The role of ideology in Xi Jinping’s China

There is an increasing sense around the world that under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party of China has doubled down on ideology. This is seen as a distinct turn away from the pragmatism that Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening up had engendered. The argument goes that emerging from the failure of the Great Leap Forward and the subsequent chaos of the Cultural Revolution, Deng reoriented the Party’s mission away from class warfare and revolution towards economic prosperity. In this quest, he restructured the Party’s organisational system and redefined its relationship with the state, capital and society, loosening controls. Policies through the decades of reform and opening up, for many, had implied that China had begun transitioning to a post-ideological society, where ideological discourse provided a rhetorical connection to communism and socialism but lacked substance. This is the trend that has seemingly regressed or been rectified, depending on one’s viewpoint, with the emergence of Xi Jinping Thought as China’s guiding ideology after the 19th Party Congress in 2017.There are, of course, fundamental changes that are taking place in China under Xi Jinping. For instance, there is indeed greater discussion about inheriting red genes, the vitality of socialism and the superiority of the socialist system, and the goal of common prosperity. These are certainly also impacting policies with regard to the Party organisation, the role of private capital, approach to economic reform and social security policies. However, the argument that there is a return of ideology is epistemologically on shaky ground. Such an assessment, in fact, is a fundamental misinterpretation of the political evolution of the Chinese Party-state system. In part, this misinterpretation has been the product of the manner in which observers have approached the concept of ideology, and in part, it is a product of misreading the essential impulses that shape the Party’s ideology.Read the full article here in Hindustan Times