Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: Is China socialist?
The socialist market economy (SME) is the economic system and model of economic development employed in the People's Republic of China. The system is based on the predominance of public ownership and state-owned enterprises within a market economy.[1] The term "socialist market economy" was first used during the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1992 to describe the goal of China's economic reforms. Originating in the Chinese economic reforms initiated in 1978 that integrated China into the global market economy, the socialist market economy represents a preliminary or "primary stage" of developing socialism.[2] Despite this, many Western commentators have described the system as a form of state capitalism.[3][4][5]
The China Democratic Socialist Party (CDSP; ) was founded in Shanghai on 15 August 1946. It was formed through the merger of the former Chinese National Socialist Party (; their preferred shorthand name was "Socialists" and had no relation to the German Nazi party) and the Democratic Constitutionalist Party (), both of which had survived the years of Japanese aggression by generally supporting the Kuomintang-led national government. The new party's first head was Carsun Chang.
The former socialist ideology of the Kuomintang is a unique form of socialism and socialist thought developed in mainland China during the early Republic of China. The Tongmenghui revolutionary organization led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen was the first to promote socialist ideology in China.
In its post-revolutionary period, Mao Zedong Thought is defined in the CPC's Constitution as "Marxism–Leninism applied in a Chinese context", synthesized by Mao and China's "first-generation leaders". It asserts that class struggle continues even if the proletariat has already overthrown the bourgeoisie and there are capitalist restorationist elements within the Communist Party itself. Maoism provided the CPC's first comprehensive theoretical guideline with regards to how to continue socialist revolution, the creation of a socialist society, socialist military construction and highlights various contradictions in society to be addressed by what is termed "socialist construction". While it continues to be lauded to be the major force that defeated "imperialism and feudalism" and created a "New China" by the Communist Party of China, the ideology survives only in name on the Communist Party's Constitution as Deng Xiaoping abolished most Maoist practices in 1978, advancing a guiding ideology called "socialism with Chinese characteristics".
Within the socialist movement, a number of criticisms are maintained towards the use of the term "Socialist states" in relation to countries such as China and previously of Soviet Union and Eastern and Central European states before what some term the "collapse of Stalinism" in 1989. Democratic socialists, left communists, anarchists and some Trotskyists claim that the so-called "Socialist states" or "people's states" actually presided over state capitalist economies and thus cannot be called "socialist".
In 1935, former members of the Research Clique created the Chinese National Socialist Party, they were known as the Socialists to avoid confusion with the German Nazis. The CPWDP joined the short-lived Productive People's Party in the Fujian Rebellion. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the YCP, CPWDP, and the Socialists formed the China Democratic League (CDL), as an umbrella group, to fight the Japanese while providing for a "Third Way". After the war, the YCP and the Socialists, joined the Nationalists in Taiwan. The Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang, CPWDP, CDL, and the CPIP joined the Communists' United Front which also included several political pressure groups.
Saying that "some (extremist) foreign forces have used religion to infiltrate China", and noting that some religion including Christianity and Islam deliberately spread their political views in China, Wang considers "guiding religions to suit to China's development (a) core policy to solve China's religious problems." He supports the sinicization of religion: "Religions should be sinicized [...] We should guide religious groups and individuals with socialist core values and excellent traditional Chinese culture and support religious groups to dig into their doctrines to find parts that are beneficial to social harmony and development."
The People's Republic of China was founded on September 24, 1949, and proclaims itself to be a "Socialist state" in its 1982 Constitution of the People's Republic of China.
China's constitution states that The People's Republic of China "is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants," and that the state organs "apply the principle of democratic centralism." The PRC is one of the world's only socialist states openly endorsing communism (see Ideology of the Communist Party of China). The Chinese government has been variously described as communist and socialist, but also as authoritarian and corporatist, with heavy restrictions in many areas, most notably against free access to the Internet, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to have children, free formation of social organizations and freedom of religion. Its current political, ideological and economic system has been termed by its leaders as the "people's democratic dictatorship", "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (which is Marxism adapted to Chinese circumstances) and the "socialist market economy" respectively.
The "Five Goods Movement" (五好活动 "wuhao huodong") was a political campaign carried out in the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1956-1959 that reflected the PRC State's vision of where housewives and "family dependents" (家属 "jiashu") belonged within China's emerging socialist order. The movement began in earnest in early 1956, when the All-China Women's Federation in tandem with local branches of the Women's Federation began promoting "Five Goods" for urban housewives to aspire to. These "five goods" intended to promote socialist development primarily through the education of children and support of male workers. The five tenets of the campaign were to encourage housewives to: promote mutual assistance between neighborhood households, arrange domestic life well, educate children well, encourage and support the production, work, and study of (male) spouses, and to study well themselves. In this case "study" referred to the political study of government issued works intended to promote socialist and communist thought. This model of the ideal housewife reflected PRC visions of how a seemingly "non-productive" member of socialist society could contribute to the building of a socialist state.
Socialist heraldry is still seen in the emblems of several countries, such as the People's Republic of China. North Korea has a national emblem in pure socialist style, as does Vietnam.
Different ideologies support different governments. For example, in the era of the Soviet Union Western socialists were bitterly divided as to whether the Soviet Union was basically socialist, moving toward socialism, or inherently un-socialist and in fact inimical to true socialism. Similarly, today the government of the People's Republic of China claims to be socialist and refers to its own approach as "Socialism with Chinese characteristics", but most other socialists consider China to be essentially capitalist. The Chinese leadership concurs with most of the usual critiques against a command economy and many of their actions to manage what they call a socialist economy have been determined by this opinion.
Mao Zedong spoke of a Chinese nation, but specified that the Chinese are a civic-based nation of multiple ethnic groups, and explicitly condemned Han ethnocentrism, that Mao called Han chauvinism that he claimed had become widespread in China. The constitution of China states that China is a multi-ethnic society and that the state is opposed to national chauvinism and specifies Han chauvinism in particular.
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany officially had socialist patriotism within its party statutes. The SED expanded on this by emphasizing a "socialist national consciousness" involving a "love for the GDR and pride in the achievements of socialism. However the GDR claimed that socialist patriotism was compatible with proletarian internationalism and stated that it should not be confused with nationalism that it associated with chauvinism and xenophobia.
The key tasks highlighted in the Plan were to concentrate efforts on the construction of 694 large and medium-sized industrial projects, including 156 with the aid of the Soviet Union, so as to lay that the primary foundations for China’s socialist industrialization; to develop agricultural producers’ cooperatives to help in the socialist transformation of the agriculture and handicraft industries; to put capitalist industry and commerce on the track of state capitalism so as to facilitate the socialist transformation of private industry and commerce.
Third, Article 1 of the Constitution defines China as a "people's democratic dictatorship" with "the socialist system" as its "basic system". It explicitly forbids "sabotage of the socialist system by any individual or organization".
The socialist market economy is seen by the Communist Party of China as an early stage in the development of socialism (this stage is variously called the "primary" or "preliminary" stage of socialism), where public ownership coexists alongside a diverse range of non-public forms of ownership. The Communist Party of China maintains that despite the co-existence of private capitalists and entrepreneurs with public and collective enterprise, China is not a capitalist country because the party retains control over the direction of the country, maintaining its course of socialist development.[6] Proponents of this economic model distinguish it from market socialism as market socialists believe that economic planning is unattainable, undesirable or ineffective and thus view the market as an integral part of socialism whereas proponents of the socialist market economy view markets as a temporary phase in development of a fully planned economy.[7]
One of the hallmarks of China's socialist economy was its promise of employment to all able and willing to work and job-security with virtually lifelong tenure. This socialist policy is known as the iron rice bowl.
Stalin's work was harshly criticised by Mao Zedong in "A Critique of Soviet Economics". Ironically, early market socialist economists in both the Soviet Union and China would use these words of Stalin to justify market reforms. In his 1981 work "China's Socialist Economy", Xue Muqiao would use Stalin's book as a justification for using the market mechanism in the primary stage of socialism. Xue also introduced the term "underdeveloped socialism" in his book "China's Socialist Economy". The book was written in the orthodox Marxist–Leninist framework enunciated by Stalin in "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR". Xue wrote that within the socialist mode of production there were several phases and for China to reach an advanced form of socialism it had to focus on developing the productive forces. He proposed a theory in which the basic laws of economic growth were those in which "the relations of production must conform to the level of the productive forces". Similar to Stalin, Xue considered the productive forces to be primary and that the relations of production had to conform to the level of the productive forces. Xue believed that this was a fundamental universal law of economics. Stalin also insisted that wars between capitalist nations were still inevitable, a position that Eugene Varga had disputed.
The Socialist Education Movement (, abbreviated 社教运动 or 社教運動), also known as the Four Cleanups Movement () was a movement launched by Mao Zedong in 1963 in the People's Republic of China. Mao sought to remove what he believed to be "reactionary" elements within the bureaucracy of the Communist Party of China, saying that "governance is also a process of socialist education." On August 19, 1966, the campaign to destroy the Four Olds began in Beijing.
When the CDL became increasingly pro-Communist, the National Socialists withdrew and merged with the Democratic Constitutionalists on 15 August 1946 to form the China Democratic Socialist Party (中國民主社會黨). They fled to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War and along with the Nationalists and the Chinese Youth Party (中國青年黨), were the only legal parties for decades. In Taiwan, they offered the same soft criticisms they have been giving since their earliest incarnations. The Democratic Socialists lost all their seats in the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly after free and fair elections began in the 1980s. Within the People's Republic of China, the China Democratic League continues to exist as part of the United Front.
Eco-socialism has had a minor influence over developments in the environmental policies of what can be called "existing socialist" regimes, notably the People's Republic of China. Pan Yue, Deputy Director of the PRC's State Environmental Protection Administration, has acknowledged the influence of eco-socialist theory on his championing of environmentalism within China, which has gained him international acclaim (including being nominated for the Person of the Year Award 2006 by "The New Statesman", a British current affairs magazine). Yue stated in an interview that, while he often finds eco-socialist theory "too idealistic" and lacking "ways of solving actual problems", he believes that it provides "political reference for China’s scientific view of development", "gives socialist ideology room to expand" and offers "a theoretical basis for the establishment of fair international rules" on the environment.
In 1929, he co-founded the Chinese National Socialist Party which merged into the China Democratic Socialist Party. He ran for the Republic of China vice-presidential election of 1948 and Republic of China presidential election of 1954 but failed. In January 1955, he was elected chairman of the Chinese Democratic Socialist Party. He died on 12 January 1958.
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam has pursued similar economic reforms to China, though less extensively, resulting in a socialist-oriented market economy, a mixed economy in which the state plays a dominant role intended to be a transitional phase in establishment of a socialist economy.
The Socialist Unity Party was founded in 1966 as a splinter group of the Communist Party. The Communist Party had been bitterly divided by the Sino-Soviet Split, a dispute between the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev and China under Mao Zedong. The party eventually decided to take China's side. Shortly afterwards, a number of the more prominent supporters of the Soviet position, such as Ken Douglas, George Jackson and Bill Andersen, established the Socialist Unity Party. The Socialist Unity Party retained ideological and political links to the Soviet Union for most of its existence.
China practices a form of democracy that it calls socialist consultative democracy. Socialist Consultative Democracy is the form of democracy that exists in the People's Republic of China, though at least one source says that this form of democracy was created by the Communist Party of China. According to an article on Qiushi Journal, "Consultative democracy was created by the CPC and the Chinese people as a form of socialist democracy. In this sense, consultative democracy represents the grand product of our efforts to enrich and develop Marxist theories on democracy. Socialist consultative democracy exhibits distinctive features as well as unique advantages. Not only representing a commitment to socialism, it carries forward China’s fine political and cultural traditions. Not only representing a commitment to the organizational principles and leadership mode of democratic centralism, it also affirms the role of the general public in democracy. Not only representing a commitment to the leadership of the CPC, it also gives play to the role of all political parties and organizations as well as people of all ethnic groups and all sectors of society".