Seeing this one making rounds as pointed proof of how Marxist Xi actually is which, yes he is, but not in the way people mean with the charge. Marxism is used as a dirty word, but it’s actually a very broad identity that can mean diverse range of things. https://amp.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3097561/chinese-president-xi-jinping-says-marxist-political-economy

What’s meant when people use the term with Xi often is as a signifier of vaguely defined threatening ideology, usually implying redux of Stalin or Mao. But substantive content and range of Marxist ideas is rarely understood by those who use the reference in a derogatory fashion.

In this particular incidence, the sort of Marxism Xi discusses has very little to do with the violent global revolution that Stalin or Mao promoted. It’s little more than an academic articulation of how he views the political economy of development, and his preferences for such.

In this case, specifically what Xi’s saying in essay referenced by this article is that 1) He views the West as being led and run by the interest of financial powered elites and their cohorts. This is what Marxist lingo typically means when they refer to “capitalism” these days.

2) He thinks this is bad, but also recognizes “capitalists” have figured out much about how economics works, so CCP should learn from them, need to separate wheat from chaff, not so much in exclusion of Western ideas as what he perceives to be Western interests behind the ideas,

3) The focus of development should be based on how economics actually works. In particular he thinks what “capitalist” policymaking gets wrong is preoccupation with factor distribution based perspectives. He argues what should matter most are factor production based perspectives,

4) But he continues to think China’s policymakers need to explore, study, and understand different mechanics and processes of different forms of production and distribution, because they’re all optimized differently and require different models and approaches to function well,

5) The state plays a central role in the development process, *but* not in exclusion of other forms and models. The state is an essential means toward synthesized best of all worlds approach, 6) The ultimate objective of which for CCP is socialized rather than privatized benefit.

In summary, I agree with common quip that we must understand and assess the CCP based on what they say, but this remark is often used as justification for conclusions formed by reading CCP primary sources in ways that amount to little more than cherry picking and pattern fitting.

The way many China watchers often read CCP primary sources is mostly through motivated reasoning, interpreting based on what they want to see, or preconceived prejudices. Little work is put into understanding arguments and ideas in terms and perspectives of those who wrote them.

There is an entire wide ranging body of debates, intellectual foundations, and discursive perspectives which serve as essential background which the substantive content of CCP primary sources are directed toward, that are quite diverse in their positions and disagreements.

Foreign observers are not usually these primary sources’ audience. Even Xi’s public speeches are drawn from a body of thought not often familiar to those who don’t share his intellectual background. Proper comprehension requires understanding context from which his views derive.

If we want genuine clarity about CCP thinking and intent on domestic and global politics, what CCP “ideology”, insofar as their politics is ideological, actually means, we need to do deep analytical work, rather than project what we think they mean based on how they sound to us.

Otherwise we are only engaging in selective reading superficially masquerading as serious scholarship. It’s a bit like how Obama saying “you didn’t build that” or Mitt Romney saying “binders full of women” can be twisted out of context to suggest comments they didn’t mean.

Just as a fun illustration, the below sketch is what debating with other China watchers over how to read CCP primary sources often feels like. https://t.co/OT7ejXE0jy