Eric's Beijing Diary

Had an interesting conversation this morning with the professor here who teaches history and Mao Zedong Thought. She was complaining that young people are not interested in studying history. They only want to make money. I told her that I felt perhaps the history was not so interesting to students because in China, the history is controlled by politicians. I told her that if I were teaching the course, I would tend to emphasize Deng Xiao-ping theory more than Mao Zedong Thought. Mao was a very adept military strategist, but he was a poor administrator, whereas Deng Xiao-ping really changed the lives of Chinese people, because he was able to change the economic system in a subtle, gradual manner. But I also told her that any teaching of Marxism is going to be boring to students, because they don't want to spend time studying something that no one believes in anymore.

This is the problem with modern China. You have a country where the constitution still embraces "public ownership of the means of production" (Article 6), but where most of the business that the average person encounters is private. Let's say, I stop by KFC for breakfast. Private business. Then I stop by the grocery store to pick up some stuff. Private business. I stop to get my bike fixed. Private business. Now, I work for a public university. Public universities are just that--financed by the government, so that could be called socialist. But they are socialist in America, too. Bottom line: for the most part, businesses in China are not owned by the government. Political rhetoric notwithstanding, France is more socialistic than China. So you have a country that is moving toward market economy status, but still obliged to pay lip service to Marxism from time to time.