Rethinking Chinese Marxism And The Rise Of China

The primary purpose of this thesis is to critically study the essence of the official discourse of Chinese Marxism and the post-Mao theoretical continuity under the three broader theoretical paradigms: Mao Zedong Thought,Deng Xiaoping Theory,and Xi Jinping Thought.Moreover,this study highlights that there is a theoretical continuity in all five generations of Chinese political leadership for the nation-building project including the new era of Xi Jinping to better understand the cumulative historical Chinese experiences in last seventy years.The official discourse of Chinese Marxism and the developmental experiences under the political leadership of the Chinese communist party helped in contesting Western imperialist and hegemonic project of western knowledge production vis-à-vis China collapse thesis particularly.However,one should also acknowledge the complex diversities in the academic field of Sinology within the Western academia,which contain an in-depth and sympathetic understanding of China,as well as support,reflection and proper criticism.It is in this backdrop one needs to understand the rise of China and the successful developmental experiences in the last seventy years.It also implies that all five generations of Chinese leaderships were confronted and are still facing Chinese socio-politicoeconomic contradictions in the changing world order.Indeed,the Chinese development path has not been always direct or clear-cut but the main objectives of the official discourse of Chinese Marxism remain the same more or less.One needs to critically assess the many successful aspects of Chinese experiences as a lesson for the other developing countries,without falling into the temptation of its desirability and portability.In fact,this is one of the salient features of the Xi Jinping Era and his encouragement to detailed study the success of Chinese experiences without any ideological biasedness to deconstruct the Western biasedness of knowledgeproduction vis-à-vis the rise of China in the twenty-first century.As a conceptual framework for this thesis,I extensively refer the condescending critical studies by Edward Said on “Orientalism”,Daniel Vukovich on “Sinological Orientalism”,Josef Gregory Mahoney and Maximilian Mayer on “Digital Orientalism”.A key value of postcolonial orientalist discourse analysis is to question if not deconstruct western hegemonic values and cultural difference between the Westphalian nation-states and civilizational states.I argue that with the rise of China,the western academia has replaced “China collapse thesis” with the “China threat theory” in the academic field of Sinology.In order to get the comprehensive assessment of the rise of China,hence one needs to contextualize this phenomenon in the official discourse of Chinese Marxism,worldview,the dual identities of China as a civilizational state and modern nation-state.Furthermore,I tried to understand how do Chinese political leadership think theoretically within the Westphalian international order to explain the peaceful rise of China in order to counter the subjective “China threat theory” in particular and the neo-colonial discourse of western knowledge production in the academia in general.Certainly,the theory-development under the discourse of Chinese Marxism provides an analytical role and political guidance in the transformation of Chinese society from an “agrarian society” to an “industrialized society” to an “advanced technological society”.One can question the soundness of an official ideological position of the Chinese Marxism under the five generation of leadership of the communist party of China but,it is equally impossible to ignore the long march of Chinese nation from famine-stricken,semi-colonial,semi-feudal and stratified society by local warlords,feudal groups,and foreign powers-to the second-largest economy as the 5000 years old continuing Chinese civilization-state.Under the overall leadership and governance system of the Chinese communist party,the differenttheoretical discourse of the Chinese Marxism helped the Chinese society to usher in a new era of stability and prosperity.To find out the Chinese path to socialism,Mao Zedong sinicised the Marxism,which laid the foundation of Chinese Marxism based on the Chinese peasant revolution in an agrarian society with peasants as the potential revolutionary force.Indeed,the post-Mao theory development showed continuity at large based on the yardstick of the societal development and well-being of the people.The post-Mao ideological basis of Chinese Marxism shares the common geo-cultural position with the postcolonial orientalist civilizational critiques of western discourse of knowledge production vis-à-vis China threat thesis in the media and academia.Therefore,the viability of postcolonial orientalist civilizational critique provides a critical non-Western academic space to initiate an academic debate from the Chinese vantage point.In doing so it also helps in learning from the success of Chinese sociopolitico-economic experiences and the objectives under the official discourse of Chinese Marxism.Many developing countries like India,Brazil,South Africa and Asian,African and Latin American countries are involved in exploring their own critical postcolonial projects today.Certainly,the rise of China has upset the ideologically biased agenda-setting of western knowledge production in academia.