By David Bandurski — For those of us outside the pale of Chinese politics, the leftist bluster that emerges at times from the CCP is simply impossible to take seriously. We are more likely to titter than to tremble when we hear bombast about “hostile Western forces” or the “running dogs of America and Europe.” More likely than not, we pay it no attention at all. [Frontpage Image: “Mao Zedong in Tianfu Square”, by NewChengdu available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]
So it has been with the latest political manifesto from China’s left — a rant riddled with buzzwords old and new that has caused not a hiccup outside China, but has given intense heartburn to more moderate scholars and officials in China.
The editorial — really too important to titter about — was written by General Xu Tianliang (徐天亮), director of the political department of China’s National Defense University, and it appeared in the November 10 edition of the official People’s Daily.
It spoke in grandiose terms about the need for China’s leaders to be “thoroughly vigilant” in recognizing the threat posed by “hostile forces” in the ideological sphere. But more importantly, it was an open challenge to pro-reform leaders on the eve of a critical anniversary next month that will mark 30 years of economic and social reform in China.
[ABOVE: Page 7 “Theory” page of People’s Daily on November 10, with the editorial by Xu Tianliang marked in red.]
December 18 is the 30th anniversary of the Third Plenum of the Eleventh National Party Congress Central Committee, an event regarded generally as a pivotal moment in the modern political history of China.
The plenum marked Deng Xiaoping’s re-emergence and the onset of economic, social and political reforms. It also repudiated the errors and excesses of the CCP’s left and the cult of personality surrounding Mao Zedong, and adopted the Four Modernizations (agriculture, industry, technology, defense).
Through the 1980s, Deng oversaw a diminishing of the importance of ideology in China. But in the aftermath of the June 4, 1989, crackdown on democracy demonstrators in Beijing, the political climate shifted once again to the left, and ideological rhetoric denouncing “bourgeois liberalization” returned.
A People’s Daily editorial following the August 1991 coup attempt in the Soviet Union, quoted by Kalpana Misra in a work on “neo-left” and “neo-right” theory in China, bears remembering as we turn to Xu’s more recent pronouncements:
Chairman Mao was the first to raise this question . . . [t]he actual development over the past few decades has fully proved that the hostile forces at home and abroad have never stopped attempting to subvert the Communist Party’s leadership and undermine the socialist system — they are largely relying on the ‘war without smoke of gunpowder’ for fulfilling their goal. We will grieve if, instead of gaining a keen insight into the real threat of peaceful evolution, we lower our guard against it.
Deng Xiaoping famously cut off the ascendancy of China’s left in the early 1990s with a call to cease ideological wrangling about whether the nation’s economic reform policies were “surnamed Capitalism or surnamed Socialism” (姓资姓社).
Xu Tianliang’s November 10 editorial is an attempt to reinvigorate this ideological debate about the past and future of China’s reforms. Xu, in fact, seems at points to be calling for a kind of fifth modernization — of socialist ideology.
China, says Xu in one section, must master new information technologies in order to project itself ideologically and to “safeguard our nation’s ideological security” (意识形态安全).
Toward this end, in the “great project of building a modern transmission system with Chinese characteristics” (中国特色现代传播体系), China’s media would play a crucial role :
We must clearly recognize the importance of improving our country’s international transmission [of ideas and information] to the safeguarding of our nation’s ideological security. Numerous facts have revealed that in this age of rapid development of information technologies, whoever has mastery of cutting-edge transmission methods, and whoever’s transmission capabilities are strongest, can achieve more widespread transfer of their thinking, culture and value concepts, and thereby more effectively influence the world. Our matching of strength with hostile forces in the ideological sphere is to a definite degree also a matching of strength in the transmission [of ideas and information]. Right now, our material goods are seen the world round, but our spiritual and cultural goods find limited [representation] on the international market. Building and strengthening our international transmission capacity is critical to preserving our ideological security, to recasting the greatness of the Chinese people, and to China truly becoming a great world power. In the great project of building a modern transmission system with Chinese characteristics (中国特色现代传播体系), the mainstream media bear a great weight of responsibility.
In an eery echo of the August 1991 People’s Daily language about the need for “keen insight into the real threat of peaceful evolution,” Xu’s editorial calls on China’s leaders to be more keenly alert to the “struggle” in the ideological sphere, particularly in the new information age.
“As we concentrate our efforts on carrying out modernization, we must not even for a moment grow lax in our ideological work,” Xu writes.
For supporters, who voiced their views across an array of websites, from Tianya to the fervently leftist Wuyou Zhixiang (乌有之乡), Xu’s words were like the ecstatic utterance of a Nietschean Zarathustra. Xu had smashed his lamp to startle awake party leaders who have lost touch with “the lofty goals of Communism” under a bombardment of foreign ideas like democracy and human rights.
The editorial, said one googly-eyed admirer in a Chinese internet forum, is “a great party paper article such as we have not seen in many years.”
“I support the author of the article,” exclaimed another. “We definitely must be aware of and stave off hostile Western forces! At the same time, we need to urgently make our own voices heard! We can’t let the West control the power of speech!”
Xu Tianliang’s editorial underscores a deep and fundamental debate within the CCP about how to commemorate the 30th anniversary of China’s Open Door policy. Critically, it also underscores the sensitive political climate in which Chinese journalists are now working — and there is no better illustration of that than recent troubles at Yanhuang Chunqiu.
There is much more to say, but for now we offer a full translation of Xu’s editorial. We welcome further thoughts and analysis — after all of you are done tittering, of course.
“Sound Ideological Work Demands Clear Understanding“
People’s Daily
November 10, 2008
Xu Tianliang (徐天亮)
Our party has always placed great emphasis on ideological work. In the age of information and economic globalization, there have been many changes to the complexion of the ideological sphere. Doing adequate ideological requires that we remain thoroughly vigilant, no matter when or under what situation.
We must have a clear understanding of the utmost importance of the party’s ideological work . . . Ideology is the central manifestation of the will of the ruling class, the soul of the body social, and it provides the theoretical justification, thought foundation and spiritual support for the leadership of the ruling class. In this sense, ideological work is a critical task that protects the leadership position of the party. Great problems will result if economic work is not done properly. So too will great problems result if ideological work is not done properly. As we concentrate our efforts on carrying out modernization, we must not grow lax in our ideological work for even a moment. We must also recognize that the development of thought, morality and culture with ideology at its core constitutes critical soft power that contributes to the building of comprehensive national strength . . .
We must have a clear understanding of the nature of struggle in the ideological domain. Historical experience demonstrates the absolute necessity of having a clear understanding and scientific grasp of the nature of the struggle in the ideological domain . . . In recent years, our party has put a strong emphasis on ideological work, thoroughly promoting the work of arming ourselves with theory (理论武装工作), doing news propaganda work, building of thoughts and morals, carrying out literary and artistic creation, and promoting the development and flourishing of socialist culture, providing a common foundation of political theory for the concerted efforts of people of all ethnic groups as well as great spiritual motivation and intellectual support. At the same time, we must clearly see the continuing urgency and complexity of the struggle for and against infiltration in the ideological sphere, that hostile forces have intensified destructive acts of infiltration against our country in the ideological sphere. First, they are always using such topics as freedom, democracy, human rights, ethnicity and religion to carry out rumor-mondering attacks on our nation. Second, they have made it their stock-in-trade to broaden the [apparent] scope of various problems, taking simple issues and complicating them, taking ordinary issues and politicizing them, ultimately pointing the finger of blame at the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and at the socialist system. Third, they use media, particularly the Internet and other modern media, to vilify and demonize our nation. We must have a clear understanding of this, having a keen but not overly sensitive, cool-headed but not dull, treatment of problems in the ideological sphere, working to enhance our conscientiousness in doing ideological work well.
We must be clear in recognizing the basic tasks of ideological work. Our struggle against hostile forces in the ideological sphere is at its base a matching of strength between the socialist value system (社会主义价值体系) and the capitalist value system (资本主义价值体系). Therefore, the basic task in strengthening ideological work is to energetically promote the building of the social core value system (社会主义核心价值体系). The party’s report to the 17th National Congress says that the socialist core value system is the essential embodiment of socialist ideology. All of those world views, methods, social ideals, spiritual supports, and moral precepts that best reveal the basic demands of socialism and the basic principles of socialism must be gathered together under the core value system, in order that they might provide us with basic guidance for the strengthening of ideological construction. We must persist in the unshakeable position of Marxism in the ideological sphere, promoting the popularity of contemporary Chinese Marxism, firmly establishing the basic theoretical foundation of socialist ideology; we must unshakably persist in the great ideals of communism and the common ideals of socialism with Chinese characteristics, holding high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, firmly establishing the basic political foundation of the socialist ideology; we must unshakably persist in promoting a nationalist spirit with patriotism at its core and a contemporary spirit with reform and renewal at its core . . . fostering among the entire people an enterprising spirit; we must unshakably persist in the central task of building civic morals, so that the socialist view of honor and shame becomes the guiding principle of the behavior of all citizens.
We must clearly recognize the importance of improving our country’s international transmission [of ideas and information] to the safeguarding of our nation’s ideological security. Numerous facts have revealed that in this age of rapid development of information technologies, whoever has mastery of cutting-edge transmission methods, and whoever’s transmission capabilities are strongest, can achieve more widespread transfer of their thinking, culture and value concepts, and thereby more effectively influence the world. Our matching of strength with hostile forces in the ideological sphere is to a definite degree also a matching of strength in the transmission [of ideas and information]. Right now, our material goods are seen the world round, but our spiritual and cultural goods find limited [representation] on the international market. Building and strengthening our international transmission capacity is critical to preserving our ideological security, to recasting the greatness of the Chinese people, and to China truly becoming a great world power. In the great project of building a modern transmission system with Chinese characteristics (中国特色现代传播体系), the mainstream media bear a great weight of responsibility.
We must clearly recognize that the key to doing ideological work well lies in the prioritization [of ideological work] and the enhancement of leadership [in this area] by the whole party. Comrades throughout the party, but particularly comrades who carry out propaganda work, must have ideological backbone (意识形态这根弦), must give ideological work a high priority, and must enhance their political awareness, their political sensitivity and their political perceptiveness. While we cannot say that propaganda work and ideological work are equal to one another, they are intimately connected. Propaganda work is the principle vehicle of ideological work, and [we can say that] ideology is the soul of propaganda work. We cannot view all propaganda and cultural work as ideological work, but perhaps all propaganda and cultural work bears elements and shadows of ideology. We must certainly, according to the demands of the CCP central committee under the presidency of comrade Hu Jintao, earnestly improve our leadership on ideological work, striving to raise our capacity to do ideological work effectively, conscientiously summarizing the party’s successes in the area of ideological work, deepening our research of the characteristics and laws governing ideological work under the conditions [created by] information technologies, economic globalization and the market economy, raising our capacity and ability to control our overall ideological interests, and energetically promoting the scientific development of the press and propaganda (新闻宣传事业).
MORE READING:
[Xu Tianliang listed as a delegate to the 17th National Congress in October 2007, after alternate members and disclipline inspection committee members are added. He does not appear in the People’s Daily list of August 3, 2008.].
[News on Xu Tianliang’s visit to the earthquake zone in Longnan, Gansu, in June 2008, includes a photo of Xu.]
[On a less serious note, get your greeting cards, signed by Xu Tianliang, here.]
[Posted by David Bandurski, November 26, 2008, 3:43pm HK]