The break with the ideological past that still can't be confronted
'The theory of communism may be summed up in one sentence: abolish all private property,' wrote Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto.
By that definition, the road taken by the Chinese Communist Party since 1978 has been in the opposite direction from communism.
In the course of its rapid development, the country has ditched collective agriculture, dismantled the state sector, smashed hundreds of millions of workers' 'iron rice bowls', dumped cheap housing, gutted social services such as free education and health care, embraced the free market and celebrated the art of getting rich.
The spectacular economic growth the mainland has been enjoying is decidedly capitalist in style - or, in the peculiar wording of the party, its experiment with 'a new form of socialism with uniquely Chinese characteristics'. The party's careful scripting is a sign that it's trying hard to hide the truth that Marxist ideology is practically dead in the country. Few even remember Marxist theory, except party ideologues who make a living out of preaching it. And perhaps even fewer subscribe to its principles, as the country completes the transformation from one of the most equal societies in the world to one of the most unequal.
In a demonstration of the 'extraordinary flexibility of Chinese pragmatism' - according to the late American Sinologist Lucian Pye - the party abandoned ideology, or at least orthodox Marxism, which had been blamed for producing stagnation.
