Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Is China socialist?
The Communist Party of China and the government of China advocate socialist patriotism. The Communist Party of China describes the policy of socialist patriotism as the following: "Socialist patriotism has three levels. At the first level, individuals should subordinate their personal interests to the interests of the state. At the second level, individuals should subordinate their personal destiny to the destiny of our socialist system. At the third level, individuals should subordinate their personal future to the future of our communist cause." The PRC portrays the Communist government as the embodiment of the will of the Chinese people.
The response to Su and Feng's article was mixed. Some responded positively and called for a retreat from socialist practices and a return to the policies of New Democracya period that lasted until 1956 when China had a mixed economy. More conservative elements tried to suppress it. Deng Liqun, the Deputy President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), used his powers to organize a meeting which criticized Su, who had become a member of the CASS Institute of Marxism–Leninism after writing the article. While Su garnered some support from high-standing officials, such as General Ye Jianying, the concept was the target of several crackdowns; the first occurred in 1981 during a crackdown on socialists supporting liberal democracy. A later crackdown was orchestrated by longstanding party theoretician Hu Qiamou and thirdly during the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign in 1983. The reasoning was that the idea lent weight for forces opposed to socialism in China and was therefore dangerous. Despite this, the 6th Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee sanctioned the idea that China was in the "primary stage of socialism", even if key theoreticians such as Wang Xiaoqiang dismissed Chinese socialism as "agrarian socialism", believing that socialism had been constructed on a feudal base.
The concept of a primary stage of socialism was conceived before China introduced economic reforms. When discussing the necessity of commodity relations at the 1st Zhengzhou Conference held between 2 and 10 November 1958, Mao Zedongthe Chairman of the Communist Party of China's Central Committeesaid that China was in the "initial stage of socialism". Mao did not elaborate on the idea; his successors did.
Sun Yat-sen is seen as the first president of a Republican China and is highly regarded as the "Forerunner of the Democratic Revolution" (革命先行者) in the People's Republic of China. Mao Zedong is reverred as the founder of the people's republic in 1949.
Mao's social and cultural programs, including collectivization, were most popular in the early 1950s. However, China's strained relations with new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and newfound contradictions between the Chinese and Soviet schools of communism seeded a novel and radical drive to reform China's economic system in its entirety. This split developed after Stalin's death in 1953 when new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced him. The "secret speech" in 1956 stunned the communist world. China rejected de-Stalinization and in fact displayed large Stalin portraits at the May Day celebrations that year. Mao declared that despite some faults, Stalin had basically been a good, well-meaning Marxist. He felt that the Soviets were not treating China as an equal partner. Cultural differences also contributed to friction between the two communist giants. Khrushchev's idea of peaceful competition with the United States rather than overt hostility did not resonate well with Beijing. Mao said that "Do you think the capitalists will put down their butcher knife and become Buddhas?"
The Chinese economic reform (; known in the West as the Opening of China) refers to the program of economic reforms termed "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" and "socialist market economy" in the People's Republic of China (PRC) which reformists within the Communist Party of China - led by Deng Xiaoping - started in December 1978.
The Western Left academics are nowadays very happy to talk about "varieties of capitalism", but talking about "varieties of socialism" remains almost an absolute "no-no". Most Marxists continue to believe in "only one" (Marxian) socialism: either that, or nothing at all. "Either" a society or movement conforms to the true concept of socialism, "or" it does not; and if it does not, it "cannot be" socialism. However, precisely "because" there are many different Marxist beliefs about socialism, Marxists cannot agree among themselves whether Soviet-type societies were socialist, capitalist, or something else. Some countries meet with the moral expectations which Marxists have, and others do not.Originally Marx and Engels themselves had heckled the advocates of "true socialism", but later Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky promoted Marxist socialism as the one and true "scientific socialism" within the Socialist International. When he was 43 years old, Lenin stated: "The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true". Lenin's Communist International (a deliberate split with the social democrats) adopted Marxist socialism as its official political doctrine.
Saying that "some (extremist) foreign forces have used religion to infiltrate China", and noting that some religion including Christianity and Islam deliberately spread their political views in China, Wang considers "guiding religions to suit to China's development (a) core policy to solve China's religious problems." He supports the sinicization of religion: "Religions should be sinicized [...] We should guide religious groups and individuals with socialist core values and excellent traditional Chinese culture and support religious groups to dig into their doctrines to find parts that are beneficial to social harmony and development."
China is a largely-homogenous society; over 90 percent of its population has historically been Han Chinese. Some of the country's ethnic groups are distinguishable by physical appearance and relatively-low intermarriage rates. Others have married Han Chinese and resemble them. A growing number of ethnic minorities are fluent at a native level in Mandarin Chinese. Children sometimes receive ethnic-minority status at birth if one of their parents belongs to an ethnic minority, even if their ancestry is predominantly Han Chinese. Pockets of immigrants and foreign residents exist in some cities.
According to orthodox Marxist theory, the overthrow of capitalism by a socialist revolution in contemporary society is inevitable. While the inevitability of an eventual socialist revolution is a controversial debate among many different Marxist schools of thought, all Marxists believe socialism is a necessity, if not inevitable. Marxists believe that a socialist society is far better for the majority of the populace than its capitalist counterpart. Prior to the Russian revolution of 1917, Lenin wrote: "The socialization of production is bound to lead to the conversion of the means of production into the property of society ... This conversion will directly result in an immense increase in productivity of labour, a reduction of working hours, and the replacement of the remnants, the ruins of small-scale, primitive, disunited production by collective and improved labour". The failure of the 1905 revolution and the failure of socialist movements to resist the outbreak of World War One led to renewed theoretical effort and valuable contributions from Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg towards an appreciation of Marx's crisis theory and efforts to formulate a theory of imperialism.
In response to the fall of Eastern European governments, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, two distinct positions began to emerge within the FRSO on how to assess the socialist countries. One position saw the events of 1989-1991 as indicative of a deep crisis in socialism that required what they called "left refoundation". The other position continued to assess the experience of socialist countries as essentially positive, and saw their defeats as the result of revisionism, not as a crisis of Marxism itself. This side continued to identify itself as Marxist-Leninist. At the organization's 1991 Congress, the group's highest decision-making body, a document explaining the official position of the organization was adopted entitled "On the Crisis of Socialism." This document was reaffirmed at the 1997 Congress. This internal division solidified throughout the 1990s until the organization split in 1999.
In 1949, a Communist-backed government, led by Mao Zedong, was instated in China (officially becoming the People's Republic of China). The installation of the new government was established after the People's Liberation Army defeated the Nationalist Republican Government of China in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War (1927-1949). Two Chinas were formed - mainland 'Communist China' (People's Republic of China) and 'Nationalist China' Taiwan (Republic of China). The takeover by Communists of the world's most populous nation was seen in the West as a great strategic loss, prompting the popular question at the time, "Who lost China?" The United States subsequently ended diplomatic relations with China in response to the communist takeover in 1949.
In the 20th century, written Chinese divided into two canonical forms, called simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese. Simplified Chinese was developed in mainland China in order to make the characters faster to write (especially as some characters had as many as a few dozen strokes) and easier to memorize. The People's Republic of China claims that both goals have been achieved, but some external observers disagree. Little systematic study has been conducted on how simplified Chinese has affected the way Chinese people become literate; the only studies conducted before it was standardized in mainland China seem to have been statistical ones regarding how many strokes were saved on average in samples of running text.
It does not consider the former Soviet Union socialist, but rather a "tragic degeneration" of the Russian Revolution and the socialist tradition. While it views the Russian Revolution positively as a mass democratic revolution of the working class in Russia, it is in complete opposition to the bureaucratic dictatorship that came about after the death of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin's subsequent reign of terror. It sees these not as an inevitable outcome of the Russian Revolution, but an expression of Russia's isolation and economic starvation and a result of the vacuum of workers' power from below. "This was not a healthy ground upon which socialism could be built. The whole basis of socialism is having enough to go around, but Russia didn't have that. In this context, the democratic structures in the Soviets (workers' assemblies) ceased to function.
In 1989, the Socialist International adopted its present Declaration of Principles. The Declaration of Principles addressed issues concerning the "internationalization of the economy". The Declaration of Principles defined its interpretation of the nature of socialism. It stated that socialist values and vision include "a peaceful and democratic world society combining freedom, justice and solidarity". It defined the rights and freedoms it supported, stating: "Socialists protect the inalienable right to life and to physical safety, to freedom of belief and free expression of opinion, to freedom of association and to protection from torture and degradation. Socialists are committed to achieve freedom from hunger and want, genuine social security, and the right to work". However, it also clarified that it did not promote any fixed and permanent definition for socialism, stating: "Socialists do not claim to possess the blueprint for some final and fixed society which cannot be changed, reformed or further developed. In a movement committed to democratic self-determination there will always be room for creativity since each people and every generation must set its own goals".
The President of the People's Republic of China is the head of state of the People's Republic of China. Under the country's constitution, the presidency is a largely ceremonial office with limited powers. However, since 1993, as a matter of convention, the presidency has been held simultaneously by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, the top leader in the one party system. The office is officially regarded as an institution of the state rather than an administrative post; theoretically, the President serves at the pleasure of the National People's Congress, the legislature, and is not legally vested to take executive action on its own prerogative. The current President is Xi Jinping, who took office in March 2013.
The Kuomintang unified China in 1927, and started to prepare the state for democracy, as according to Sun's teaching. The Constitution of the Republic of China enacted in 1947 stipulates that different parties shall enjoy equal status, and the National Revolutionary Army was returned to civilian control as the Army of the Republic of China. However, due to the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War, the ROC was under military rule of the KMT during the period of mobilization. In the 1990s, when the martial law ended, all political parties became legal and the Republic of China was democratized. Since then, the President of the Republic of China has been democratically elected by the people of the Free Area. Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected president, making him the first non-KMT president under the Constitution.
The history of socialism has its origins in the 1789 French Revolution and the changes which it wrought, although it has precedents in earlier movements and ideas. "The Communist Manifesto" was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 just before the Revolutions of 1848 swept Europe, expressing what they termed "scientific socialism". In the last third of the 19th century, social democratic parties arose in Europe, drawing mainly from Marxism. The Australian Labor Party was the world's first elected socialist party when it formed government in the Colony of Queensland for a week in 1899.
The People's Republic of China (PRC) officially recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, the largest of which are Han, who constitute 91.51% of the total population in 2010. Ethnic minorities constitute 8.49% or 113.8 million of China's population in 2010. During the past decades ethnic minorities have experienced higher growth rates than the majority Han population, because they are not under the one-child policy. Their proportion of the population in China has grown from 6.1% in 1953, to 8.04% in 1990, 8.41% in 2000, and 8.49% in 2010. Large ethnic minorities (data according to the 2000 census) include the Zhuang (16 million, 1.28%), Manchu (10 million, 0.84%), Uyghur (9 million, 0.78%), Hui (9 million, 0.71%), Miao (8 million, 0.71%), Yi (7 million, 0.61%), Tujia (5.75 million, 0.63%), Mongols (5 million, 0.46%), Tibetan (5 million, 0.43%), Buyei (3 million, 0.23%), and Korean (2 million, 0.15%).
President Chen Shui-bian (2000 – May 2008) fully supported the idea that the "Republic of China is an independent, sovereign country" but held the view that the Republic of China is Taiwan and Taiwan does not belong to the People's Republic of China. This is suggested in his Four-stage Theory of the Republic of China. Due to the necessity of avoiding war with the PRC however, President Chen had refrained from formally declaring Taiwan's independence. Government publications have implied that Taiwan refers to the ROC, and "China" refers to the PRC. After becoming chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party in July 2002, Chen appeared to move further than Lee's special two-state theory and in early August 2002, by putting forward the "one country on each side" concept, he stated that Taiwan may "go on its own Taiwanese road" and that "it is clear that the two sides of the straits are separate countries." These statements essentially eliminate any "special" factors in the relations and were strongly criticized by opposition parties in Taiwan. President Chen has repeatedly refused to endorse the One China Principle or the more "flexible" 1992 Consensus the PRC demands as a precursor to negotiations with the PRC. During Chen's presidency, there had not been any successful attempts to restart negotiations on a semi-official level.
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local language varieties or dialects, many of which are not mutually intelligible. The differences are similar to those within the Romance languages, with variation particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast. A widely quoted classification divides these varieties into seven groups: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka and Yue, though a more recent classification splits some of these to obtain ten groups, and some varieties remain unclassified.
Mao Zedong spoke of a Chinese nation, but specified that the Chinese are a civic-based nation of multiple ethnic groups, and explicitly condemned Han ethnocentrism, that Mao called Han chauvinism that he claimed had become widespread in China. The constitution of China states that China is a multi-ethnic society and that the state is opposed to national chauvinism and specifies Han chauvinism in particular.
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany officially had socialist patriotism within its party statutes. The SED expanded on this by emphasizing a "socialist national consciousness" involving a "love for the GDR and pride in the achievements of socialism. However the GDR claimed that socialist patriotism was compatible with proletarian internationalism and stated that it should not be confused with nationalism that it associated with chauvinism and xenophobia.
Both the Socialists and the Democratic Constitutionalists had strong ties to Liang Qichao's defunct Progressive Party. The former were based in China as part of the China Democratic League while the latter was made up of overseas Chinese and expatriates. Most of their members were middle-age to elderly. They never actively recruited and most of their members were friends or relatives of each other. Their small numbers meant they lacked influence but also allowed them to operate under the radar of the Kuomintang and prevent infiltration by other parties.
In 1935, former members of the Research Clique created the Chinese National Socialist Party, they were known as the Socialists to avoid confusion with the German Nazis. The CPWDP joined the short-lived Productive People's Party in the Fujian Rebellion. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the YCP, CPWDP, and the Socialists formed the China Democratic League (CDL), as an umbrella group, to fight the Japanese while providing for a "Third Way". After the war, the YCP and the Socialists, joined the Nationalists in Taiwan. The Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang, CPWDP, CDL, and the CPIP joined the Communists' United Front which also included several political pressure groups.
Different ideologies support different governments. For example, in the era of the Soviet Union Western socialists were bitterly divided as to whether the Soviet Union was basically socialist, moving toward socialism, or inherently un-socialist and in fact inimical to true socialism. Similarly, today the government of the People's Republic of China claims to be socialist and refers to its own approach as "Socialism with Chinese characteristics", but most other socialists consider China to be essentially capitalist. The Chinese leadership concurs with most of the usual critiques against a command economy and many of their actions to manage what they call a socialist economy have been determined by this opinion.