Upstream - China Pt 8 Mao Zedong And Maoism With Yueran Zhang

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

In Part 8 of our ongoing series on China we're joined by Yueren Zhang to discuss Mao Zedong and the political philosophy of Maoism. Yueran Zhang is Assistant Professor in the department of sociology at the University of Chicago. He specializes in the comparative studies of capitalism, socialism, and transitions in between, with a special emphasis on political economy and the dynamics of development in the Global South.  The conversation opens by presenting a biographical and historical overview of Mao Zedong, the context in which the Chinese Revolution occured, and Mao's role in the Chinese Revolution. We then introduce Maoism as a philosophy and political practice and take a deep dive into how Mao's philosophy shaped his political practice—using the cultural revolution and building mass movements as examples. We explore Mao and his relationship to Deng Xiaoping, China's political system and whether we can view China as a socialist or capitalist state (Yueren holds a very different view from most of our previous guests in this episode), the role that Mao's political practice and philosophy plays in modern day revolutionary movements, and much more.  Producer's note: Our China series is a Patreon series, but we've published this episode publicly. The episode itself is completely fine to listen to as a standalone. If you like what you hear and want to hear more, the entire series is available on Patreon and covers a wide range of topics and perspectives which complement this episode.  Further resources: The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis, by Yiching Wu Studies show strong public support for China's political system (Jason Hickel) Related episodes: Listen to our ongoing series on China Migration as Economic Imperialism w/ Immanuel Ness Revolutionary Leftism with Breht O'Shea (includes an introduction to Marxism-Leninism) Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes (includes a basic introduction to Maosim) Historical Materialism w/ Torkil Lauesen Our ongoing series on the Alliance of Sahel States Our ongoing series on Venezuela Our ongoing series on Palestine Intermission music: "The Way That You Slope Your Shoulders" by Witchdream Mansion Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Within Maoism, there was this very strong kind of insistence that Marxism, Leninism, has to be indigenous, according to the local context of each revolutionary movement. There's no one-size-feas-all kind of policy. You always have to adapt Marxist Leninism according to local context. There's no formula, no kind of like iron law of history, no kind of like universal manual, but you have to figure out how to do a revolution based on local context, right? So in that sense, Maoism really made revolutionary theory much more dynamic. You're listening to Upstream.

Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. The philosophy and practice of Mao Zedong

has left an indelible stamp on not just the revolution that he helped to lead and enact, but on many, many revolutionary movements and state projects that have arisen since his time. Mao built his philosophy and political ideology out of Marx and Lenin's, and his contributions to communism, both on a philosophical but also on a practical level,

have been extremely commonplace. consequential contributions to the fight for a better world, and, importantly, for how we get there. In this episode, Part 8 of our ongoing series on China, we're joined by Yeran Zhang to discuss all of this and more. Yeran Zhang is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He specializes in the comparative studies of capitalism, socialism, and the transitions in between, with a special emphasis on political economy and the dynamics of development in the global south. And before we get started, Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants, just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations.

We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Please subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for stickers and bumper stickers. at certain subscription tiers. Through this support, you'll be helping keep upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going.

Post-capitalist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support. And now, here's Robert in conversation with Yaron Shah. All right, Yurin, it's great to have you on the show. Oh, it's my pleasure to be here.

Yeah, yeah, thank you so much for joining us. And just to get started, I'm wondering if you can introduce yourself for our listeners and tell us a little bit about the work that you do and how you came to be doing it. Cool. Hello, everyone. My name is Yuran. I teach sociology as the University of Chicago. And as a scholar, I study basically the history of Chinese socialism, especially from the perspective of the labor movement and class politics. And other than that, I have also been involved. in different kind of efforts of labor organizing, leftist organizing, both in China and the U.S. And I'm Chinese. For me, my interest in both, like, studying Chinese socialism and also participating in labor and the leftist organizing really kind of like originated from my strong sense of concern and identity with workers in China, basically.

So when I was growing up in high school, when I just started to kind of like pay attention to like social and political news, that was around 2010 when a dozen of workers in the Foxcon factory in Shenzhen just committed suicides over like three months or something. And that was pretty shocking to me. So since then, I have just been paying a lot of attention to the living and the working conditions of Chinese workers. And all of my later efforts kind of like just sprung from that. interesting interesting yeah thank you for that it's interesting you bring that up because we just had emmanuel ness on the show a couple of weeks ago to talk about migration actually and its connection to imperialism but in that conversation he mentioned that he's actually working on a very meticulously researched book on the labor movement in china we're going to have to have him back on at some point to talk about his findings there he came up with a very He said, a controversially positive outcome for that. And I'm not sure what your research has led you to think about when it comes to labor relations in China.

And maybe we'll be able to actually get into some of that as we go through this episode, maybe later on in the episode when we start talking a little bit about the state of socialism in China. But I think the best place to start for this conversation would probably be a little bit of history. because we're talking about Mao Zedong and Maoism specifically today. And we'll get into some conversations on criticisms of China from the left as well, of course, because there are many. And I think it's definitely worthwhile to devote an episode of this series to grappling with them because so far parts one through seven of this series have been quite positive.

And our guests have had quite a positive analysis of what's happening in China, not without criticisms, of course, but over. all very positive. So it'll be interesting to learn a little bit more about the criticisms from the left. And I also want to start with shouting out Rev Left Radio, because they had you on in 2018. And a couple of people actually recommended that I reach out to you, but one of the places that I heard about you first was on Rev Left. So I'm going to encourage folks to check out that episode with you if they want to hear more from you after this episode. We're going to, you know, probably have some overlap, but hopefully the episode will, our episode will have its own

unique form to it. So yeah, let's start with the history, like I said. So we've talked about the Chinese revolution to some degree, not in great depth, but enough to sort of maybe have already set the table for our audience. But what I'm really interested in asking you about is knowing more about Mao Zedong, like maybe just biographically to get started. So who was Mao and what is his background? Cool. I think in some sense, when you look at the trajectory of Mao coming to age, it was actually quite representative of kind of like a whole generation of kind of like

revolutionary youth coming off age, more broadly speaking. Of course, we kind of know that Ma was born in 1893. He was born to a relatively, like, moderately wild-off peasant household in Hunan. And even though he didn't receive, like, super elite education, he still kind of like received pretty good education. That was definitely signaled privilege, like within the Chinese society at that time, when most of the population were illiterate. And then in the sense, when you look at his youth, he was pretty much the product of this moment of, for the lack of a better term, the moment of enlightenment in early 20th century. This sense that like around 1910s, a lot of youth, young students, young intellectuals were really trying to think very critically of cultural and social practices that were associated with the so-called. old regime, the Qing dynasty, this sense that we really have to break away and reject these

old customs, these old social and familial practices, Confucianism, and then embrace something that was modern, right? So there was this kind of like really not super developed, but very passionate search for something that would embody modernity, especially in the ideas of democracy and science. That's what people were talking about a lot. So he was certainly a product of that moment in the 1910s. And then along many of other comrades of his, he was trying to think about how to beyond that.

Because that whole kind of liberal progressive promise of democracy and science was pretty shaky. So how can you actually go about changing Chinese society? So again, similar to many of his peers, He first of all, kind of like had this short, short but very formative embrace of anarchism as one way to explore a political project to transform Chinese society, right? This idea that we should just get away with bureaucracy, get away with the oppression of the state, and try to organize our communities locally through local democracy, self-empowerment,

mutual aid, so on and so forth. So he was part of this tide of revolutionary youth really trying to explore anarchism. But of course, that moment also didn't hold much promise in a sense that within so much political turmoil, it seems that these localized anarchist ideals still couldn't go anywhere. And then, again, similar to many of his peers,

he turned to Marxism and communism in the end. So I think when looking at his background, it's very important to both recognize him as the product of the enlightenment moment in early modern Chinese history and also kind of like a product of anarchism. But eventually he kind of like went beyond both along many of his peers.

And I guess another important thing to emphasize in terms of his background is that unlike many of young revolutionary comrades at that time who went overseas to study either in Japan or France. So these were kind of two popular destinations for many young students to go abroad to study overseas. But Mao didn't have any of that experiences, unlike people like Deng Xiaoping, Liu Xiaou Qi, Zerunai,

he didn't study abroad. So in some sense, that also gave him a more kind of like a indigenous or domestically centered outlook that kind of like also shaped how he approached Marxism and the revolutionary project later. And we have talked a little bit, like I mentioned, about the history of the Chinese Revolution a little bit with Jason Hickle in part one. That's a publicly available episode. And part two with either part two or part three now.

I can't remember it with that with Canaan. Hammond. But just so that we have it here as well, because I think it's important to contextualize the environment and like the context within which Mao shaped his political philosophy and practice. So maybe give us a sense of like what events, what aspects, what individuals we need to know a little bit more about in order to give us this context on Mao and Maoism more broadly. specifically I'm asking I think for like a context of the times that Mao grew up in like what you mentioned this enlightenment era China was experiencing a lot of hardships what's been referred to as the century of humiliation right before the revolution so maybe give us a sense of what led to the

Chinese revolution what context was Mao sort of growing up within what that looked like and And then give us a sense of Mao's role in the actual lead-up to and the eventual revolution. I know that's a huge question, so please answer it however long you want to go for. Cool. Yeah. So that's definitely kind of like a tough question to kind of like give a historical overview of the Chinese Revolution within like a 10-minute crash course or something. But I will just, I guess, I would just kind of throw out some ideas here so that we can just push our conversation further. So, yes, as you said, in around like late 19th century,

it was pretty much clear to everyone that China was in crisis. Right, this idea that all these foreign imperialist forces were building their own stronghold in China. And in terms of like military power, economic power, China was not able to compete. and was also very clear that the Qing dynasty was not able to really, like, effectively steer China further. Right. So, again, a lot of these revolutionary activists, intellectuals were basically trying to figure out, like, how to address this crisis. Like, what would be the way out, right? And some people were like, we could just, like, reform the Qing dynasty. We push for reforms internal to the Qing dynasty, right, to push it towards something more like a constitutional monarchy, right, things like that. And then some other people were like, the problem was the Qing dynasty, right?

Like as long as we overfill the Qing dynasty, we would be on good footing. But then I think, again, going back to this enlightenment moment, right, going back to 1910s, after the Qing dynasty was already overthrown in 1911, it was pretty clear that with the overthrow of the Qing dynasty, things were not getting better in China, right? You have all these warlords fighting against each other and politicking. And yeah, so it seems like there was still no. effective sign of progress, empowerment to address this centuries of humiliation problem. And that was kind of like one moment when many people got radicalized to really kind of like

locate problems that were more deep rooted in Chinese society. Again, that went all the way back to what I mentioned about this enlightenment moment. And then again, through this kind of like through this transition from the enlightenment moment to anarchism and to communism, right, that was not just Mao, but that was a generation of his peers. Then the Chinese Communist Party was funded in 1921. But I would argue that when you look at the Chinese revolution, it was not a creator of the party. So I feel like we can kind of like conceive of the revolution as more,

kind of like a huge sea or ocean in which the Combs Party was a big shark that was kind of like really trying to figure out how to navigate within that space. Because going to the 1920s, you not only have educated youth being radicalized, but you have a lot of workers being radicalized, a lot of peasants being radicalized. So in the cities, you have these huge military. worker strikes going on, right? Sometimes organized by the Commerce Party, but sometimes not. And then in the countryside, you'll have these extremely kind of dynamic and sometimes brutal, patterns and rebellions against the landlords, against rentiers, again,

sometimes organized by the Commerce Party, sometimes not. And in that moment, the sense of radicalization was so strong, that even the nationalist party, right, this kind of political representative of the domestic bourgeoisie, essentially, even the nationalist party had its own kind of radicalizing currents within. So in the 1920s, you really have this kind of like a revolutionary high tide going on, and the Communist Party was trying to figure out how to swim within that tide and push it even higher. But then that whole process came to a bloody, bloody stop in 1927. When Chang Kechek took power over the Nationalist Party,

and he just issued this extremely bloody and harsh crackdown on worker uprisings, on peasant repellions, and on communist activists as well. So that was a moment when China entered the so-called white terror. period. So that was like a huge moment of defeat and then the kind of the task of the Communist Party was to figure out like how to survive and how to kind of like preserve some sort of revolutionary momentum in the wake of this huge defeat. And that was a period basically in the late 1920s and going to all the way to the 1930s, that was a period when Mao became increasingly important within the party

because he was really trying to lead kind of like one way to think about how to preserve ourselves and how to kind of like subtly grow ourselves in the wake of this giant repressive defeat. So the idea is that, you know, cultivate our bases more strongly among the peasants and, you know, be more strategic, avoid kind of like head-on confrontation with the nationalist party,

and then once the Japanese troops invade China, then the idea really became like we do everything under the slogan of nationalism, under the slogan of anti-Japanese nationalism, right? We could even collaborate with the nationalist party again to push them to stake out and more kind of anti-Japanese position again. So the Communist Party in that environment, really became more pragmatic in terms of using whatever resources, both material and political, whatever resources that were possible to preserve and subtly grow itself. And it really worked,

right? So by the time China emerged out of the anti-Japanese war in 1955, the Communist Party was really on strong footing, especially in rural areas, in central China. And then basically, in the last few years of the 1940s, then the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party were really engaged in this direct military confrontation with each other, by the so-called civil war, from which the Communist Party eventually emerged victorious. So I guess that's kind of just a very brief overview of like two or three decades of the history of the Chinese Revolution. But of course, we can talk more later because I don't think the Chinese revolution

just referred to the communist takeover in 1949, right? So even after the founding of the People's Republic, there was still a continuous revolutionary process. But we can talk more about that later. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The cultural revolution, right? So, okay, let's take a brief pause from the history here, because now you've let us up until the revolution and the, or let's call it the initial phase of the revolution, which was

beating the nationalists and then a little bit into the rise of the Communist Party and how it took power. But let's talk now about Maoism, right? Because there's a whole philosophy and like political ideology that Mao developed and which has taken many different shapes and forms ever since. So we've done some episodes on this show just introducing Marxism, Leninism, introducing dialectical materialism, and to some extent the very basic building blocks of what Mao contributed to Marxism, Leninism. But just for the sake of some more table setting, can you give us a brief outline of Maoism as a philosophy and practice? And we can dive into some of the more granular details. But just for now, like maybe just basically what did he

contribute to the science of Marxism, Leninism, more broadly? Yeah, I think the appeal of significance of Maoism really kind of lies in the fact that it means so many different things with so many different people. In my view, that is what makes Maoism so fascinating because it's kind of like error one feels like they can actually take away something from it. But so I think in terms of some of the major components or the key pillars in the broadly speaking kind of sense,

I think there are several things that are worth emphasizing. First, I think within Maoism, there was this very strong kind of insistence that Marxism, Leninism, has to be indigenous according to the local context of each revolutionary movement. There's no one-size-feas-all kind of policy. You always have to adapt Marxist Leninism according to local context. There's no formula, no kind of like iron law of history, no kind of like universal manual, but you have to figure out how to do a revolution based on local context, right? So in that sense, Maoism really made revolutionary theory much more dynamic.

And again, a lot of that really manifested itself in his argument and the satisfaction with the Soviet Union, right? Like there were many moments when the Soviet Union, both under Stalin and after, were trying to really tell the Chinese Communist Party what to do from afar based on some kind of like formula, kind of understanding of the revolutionary process. But Mao was like, no, we have to look very seriously at the local context and figure out what to do based on the context. So the indigenization is a very important component. And then I guess another component is just this. emphasis on the role of the peasantry in a revolutionary movement. And I think that's also where

Mao really sharply, kind of like sharply deferred from many Bolsheviks and also many like Bolshevik inclined Chinese communists as well. So when you look at writings of the Bolshevik, for example, in the late 1910s and 1920s, you really repeatedly see this kind of like idea that like, only the working class or only the industrial workers are the backbones of the socialist project. The peasantry was potentially our enemies. It was not a social force to be trusted. Many bolsheviks were arguing that, and many bourgeoisly inclined, Chinese communists were also arguing that.

For example, in the 1920s, right, was like, it's the revolution. has to be all about workers, workers and workers. And after Chang Keshik launched the white terror, in which it was no longer really possible to do revolutionary agitation in urban industrial settings, then a lot of Chinese Congress were like, okay, now we are doomed, right? Because workers are just so terrorized by the white terror.

But here, Mao's big contribution was to really try to locate the revolutionary potential in the peasantry. He insisted that we had to do very serious and careful class analysis in the peasantry and identify which sectors or which strata among the peasantry had revolutionary potential and how to turn that potential into reality. And again, that was hugely inspirational for other revolutionary movements in even more agrarian.

contacts, right, like in Vietnam, in Latin America, right, that the peasantry question had to be constantly grappled with. Okay, so these are two of the important components, which were more or less associated with the kind of pre-1949 period. Then in the post-1949 period, I think there were another two important components that can be highlighted. First, is this idea that the socialist, like building socialism, socialist construction, had to center mass mobilization. The importance of mobilizing the masses to do things.

That was such a important part of how Mao envisioned the project of socialist construction. And again, that also became very important for other socialist projects that were trying to survive and develop in more agrarian and in more materially deprived contexts. The idea is really to rely on the masses, mobilize the masses, and let the masses build socialism. And of course, I guess finally, the last key component of Maoism was associated

with kind of like the line of thinking he was developing during the cultural revolution about how the socialist project constantly faced the risk of ossification and restoration to capitalism and how to guard the

socialist project against that risk. So he was really trying to identify the potential dangers of sliding back to capitalism within a socialist project. So that's also a kind of like a pillar of his thinking.

But I guess in closing, I would just say that, you know, Mao was a very whimsical person. You know, he just say things. So I feel like his thinking was not entirely coherent and systematic. So there were actually a lot of contradictions in his thinking, both in terms of like across time, but also in terms of how he was like, swinging back and forth within a historical moment. So I think it's important to not over-emphasize

the coherence of his thought because some of those tensions and the contradictions are exactly what is really generative about his thought. Thank you. Yeah, that was really, really helpful, really awesome. And yeah, I guess it is fitting that there were a lot of contradictions in his philosophy since contradiction itself is a major aspect of what he contributed to Marxism, Leninism, And just really quick, if anybody's feeling a little bit lost in terms of any of this, if you haven't listened to some of our previous episodes on Marxism, Leninism, I'll link to those in the show notes just to give yourself a little bit of context because we are kind of diving into this with assuming that our listeners have a little bit of background here just because of past episodes that we've done. But if you're feeling a little bit lost, we have several episodes that will bring you up to where we're at right now with a little bit more depth. One thing I wanted to talk. about too just really briefly you mentioned the cultural revolution as this way of trying to combat the ossification that can occur within a socialist society it's interesting you mentioned that because vj Prashad brought that up in the context of present-day china in our first actually

that might have been the second episode in the series man i really got to open this up so i can look at the list of these episodes because we've been doing this for uh this series for a while now so I'm getting lost on what episode number has what guessed. But the idea that right now, because China is being so successful in building a middle class, BJ Prashad was questioning, you know, like how is the CPC approaching this in terms of keeping the population and keeping the masses with this revolutionary spirit so that they don't fall into the pitfalls of allowing ossification or even allowing some of the more harsh forms of capitalism to enter back into the society. So it's an interesting throughline from the

very beginning of this series that you're bringing up. And on that note, maybe it would actually be a good time to talk a little bit about the cultural revolution, which, you know, is another huge question, which we are not going to be able to tackle thoroughly and in every finer point of detail here. But maybe just give us a sense of what the cultural revolution was and how it fits into this narrative and the story that you're telling about China's history and Mao's contribution to pushing history forward. Cool. Here, I think one of the very kind of like perceptive of formulations actually came from Mao himself.

I actually have this coat. And the book I'm quoting from was called The Cultural Revolution at the margins by I Ching Wu. And for those who are interested in learning more about the history of cultural revolution, I highly recommend this book. So here, this quote that is very interesting is in a letter written to his wife, Jiangqing, dated on July 8, 1966. right? And in the letter, Mao said, I possess both some of the spirit of the tiger and some of the monkey, but it is the tiger spirit which is the dominant and the monkey spirit secondary.

So I feel like when I read this, I feel like, yes, no one knew Mao better than himself. This idea that in the Chinese culture, Monkey represented this very kind of rebellious sentiment against authority, against domination, against political order. And Tiger represented exactly authority, domination, iron fist, and political order. And here, Mao was trying to say that he had some of these. rebellious spirit in a sense that he realized the party state bureaucratic apparatus have to be shaken up, right? When workers and peasants students were challenging the party state bureaucracy

from below, that was a good state, right? That's the monkey part of him. But as he said, for him, the tiger spirit was the dominant and the monkey spirit was the dominant. And the monkey spirit was the secondary. So in that sense, eventually, he still felt like after rebellions happened for a moment, for a short period of time,

then the bureaucratic orders still have to be rebuilt and maintained. And that kind of captured the dynamic of the Cultural Revolution pretty well. Because initially in 1966, when

Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, revolution, he was really just trying to do a cultural revolution, right, like a huge rectification effort within China's cultural, educational, and intellectual institutions, right? Like, in terms of universities, high schools, research institutes, theaters, writers' association, all of these things, right? He was envisioning this thorough political remaking of these institutions. So initially, the way this was supposed to be done is that the party was going to send work tips from above to these institutions to lead rectification efforts. But because these work teams behaved in very kind of like despotic ways, they started to receive a lot of pushback, especially in universities.

they received a lot of pushback from students who are saying, you know, you didn't really know this institution. Why were you messing here? And then there was this key moment when Mao's monkey spirit got the better of him in a sense that he was like, okay, now let's withdraw all work teams from these institutions and let the grassroots members in these institutions do the cultural revolution themselves. especially students were encouraged to form their own rebel groups to challenge the authority figures in these institutions. Again, this is kind of like this sympathy with rebellion, kind of like just shaking things up from below, right?

There was that moment. But still, at that moment, the cultural revolution from below was supposed to be restricted to cultural institutions only. It was not supposed to be a kind of like a society-wide kind of thing. But the problem is that once you lit the fire, you really couldn't control how far it went. Because months after students started to form their rebel groups in universities, in high schools, then some workers, factory workers, started to feel very inspired. It's like, right, like students were forming these rebel groups in their universities

who challenge the university presence. So why couldn't we as workers also form rebel groups who challenge our factory directors and party secretaries? Why, why couldn't we write big character posters who criticize factory mismanagement, for example? So a lot of workers became really rastive and really kind of like both agitating within their factories but also forming all these alliances across factories.

And then in November, 1966, then many workers in Shanghai actually tried to travel to Beijing to demand the official recognition of their right to partake in rebel activities. Right, again, that was another moment when Mao's monkey spirit got a bet on him. He was like, okay, workers want to rebel? Fine, we are going to let them. So that was a really kind of surprising and remarkable moment when basically for the first time in modern Chinese history, workers got the explicit assurance

that they could stage their own kind of independent activities to challenge critical authority and even form their own organizations for that purpose. And of course, once that flash gate was opened, then workers from all walks of life, right, all kinds of cities, all kinds of sectors, started to organize all sorts of groups to post demands, to challenge their factory leaders, but also to occupy and sitting at the government headquarters, posting demands to government officials,

ransacking government offices, so on and so forth. And then once things went really out of control, Again, Mao became really anxious, right? Because remember, he also had this tiger side of him. Once things became really arrestive and like turmoil really spread across the society, he became so anxious that he started to see, okay, how can we rein in these rebellious activities and restore water? So after kind of like a trial and error period when he was trying different. approaches, but now of them were exactly working in two years time in 1968.

He eventually decided to just order the military to do like a unconditional crackdown on all sort of rebel activities and also to forcefully disband all rebel groups. So you can see this very kind of like interesting and also ironic and also tragic dynamic in which kind of like Mao really opened up this space for revolution, but in the end he kind of like also just like rained in on the revolution he started. So that dynamic was I think was quite a remarkable part of the history of Chinese socialism. Were there any positive outcomes from the cultural revolution? Was it just a complete disaster, a little bit of both?

Like, what was the outcome? Was ossification and sort of the bureaucratization of Chinese society and the party mixed it up at all in the end? Or was this just kind of a trial and error? I think it depends on where you look, because I think, like, existing research has documented this pretty well. So when workers were recounting their life experiences over decades, some of them do remember the onset of the Cultural Revolution, right? The late 1966 as this extremely liberating and empowering moment. It's kind of like whatever witnesses you have held regarding the government,

the policies or factory management. Now, you just go ahead to write a big character poster and posted on the factory's bulletin board. But no one is going to make trouble with you. No one is going to say, this is not allowed. You're just going to do whatever you want. And that is hugely liberating and empowering. This is really a moment when a radical sense of democracy

from below was being evasioned and practiced. So even decades and decades later, some workers still remember that, remember that passion, remember that sense of increased confidence and hope in kind of like really seeing them as powerful political subjects. I feel like that in itself was a very important legacy. And of course,

there are also kind of like research that has documented that this brief period of rebel activities did change that a shop floor dynamics in many factories for a long time to come. This sense that workers were no longer so afraid of their superiors. Workers no longer felt that they have to be like super obedient doing whatever the factory managers were telling them. because within that short period of time in 1966, in 1967, workers used to stage these struggle sessions to really directly denounce the factory management. So after that experience, workers were like, why do you have to be afraid of you all the time?

Right. So I feel like in that sense, the shop flow dynamics was kind of like reshaped in a more kind of like an egalitarian way. in the decade that followed. So I want to get a little bit more into some of the philosophical elements of Maoism here, specifically just building on our conversation that we had with Josh Sykes a little while ago on dialectical materialism. This is building on sort of the philosophy component. So tell us a little bit about this idea of antagonistic.

and non-antagonistic contradictions that Mao lays out in his text on the correct handling of contradictions among the people. Where does this idea come from? And what was Mao arguing here? Okay, so I'm not a philosopher. I'm not used to thinking very philosophically. So it's kind of like my interpretation of that idea was really kind of like rooted in. the historical context. And here, I think it was actually the notion of the people, right, the notion of the people that is very important in his whole statement on antagonistic and non-antagnostic contradictions. Because my understanding is that the non-antagonistic contradictions were contradictions or tensions or conflicts within the people.

or among the people. And the people is this very broad-based, cross-class popular front in support of the revolution. And then the antagonistic contradictions or the contradictions or the conflicts, the struggles between the people and their enemies, or between the people and the enemies of the revolution.

So I think what is, what is actually very important here is this notion of who is part of the people and who is not part of people. That determines whether a contradiction is antagonistic or non-antagnostic. Again, here, I think appreciating the significance of this idea really requires us to just pose a mouse idea with the more kind of like the orthodox Bolshevik position. again in the early 20s widely shared among the remnants of the Bolsheviks were this idea that only the working class

was the backbone of the Bolshevik revolution all of the other classes were either explicitly or potentially against the revolutions especially the peasants right so again in that sense every contradiction between the working class and other classes were antagonistic, right, in this Bolshevik understanding. But Mao was, again, really trying to radically broaden the popular base of the revolution by replacing the working class as the central figure with the people as the central figure.

He was like, people include not only the workers, but at the very least, the peasants, and some petty budra sectors, some intellectuals, and even some domestic patriotic budrazi, can be included in this notion of the people. So again, it is this radically expanded notion of the people that determines the significance of the distinction between the antagonistic and non-antagnostic contradictions. So on the one hand, I think,

that's a huge conceptual breakthrough, because now with the centrality of the notion of the people, we can imagine socialist revolutions in a much more dynamic way than a kind of like a orthodox, only like a workers-centered way of making sense of it. But then on the other hand, it also introduced a lot of murkiness and vagueness, right, in terms of who counts as part of the people, and who is going to make the call on whether some actors, some individuals are part of the people or not.

So again, I feel like that's kind of like a double-edged kind of move. It makes me think, and to bring that into like our current context in the United States about those of us on the left, socialists, communists, anarchists, et cetera, and liberals. And there's a lot of, there is antagonism, obviously, between liberals and liberals and, Liberals are also, there's a lot of stratification within liberalism, right? There are the people that are consciously supportive of the Democratic Party. They know what the Democratic Party actually represents and they support it all the way down to people who, I think most people on the left in the United States started more as just a progressive liberal. You enter into it sort of by default. And then it's a

little bit of a unlearning process and then you sort of enter into more leftist spaces, right? And the question, one of the questions that I think about a lot is which liberals are reachable, which liberals aren't reachable. And there are a lot of people on the left who think that liberals as a whole are just in an antagonistic contradictory relationship to the left, that there's no way that liberals could ever present as a revolutionary class. And, etc., etc. So just to bring that part of it in, and I don't, you know, I don't have a firm position at this point right now on a lot of the questions that I just posed, but I think it's a really good way to sort of bring down to eye level what Mao was talking about.

And I think that dilemma was very similar to what the Communist Party was facing, like at the moment of the founding of the People's Republic, this idea of like how to build a united front with people that were not exactly us, but somewhat sympathetic to us, somewhat friendly to us, but who can be part of that United Front, who cannot be part of that United Front? Yeah, so I feel like that dilemma was quite resonant.

You're listening to an upstream conversation with Yeran Zhang. We'll be right back. That was The Way You Slope Your Shoulders by Which Dream Mansion. Now back to our conversation with Yaron Zhang. To continue to talk about contradictions, but in a more general sense, we have talked a lot in our episodes, both on China, but also our series on the Alliance of Sahel States, our series on Venezuela, and of course our series on Palestine. When we look at these states or movements that are fighting for sovereignty from U.S. imperialism, we often talk. about imperialism as being the primary contradiction that these states are facing within a global capitalist system. So when we talk about the fight for socialism or communism within these states,

we often don't focus primarily on the fight for socialism as being what the revolutionaries and the masses in these states are primarily fighting for. They're primarily fighting for sovereignty, which will then hopefully give them the space to pursue socialistic or communistic programs and policies. So that's what we mean when we talk about imperialism being the primary contradiction and that it's important for us on the West to keep this in mind when analyzing these states and governments from afar. Can you talk about what Mao taught us about contradictions more broadly? And particularly, I'd love to get your opinion on what I'm a lot of, I was just saying in this context of U.S. imperialism.

Cool. I have somewhat of a hot take here. I feel a little bit uneasy with this idea that the history of socialist projects had always to be understood primarily through its relationship with U.S. imperialism. I feel like making everything about the U.S. is itself. an intellectual manifestation of U.S. imperialism. Right? This is like, no, US, it's not like everything in the world is all about you. So I do feel there is this idea that,

like maybe something I'm really trying to push forward is this idea that somewhat we have to, when we talk about the history of Chinese revolution, we really have to really center how the Chinese actors were understanding the situations they were in. So between the 1950s and 1970s, Chinese communists, Mao included, were very, very concerned with impureism.

That's absolutely true. But over the years, it seems like Mao and many of his peers got way more concerned was what they saw as Soviet imperialism than the U.S. imperialism, right? Like, what they would call the social imperialism as way more dangerous and way more reactionary than bourgeois imperialism. Again, that might sound like really crazy assessment today.

But, you know, once we imagine ourselves, us Chinese communists operating at that historical moment, by looking from afar what the Soviet Union did to Hungary in 1956 and again to Czechoslovakia in 1968, then I think it makes sense, right? It kind of makes sense to see Soviet imperialism as a more imminent threat, right, to the extent that the Chinese communists were even preferred befriending the U.S. government to construct a united front against the Soviet Union in the early 70s.

So I think was imperialism an important part of the story of Chinese socialism? Absolutely. But the dynamic of imperialism as perceived by Chinese actors were way more complicated and nuanced than what we would understand to be just a story about U.S. imperialism. So I do want to highlight that nuance. Yeah, no, that's a very interesting. It's an interesting analysis. I would also, it makes me think about peeling back the layers of imperialism,

because then when you look at the Soviet Union and a lot of the decisions that it was sort of forced into in terms of, for example, let's say the confrontation with Hungary, or Czechoslovakia like you mentioned, and some of the ways that the Soviet Union was forced to sort of create this more authoritarian state also has a lot to do with imperialism. And their cold, what's called the Cold War had many hot fronts, of course, and this sort of this like heightening of tensions with the United States, primarily because the United States was expanding closer and closer to the Soviet Union and invading all sorts of countries. that were close to the Soviet Union or had like alliances with the Soviet Union.

And so it's interesting to think about peeling back the layers of imperialism when you think about how you mentioned that a lot of people in the CPC saw the Soviet Union as the like primary imperialist that they were up against. And then you peel back the layer and you see that a lot of the decisions that were made by the Soviet Union were a result of the imperialist ambition. of the United States itself. So not just to, of course, focus again just on the United States, like you mentioned, and make everything about the United States. But at the same time, I do think that the role that the United States has played as the global hegemon is something that can't be

sort of ignored in terms of how it shapes geopolitics and how it shapes decisions that people in these in these states are required to make in order to just survive, basically. So, yeah, a lot of, like, interesting dynamics there, and it's not a simple, it's not a simple question. There's a lot of complexity within it. And this actually, you know, speaking of complexity, this brings us back to history for a second because, yeah, we haven't talked about Deng Xiaoping. His legacy continues to be massive in China and a very complicated,

legacy and he did a lot of things in China, which are, you know, very controversial to some and are celebrated by others. So maybe we can talk a little bit just to sort of introduce Deng Xiaoping. Maybe in order to do that, we need to understand a little bit about his role while Mao was still in, you know, in power. And then when Mao died and the end of sort of the Maoist period, and then talking a little bit about the direction that Deng took China after 1978 after Mao's death. So I think, okay, so I feel like there are several kind of like premises I really want to kind of like clarify. So I guess first I was kind of really against the way of understanding history as like some like supreme leaders to power. and then they took the society in a direction versus the other.

I felt like that's a very kind of a top-down way of understanding history I am trying to push back against. Right. So I feel like it's idealism in a sense, right? Yes. So I feel like in terms of understanding the historical trajectories of socialism, it's really kind of like we really have to highlight the interplay between political leaders and social conditions and also like popular sectors. in a more kind of like interactive and dynamic way.

So I think that's kind of like the first point I want to make. And I guess the second point I want to make is that in many conventional narratives, right, there was this kind of like sharp contrast between Mao and the Deng. It's kind of like a Mao represented one vision of the Trans-Rulusion and Deng represented another. And I think this kind of like a black and white approach was not very very, helpful because the relationship between these two people were very nuanced and involving constantly. And in the end, you can sort of see these two people as kind of like strange bad fellows that were like trying to have a divorce, but not quite. It was a very complicated

relationship. But I think when you look at the 70s, right, when Mao was really concerned with, like, the question of, like, where China wants to go, like, where China should be headed. Again, he was really kind of like trying to jungle with two different priorities, right? The first priority is to have, like,

capable administrative management, right? like you need competent bureaucrats to run things. And then on the other hand, you also have to have like a good, like revolutionary propagandist or revolutionary agitators who can kind of like constantly incite mass' revolutionary spirit to fight against bureaucratic ossification. So in the 70s, Mao was in this huge trouble, in this huge dilemma because he knew he didn't have much left.

His health was very fragile. So he knew he had to set up something. So in the revolutionary agitator side, he pretty much relied on the so-called gun of four, his most kind of radical associates. And on the administrative management side, he kind of realized that he didn't have anyone else to rely upon other than Deng Xiaoping.

So especially after Joe and Lai was debilitated because of health issues, Deng was really kind of taking on so much administrative duties to run the day-to-day management of the party-state bureaucracy with Mao's consent. Basically, Mao said, okay, so this is the most capable person we have right now. we have to let him do things.

But again, the kind of balancing these two priorities was very difficult, and that balance totally collapsed after Mao's passing. And as we all know, the revolutionary old guard, the more bureaucratic faction, a stage of basically a cool data, to drive out and prosecute the more revolutionary kind of agitating faction, the gun of four. And then it was kind of like in the early days of the post-mow moment, the dominant kind of political sentiment was that we just kind of get back to business as usual, right?

We focus on how to increase economic efficiency, how to make people's material lives better, and how to make society somewhat normal again. So in that sense, in the end, he did represent a very different vision of the Chinese revolution than Mao's. But again, here the important reminder, again, comes in terms of do not place too much emphasis on the leaders themselves. Because I would say a lot of the reform measures Deng was initiating in the post-Mao years really appealed to very broad, sentiment shared across society that we feel so exhausted by politics and we just want to focus on making our lives better. So there was this very kind of like extensive sense of exultation and a disillusionment

with politics in the aftermath of what I describes as a tragedy. ending of a cultural revolution. So in a sense, what Deng ended up doing at that moment kind of spoke to people's wishes and preferences. So in that sense, it was not done single-handedly taking China into a different direction, but kind of reflected this dilemma in which the Maoist political project really kind of like exhaustive its political energy.

and that people felt widely disillusioned. Super interesting. Yeah. I really appreciate the spirit of like dialectical analysis there. And, you know, to some extent, at least that leaders are often a reflection of larger societal forces as a whole, perhaps mass sentiments more broadly. And I have a, you know, I'm curious because we know that all sorts of amazing achievements came out of the Chinese revolution in terms of, life expectancy like doubling and literacy rates skyrocketing poverty being, I mean, eventually entirely eliminated, but gradually I'm assuming. So during this period, this period between the

transition from Maoism to post-Maoist China, how far along was China in making these achievements? You know what I mean? Like was the Maoist period primarily responsible for this lifting of people out of poverty and all of these statistics that positive statistics that we hear about, or did that sort of come after this dangest sort of marketization and liberalization process, which we'll get into more of that in a second and talk specifically about that process. But I'm just curious, like, how many of these achievements were done under the Maoist period? I think that's kind of like a very interesting question that's actually. actually is hard to parse out in a very kind of like a black and white way,

because in the, in most of the Maoist period, right, the Chinese political economy relied on this very kind of like, what we would call high accumulation and a low consumption kind of approach. So in terms of the capital that is being accumulated, most of that capital, right, most of the economic resources, went into reinvestment to build up even more industrial capacity. And relatively little resource, little capital, went into addressing people's consumption needs and livelihood needs.

So, of course, a lot of campaigns aim to deliver better medical services, fight against certain diseases, especially in the countryside, and also all these literacy classes. But all these campaigns really relied on this idea of fugality and self-reliance. This emphasis is that we have to do these things with very little material resource, and we have to kind of rely on ourselves to be creative, to use whatever that is available, because the state is not going to support us very much, because most of the economic resources were directed into further accumulation and reinvestment. So those campaigns did achieve very good, very impressive results,

but overall, I would say the living standards of ordinary Chinese people didn't improve that much in the Mao period. But then I think here the historical irony is that during the Mao period, the Chinese economy was able to accumulate so much that when Deng was kind of making a policy turn, it was easy, it was relatively easy to redirect some of the capital being accumulated to addressing people's consumption needs. So there was a good.

kind of like a policy shift in the late 70s and early 80s in terms of emphasizing improving living conditions, things like that. But that was possible precisely because a lot of capital had been accumulated over the Mao years. So I would say, right, all these high accumulation that was done in the mall years created the necessary conditions for the pivot that came later. So I think these two things could not really be separated from each other. Gotcha.

That makes a lot of sense. The Maoist period laid the foundations for what would come later and was a necessity for what would come later, although you didn't see the dramatic positive statistics that we were so used to hearing about in the previous episodes that we've done in terms of life expectancy. just overall betterment and improvement of living conditions. So this is a big question. Let me sort of set the table out here for it first.

The basic analysis that we've probably used the most to analyze contemporary China in this show, and which I would characterize as the Marxist-Leninist view predominantly, is that China played the long game in terms of its relationship to the U.S. and its attempts to escape the boot of U.S. hegemony and neoliberalism, that under Dang, the decision was made to rapidly industrialized by introducing market reforms, opening up to U.S. capital, this entire process of liberalization. But that it was done in a way which maintain a certain level,

of autonomy so that China itself was actually developing its productive forces in a robust way, not being forced into a relationship of one-sided dependence on the U.S. A lot of the episodes that we've done on other global South countries really look at this dynamic of underdevelopment, popularized by Walter Rodney, of course, that oftentimes imperialist countries or colonizing countries, the relationship that they have with the colonized countries can hardly be called like even a relationship. It's a basic extraction. They're not going into these countries and allowing these countries to develop their own productive forces in the process of this relationship of imperialist and subjugated country. Whereas China did things a little bit differently.

and although this took a heavy toll on the environment and the people in China, as we can begin to really see now that this was ultimately successful in getting China out from under the U.S.'s thumb, and now China is in a position that it can act much more freely and that it is in fact very much oriented towards socialism, and it has the space to experiment more with that now. So that is the basic analysis that I would say is what I primarily believe and from most of the guests that we've had in this series, what they have espoused. Then there is a camp of socialists who believe that, no, that's not true. And these socialists we might refer to as non-revisionist Marxist-Leninists or Maoists.

And of course we've discussed that Maoism is a very broad term, right? it's not like a consolidated ideology necessarily. But so these people believe that China stopped being socialist in 1978, that it is now strictly a capitalist state because of this market liberalization and that it has no intentions to lay the foundations for socialism anymore. So with all of that on the table, what are your thoughts on how I just sort of parse those two positions? if I have that correct from your analysis and where you stand on it.

Again, I guess I will just speed out some hot takes again here. To be honest, I'm a strong opponent of the first view you laid out here. This again, I feel like my problem with it is that it's so U.S. centric. Basically, the assessment is that whatever is bad for the, U.S. is good. Like, China somehow represents a more promising alternative because it ended up becoming a powerful counterpoint to the U.S. But still, that's still trapped in this mentality that we judge any, we assess any other

societies vis-a-vis the U.S. Right. So I think that's one way how U.S. centrism actually manifests itself among the U. the left. I also have had these conversations and arguments with other leftists I came across in the US too. It's kind of like, why does everything always have to be about the US? Can't we understand these societies on their own terms? Can't we understand people's experiences in these societies on their own term? So I felt like this is something I have been struggling with a lot.

Because I feel like if you now go to China and interview a random Chinese person, they would definitely say, I think there's 90% chance that they would say they definitely live in a capitalist society. For any random worker, there's a strong sense that they are being exploited by capitalists, right?

by bosses who operate in this very profit maximizing way. And they are definitely trapped in wage labor relationships. So again, especially within the recent years, across the Chinese society, you see this visibly, visibly a growing anti-capital sentiment, right? Like our society and our daily lives were just being chokeholded, by big capitalists like Jack Ma. People like them.

So from the perspective of people's everyday experiences living in Chinese society, I think people will say we are living under capitalism. Just given how employment has been made so precarious, right, it's not even regular wage-labor relationship, but all these precarious wage-labor relationship. and how access to basic necessities has been marketized so much. So just to stake out my position very clearly here,

I think China right now is capitalist. But I also disagree with the second view, which kind of like marked the important turning point or the important moment of periodization to 1978. Because that periodization was basically, kind of like saying, you know, we judge the character of a society by who sat on top of it. Right. This idea that like China just went through a leadership transition from mouth to turn and so now

its character is capitalist. I also do not agree with that analysis. I think in terms of assessing whether a society is capitalist or socialist, we have to look at when the actual transformation of property relations actually happened, when the property regime actually undergo a dramatic change. And I would locate that key historical moment to the early and mid-1990s, basically after the crackdown on the T.M.N. pro-democracy movements. Because in the 1990s, you started to see that the Chinese government,

the party state became this huge supporter and the promoter of unconditional private and foreign capital accumulation. And then there was this gigantic wave of restructuring and the privatization of publicly owned enterprises. Where workers were massively laid off, they lost their employment security

and the welfare guarantees they used to have under publicly owned enterprises. And that's also when, The wage labor relationship became widely institutionalized. So I don't think the key turning point is 1978, but it was a process that mostly happened in the 1990s. Do you believe that the CPC is oriented towards building the foundations for socialism?

Because I would agree with you that the Chinese economy, the political economy of China has a capitalist character. I might not have actually been super comfortable saying that a few weeks ago, but actually after speaking to a previous guest in our Venezuela series, Sierra Pascual Markina, where she was describing how, in her analysis, Venezuela, despite everything that we hear coming out of, you know, the ruling class here in the U.S., that Venezuela is in fact a capitalist state. because like you said, the property relations in Venezuela are still largely capitalist. However, they are building the foundations for socialism there in terms of these, you know,

the communes that they're building and a variety of different things. In China, inequality is massive, right? It's one of the most unequal states in the world. And yet it's decreasing. The number of billionaires in China is very high. but that number, unlike anywhere else in the world, is decreasing. And we're seeing trends, right? We're seeing orientations and leanings towards certain things which would suggest that,

and from the rhetoric, of course, of the CPC, which of course you can't just go by rhetoric, but just another data point there is that the rhetoric coming out of, you know, coming from people like Xi Jinping is very much. socialistic, right? And I think it's pro-socialism, it's pro-communism. And so this argument that a lot of Marxist-Leninists make is that China under Dang went through this process of becoming very capitalistic to develop the productive forces and build a society that was like materially sufficient and that it still intends to begin to embark on this process of now really laying the foundations for socialism. What do you think of that? So first, in terms of whether inequality

in China is decreasing and the number of billionaires, that kind of thing. So I am not entirely sure about how to make sense of those indexes. Because in recent years, you, do see a lot of appropriation of private wealth on the part of the party state. But if you trace where that wealth went, these appropriated wealth didn't go to public services. They basically went to other cronies who had intimate relationships with party state bureaucrats. And then they kind of like just innovated all kinds of ways to hide that wealth from public scrutiny. So there was that. So in terms of whether the Communist Party in China had any intention to steer the society towards a more socialist direction,

so for me, there is only one golden standard to assess whether that's happening. That is, the party state's attitudes towards the labor moment. I mean, there's no thing that is more definitive than that. And I think that's one key distinction between the communist regime in China right now and the Venezuelan regime, because my understanding is that in Venezuela, the Chavistas were still very much emphasizing that we have to mobilize the masses, we have to mobilize the popular sectors, and then we have to channel resources to the popular sector so that they can organize themselves better, right?

They can be more organized, institutional, stronger, things like that. But if you look at how the Chinese Communist Party has been treating the Chinese labor movement over the last decade, it's just crack down, crack down, crack down. It seems that there's nothing the Chinese Communist Party is more afraid of than a militant working class. And that space for the political space there was for labor organizing

has been very visibly shrinking over the past decade or so. A lot of labor organizers have been jailed, detained, a lot of nonprofits that worked to strengthen workers' organizing skills, were defunded and shut down, and any kind of strikes and workers' riots usually get a very kind of like iron fist kind of reaction. So I guess as Lenin said, the character of a regime became most obvious at the moment when it had to deal with its challengers. And in this case, I do think the Chinese country regime saw a potentially strong working class as a knightman rather than an ally.

And for me, that is the most definitive index. I see, yeah, that does make sense. So, I mean, you've answered this question pretty thoroughly in terms of relations between the Chinese government and the labor movement. But if there's anything more that you'd like to talk about in terms of that specific dynamic or any other areas that China needs to improve on when it comes to, let me see if I can rephrase this, because in the question, there's the presumption that I'm making, which is that the Chinese state is attempting to lay the foundations for socialism or aligning more with socialism.

So I know that you don't agree with that. But let's say if China were to begin to move in that direction, what would you like to see, what improvements need to be made? And I know you answered this in terms of the labor movement and its relationship to the state. But anything else or any more depth on that part of it? Again here, just kind of repeating what I said previously throughout this conversation, I think we should locate the promise of socialism in a more. bottom up or from below kind of way rather than top down or from above. Because I think the promise of socialism, if there's any in China, lines within the Chinese people,

not with the Communist Party. And I think if the Chinese working class can figure out better ways to organize in a more a sustainable way, right, to really grow the organizing basis of the labor movement. Yeah, I think that points to a direction towards socialism. But again, I think the promise lines with the support and actors, the people, not the party. Do you see there being much of a revolutionary sentiment among the mass of people in China? from here, from my vantage point and from the guests that we've spoken to, it seems like the mass of people in China seem to be doing quite well.

Like I see statistics that are say like 90% of people in China own their home, which is like insane to someone like me in the United States thinking about. And then you have like all of these surveys consistently showing that massive, massive amounts of people in China report a lot of tribes. in the government. They're happy with the direction that the country is going in, that they feel represented. And then you have all of these different surveys, like survey after survey, which consistently shows that, you know, massive amounts of people in China, often 90% or 95% or more people in China have a lot of trust in their government, that they feel their government is going

in the right direction, that they feel represented. And these are, like reputable surveys. We actually talk quite a bit about these surveys in our episodes with Jason Hickle and a couple other of the guests in this series. So I'll also put a link to the most recent ones in the show notes. And a lot of anecdotal stuff too just seems like for the most part material conditions in China have become much better, at least than they were in the past. So there's this trajectory of improving conditions, which makes me think that revolutionary, like, sentiment might not be as, like, fervent in the country, which might be one of the reasons why there isn't as much, in addition to the pushback from the state, there isn't much like turmoil in terms of, you know,

a mass movement that was similar to something in like the 1910s or something like that. Like, is there much, like, revolutionary sentiment in China right now? Or are we just not seeing that? Or are the conditions of people not as good as, you know, some statistics or some anecdotal analysis might suggest? My stance for the kind of like the past two or three years as China was kind of like transitioning out of the COVID lockdown era. And I spent a lot of time, a lot of time all the power. the past few years in China. And there was this sense that the economy is really in the process of slowing down and

awakening, and unemployment becomes a huge, huge problem. And there is this sense that the window of economic opportunity is really shutting down. So it's not like people face the existential threat of like, not being able to make a living at all, because, again, with China's rapid economic growth over the past few decades, there is still accumulation has already happened. And as you pointed out, home ownership rate has been pretty high. So this kind of gives rise to this very widespread phenomenon called laying flat, in which people, especially like young people just don't want to go to work,

don't find any job appealing, but also they are now starving, so they just lie flat. They just kind of like do not go to work and do not really engage in any socially defined productive activities. So I think there is this sense that we are still making it, but the future does not look so good. So that hasn't really resulted in like wide-spoken. spread dissatisfaction with the communist party regime so far, like what we used to see in Tunisia in 2010, right? So we are not there yet. But there was this sense that the society somehow is losing its vitality, people are losing their hopes, and people are just trying to lie flat and don't do anything.

So I think like this is a moment when China is really out of crossroad. So I feel like if the economic situation as a whole goes into a worse direction, then I feel like there actually might be possibilities to catalyze more of a widely shared or even explicitly subversive political sentiment. Or if the economy managed to hold on to its current. shape somewhat, then more people might feel like, okay, we can, you know, we can still continue laying flat for a few years. But I feel like a lot of that is going to depend on what kind of structural changes the Chinese society is headed towards. And also I feel like

one, another index of this kind of society losing hope and energy and vitality is the extremely low birth rate. I feel like it's pretty clear by now that China has started the age of population decline. With all these subsidies, with all these rhetorical promotion to encourage people to have more kids, people are just not. So I feel like that's a very important index of the mainstream social sentiment in China. Fascinating. Well, I know I've kept you here a little bit longer than that.

than I had asked for originally. So thank you for giving us so much of your time. And I just had one last question to kind of wrap everything up in terms of, you know, this episode is about Mao. Maoism ultimately. So maybe if you could just talk a little bit to close about the influence that Maoism has and has had on revolutionary socialist movements throughout the globe, state building projects as well. And what we can learn from Mao today, when we look at many of the contradictions that both we're facing globally, but since this is our China series, some of the contradictions that China is currently facing.

Okay, I think my kind of like final take on this question is kind of like a paradoxical. I think what really makes me fascinated with Maoism is really this Mao's valorization or insistence valorization. of and insistence on the power of the people. One way to read Mao's thought is this idea that the revolution should not be a top-down process. It has to be a process in which the masses kind of creatively reinvent themselves, figure out how to push the socialist project forward.

But then I think the paradox is that if we really take Mao, message on the power of the people very seriously, then I think we have to de-center Mao a bit when we understand the Chinese Revolution. We have to realize that the Chinese Revolution, first and foremost, was the making of the Chinese people, right? It was not the making of Mao as the supreme leader of it. Mao was as much the product of the Chinese revolution. It was as much the product of the Chinese revolution as he shaped the Chinese revolution. So I think we have to really, again, seriously interrogate the dialectic between from above and from below.

And if there is kind of like any kind of key lesson to take away, I think is this. And again, that goes back to what I was saying in terms of locating the promise of socialism in contemporary Chinese society. It was not the party from above, but the masses and Chinese workers from below. You've been listening to an upstream conversation with Yaron Zhang, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He specializes in the comparative studies of capitalism, socialism, and the transitions in between, with a special emphasis on political economy and the dynamics of development in the global south.

Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you to Witchdream Mansion for the intermission music. The cover art for today's episode is a vintage Chinese propaganda poster. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert. Upstream is entirely listener-funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants, just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your. support, please subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire

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