September 11, 2013
China’s president calls for a return to “Marxism,” but what does that mean exactly?
Statue of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in Shanghai, China. Photo via wikimedia, Creative Commons.
Trier is a beautiful, mid-sized city in south-west Germany. Founded 2000 years ago, it was once under the governance of the Roman Empire. Even today one can see many traces of the ancient in the city: The castles, the churches, the marketplace, and other buildings from the middle ages still exist. A tributary of the Rhine and Mosel rivers curves around the city, and the valleys, with their sloping vineyards, enrich the beauty of this town with a touch of fairy-tale charm. Each year, thousands of Chinese tourists make a stop at Trier—not because of her ancient enchantment, but to search for their contemporary spiritual roots. If one were to ask the inhabitants of Trier if any famous historical figures came from there, they may name some bishops or Roman emperors. But ask a Chinese person, and he or she will show you the tomb of Karl Marx.
In fact, Marx’s ghost does not linger above his hometown of Trier, nestled on the bank of the Mosel. No, it hovers over the vast land of China and its 1.3 billion citizens. Even today, when China is abandoning socialism and embracing a predatory capitalism, the rulers in Beijing still want to bathe in the glowing sunset that is orthodox Marxism.
To this effect, the new emperor of China, president Xi Jinping, gave a speech at the national work conference for propaganda and ideology on August 19. He asked “Party schools, Cadre academies, academies for social sciences, universities and colleges, as well as Learning Centers for theories, to assign Marxism as an obligatory course, so that they could become the front for doing important Marxist research and propaganda.”
Did old Karl Marx ever dream that he would foster generations of slit-eyed Chinese with his revolutionary theories? Did the millions of Chinese ever imagine that after 60 years of socialist lies, they would still have to study the fluffy “long nose’s” (what the Chinese call all Europeans) theories out of fashion? It must be a joke. Yet Xi, the dough-faced boss, means it.