The concept was at the center of a “Seminar on studying and implementing Xi Jinping’s thought on culture.”
by Hu Zimo
On May 31, the CCP organ “People’s Daily” published excerpts from the main speeches given at the May 28 “Seminar on studying and implementing Xi Jinping’s thought on culture.” There is a Xi Jinping’s thought on everything but theories on culture deserve to be taken more seriously than, say, Xi Jinping’s thought on toilets (it does exist, too).
The main slogan of the seminar’s speeches is about the “second integration,” a concept Xi Jinping has been advancing for some time. The first “integration” in this scheme, dating back to the origins of the CCP, was between Marxism and China’s special circumstances. The second one, according to Xi Jinping, goes one step further and integrates orthodox Marxism with traditional Chinese culture.
The “second integration,” according to the current President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, historian Gao Xiang, “liberates us from the binary opposition between tradition and modernity.” It is “an emancipation of the mind” and “a new awakening.” This grandiose claim is justified by the idea that the “second integration” overcomes “the lack of confidence in the history and culture of the Chinese nation and the blind superstition of Western culture and Western-centrism.”
Marxism, after all, originated in the West. However, with a curious use of Christian categories, Gao explained that Marxism is a “soul” that can be incarnated in different bodies. The “second integration” is the experiment where the Marxist souls incarnated in the body of Chinese tradition. However, not all bodies are adequate to welcome the Marxist soul. Thus, quoting Xi Jinping, Gao explains that Chinese traditional culture should be “treated with discrimination.” Whatever is incompatible with Marxism should be eliminated.
Li Wentang, Vice President of the Central Party School, added that according to Xi Jinping what at first sight looks incompatible with Marxism in Chinese culture is often not genuine but the result of a false interpretation by Western sinologists. “General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that due to the long-term control of ‘cultural hegemony’ and propaganda and agitation by the West, there are too many distorted interpretations, blocked truths, and inverted facts” in the prevailing academic interpretation of Chinese traditional culture.
Of course, what is really “distorted” is the interpretation of the same culture by the CCP. In its effort to make its body ready to receive the Marxist soul, the Party has eliminated from Chinese traditional culture all the religious and spiritual elements, i.e., its very soul. The “second integration” continues along this way.
