The Ideological Building in China

Since China entered its reform-era after 1976, scholars from both home and abroad continue to make different judgments on performances of China and the Chinese Communist Party.

Scholars who hold negative opinions argue that in opening up to global culture, CCP has sacrificed a large degree of internal control over the recreation of Chinese culture and failed to develop a new ideology. Daniel C. Lynch, in his article named “Dilemmas of ‘Thought Work’ in Fin-de-Siècle China”, directly points out that “the related, positive effort to ‘build a socialist spiritual civilization’ - are failing; and that reasserting control over thought work to the degree expressed as officially desirable will prove impossible.”However, as one important principle of Marxism states that one can neither confirm nor deny everything, the above views seems too incomplete and arbitrary for me to agree with. While we recognize the inevitable problems faced the Chinese government after its implement of the “reform and opening-up policy”, we should also see China’s progress under the lead of CCP. And I believe the ideological building in China’s reform-era has functioned and made several achievements.

I’ll develop this essay based on the following interrelated aspects: the control over thought work, the building of socialist spiritual civilization and the Party’s current ideology.First of all, the term "thought work" originally denoted the exertion of influence in small study groups, but is now used in China to refer to propaganda and persuasion in general. The aim is to sway the public and international opinion in favor of its policies. During the Mao-era, there was no question of other groups challenging the government for control over thought work under Mao’s leadership.

Certainly Mao had his opponents but they were not opponents of the Party. The disagreements never lasted long and the mass public was falling in an ardently love with the Party. In brief, the success of controlling thought work was mainly due to two reasons: the mass worship of CCP and the policy of self-sufficiency in the early periods of New China.However, the situation has changed. As we all know, the economic reform has pushed China into a world stage and a more open atmosphere.

Despite the prosperity it has brought to China, there are also side-effects. As a result, CCP has to find solutions to deal with the loss of control over thought work. In addition to the open propaganda and thought education that bring positive information to the public, CCP also pays attention to keep away negative information from the mass. The following paragraph extracted from a foreign website illustrates CCP’s major methods of controlling thought work from an indirect way:Crucial to managing thought work is control over the mass media and telecommunications systems. Although domination of these systems cannot lead directly to government controlover the entire environment of symbols, and certainly not to control over the content of all thought, domination of the media and telecommunications is the most critical componentof the thought work enterprise.

If the government does not dominate these systems, othergroups will. That will give these groups a strategic bastion from which to challenge the government's leadership over society.Obviously, the mass media develop rapidly and the press gains more freedom. Today, people receive large amounts of information everyday through newspapers, broadcasts, internet and so on. A new research conducted by American researchers even states that the average amount of information one may receive everyday is 34G. Thus, in order for CCP to filter information which against its ruling status, an effective media control is supposed to be done.

Several matures have been taken: an elaborate architecture of Party supervision, related legislation, stringent licensing mechanisms, handpicked personnel or control through the intimidation of journalists and restrictions on media ownership. It’s not surprised to see articles attacking CCP’s control methods, especially by foreign media industry. Nevertheless, the natural and original intention of them is to keep the nation stable in general. Although perfect control can never be achieved without question, it’s over-rigorous to say the media control in China has no redeeming feature.By contrast, CCP’s control of media functions in the mainland China. In people’s daily life, they never hear or read the expression of anti-communism through broadcasts on TV or newspapers bought from local shops.

Even when people surf on the internet, the search engines that used widely in China such as Baidu, Sohu, and Sina will filter that kind of particular information. Moreover, some members within the party are employed as internet commentator to guide the public opinion on the internet. The outcome of CCP’s efforts in mainland China should be considered desirable if we compare that in Hong Kong.Due to the policy “one country, two systems” proposed by Deng, Hong Kong is the Special Administrative Region and its economy remains capitalism, which differ from that of the mainland China. The mass media has much greater freedom and the thoughts of anti-communism or anti-CCP are allowed to go public.

For instance, the famous anti-communism newspaper Apple Daily (Ping guo ri bao) beats the drum for Tibet independence and national disruption. Such expressions cannot be seen in mainland China. What’s more, according to scholar Wenfang Tang , several surveys conducted in reform-era of China shows a positive result of the Party’s control over thought work: “In 1999 Six-City Survey, when asked whether the Communist-led multiparty system should be changed…the majority of people either did not care or did not want any change” (71);