Suchergebnisse

The Chinese Communist Party's dramatic shift from Mao Zedong's Chinese Revolution to Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream remains under-examined and even misunderstood or mispresented despite its enormous impact on every aspect of national life in the People's Republic of China. There is a clear need for in-depth analysis of the extent to which the CCP has departed from the philosophical foundation of Marxism and Maoism, abandoned socialism and communism, inverted its long tradition of iconoclasm, transformed its own identity and altered its subject position. Part of the CCP's philosophical departure from Marxism and Maoism is its increasing conversion to nationalism. The new nationalism underpinning the Chinese Dream, in particular, operates against the grain of Marxism and Maoism, and vice versa, and is logically irreconcilable with the latter — so much so that the CCP cannot be nationalists and Marxists, Maoists or communists at the same time. The contradictory logics between nationalism and Marxism can be best seen from their respective conceptions of permanence and change, the unity and conflict of opposites, and conceptions of, and approaches to, tradition and the past, which have had major ramifications in political-cultural change in post-Mao China, especially in Xi's New Era.

The meaning of class, like many other things, is conferred by historically specific chains of signification or discourses that constitute the identity and significance of class as a social reality. Therefore, much of the conceptual purchase and explanatory power of class will be lost when the concept is taken out of the theories in which it is embedded. This is exactly the case with the use of class in the People's Republic of China in the last two or three decades, when the Marxist approach to class has been rejected and 'forgotten' by the social analysts and the Chinese Communist Party-even though the latter continues to pay lip service to Marxism-in favour of alternative concepts, methodologies and theories that sidestep class relations. The point of departure here is not so much sociological as political-ideological. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

This article seeks answers to three basic questions about the WTO's impact on domestic openness in China: is China a more open society as a result of its WTO membership; in what way has the WTO affected reform and openness; and, is WTO membership leading to political liberalization or translating into a demand for democracy as democracy advocates predicted? To this end, it identifies and analyzes the WTO-related reforms at central and local levels which have had the strongest impact thus far on openness to Chinese citizens. The analysis focuses on the reduction of the Party-state's control of economic activity as manifested in decreasing state monopoly and bureaucratic intervention in the sphere of economic activity, improved legal regulation, and increasing transparency of trade-related rules and rule-making. It argues that the varied depth and scope of the WTO's impact are attributable to differences in the congruence between the WTO principles and China's domestic political logic and the varying levels of effectiveness of external and internal pressure for change. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

The debate on Chinse cultural nationalism, as on nationalism in general, is often polarised by a number of theoretical positions, value judgements, practical concerns and methodological choices. While there is no consensus that cultural nationalism has developed into a formidable force in China, few would deny that it has been on the rise since June 4, 1989, and that it is a cultural-political movement with no parallel in the People's Republic, except perhaps for the period following May 4, 1919. Of central concern in this special issue of PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies are the manifestations of cultural nationalism, the causation of its resurgence in post-Tiananmen China, and the ways in which it is likely to impact on China's future development.