Selling ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ ‘Thought and Politics’ and the Legitimisation of China’s Developmental Strategy

2008 looks set to be remembered for the global discrediting of an overly doctrinaire faith in market-driven economic development and, by the same token, of predominantly market-based rather than state-directed models for the provision of basic services. Meanwhile, in China, a year in which the Beijing Olympics were intended to be an unalloyed triumph for the successes of national development has been punctuated by a series of unfortunate events underlining the tensions inherent in what Harvey has termed ‘Neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics’ (Harvey, 2005). Both the glittering spectacle of the Beijing Games, and the subsequent spacewalk by a flag-waving Chinese astronaut, were meant to illustrate in spectacular fashion the nation’s acquisition of key attributes of ‘developed’ modernity. However, the freak snowstorms of February, the April earthquake in Sichuan and the autumn milk-powder scandali have demonstrated the effects of political and fiscal structures that have left many communities severely disadvantaged, and have ‘“significantly impaired” the capacity of local governments in poorer areas to respond to local needs and demands for decent public goods’ (Shue and Wong, 2007, 10, citing Liu and Tao, 2007). In addition, the furious public outrage expressed by mostly young, urban and educated Chinese at the anti-government protests in Tibet during March, and at Western reaction to the subsequent government clampdown, highlighted the powerful resonance of discourses that on the one hand portray minorities as ‘backward’ beneficiaries of enlightened Han trusteeship, and on the other depict Western states as determined to demonise and misrepresent Chinese policies in order to frustrate the drive for national strength and international status.