Chinese Experiments in Socialist Modernisation
This issue of the international edition of Wenhua Zongheng (文化纵横) explores China’s path to socialist modernisation as a world historical process. The essays highlight the experimental nature of socialism, China’s unique institutional mechanisms of industrial development, and debates over agrarian transformation in a context of persistent ideological struggle.
In this Issue
Editorial
Chinese Experiments in Socialist Modernisation
Rather than a fixed ideal, socialism is a process of experimentation. The essays in this issue examine how China’s modernisation offers new insights into the socialist path, with all its contradictions.
On the Experimental Nature of Socialism and the Complexity of China’s Reform and Opening Up
Li Tuo traces how China’s modernisation can be understood as part of a long tradition of socialist experimentation, from the Paris Commune to Lenin’s New Economic Policy and China’s own reform and opening up.
Industrial Policy with Chinese Characteristics: The Political Economy of China’s Intermediary Institutions
Meng Jie and Zhang Zibin examine how China’s institutional innovations and inter-governmental competition support a mission-oriented approach to industrial policy and development, distinguishing it from neoliberal models.
Review: Understanding the Historical Coordinates of Chinese Modernisation
Xiong Jie reviews Lu Xinyu’s influential analysis of the agrarian question and rural modernisation in China, highlighting debates between neoliberal and socialist approaches within contemporary Chinese thought.
