WeeklySA_AdminMODEL: The strategy followed by the Chinese Communist Party expresses a clear attempt to demonstrate that the market, as an instrument of economic management, can also function in a liberal, non-capitalist society…
By XULIO RÍOS
Today’s China has undergone a series of transformations since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power more than 75 years ago.
Many of these changes are radical among themselves, even more so considering that they have been carried out in a short proportion of time and that they have been carried out under the command of the same ruling party. This situation makes it not so obvious to classify the policies established by the CCP in some classical theoretical economic model.
Another variable that makes it difficult to interpret the new changes has to do with the fact that China uses the influence of international models, while maintaining its own socio-cultural structures and dynamics. Beyond the process of modernization and boom of the private sector, China maintains a dominant public sector in several sectors of its economy. It is evident that the State retains essential factors of a socialist model, but it has gradually incorporated some elements of the free market to activate its economy and integrate it into the international scene. It is difficult to imagine China returning to the communist system propelled in the times of the revolution.
The strategy followed by the CCP expresses a clear attempt to demonstrate that the market, as an instrument of economic management, can also function in a liberal non-capitalist society or that a certain structure of ownership does not have to prevent the establishment of an effective economic model of socialism. China inserted the recognition of private property into the Constitution in 2004.
The contemporary mutation of the Chinese model refers us to an unfinished transition, piloted by a particularly powerful Party-State. This clashes, in the first place, with the conception that communism is either or it is not, that is, it is not reformable and any fickleness represents a crack that makes the values of the system tremble. The CCP is signing up for reforms, reforms that make it weaker but more powerful at every step, while continuing to demand a more social, modern state, subject to the rule of law.
The CCP is the engine of the state in Chinese society. The State-Party fusion perpetuates the system at the institutional level with supreme and at the same time flexible decision-making bodies. The CCP moulds the system and affirms its nationalism while extending its militancy based on the triple representativeness, which is no longer only the proletariat or the peasantry, it is the people, it is a party of the whole society.
It is, in short, the country’s elite that organises its life in all aspects, so that its broad coverage makes it difficult for any political alternative to its teaching profession to come to fruition.
Therefore, attempts to categorise China in Western theoretical schemes are sterile because they are inadequate to the extent that they fail to reflect its originality and complexity. Thus we can conceive it from the definition of this or that policy as Keynesian or social democratic or its model as state capitalism.
And China does not fit in because its reality, so unknown in detail, transcends our categories. This is due to the fact that to a large extent it has invented its own model, a new scheme of economic, social and political development, which is nourished both by global inspiration, Marxist in particular, and by its own cultural and civilizational idiosyncrasy.
It is not possible to ignore the fact that its economy is still governed by five-year plans, or that it is the Party that holds control of strategic areas of the economy, or that it perseveres in the supremacy of the state sector over the private sector, or that it institutes the role of public, state or collective ownership as fundamental. All aspects that are modular in the conception and exercise of the CCP.
In politics, promoting genuine formulas that prioritise consultation and cooperation as ways to generate consensus and stability.
And all this subsists without absolute dogmatic rigidities, that is, responding to the situation with a stable general scheme but admitting variations in the substantial equilibrium so that in certain circumstances the private sector can gain relevance while in others it is the public sector that experiences a greater boom depending on what is defined as best for the general interest and the progress of the economy.
The sinicisation of Marxism is, therefore, an invocation to reinvent, adapt, Marxism in each country, in each epoch, starting from research and the systematization of social aspirations. It is the end of any automatism of a supposedly universal model and of the blind copies of foreign models, whether or not they have worked in a given reality. – Globalter
* Xulio Ríos is an advisor emeritus to the Observatory of Chinese Politics
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GET TOUGH ON RAPISTS
The rape and murder of women and children are the most violent crimes which, in some countries, are punishable by death.
In South Africa, a democratic State, some of the suspects implicated in these vicious crimes are granted bail only to go and commit the same type of crimes and be rearrested after more lives had been lost.
It is because of this laxity in our laws that these crimes were being perpetuated almost on a daily basis. The latest statistics included two young girls who were raped and murdered in separate incidents in Tsomo in the Eastern Cape and Khayelitsha in the Western Cape. Instead of nurturing children into responsible future leaders, certain community members, with evil intentions, viewed children as symbols that must be raped, murdered and dumped like discarded animals.
A 14-year-old learner at KwaMfula Administrative Area went missing on June 20, 2025 after she left home for school in the morning. After a joint search operation by the police and community members, her body was discovered two days later in a collapsed structure near a forest. She had been raped and murdered.
Last week, another victim, Lolitha Kowa (7), was kidnapped, raped and murdered at the Kuyasa community area in Khayelitsha in Western Cape. Two suspects have been arrested in connection with the gruesome crime.
The list of women and children subjected to abuse and this kind of violence keeps growing despite the latest police crime statistics that revealed that South Africa’s murder rate was on the decrease during the first quarter of the 2024\25 financial year. Rape and contact crimes showed an increase compared to the same period last year.According to Statista Research department’s June 2025 report, nearly 53,500 South Africans reported being a victim of a sexual crime during the 2022\23 fiscal year. About 80 percent registered being raped while 7,500 disclosed that they were sexually assaulted.
Women and girls have suffered enough at the hands of evil persons who subjected them to torture, rape and death almost on a daily basis with no solutions offered by the authorities to counter these vicious abuses. Some of the measures that government must implement should include no bail for rape and murder suspects and long jail terms for those convicted– without parole.
What kind of country is this where people rape and kill their own children – their future leaders ? Excuses have been made that some of the major issues which contributed to these crimes included poverty and unemployment as well as lack of public services.
Our politicians must urgently attend to matters including the plight of our mothers, sisters and children who have been pleading for years without help. Gender violence can only be resolved through the promulgation of tougher laws against the perpetrators, not through marches and petitions and a lot of talking. Members of communities must also help the police by taking responsibility in protecting children in their areas. People who usually commit these crimes are known and live within their midst. Crime can be defeated through a unified stance because remaining silent is in itself, a violent act.
