[Marxism] (NYT) Sharp Debate Erupts in China Over Socialism and Capitalism

["Richard Fidler" <rfidler@xxxxxxxxxx>]

March 12, 2006

Sharp Debate Erupts in China Over Socialism and Capitalism

By JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING, March 11 - For the first time in perhaps a decade, the
National People's Congress, the Communist Party-run legislature
now convened in its annual two-week session, is consumed with an
ideological debate over socialism and capitalism that many assumed
had been buried by China's long streak of fast economic growth.

The controversy has forced the government to shelve a draft law to
protect property rights that had been expected to win pro forma
passage and highlighted the resurgent influence of a small but
vocal group of socialist-leaning scholars and policy advisers.
These old-style leftist thinkers have used China's rising income
gap and increasing social unrest to raise doubts about what they
see as the country's headlong pursuit of private wealth and
market-driven economic development.

The roots of the current debate can be traced to a biting critique
of the property rights law that circulated on the Internet last
summer. The critique's author, Gong Xiantian, a professor at
Beijing University Law School, accused the legal experts who wrote
the draft of "copying capitalist civil law like slaves," and
offering equal protection to "a rich man's car and a beggar man's
stick." Most of all, he protested that the proposed law did not
state that "socialist property is inviolable," a once sacred legal
concept in China.

Those who dismissed his attack as a throwback to an earlier era
underestimated the continued appeal of socialist ideas in a
country where glaring disparities between rich and poor, rampant
corruption, labor abuses and land seizures offer daily reminders
of how far China has strayed from its official ideology.

"Our government only moves forward when it feels there is a strong
consensus," said Mao Shoulong, a public policy specialist at
Tsinghua University in Beijing. "Right now, the consensus is
eroding and there is a debate over ideology, which we haven't seen
for some time."

The divide does not appear likely to derail China's market-led
growth. President Hu Jintao, in what Chinese political experts and
party members said was a clear reference to the debate, told
legislative delegates last week that China must "unshakably
persist with economic reform."

Full: http://makeashorterlink.com/?E40B157CC


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