Today, I went to the
school bookstore to check up on the latest
Chinese political trends. I was not surprised by the fact that the
propaganda machine in
Beijing are tossing their covers at night looking for a new philosophy to broadcast, for the death of
old school socialism is all too obvious. A further search on the
politics section revealed that they finally came up with a solution, the official government line is now
"Socialism - Deng Xiaoping thought".
China's education system is full of socialist dogma, much worse than America will ever be. Kids are taught from a very early age the greatness of socialism and the evils of capitalism. Formerly, Maoism was extolled, in the 80's, that became Marxism-Leninism. However, with the changes sweeping China, there is a need for an updated Chinese model. Apparently, the Politburo became concerned with the archaic curriculum, kids were actually (gasp!) to question the validity of their curriculum. Marxism Leninism was not supreme!
The result, shrewdly named Deng Xiaoping thought to avoid the nasty capitalist connotations, is fairly bland in terms of wording (the old dogma was full of fiery anti-capitalist rhetoric). Basically it continued to praise the theories of Marx and Engels while making heavy concessions on the validity of capitalism. I'm glad to see the old men in Beijing are finally admitting the truth and the futility of communism, but they're still being very vague about it, like little schoolchildren mumbling about how "he was still right".
So, 4 year old kids are now told that Deng Xiaoping is the great leader instead of Mao Zedong. Not bad at all. I bet they would be replacing that nasty Mao poster in Tiananmen Square soon. This Deng Xiaoping Thought is still vague, but I predict they will drop the whole socialist facade soon.