[Marxism] Neo-Maoism

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/18/AR2009041801939.html
For China's New Left, Old Values
Emerging Movement Views State Power as a Remedy for Free-Market Inequalities

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 19, 2009

BEIJING -- Zuo Dapei took the microphone and declared that China's 
leaders were going in the wrong direction. The country had become too 
capitalist. Things would improve, he continued, only if the state 
reasserted its control over corporate assets.

The crowd of about 220 people, who had come to hear Zuo and other 
authors and academics speak on the topic of "Unhappy China," cheered.

For a growing number of Chinese, the solutions to the problems of the 
country's present -- including the income gap between rich and poor and 
the manipulation of the court system by state officials and company 
executives -- lie in its past, with the teachings of Mao Zedong.

Although Chairman Mao continues to be revered here as the visionary who 
founded the country and transformed it into a world power, the Communist 
Party has broken from many of his ideals through market-based reforms 
over the past three decades.

Not everyone has been supportive of this shift, and a nostalgia for the 
old days has increased amid the global financial crisis. The most 
influential critics, known collectively as the New Left, are not like 
the dissidents or political exiles of a previous generation. They are 
not calling for an overthrow of the Communist regime. Their 
recommendations and criticisms are, instead, based on a belief that 
state power can redress the injustices created by free markets, 
privatization and globalization. Their views are also characterized by a 
fierce nationalism and criticism of the West.

Although the New Left has been publishing position papers in journals 
and on the Internet since the 1990s, the global financial crisis has 
brought the group's leading figures into the spotlight as never before. 
Their rise comes as the Communist Party, which has held absolute power 
since 1949, faces growing discontent over unemployment, contaminated 
infant formula that has sickened more than 300,000 babies, shoddy 
construction that led to the collapse of thousands of school buildings 
during last year's Sichuan earthquake and corruption among public 
officials at all levels.

In a country where the state is often quick to crush criticism, 
Communist officials have tolerated the New Left, which is just one part 
of a broader phenomenon of emboldened Chinese questioning officials and 
speaking out about the failings of their government.

In what commentators have called a "patriotic movement," ordinary 
citizens, or "laobaixing," are increasingly seeking to find a way to 
participate in government in order to improve it: to educate themselves 
about policymaking, to influence legislation and to increase 
transparency and accountability.

The new passion for politics can be seen in the existence of public 
seminars such as the one at which Zuo spoke this month. It is apparent 
in the popularity of such books as "Unhappy China" -- a collection of 
essays that reject the government's policy of increased international 
cooperation to help the world out of the financial crisis and argue that 
China should use its power to further its own position. There is also a 
new, wildly popular genre of fiction called "officialdom novels."

The books focus on the messy, behind-the-scenes workings of high-level 
government in China. One series, "The Beijing Office Representative," 
tells the story of a municipal official who observes real estate 
developers and company executives offering bribes or sex to government 
officials in exchange for favors. Another, called "The Mayor's 
Assistant," is told through the eyes of the assistant to a deputy mayor 
who watches as his boss gradually becomes more and more corrupt and, in 
the end, is sentenced to death for his crimes.

The New Left's appeal is built on the work of prominent academics, 
including Zuo, 58, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and 
Tsinghua University professors Cui Zhiyuan, 47, and Wang Hui, 50. They 
have become especially popular among young people, farmers and laid-off 
factory workers.

Wang, a professor of humanities who is considered the leading New 
Leftist, has said that China is caught between two extremes: "misguided 
socialism" and "crony capitalism."

"The common objective of China's New Left is to create an understanding 
of the full implications of China's current policies. I think if people 
see what is really happening in China, they might be less excited about 
reforms," he said.

Zuo has been critical of the robber barons who took advantage of the 
privatization of state enterprises. He has argued that because they did 
not have to pay back government-run banks and did not adequately 
compensate workers, they essentially looted the state's coffers.

"Look at health-care system reform, property market, and education 
reform -- all of them have deviated from benefiting the ordinary Chinese 
public under the huge influence of those interest groups that argue in 
the name of reform," Zuo said in an interview after his talk.

Wang Xiaodong, 55, one of five authors whose works are included in 
"Unhappy China" and a speaker at the event with Zuo, said in an 
interview that he has been disillusioned with the current leadership.

"Today in China, those elite are lazy and do nothing. They failed to 
generate any innovations even after spending all that money from 
taxpayers," he said. "China's current achievements are more a product of 
efforts by industry workers, rural workers."

The Utopia bookstore -- named after the perfect sociopolitical-economic 
system of Sir Thomas More's imagination and located northwest of 
Tiananmen Square in Beijing -- has become the premier gathering place 
for these intellectuals and their supporters.

Members include environmental activists, songwriters, Internet 
programmers and entrepreneurs, few of whom are shy in speaking out at 
the weekly meetings. Although attendees of the seminars have been 
variously described as pan-Leftists, Maoists or nationalists, many 
participants say they reject labels but are united in their passion to 
make sure the rewards of China's development are shared equally among 
all its citizens.

Blogger Yang Songlin, a 60-year-old who used to run his own business in 
Henan province, said he began to attend the meetings because of his 
concern that China had veered from its founding principle of helping the 
ordinary man. "Bureaucrats, big bosses and intellectual elite formed a 
joint, strong interest group while Chinese laobaixing, like workers and 
rural farmers, were marginalized and benefited little from the reform 
process," he said.

Another regular, Chang Xiangle, a 29-year-old copy shop owner from 
Shandong province, said he became interested in the meetings as he 
observed what he called the "uncured disease of the capitalist system." 
He has been fighting government officials and developers in his home 
town who have, in his view, illegally seized land from farmers. In the 
Mao era, he said, there was little corruption because there was a 
powerful system of checks and balances.

Filled with books such as "Secret History of the American Empire: 
Economic Hit Men, Jackals and the Truth About Global Corruption," 
"Empire of Debt" and "Against Capitalism," the Utopia bookstore is a 
reflection of the group's philosophies.

Fan Jinggang, 32, Utopia's manager and a former graduate student in 
Marxism at Peking University, said sales of books about Mao have 
increased tenfold since the economic crisis began.

During 30 years of capitalist-style economic reforms pioneered under 
Deng Xiaoping, Fan said, "we had been sticking to one goal: America's 
today is China's tomorrow, and we should work for that." Now, with the 
United States in crisis, Fan said, "Chinese people are beginning to 
reflect on this phenomenon -- whether the financial crisis is not only 
purely economic or financial but something that arose because of a 
development-path issue, that there might be a problem for us to pursue 
such a path."

Researchers Wang Juan and Liu Liu contributed to this report.

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