The China Matters Oration

The report speaks to the great ideological progress which has been achieved over the previous decade in developing a new chapter in a modern Marxism for the 20th century.” Xi enjoins the party to grasp both the worldview and methodology of Socialism,” and to apply the analytical tools of dialectical and historical materialism to the Party s understanding of the great challenges of the time. [...] One indication of the shift away from the absolute centrality of the economic growth agenda lies in the number of references to simply the economy” in the text of the 2022 report. [...] Whereas the report does make reference to an earlier party mantra of giving full play to the decisive role of the market in resource application,” this continues to be tempered by parallel reference to the need for a better role being played by the state.” The same sort of parallelism is evident in the report s treatment of state-owned enterprises and the private sector: the party is told to conso. [...] While the 2021 CEWC report warned of the dangers of monopolistic behavior and the disorderly expansion of capital” with reference to China s fin-tech sector, this is no longer the case with the 2022 report; • The property sector is also treated differently in the 2022 report, pointing to a potential return to a level of normality in 2023 as an essential component of the Party s overall growth stra. [...] The speech seeks to put flesh on the bones of one of Xi’s major new ideological themes outlined at the 20th Congress: the concept of “Chinese-style modernization” as an explicit challenge to the “myth” of the purported Western monopoly of the concepts of modernization, globalization, development and democracy.