Until the advent of the 20th century, China was a rural society composed of an agrarian economy with very little experience of the urban. This state of affairs however elevated the country into a collective socialist imaginative mirage of a Utopian system. The application of a Utopian system is largely associated with some of the 20th century leaders such as Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin whom in their quest for a Utopia on earth led to a “state of hell” where thousands of citizen got killed. Although the Utopian systems such as that of Adolf’s “Thousand year Reich” ultimately ended up in a military defeat, the dream of a centrally planned Utopia still lives on in China under the leadership of the Chinese Communist party (CCP). In the modern china, there exist only one political party that is responsible for implementing the plans that are aimed at improving the lives of people. However, unlike other states that have tried to shun the collective Marxist model and adopting Thomas Moore’s Utopian approach, China has significantly improved with regard to its social and economic state. In fact, the Chinese economy has currently emerged as one of the biggest economies in the world. In this paper, I will seek to establish how Utopian Socialism has affected China. I will use a working thesis that Marxism has been accepted as kind of Utopia in the current China.
In the modern Chinese context, the term “Utopia” has numerous complicated meanings, all of which appears to be closely related with the Chinese understanding of Marxism. There are numerous meanings that can be deduced from this term, however most of the Chinese people believe that Utopia is an unrealistic idea. According to the renowned Greek sociologist Thomas More who coined the theory of Utopia, he explains that a Utopia is a type of a society or community that is perfect and possess highly desirable qualities. It is a kind of an ideal or imagined society that has been explained further by William Morris in his classical work News from Nowhere. Where he explained the future society where everything is based on common ownership and a democratic control with regard to the means of production. This these sociologists suggest that this ideal society would not be having private property, no monetary system, no big cities, no courts, no class systems but only people who live in global peace and relates perfectly to their environment. Similarly, since the late eighties, many Chinese scholars sought to reflect about the general conditions of the Marxism in China. Most of them stressed that the Marxism is an embodiment in the socialist system of the Mao era.
Governing System in China
- Jobs
Although the in the Utopian structure of a community calls for people to live in unity and share property, the issue of unemployment still persist in China as it does to other parts of the world. This is because, just as Morris handles the criticism of socialism that it lacks enough incentives to enable people work I the communist societies. According to Morris, everybody must put effort to better their individual economic capacity while doing it for the good of the society. Socialism has proven to be the most influential Utopianism of the 20th and 21st centuries. In addition, the Chinese public ownership gives a general rule for how holding property should be structured. For instance, the field of real estate in the current china has grown beyond recognition in the past 10 years, however, the laws that govern land and real estate’s differs to a large extent with the laws from different countries especially in the communist states. China applies the system of public ownership to all the land in China (Bauman, 23). As a general rule, the land that is situated in urban towns becomes state owned while the land in the rural area becomes owned by collective’s i.e. rural collective organisations for a mutual economy. Therefore, an investor only acquires the right to “use” the land instead of fully purchasing it as is the case with other countries policies.
- Property: Household distribution
The household distribution in China that entails the income and property that a household makes or possesses has been a subject of discussion for economists and other interested organs of authority. Many scholars find a lot of interest in wanting to know whether the sociologist or Utopian strategy that is being used in China has resulted into an egalitarian society and more importantly, how the distribution of household property can be compared with that of other countries, policy makers in China have always desired to know, especially since the great economic reforms of 1978, whether or not the institutional transformation, and the policy interventions have aggravated inequalities. Nonetheless, it appears somehow impossible to address these and similar questions systematically due to the inadequacy of information.
According to an article by an independent economic firm shows why the household incomes are generally unequally populated in China than in Russia. It shows micro data for per capita total income of 46.3% in China (2012) and a total of 33.6% (2010). This article records that a much bigger urban to rural household gap with a much more smaller proportion of the citizens that are living in the urban areas in china (Meisner 122). It depicts that wage is a more non-equalising factor in the republic of China than in Russia. From this essay it is evident that property, in the context of household distribution is largely unequally distributed since most of the people are densely populated in the urban towns while fewer people resides in the rural area.
- Public ownership Company
Taking public ownership as the major mainstream is a fundamental principle of socialism. In socialist countries such as China, where people are known to become masters of their own destiny, it is very crucial for to keep public ownership, especially with regards to means of production, as the major basis of the Utopian economic system. Therefore, similar to Thomas more’s argument on socialism utopia, the adherence to public ownership plays an imperative role as the main body that seeks to give superiority of the nationals socialist system of governance, thus promoting economic strength while strengthening societal harmony in China. Nonetheless, one may question as to why in the bid to uphold the public ownership company economy does China still allow, support and encourage non-public owned company? This s because during the Third Plenum of the 11t CPC Central committee which was held back in the year 1978, the Communist Party of China (CPC), recognized and also redefined the role and status of the non-public since it is an important facet of the socialist market economy.
B. The weakness of public ownership in china now the
Through the “Socialist Marketeers”, who are considered to being the economist who perfectly understands the socialist market economy, the issue of central planning is done away with since they believe that whatever causes low efficiency in a classical economy was due to excessive centralization. In China, socialism is believed to be based majorly on three pillars namely: central planning, state ownership and the elimination of income property (Morris et al 54). Therefore the one of the weakness that characterizes public ownership is through the fact that the socialist Marketeers are convinced that the classical command economy exceeds the capacity of the central planners especially with regard to the collection and processing of information.
- Negative attitude of workers
Although public ownership is considered a major substitute for private initiate and also an engine for development, by providing public goods, the attitude of the workers largely derails the speed at which the Chinese socialist economy progresses at. The bad attitude by the employees towards state owned corporations creates an effect of laxity due to lack of very strict follow-up guidelines as compared to privately owned corporations. Therefore, despite the fact that publicly owned property is designed to help the economy grow by creating a conducive socialist economy, the workers mostly ends up misusing these public amenities. Through this planned economy, it is easier to predict the future direction of the economy since everything is guided by policies that requires the state to follow a pre-set plan that is funded by an annual budget and founded for the welfare of the people of China. In addition, the issue of workers attitude in claiming that working for the public owned facilities is not well paying is another reason that weakens the utilisation of the public owned property. There are thousands of private companies which are aimed at making good profits and therefore they create favourable remunerations as compared to working for the public owned enterprises which are largely driven by the desire to reach as many people as possible and offer the necessary public utilities.
- Speculator sell the house to earn the money
The public ownership structure is normally guided by a planned economy that encompasses socialism as the key concept in delivering its services. It is a mixture of public ownership means of production and the combination of production and distribution through an economic planning. In this context, there exists both the centralised and decentralised forms of economy planning. For a planned theoretical framework of a socialist economy, a comprehensive model for how a financial year is expected to flow exists. Therefore, is a speculator realises that private goods such as land is intended to be converted by the state into public ownership, they may opt to liquidity this property by selling it and thus remaining with cash. Therefore, this strategy which is used by various individuals creates an unlevelled playing field to other systems who handle their private property into public ownership without using any unscrupulous ways. This is further motivated by the presence of the planned economy since the speculator can easily deduce the next move by the state since most of the states endeavours are listed down in the financial year report. In this form of a socialist economy, the desire to create an ideal or a Utopian society is largely hampered by the problem of converting privately owned properties into the public owned kitty.
- Monopoly
It is known that the case of great social revolutions are normally inspired by the Utopian visions in the desire to create a future perfect social order. However, Morris et al argues that, the Chinese market reforms are leading inexorably towards a capitalist’s form of development that is foreign-dominated with enormous social and political costs both in China and internationally. However, through the aspect of public ownership, a capitalist market that would have been created by the private investors is stopped by the state through the prevention of misuse of monopoly power. The state takes charge of all the crucial sectors of the economy such as the role of monetary control, the energy sector, the minerals sector among other fields that may otherwise lead to monopoly if they were to be left into the private owner’s hands (Morris et al, 72). Therefore, the government plays an imperative role in creating a utopian form of a society since it is aimed at protecting its citizens from people who would end up straining them economically by making it hard for them to access basic needs. China’s economic transformation can be considered to have intensified the contradictions of the capitalist developments in other countries of the world. It has set pace in maintain its socialism structure and favourable economic models that ultimately has catapulted China into the class of world superpowers economies.
C: Criminal in china: compared to Tomas More’s criminals
Given that Thomas More’s utopia argument is a form of a communist system, there is therefore no private property, and everybody is working hard for the common good of the society, generally, there is always an incentive that always pulls the people in a utopian society together so that everybody is monitored as they add their share of input. Due to this, there is a lot of surveillance form other members of the society as the society has no privacy. In a situation of people with unruly behaviours, the utopian society largely advocates for the relevant law bodies to ensure that they consider reforming the criminals so that they can go back to the society and start doing good and ultimately uphold the utopian theory. Unlike More’s criminals special mark’s idea, the Chinese society believes in the aspect of reforming a criminal, only the criminal offenders that appears extremely violent are not spared and are executed for capital punishment.
- Hold a honor council for a criminal in a big hall with 500 hundred people who watch and judge you in Mao’s period
During the beginning of the Chinese communist revolution, the impact of idealist Mao Zedong who was very radical in initiating several utopian projects to develop a great utopian paradise in the land of China. Mao developed a number of utopian projects which were meant to raise the living standards of the peasantry-based communist in china. He invented the Utopian projects such as the Great Leap forward (1958-1960) and also regarded the people’s commune as the major driver for rural organisations reconstruct. It is in this initiative that Mao suggested that, for a criminal to get a fair hearing the court would hold an honor council in a big hall with 500 people who watch as the judge delivers the judgement. This was a great approach in the creation of a Utopian society since it respected that a criminal had the right for a fair hearing.
- Death Punishment
In the people’s republic of China, Capita punishment is only administered when the said criminal is a very serious violent offender. The charges ranges from aggravated murder and other non-violent offences such as drug trafficking. However, China differs from the More’s approach to the issue of criminals since capital punishment is considered as a state secret. China records the highest number of executions. In fact in the year 20111, the Dui Hua foundation gave an estimate of 5000 people executed for capital crimes. This figure is higher than the total number of all the executions carried out in other countries combined. However, the Chinese judicial authorities has been recently working to try and put various measures that have been designed to reduce the number of people executed in China.
D. What led to China finding themselves further away from Utopia
- Productivity cannot satisfy human’s greed.
Despite the fact that the China has adopted the one of the best structure that has led into an enormous growth in both the economy and the general population growth, the Utopian form of a society has not yet been achieved. This is because, although the country has grown into the class of a superpower nation, productivity cannot satisfy the level of human greed. People will still scramble for property and thus killing the ideal utopian society.
- A strict centralization system in china
Additionally, China has a very strict centralization system, although the Marxist model largely supports central planning, various factions in the Chinese authority system held positions contrary to the central planning. The main argument by the anti-centralization proponents was that, regardless of the intellectual capacity that the central planners may be unable to coordinate the imperative economic and socialism facets of the society since they are normally operated with tactic knowledge that has been embodied by the mass participation of all the citizens in the economy.
Arguably Utopia is hard to approach, even though utopia is a blueprint in many undertakings. From this paper, it is evident that the Socialism Utopia largely borrows from the Marxist model, however, utopia requires high moral standard and self-control, or at least human civilization. It appears that an ideal society is extremely hard to find and thus China is not an exceptional.
Work Cite
Bauman, Zygmunt. Socialism: The active Utopia. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1976. PrintMeisner, Maurice J. Marxism, Maoism, and Utopianism: Eight Essays. Madison: University
of Wisconsin, 1982. Print.More, Thomas, and Paul Turner. Utopia. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.Morris, William, and David Leopold. News from Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.
