Maomart

I am finally getting around to posting some entries from things I experienced on my last trip to China. Well, I've got to hand it to Walmart, they are really something. I can't believe that they manage to put in a store underneath People Square in Guiyang. As many of you who have been to China knows, you can find a People's Square in most big cities in China, they were put in place as a symbol and reminder for the communist ideals.

I find this to be such a telling picture of what is going on presently in China: On the surface you still have the rhetorics and the ideals of Communism, but below ground sweeping the nation is the tide of capitalism. Everybody is trying to get ahead and make a buck from themselves. (If you look closely, you'll see in the background of the picture a statue of Chairman saluting the square)

I recently read an article that appeared in the Washington Post that indicatest that the leaders in China are becoming increasingly aware of this apparent contradiction. Here is the article:


China Confronts Contradictions Between Marxism and Markets (December 5, 2005, The Washington Post)
"The Communist Party has launched a campaign among political leaders and senior academics to modernize Chinese Marxism, seeking to reconcile increasingly obvious contradictions between the government's founding ideology and its broad free-market reforms. The campaign involves the allocation of millions of dollars to produce new translations of Marxist literature and to update texts for secondary school and university students obliged to study the official philosophy, officials said. In addition, the campaign will promote more research on how Marxism can be redefined to inform China's policies even as private enterprise increasingly becomes the basis of its economy, they explained. The undertaking, which coincides with an 18-month campaign to reinvigorate the party rank and file, seems designed as a response to frequent complaints about the chasm between official discourse in Beijing -- emphasizing "socialism with Chinese characteristics" -- and the growing reality of often unbridled capitalism in which party officials are eager partners. Unease over this gap has become particularly apparent among university students, who often chafe at their required classes on Marxist theory. A prominent university's party secretary recently told a visitor that his school had resolved the problem by simply teaching traditional Chinese philosophy during the time set aside for the study of Marxism."


I wonder if Mao is rolling over in his grave, I mean in his "Maoseuleum"