The Pseudo-Ideological Ballast of the CPC – A comment on Jiang Zemin’s 100th birthday

Jiang Zemin would have turned 100 on 17th August of this year when he wouldn’t have died already on 30th November 2022. Because he was enshrined as a classic of the CPC’s official ideology in 2002 with his three volumes of Selected Works published in 2006 his centenary is a date to look back on his deeds and “ideological merits”.

Xi Jinping said on the centenary event for Jiang Zemin on 17th August 2026, with almost the exact same wording as on Jiang Zemin’s funeral:

“Comrade Jiang Zemin is an outstanding leader recognised by the entire Party, the military, and people of all ethnic groups nationwide, enjoying high prestige and outstanding leadership, a great Marxist, a great proletarian revolutionary, politician, military strategist, diplomat, a long-tested communist fighter, an outstanding leader in the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the core of the Party’s third generation central leadership collective, and the main founder of the important thinking of the ‘Three Represents’.”¹

Jiang Zemin formulated the Three Represents as his “ideological innovation” to the CPC ideology in 2000 just after enshrining Deng Xiaoping Theory in 1997 on the XVth Congress of the CPC into the official party ideology.

That there is not much time for something new that would be groundbreaking should be obvious. Jiang Zemin’s excuse for it was the following: “We must uphold Deng Xiaoping Theory as our guide and constantly encourage theoretical innovations.”² This excuse was used by his successors Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping as well to put their pseudo-ism into the CPC Statute. But let’s focus on Jiang Zemin here for starting this entire process of devaluing the party ideology.

When Jiang Zemin first spoke of the Three Represents on 25th February 2000 during an inspection tour in Guangdong³ he didn’t give it a clear definition. Later three points found in his speech were summarized to compose his pseudo-ism. Xi Jinping repeated these in his speech on the event of Jiang Zemin’s centenary on 17th August 2026:

“He proposed that all the Party’s theories and work should reflect the spirit of the times, grasp the laws of development, and be creative, concentrating the wisdom of the whole Party to establish the important thinking of the ‘Three Represents’, emphasising that our Party always represents the development requirements of China’s advanced productive forces, the forward direction of China’s advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the broadest masses of the Chinese people.”⁴

This reads trivial and vague because it is. Xi Jinping had a bad template he simply copied. He made the best out of it by mentioning the Three Represents in this speech only twice to save himself from giving even more void explanations.

The Three Represents were officially adopted at the XVIth Congress of the CPC in 2002 as part of the party ideology. This doesn’t mean that Jiang Zemin had defined his pseudo-ism there any way better. He just said:

“The Three Represents is a continuation and development of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, which reflects new requirements for the work of the Party and state arising from changes in China and other parts of the world today. It is a powerful theoretical weapon for strengthening and improving Party building and promoting the self-improvement and self-development of socialism in China. It is the crystallization of the Party’s collective wisdom, and a guiding ideology that the Party must follow for a long time to come. Always implementing the Three Represents is the foundation for building our Party, the cornerstone for its governance and the source of its strength.”⁵

This is also very vague despite being in his official political report to the Congress on behalf of the Central Committee. A proper explanation would have been vital but was just not delivered. Instead he wrote in a letter to Hu Jintao already in February 2002 that “it cannot be gone into in detail”⁶, meaning the explanation of the Three Represents in the draft of the report. When, if not at the Party Congress, should a “new theoretical innovation” be explained in detail? It is clear that Jiang Zemin knew that the Three Represents have no substance but just didn’t want to admit that. Instead he said on 18th September 2002 on a meeting of the Document Drafting Group for the upcoming XVIth Congress: “The thought of Three Represents was not produced out of thin air; rather, it is the result of 13 years of constant exploration and breaking new ground in theory and practice.”⁷ Even on this occasion he didn’t explain in-depth what the Three Represents would qualitatively change in comparison to Deng Xiaoping Theory. Instead he effectively admits that it is a summing up of his 13 years in office as General Secretary.

Xi Jinping had the impossible task of finding lasting value in this “theory” which is just the practice of Dengism 1989-2002 and nothing else. As we already have seen: He was unable to find such. That wasn’t the fault of Xi Jinping in this case (he is responsible for his own void “innovation” to the official CPC ideology!) but of Jiang Zemin leaving behind nothing of use.

On Jiang Zemin’s funeral ceremony Xi Jinping said on 6th December 2022 had similar problems like recently:

“In particular, by pooling the wisdom of the whole Party, he formulated the Theory of Three Represents, which further answers the questions of what socialism is and how to build it, and creatively addresses what kind of Party to build and how to build it. The Theory of Three Represents has deepened our understanding of rules to advance the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics and strengthen Party building in the new conditions. With its new ideas, viewpoints and judgments, it serves as a continuation, enrichment and development of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory.”⁸

These are a bunch of empty filler-phrases that could have been AI-written. Effectively there is nothing in the Three Represents that exceeds Deng Xiaoping Theory in essence.

Xi said on the very same occasion: “The Theory of Three Represents is a guiding ideology that the Party must adhere to on a long-term basis.”⁹ Except occasional mentionings in the listing up of the entire CPC ideology the Three Represents only find explicit mentioning on occasions related to commemorating Jiang Zemin. This makes it clear: The Three Represents aren’t a theory to “adhere”. We can all see that it is more of a name for the Jiang Zemin pressed into a pseudo-ideological term.

Even at the XVIIIth Congress of the CPC in November 2012 Hu Jintao summoned the Three Represents merely as one of several components of the “system of theories of socialism with Chinese characteristics”:

“The system of theories of socialism with Chinese characteristics is a system of scientific theories that includes Deng Xiaoping Theory, the important thought of Three Represents and the Scientific Outlook on Development, and this system represents the Party’s adherence to and development of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.”¹⁰

Here we get a bit closer to the problem behind all the post-Deng pseudo-isms polluted into the official CPC ideology: They are all just seen as continuations of the “theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics”, including Hu Jintao’s own Scientific Outlook on Development and later on Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in a New Era.

Now the open question is: What is the “theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics”? Jiang Zemin himself was first speaking of a “general theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics” on 10th March 1988¹¹, which is the origin of today’s term. On 29th September 1989 Jiang Zemin delivered the speech at an event for the 40th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. He said in that speech:

“Comrade Deng’s theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics is a scientific theory that has been tested through a decade of practice and is now recognized and accepted by millions and millions of Chinese people as the banner guiding our ongoing progress.”¹²

This is the original term that would later give birth to the term Deng Xiaoping Theory as a sort of short form. And there is the problem: Deng Xiaoping Theory is effectively “Deng Xiaoping Theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics”, the “system of theories of socialism with Chinese characteristics” is therefore effectively just Deng Xiaoping Theory without mentioning his name.

The main issue is that this whole “theory” is built on sand. Deng Xiaoping restored capitalism in practice but his reasoning was always only vague. This applies most obviously in his propagated “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (which doesn’t even appear very often in volume III of his Selected Works actually). The whole “theory” was founded with this sentence in his opening speech on the XIIth Congress of the CPC on 1st September 1982:

“We must integrate the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete realities of China, blaze a path of our own and build a socialism with Chinese characteristics – that is the basic conclusion we have reached after reviewing our long history.”¹³

Almost the exact same sentence was repeated in a talk with Julius Nyerere on 21st August 1985 included in the same volume¹⁴. Deng repeats his term over and over again but doesn’t explain it deeper. In short: It is the practice of capitalist restoration with a “theory” behind it composed of thin air. Deng Xiaoping Theory is in the end not an actual “theory” but rather only a “practice”.

Jiang Zemin must have known that he built his own “ideological development” on sand – in the end he was the General Secretary under whom Deng Xiaoping Theory was established as a part of the CPC party ideology and also had the overconfidence to push his own “contribution” just very few years after – for which party elders (who were silenced by him) criticized him in 2001 in their famous “Letter of the Fourteen”¹⁵.

Ma Bin and Ha Yaxi, who also signed the “Letter of the Fourteen” wrote another one signed 15th July 2001. They criticized the practice of enshrining the current General Secretary as integral part of the CPC ideology shortly before it officially started with Jiang Zemin with the following words:

“Nowadays, when Chinese people mention in speech and writing about their guiding thought, they have to spell “Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and Deng Xiaoping Theory.” If we keep adding the expositions of one term after another of the leaders, how could we possibly handle it?”¹⁶

As we can see today, this all went ad absurdum. Xi Jinping listed the entire official CPC party ideology on the event held for the 100th anniversary of the CPC on 1st July 2021:

“On the journey ahead, we must continue to uphold Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development, and fully implement the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”¹⁷

This list is merely endless. He only left out his own name on the last component because that would sound even more absurd. This whole process started with Jiang Zemin and has its continuity until today.

Jiang Zemin’s centenary shows the ideological void after the restoration of capitalism in China very clearly. When Deng Xiaoping Theory could still be used as a (not very convincing) excuse for why the capitalist restoration would be “not capitalism” but instead “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, the Three Represents add nothing to it except pinning Jiang Zemin’s most important works on continuing the capitalist course in the period of his leadership should be continued to be studied in the future despite having mere historical value.

When the air is already so thin at Jiang Zemin’s centenary celebrating his Three Represents, we can barely wait to see the even thinner air for Hu Jintao’s centenary one day celebrating his Scientific Outlook on Development.