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Deng Xiaoping, the leading figure in the reform era, did not believe that the fundamental difference between the capitalist mode of production and the socialist mode of production was central planning versus free markets. He said, "A planned economy is not the definition of socialism, because there is planning under capitalism; the market economy happens under socialism, too. Planning and market forces are both ways of controlling economic activity".[32] Jiang Zemin supported Deng's thinking, and stated in a party gathering that it did not matter if a certain mechanism was capitalist or socialist, because the only thing that mattered was whether it worked.[34] It was at this gathering that Jiang Zemin introduced the term socialist market economy, which replaced Chen Yun's "planned socialist market economy".[34] In his report to the 14th National Congress Jiang Zemin told the delegates that the socialist state would "let market forces play a basic role in resource allocation."[164] At the 15th National Congress, the party line was changed to "make market forces further play their role in resource allocation"; this line continued until the 3rd Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee,[164] when it was amended to "let market forces play a decisive role in resource allocation."[164] Despite this, the 3rd Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee upheld the creed "Maintain the dominance of the public sector and strengthen the economic vitality of the State-owned economy."[164] Stance on religion Further information: Religion in China, Marxism and religion and Marxist–Leninist atheism The CPC, as an officially atheist institution, prohibits party members from belonging to a religion.[165] Although religion is banned for party members, personal beliefs are not held accountable.[165] During Mao's rule, religious movements were oppressed, and religious organizations were forbidden to have contact with foreigners.[166] All religious organizations were state-owned and not independent.[166] Relations with foreign religious institutions were worsened when in 1947, and again in 1949, the Vatican forbade any Catholic to support a communist party.[166] On questions of religion, Deng was more open than Mao, but the issue was left unresolved during his leadership.[167] According to Ye Xiaowen, the former Director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, "In its infancy, the socialist movement was critical of religion. In Marx’s eyes, theology had become a bastion protecting the feudal ruling class in Germany. Therefore the political revolution had to start by criticizing religion. It was from this perspective that Marx said ‘religion is the opium of the people’."[168] It was because of Marx's writings that the CPC initiated anti-religious policies under Mao and Deng.[168] The Marxist view that religion would decline as modern society emerged was proven false (they believed) with the rise of Falun Gong.[167] The popularity of Falun Gong, and its subsequent banning by state authorities, led to the convening of a three-day National Work Conference for Religious Affairs in 1999, the highest-level gathering on religious affairs in the party's history.[169] Jiang Zemin, who had subscribed to the classical Marxist view that religion would wither away, was forced to change his mind when he learnt that religion in China was in fact growing, not decreasing.[170] In his concluding speech to the National Work Conference, Jiang asked the participants to find a way to make "socialism and religion adapt to each other".[171] He added that "asking religions to adapt to socialism doesn’t mean we want religious believers to give up their faith".[171] Jiang ordered Ye Xiaowen to study the classical Marxist works in depth to find an excuse to liberalize the CPC's policy towards religion.[171] It was discovered that Friedrich Engels had written that religion would survive as long as problems existed.[171] With this rationale, religious organizations were given more autonomy.[171] Party-to-party relations Communist parties Hammer and sickle and red star Africa[show] Americas[show] Asia[hide] Bahrain Bangladesh CPB WPB Burma China (PRC) India CPI CPI(M) CPI(Mst) SUCI(C) MCPM Iran CPI Tudeh Party Iraq Israel Japan Jordan Kazakhstan CPK CPPK Kyrgyzstan Laos Lebanon Nepal CPN(UML) UCPN(M) Pakistan Palestine Philippines Sri Lanka Syria Tajikistan Taiwan TCP CPRC Vietnam Former parties Cambodia CPK KPRP Indonesia Korea Malaya and Singapore Marxist Leninist Revolutionary Faction Philippines Saudi Arabia Sarawak Taiwan Thailand Europe[show] Oceania[show] Related topics[show] v t e Communist parties The CPC continues to have relations with non-ruling communist and workers' parties and attends international communist conferences, most notably the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties.[172] Delegates of foreign communist parties still visit China; in 2013, for instance, the General Secretary of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), Jeronimo de Sousa, personally met with Liu Qibao, a member of the Central Politburo.[173] In another instance, Pierre Laurent, the National Secretary of the French Communist Party (FCP), met with Liu Yunshan, a Politburo Standing Committee member.[174] While the CPC retains contact with major parties such as the PCP,[173] FCP,[174] the Communist Party of the Russian Federation,[175] the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia,[176] the Communist Party of Brazil,[177] the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist−Leninist)[178] and the Communist Party of Spain,[179] the party also retains relations with minor communist and workers' parties, such as the Communist Party of Australia,[180] the Workers Party of Bangladesh, the Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist–Leninist) (Barua), the Communist Party of Sri Lanka, the Workers' Party of Belgium, the Hungarian Workers' Party, the Dominican Workers' Party and the Party for the Transformation of Honduras, for instance.[181] In recent years, noting the self-reform of the European social democratic movement in the 1980s and 1990s, the CPC "has noted the increased marginalization of West European communist parties."[182] Ruling parties of socialist states The CPC has retained close relations with the remaining socialist states still espousing communism: Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam and their respective ruling parties.[183] It spends a fair amount of time analyzing the situation in the remaining socialist states, trying to reach conclusions as to why these states survived when so many did not, following the collapse of the Eastern European socialist states in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.[184] In general, the analyses of the remaining socialist states and their chances of survival have been positive, and the CPC believes that the socialist movement will be revitalized sometime in the future.[184] The ruling party which the CPC is most interested in is the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV).[185] In general the CPV is considered a model example of socialist development in the post-Soviet era.[185] Chinese analysts on Vietnam believe that the introduction of the Doi Moi reform policy at the 6th CPV National Congress is the key reason for Vietnam's current success.[185] While the CPC is probably the organization with most access to North Korea, writing about North Korea is tightly circumscribed.[184] The few reports accessible to the general public are those about North Korean economic reforms.[184] While Chinese analysts of North Korea tend to speak positively of North Korea in public, in official discussions they show much disdain for North Korea's economic system, the cult of personality which pervades society, the Kim family, the idea of hereditary succession in a socialist state, the security state, the use of scarce resources on the Korean People's Army and the general impoverishment of the North Korean people.[186] There are those analysts who compare the current situation of North Korea with that of China during the Cultural Revolution.[187] Over the years, the CPC has tried to persuade the Workers' Party of Korea (or WPK, North Korea's ruling party) to introduce economic reforms by showing them key economic infrastructure in China.[187] For instance, in 2006 the CPC invited the WPK General Secretary Kim Jong-il to Guandong province to showcase the success economic reforms have brought China.[187] In general, the CPC considers the WPK and North Korea to be negative examples of a communist ruling party and socialist state.[187] There is a considerable degree of interest in Cuba within the CPC.[185] Fidel Castro, the former First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), is greatly admired, and books have been written focusing on the successes of the Cuban Revolution.[185] Communication between the CPC and the PCC has increased considerably since the 1990s, hardly a month going by without a diplomatic exchange.[188] At the 4th Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee, which discussed the possibility of the CPC learning from other ruling parties, praise was heaped on the PCC.[188] When Wu Guanzheng, a Central Politburo member, met with Fidel Castro in 2007, he gave him a personal letter written by Hu Jintao: "Facts have shown that China and Cuba are trustworthy good friends, good comrades, and good brothers who treat each other with sincerity. The two countries' friendship has withstood the test of a changeable international situation, and the friendship has been further strengthened and consolidated."[189] Non-communist parties Since the decline and fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the CPC has begun establishing party-to-party relations with non-communist parties.[94] These relations are sought so that the CPC can learn from them.[190] For instance, the CPC has been eager to understand how the People's Action Party of Singapore (PAP) maintains its total domination over Singaporean politics through its "low-key presence, but total control."[191] According to the CPC's own analysis of Singapore, the PAP's dominance can be explained by its "well-developed social network, which controls constituencies effectively by extending its tentacles deeply into society through branches of government and party-controlled groups."[191] While the CPC accepts that Singapore is a democracy, they view it as a guided democracy led by the PAP.[191] Other differences are, according to the CPC, "that it is not a political party based on the working class—instead it is a political party of the elite ... It is also a political party of the parliamentary system, not a revolutionary party."[192] Other parties the CPC studies and maintains strong party-to-party relations with are the United Malays National Organisation, which has ruled Malaysia democratically since 1957, and the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, which dominated Japanese politics from 1955 to 2009.[193] The Kuomintang is another case entirely, where party-to-party relations are retained so as to strengthen the probability of the reunification of Taiwan with mainland China.[194] However, several studies have been written on the Kuomintang's loss of power in 2000, after having ruled Taiwan since 1949 (the Kuomintang officially ruled China, then called the Republic of China, from 1928 to 1949).[194] In general, one-party states or dominant-party states are of special interest to the party, and party-to-party relations are formed so that the CPC can study them.[194] For instance, the longevity of the Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party is attributed to the personalization of power in the al-Assad family, the strong presidential system, the inheritance of power, which passed from Hafez al-Assad to his son Bashar al-Assad, and the role given to the Syrian military in politics.[195] Xi Jinping (second from left) with Enrique Peña Nieto (second from right), the current President of Mexico and a leading member of the social democratic Institutional Revolutionary Party In recent years, the CPC has been especially interested in Latin America,[195] as shown by the increasing number of delegates sent to and received from these countries.[195] Of special fascination for the CPC is the 71-year-long rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico.[195] While the CPC attributed the PRI's long reign in power to the strong presidential system, tapping into the machismo culture of the country, its nationalist posture, its close identification with the rural populace and the implementation of nationalization alongside the marketization of the economy, [195] the CPC concluded that the PRI failed because of the lack of inner-party democracy, its pursuit of social democracy, its rigid party structures that could not be reformed, its political corruption, the pressure of globalization, and American interference in Mexican politics.[195] While the CPC was slow to recognize the Pink tide in Latin America, it has strengthened party-to-party relations with several socialist and anti-American political parties over the years.[196] There may have been some irritation over Hugo Chavez's anti-capitalist and anti-American rhetoric on the CPC's part.[196] Despite this, in 2013 the CPC reached an agreement with the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the party founded by Chavez, for the CPC to educate PSUV cadres in political and social fields.[197] By 2008, the CPC claimed to have established relations with 99 political parties in 29 Latin American countries.[196] European social democracy has been of great interest to the CPC since the early 1980s.[196] With the exception of a short period in which the CPC forged party-to-party relations with far-right parties during the 1970s in an effort to halt "Soviet expansionism", the CPC's relations with European social democratic parties were its first serious efforts to establish cordial party-to-party relations with non-communist parties.[196] The CPC credits the European social democrats with creating a "capitalism with a human face".[196] Before the 1980s, the CPC had a highly negative and dismissive view of social democracy, a view dating back to the Second International and the Leninist and Stalinist view on the social democratic movement.[196] By the 1980s that view had changed, and the CPC concluded that it could actually learn something from the social democratic movement.[196] CPC delegates were sent all over Europe to observe.[198] It should be noted that by the 1980s most European social democratic parties were facing electoral decline, and were in a period of self-reform.[198] The CPC followed this with great interest, laying most weight on reform efforts within the British Labour Party and the Social Democratic Party of Germany.[198] The CPC concluded that both parties were reelected because they modernized, replacing traditional state socialist tenets with new ones supporting privatization, shedding the belief in big government, conceiving a new view of the welfare state, changing negative views of the market, and moving from their traditional support base of trade unions to entrepreneurs, younger members and students.[199] |
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