China's contradictory 'socialism'

China has seen strong economic growth

By Owen Bennett-Jones BBC correspondent in China

Fifteen years ago China was just one of many communist states.

But with the Soviet Union and its satellites having left the fold, the list of countries with Marxist-Leninist one-party systems makes sorry reading.

China now stands shoulder to shoulder with Vietnam, Korea, Cuba and Laos.

And when it comes to economic policy, China is only communist in name.

Many of the workers have put aside their struggle

The breathtaking growth rate - 7% plus for 10 straight years - owes more to the founding father of free markets - Adam Smith - than Karl Marx.

The Communist Party is delivering wealth to the proletariat but in a way that would have shocked the Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao.

It all leads to some very tangled ideological knots.

There is not a party member in China - and there are 66 million of them - who is prepared to admit that they now live in a capitalist country.

"This," they insist, "is socialism in action".

Booming countryside

I recently went to one of China's poorest provinces, Anhui.

I thought it would reveal the extent of the wealth gap between the towns and countryside, between the masses and the Chinese multi-millionaires who are rapidly becoming some of the world's richest individuals.

In fact Anhui is booming.

Even some low-waged peasants are seeing income increases

True, most of the peasants are still locked into a dollar-a-day economy but, as they say, if you used to earn 80 cents, a dollar is very welcome.

And the province's main city Heifei now boasts a brand new five-star hotel, some hi-tech factories and office blocks full of software companies.

When I sat down for lunch with a local party official he was keen to boast of the area's development.

'Chinese characteristics'

A podgy-faced man of about 35, he laid on a meal with countless dishes of duck, chicken and beef and he tucked in with gusto.

"You can see the wealth here," he said. "The party is delivering."

The wealth gap in China appears to be growing

"Fair enough," I said, "but how do you feel as a communist party member watching private businessmen make profits out of the relatively low wages here?"

"Ah!" he said, as his ilk tend to. "This is socialism with Chinese characteristics. Have you ever tried our local beer? Cheers."

The "socialism with Chinese characteristics" line is oft-repeated but unconvincing.

China's communists have all studied their Marx and know full well that it is the state and not private entrepreneurs who should own the means of production.

Going backwards

And so, to the second line of defence.

"This is just the primitive stage of socialism. The final stage of communism will come. But not for a long time yet."

But if China is now in the primitive stage of socialism then what came before it? What did Chairman Mao introduce?

Chinese-style communism includes share dealing

"Ah, that was socialism."

"So you've moved from socialism to the primitive stage of socialism. It sounds like you are going backwards," I said.

At which point the podgy-faced apparatchik excelled himself.

As he popped a succulent chunk of honey-glazed ham into his mouth he said with a superior, yet careless, shrug: "You obviously haven't studied your communist theory - don't you realise that Marxist metaphysics relies on contradictions?"

And there is not a lot you can say to that.

The senior Communist Party leadership in Beijing knows it has a problem.

It has junked its socialist economic policies.

But its legitimacy still depends on its claim to have liberated the Chinese masses from the feudal warlords thereby earning a historic right to run a one party state.

Slogans

Its economic policies may have taken a great leap forward, but its political theories remain rooted in the past.

The gap between theory and practice is becoming as big as the Great Wall of China itself.

Mao liked to denounce "compradores"

The party's latest attempt to fill this ideological hole has come in the form of a new piece of doctrine - the three represents.

Heavily précised, it states that rich businessmen can now join the party. So much for the class struggle.

The three represents is the latest in a long line of slogans based on numbers. In the past there have been:

"One country two systems"

"The four modernisations, the four uncleans and the four cardinal principles."

"The eight do's and don'ts"

"The 60 points on working methods"

"The plan to let 100 flowers bloom"

But the party never officially sanctioned my favourite.

It was devised by an exhausted Beijing bureaucrat and passed on by word of mouth: "The two whatevers" - whatever Mao says and whatever Mao does.

But it would be unfair to suggest that the vocabulary of Chinese communism is set in stone.

Mao liked to denounce capitalist roaders, splitists, reactionaries, mobsters and compradores.

I asked one group of party officials what a compradore is.

True believers

They went into a huddle and earnestly discussed the matter before declaring that while a precise definition is not easy, the main sense of the word is best captured by the phrase imperialist running dog.

All that, though, is in the past.

The workers have put aside the struggle to break free their chains in favour of the serious business of making money.

But there are still some true believers.

In Shanghai's Academy of Social Sciences I met an old-style party man and asked if he didn't feel just a shade downhearted by the party's new line and, for that matter, by the collapse of the international communist movement.

"Not at all," he replied as quick as a flash.

"You have obviously not been following the news. Haven't you heard? The communists have just won a striking election victory - in West Bengal."