It’s no surprise that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members are losing their faith in Marxism.
What is perhaps surprising is that this is being said in a recent op/ed in the government’s People’s Daily.
The Chinese-language online news People.com republished an opinion essay by Zhan Yong, titled “把风水迷信拉下’神坛’ (Demolish the ‘altar’ of fengshui superstition),” in People’s Daily of Oct. 27, 2013.
The opinion piece begins by decrying the “recent” trend of local government officials making decisions based on their superstitious beliefs in lucky numbers and fengshui (a type of geomancy).
The author, Zhan Yong, then proceeds to excoriate those officials and cadres:
“Some [Communist Party] cadres seek the counsel of fengshui masters in all matters. They don’t believe in Marxism but instead believe in ghosts and spirits. These superstitions are indicative of certain party members superstitious and confused mentality, which has a destructive effect on social climate and is met with disapproval from the masses.
Distortion in thought and alienation of authority go hand in hand. Whether one looks to fengshui to change one’s personal fortunes or for gain or as a source of comfort, this is all indicative of the cadre having forgotten “who I am” [that is, a member of the Communist Party] and confused about “on whom I depend”. [A cadre who is] separated from the masses is a tree that’s uprooted who no longer works for the people but instead is obsessed with fengshui superstition.
This is a warning to us that we must oppose the ‘four winds,’ intensify ideological education, so that cadres at all levels have the correct outlook on the world, authority, and on their profession; dedicate their hearts to the people and to the people’s livelihood. If we do all that, fengshui spiritualists will find it difficult to sneak in. And so, the altar of fengshui superstition will be demolished, and we become restored as honest servants of the people.”
Of course, People’s Daily‘s belated acknowledgment that Chinese Communist Party members no longer believe in Marxism raises this obvious question:
From the beginning, the CCP has justified its monopolistic right to rule on Marxism — on its claim to possession of special truths and insights imparted by the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Dengist ideology. Now that even the party no longer believes in that ideology, on what does the party base its right to rule over more than a billion people?
H/t ChinaScope and CODA’s Sol Sanders
See also:
- “Talk of the unthinkable: Collapse of communism in China,” Sept. 22, 2013.
- “Why China’s anti-corruption campaign is blocked in the PLA,” Oct. 7, 2013.
displacedjim
George Griffin
wm2ggo
Consortium of Defense Analysts 
I am so glad that both Communism and fengshui are both in jeopardy and being questioned in China. Both systems do not have their basis in reality. Communism, because it denies the existence of God, wherein it actualizes itself into fantasy and an unreal world; evil turns reality upside down. And fengshui, a type of superstitution, also not having a basis in reality.
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Discussions concerning the rationale for the political system of the PRC tend to be misleading at best. Maoism, for example, was never “Marxist” in the classical sense of the term (i.e., that the revolution could only be made by the proletariat in a mature industrial environment). It was presumably Marxist in the sense that it was “Leninist” or “Stalinist”–and that was because the structure of the Chinese Communist Party was (1) hierarchical, (2) party dominant, and (3) leadership dependent. But that has been the paradigmatic structure of all “revolutionary” parties in the 20th and 21st Centuries–including Hitler’s National Socialists and Mussolini’s National Fascist Party. There is nothing particularly “Marxist” about any of that. Thinking Chinese have been aware of all that since at least the time of Deng Xiaoping–when China was opened to “imperialist exploitation,” foreign investment, and the institution of a program of export led economic growth.. Even the least informed realize that any attempt to vindicate dictatorial Party rule by arguing that the Party conforms to the “truths” of Marxism would be a howling implausibility. Many have returned to traditional Western religions, traditional Chinese “superstitions,” or to new formulations, such as Falun Gong. Non-democratic systems invariably have difficulty in providing a convincing justification for one-party, one-man rule That becomes determinant in times of general crisis.
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