Power not socialism is today's Chinese ideology
In the late 1990s in Beijing, I attended a dinner with Rupert Murdoch where he declared he had yet to meet any communists in China. On the face of it, it was an odd statement - if you are not meeting communists in China, after all, your business is going nowhere.
Nonetheless, it is a commonly heard refrain among business leaders breezing through Beijing who have decided that China's communists are really deal-hungry capitalists in disguise, but just cannot say so. It is not for nothing that the Communist party is only half- jokingly labelled the world's biggest chamber of commerce.
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In China itself, however, ideological debates in various guises are alive and kicking and play a pivotal role in policymaking. Chinese and foreigners ignore them at their peril.
The clearest sign that ideology is back came with the demise of the property law earlier this year, shelved after a campaign against it by a law professor at Peking University. The law aimed to entrench legal protection of private property rights, but Gong Xiantian whipped up a storm by arguing it would only protect the rights of the rich and succeeded in pushing it off the legislative agenda.
That Professor Gong's argument won the day is astounding. After all, the Chinese who have made the most money from property in the past decade did so by throwing ordinary citizens out of their homes in collusion with local governments. For individuals in China, by contrast, the ability to buy a home has been tremendously empowering. With the protection of the law and independent courts, the property market would enrich both them and the country.
The key to Prof Gong's victory was that he was able to frame the debate in a code that still packs a punch in Chinese politics. The bill, he said, would undermine China as a socialist state. Or to use the code, the measure was "surnamed capitalist, not surnamed socialist", a turn of phrase not heard since the early 1990s, when the late Deng Xiaoping was fighting a rearguard action in defence of market reforms.
Deng said it did not matter what a reform was "surnamed", as long as it worked. For the conservative left, however, to label a measure as "surnamed capitalist" was akin to attaching the mark of death to it.
The phrase has been given a new twist in recent months in an intensifying debate about foreign purchases of Chinese companies. The ideologues are applying a new litmus test for such deals - whether an industry is "surnamed Chinese or surnamed foreign".
The result has been a slew of delays in purchases of local companies in industries as diverse as construction equipment, meat packing and industrial bearings, which have taken on a strategic quality in the hands of the anti-foreign forces.
This debate in China is in some respects no different from those in many countries, where an array of interests has rallied to block foreign takeovers. Ideology is also sometimes just a convenient cloak to protect entrenched interests.
But the driving force underlying the discussion in China has a character that sets it apart. The bottom line is about ensuring the party maintains its monopoly on political power.
Chinese communism has long ceased to resemble any form of dialectical materialism. Deng's clever formulation of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" gave policymakers the fig-leaf they needed two decades ago to introduce market reforms in a single-party state. The economy has flourished as a result but, in the meantime, the gap between the fiction of the party's rhetoric ("China is a socialist country") and the reality of everyday life has grown ever greater. The party has no choice but to defend the fiction, because it represents the political status quo. "Their ideology is an ideology of power and therefore a defence of power," says Richard Baum, a China scholar.
The party remains a nimble beast. A few years ago, it noticed the explosive growth of the private sector. So the party began inviting entrepreneurs to officially join its ranks and establishing cells inside private companies to ensure they did not incubate an alternative political force.
It is impossible to know how this conflict between single-party rule and growing private interests in China will be resolved. But no one should doubt the resolve of the party to maintain its grip. Even Mr Murdoch, who exclaimed last year that China's leaders were "paranoid" about the foreign media's destabilising influence, should be clear about that by now.
The writer is the FT's Beijing bureau chief
中国新意识形态之争
上
世纪90年代末，我在北京与鲁珀特?默多克(Rupert Murdoch)一起出席一个晚宴时，他声称自己在中国尚未见到任何共产主义者。表面看来，这是个奇怪的说法――毕竟，如果你在中国没会晤共产党员，那么你就没法做生意。
尽管如此，这却是在北京忙忙碌碌的商业领袖们经常说的一句话。他们认为，中国的共产党员，实际上是急切渴望做生意的资本主义者，只是不能这样说而已。共产党被半开玩笑地视为全球最大的商会，并非毫无道理。
然而，在中国内部，不同形式的意识形态辩论正进行得如火如荼，而且在政策决策中发挥着关键作用。无论是中国人还是外国人，如果忽视这一点，都会付出代价。
意识形态回归的一个最明显迹象，就是今年早些时候物权法草案在遭到北京大学法学教授巩献田的抨击之后，被搁置下来。这部法律旨在确立对私人产权的法律保护，但巩献田认为，它仅维护了富人的权利，从而引发了一场风波，最终成功地将该法律草案撤下立法程序。
巩献田的主张能占上风，着实令人吃惊。毕竟，在过去10年中，从房地产上赚钱最多的中国人，是通过与地方政府合谋，强迫普通百姓拆迁，才大发横财的。相反，对于中国的普通老百姓而言，有能力购买一套住房，是一件很能让他们感觉“当家作主”的事情。在物权法和独立法庭的保护下，房地产市场会让这些普通人和国家都受益。
巩献田获胜的关键在于，他成功地将这场辩论置于对中国政治仍有巨大影响的意识形态范畴内。他表示，这部法律草案背离了中国的社会主义原则。用意识形态术语来说，这部法律“姓资，而不是姓社”。自上世纪90年代初以来，人们就再也没有听到这种说法――当时，已故的邓小平为维护市场改革而与保守派进行了一场斗争。
邓小平曾经说过，改革只要有效，“姓什么”不是关键。然而，对于保守的左派人士而言，为一个措施贴上“姓资”的标签，就相当于判了它死刑。
最近数月，在愈演愈烈的、关于外资收购中国企业的辩论中，这种说法被赋予新的形式。理论家正用新的标准对这些交易进行检验，即一个行业“姓中，还是姓外”。
由此造成的结果是，在建筑设备、肉类加工和工业轴承等多个行业，很多对中国企业的收购案都遭遇了拖延。在排外势力的手中，这些行业都成了战略行业。
发生在中国的这场辩论，在某些方面与其它许多国家发生的辩论大同小异――在那些国家，都出现了利益集团联合起来阻止外资收购的现象。有时，意识形态仅仅是保护既得利益的一个方便借口。
但中国的这场辩论，其背后的驱动力有一个与众不同的特征。其底线是：确保党对政治权力的垄断。
中国式社会主义早就不同于任何形式的辩证唯物主义。邓小平聪明地提出“有中国特色的社会主义”理论，为20年前决策者在一党制国家推行市场经济改革提供了一块“遮羞布”。中国经济从此开始蓬勃发展，但与此同时，党的空洞口号（“中国是社会主义国家”）与日常生活现实之间的差距越来越大。党别无选择，只能维护这一口号，因为它代表着中国的政治现状。中国问题专家鲍瑞嘉(Richard Baum)表示：“他们的意识形态是权力主义，因此，他们会维护自己的权力。”
党依然很机敏。几年前，它注意到私营行业的爆炸性增长。因此，党开始邀请企业家正式加入其阵营，并开始在私营企业中建立党组织，确保它们不会滋生其它政治力量。
人们不可能知道，中国的一党制与不断增长的私人利益之间的冲突，将会如何解决。然而，人们不应质疑党保持其权力的决心。就连默多克现在也应该明白这一点了――他在去年曾表示，中国领导人对外国媒体可能影响中国稳定的担心“太多虑了”。
