Deng's China: From post-Maoism to post-Marxism

Ideological reorientation in China, which began in the late-1970s, was borne out of the need to invalidate the hitherto 'standardised' and 'immutable' Soviet socialist model, and to move beyond the limitations of classical Marxism. In emphasising subjectivity and moral-ethical interpretation of humanism, which was found lacking in Lenin's theory of reflection, the post-1978 thinking undermined the centrality of class and ultimately the party's claim and authority as a representative entity. Yet this intellectual reassessment failed at furnishing a new persuasively and coherently articulated ideological framework since it did not address the adverse long-term political and socio-economic consequences of economic liberalisation. The post-Tienanmen period has seen a simultaneous emergence of neo-conservatism, a nostalgia for the Mao era and the receptivity to New Confucianism, as an effort to address the loss of central authority and the consequent ideological and political fragmentation by having recourse to a blend of selective western ideas and institutions with the traditional Chinese values. The post-Mao change of course illustrates the 'orientational crisis' that has enveloped Chinese socio-economic cultural order after it can no more be contained by an official orthodoxy.