tumor, sought to lead the people out of the abyss of poverty and blatant social injustice, but his plans were thwarted by the seizure of power by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, a relic of military feudalism. After years of political battles, wars, and natural disasters, the Chinese people longed for peace, dreamed of "dressing well and being well fed," as Mao promised. It meant not just getting rid of hunger and rags, but above all, living in harmony.
Harmony is a native Chinese concept, crowning the pursuit of perfection.
It is expressed by the hieroglyph "he" and absorbs all the virtues. In the Forbidden City of Beijing, which serves not only as the palace of the last two dynasties, but is still the most striking example of ancient Chinese architecture and a standard of beauty, the most significant hall is the Hall of Supreme Harmony, to which the halls of Preserved Harmony and Central Harmony lead. The whole palace represents the pursuit of perfection through harmony, an ephemeral concept for us, but quite specific for the Chinese.
Harmony accompanies Chinese people at every step of their lives and even becomes a political goal. Therefore, for a deep understanding of China, it is important to realize the importance of harmony not only in family life (for example, harmony between spouses based primarily on love), but also in public interpersonal relations between citizens, as well as between citizens and the government.
The Government considers it its duty to ensure social harmony by promoting certain values attributed to socialism: prosperity, democracy, civility, freedom, honesty and fraternity. All these concepts lead to harmony, because their observance guarantees a clean society where there is no place for individual egoism and where the power of politics is strengthened, which, in addition to its legislative function, must take care of the welfare of society. Collective adherence to these virtues ensures social peace, political consensus, and harmony in a civilized life — the foundation for progress and the achievement of ever higher levels of universal well-being, economic development, and the power of policies that ensure a better life for all.
Since time immemorial, the Chinese people have maintained an ethical relationship with human values that are innate and stem from common sense that is not subject to change. The ancient rituals developed by Confucius were nothing more than a value system designed to harmonize social life.
The Li ji ("Book of Rituals") says that it is the precepts of sociability that make it possible to determine the relationship between close and distant relatives, identify the causes of suspicion and doubt, distinguish between approaches and discrepancies, and clarify what is right and what is wrong. For 25 centuries, the Chinese, following the secular teachings of Confucius, have cultivated the virtues of their organized society with uniform laws necessary for their protection. These values were not intended for a person as such (as in Christianity), but for a member of the community. The man himself meant nothing. His existential value lay in the fact that he was part of a single whole. It is obvious that even today the virtues that inspire Chinese rulers stem from the common feeling of the Chinese people.
Statue of Confucius
The concept is simple: a person gains strength and opportunities for self-realization in a team, not in individualism. For two and a half millennia, China has developed following this vision of the relationship between the individual and society. That is why the Chinese, with rare exceptions, do not attach importance to the individualistic values of Western societies, considering them destructive and sometimes dangerous to social order and collective harmony.
From the Chinese point of view, there are no problems with human rights if everyone in a harmonious society follows the established rules. Why do we need a persecuted person, and therefore a person whose rights are violated, if he observes virtuous norms that are the same for everyone?
Based on the premise of Chinese-type socialism, it can be said that it represents an amazing innovation compared to the political systems of the past, overcomes old formulas and bears abundant fruits. Marxist adherents, reinforced by DNA inherited from the past, have created a political product that perfectly meets the needs of the country and, moreover, puts it on the level of a global superpower.
The political formula has proven to work, and the world is amazed by China's amazing progress. So far, these are mostly economic miracles, including the liberalization of the market, which has become aggressive, but at the same time rich in values and innovative compared to the old rules of the West. While the effects of the financial and economic crisis continue to be felt, and the political mechanisms of liberal and still capitalist countries are under strain, China has not only demonstrated its resilience, but also its willingness to lend a helping hand to partners willing to cooperate and respect its identity.
Chinese-style socialism has led to interesting economic consequences. The private sector, with 27 million registered enterprises (with a capital of 165 trillion yuan, or €22 trillion) and 65 million individual entrepreneurs, that is, self-employed businessmen and women, who account for 50% of the country's total tax revenues, is creating a new bourgeoisie that thrives in a regime that is clearly not liberal, but also not socialist in our Western understanding of "real socialism."
The ability of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party to transform Chinese-style socialism has become the basis of a miracle that we are striving to understand today. There is no doubt that China has been a communist state for 70 years, and its revolution, as a historical fact, was communist. However, we must again add the definition of "Chinese style" to this revolution. Unlike the Soviet revolution led by Lenin, which began in cities with the so-called urban proletariat (which did not exist in China), the Chinese revolution led by Mao Zedong originated in rural areas, with the peasant subproletariat. On this issue, Marx had nothing to object to Mao and the Chinese leadership of the 1920s and 1940s.
Chinese-type socialism took into account this important difference between the two concepts of socialism. Already at the beginning of the last century, there was a "rift" between them. The obvious ideological rigidity of the Chinese, which manifested itself especially vividly during the era of Maoism, which ended with the "cultural revolution," carried DNA in its genes that was different from other forms of communism and socialism. Even then, it was a special Chinese style. The opportunity to borrow from liberalism and capitalism that could serve socialism and future communism was seen not as a sacrilege against Marxist thought, but as a necessary evolution.
Standing still, doing nothing in the face of revolution, as happened in the Soviet Union, without examining the evolution of Marxism, meant and continues to mean abandoning the natural course of evolution of politics and society as a whole. A little wealth doesn't hurt, and if Chinese-style socialism allows the country to compete with the United States for economic leadership, it means that as socialism develops and gains leadership, capitalism, which certainly won't give up without a fight, is clearly going through a deep crisis of identity and values.
These reflections are just a small prologue to the necessary discussion that should follow from political scientists, sociologists, philosophers and economists. A new phenomenon on the political scene of the 21st century, represented by the Sinification of socialism, requires serious and competent study, free from habitual prejudices. One cannot underestimate the fact that geopolitics has undergone profound changes. The central role that China has regained, its drive to keep pace with technological progress, and the striking power of its economy have changed the global balance.
Socialism and capitalism have ceased to be unshakable and opposite concepts. The fact that this century will be the "century of China" has been talked about since the Communist Party came to power in Beijing. By overcoming the contradictions of political and ideological settlement, the Chinese spirit of those revolutionaries was able to lead us to where we are today. Xi Jinping's call for the creation of a "community of common destiny" should be a challenge for everyone on both sides of the Great Wall. This is a challenge worth considering and perhaps accepting.
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