China’s Ideological Past Returns
Political contestation and ideology matter, even in authoritarian systems that appear to have embraced technocratic modernization and political centralization. This is the core point in Jude Blanchette’s fascinating exploration of identity and intellectual discourse in contemporary China.
Contrary to the conventional Western interpretation of Chinese communism as a system that has paid at best lip service to Maoist ideology while focusing on rapid economic growth and social modernization, Blanchette sees China as in the grip of a fierce battle over ideas, in which New Left intellectuals, politicians and activists are seeking to resurrect and re-legitimize the centrality of Mao.
Through interviews and an exhaustive reading of both polemical and substantive Chinese writers, and via a close analysis of the impact of neomaoist websites, such as the influential “Utopia,” Blanchette reveals a new radical and left-wing populist movement challenging the leadership of Xi Jinping, driven by nostalgia for China’s Maoist past, resentment at widening economic inequality, and amplified by anger at foreign powers and institutions seen as increasingly discriminatory towards China. Xi may be seeking to co-opt and manage this trend, but the warning is that there are powerful and emotional political forces shaping contemporary China that could disrupt the country in ways not entirely dissimilar from the Cultural Revolution’s disruption.