China's socialist experiment: Crossing the river by feeling the stones

Interview with Tings Chak

The International Union of Scientists speaks with Tings Chak, a researcher and art director at the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research and the English edition of Wenhua Zongheng (文化纵横), a landmark journal of Chinese political and cultural thought.

The discussion covers questions about contemporary China: Is China a democracy? Is it socialist? How has China addressed its environmental crises? How does China approach militarism and peace?

Ms Chak offers a perspective on how Chinese intellectuals and policymakers understand their own system. She talks about how conversations like those in Wenhua Zongheng can serve as a bridge between Chinese progressive thought and Global South movements as we move into a new era of geopolitics.

Transcript

IUS: Hello, my name is Adam Claridge-Chang, a scientist and editor at the International Union of Scientists. Today we're thrilled to be joined by Tings Chak. Tings is a researcher and art director at the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research and a doctoral candidate at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Canada, she works at the intersection of art and the social sciences, translating China's large-scale social experiments for Global South and internationalist audiences. Tings, many thanks for joining us today.

Tings Chak: Thanks very much. Thanks so much for having me, Adam.

IUS: We're curious—how was the Tricontinental Institute formed, and what are the organization's goals?

Tings Chak: Around 10 years ago, in 2015, there was a meeting called the Dilemmas of Humanity, in which many large mass organizations, particularly from the Global South, gathered together in Brazil at the national school of the Landless Workers' Movement, known as the MST. This conference, as the title suggests, aimed to understand the state of the global left—what were the problems facing the peoples of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and what political processes needed to be created.

From that process, something called the International People's Assembly was formed, which today includes hundreds of mass organizations across all continents. One of the things discussed was the need for a think tank, a research institute from the perspective of people's movements, that produces knowledge for the movements themselves—from and for these movements.

The Tricontinental Institute for Social Research was conceived as such a research instrument. Over the last 10 years, we've organized in different ways but always closely aligned our research agenda with mass organizations in Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, India, and elsewhere. In the last two to three years, we've structured our work more around a regional process. One of my tasks now is helping coordinate the Asia regional work, which includes research and publications with movements in Asia. We also organize as a Pan-African research network and in Latin America—"Nuestra América"—in the Americas continent.

IUS: So Tricontinental is sort of the think tank and ideas incubator of the International People's Assembly?

Tings Chak: Yes, I think you can call it that. What we've been trying to do is expand and build research capacities of movements themselves, and do collaborations with different research institutions interested in a progressive, left, or even socialist agenda.

IUS: It's interesting to see an organization oriented along the three continents—Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Talk about publishing the English edition or translation of Wenhua Zongheng, a Chinese journal of political and cultural thought. What makes this publication unique in the landscape of cultural critique and political science?

Tings Chak: One reason we decided not to translate the name literally into English is that it engages with different epistemologies—different ways of seeing and thinking about the world. So we retained the original Chinese name. Zongheng literally means "verticals and horizontals," with references back to the Warring States period and thinking about strategy and the first period of how to unify China. There's a lot embedded in this meaning. We thought we would challenge our readers to test out their Mandarin.

This magazine is very important in China. It was founded as a journal in 2008. The editor-in-chief, Yang Ping, is a good friend of Tricontinental. At that period in the 2000s, there was a necessity to bring together different progressive voices and intellectuals in China to have a space for progressive debate. Many people in the West say, "Oh, there's no debate in China." I think that shows a lot of ignorance or misinformation spread about China.

This is an important space of progressive dialogue and debate that brought together what were called the "new left" intellectuals, people with more liberal ideologies, even Confucian scholars—a broad left-progressive spectrum engaging with questions like: What does building socialism mean with deep market integration? Are there other framings around democracy or serving the people that aren't within a Western electoral model?

Two or three years ago, Tricontinental created a partnership with Wenhua Zongheng to produce its international edition. In addition to English, we publish in Spanish and Portuguese because, as our name suggests, we want to reach Global South audiences, and Latin America is important to us. We really wanted to be a kind of bridge—not just literally translating, but culturally translating discussions about how China sees its own development and how it sees itself in the world in this rapidly changing political conjuncture. We often invite people from Africa, Latin America, or Asia to write editorial notes and responses to Chinese thinkers. We're hoping to continue building that bridge, which is absolutely necessary in this new Cold War period.

IUS: I've been noticing that pretty much every academic in every economics department in China is trained in the Chicago school of Western economics. But then someone else said there are also all these Marxist theorists who have academic positions. There's this strange coexistence of Chicago economics and Marxist theory. Wenhua Zongheng is interesting in that it starts to give us a window into how Chinese academics and intellectuals see China's political direction—since none of the Chinese Marxists publish or write in English, certainly not in Western journals.

Tings Chak: That's an important point. At Tricontinental, we're engaged in the battle of ideas—a very active battle. Just as you said, this translates into the intellectual field. The Opening and Reform was not just economic; it entered the ideological realm. We're trying to bring a different perspective—for scholars who don't write in English or other non-Chinese languages, how do we amplify those voices and bring them into dialogue, not just those who studied in Western institutions and would tend to have more Western ways of thinking?

IUS: Many scientists around the world might equate one-party rule with authoritarianism. However, some describe China as a consultative democracy where a lot of debate and deliberation occurs within the party and outside it. How would you characterize the political system in China? Is China a democracy?

Tings Chak: This is a big and important question. It's at the crux of how we understand the emergence of different civilizations, nation-states, and the coexistence of different political systems.

To give a sense of scale: last year, the Communist Party of China surpassed 100 million members. If it were a country, it would be the 16th largest in the world by population. It's a very large institution, but the country has 1.4 billion people. Of course, not every Chinese person is a Communist Party member.

Even from the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, look at the PRC flag: the big star represents the leadership of the CPC, and the four smaller stars represent different classes of Chinese society, which actually includes the national bourgeoisie. It was never just workers and peasants aligning under the Communist Party, but also the direction by the Party of different sectors of society.

How do we answer the question of democracy? The hegemonic Western understanding is something around liberal electoral democracy—multiple parties, elections every four to six years. If you don't have that, it's supposedly an authoritarian state. That's too simplistic—and that's not even going into the crisis of electoral politics across the Western capitalist world. Are these two-party systems really more democratic than countries without that?

How can we understand China's system? Consultation is an important aspect, enshrined in the structures. We're coming up to what's called the "Two Sessions"—an annual political moment where both the legislative bodies and the consultative body come together to discuss main issues and strategies.

Let me give an example of how consultation works. The Civil Code was created in 2020. Before it was put into law, there were over 10 rounds of mass public consultation—through actual structures and increasingly online platforms where you can solicit comments on drafts. The Civil Code received over a million comments from almost half a million people on the drafts released in the years prior to adoption. There was a direct response to issues raised during those consultative processes.

There are other methods too, like social media. People say it's just censorship and controlled speech, but it's interesting how much the government cares about public opinion on social media. In 2021, during the huge floods in Henan, there was a massive social media outcry—personal videos showing inadequate warning systems, people trapped in subway tunnels. It led to swift government response: investigations into officials, looking at infrastructure improvements, different kinds of accountability. You can understand that as a kind of informal consultative process.

Maybe the last thing I'll say: last year, a European think tank—not necessarily favorable to Chinese views—released a democracy perception index. They interviewed thousands of people in China and other countries, asking if they perceive their country to be democratic. Over 80% of Chinese respondents said they believe they live in a democratic country based on their interpretation—does the government serve the people? Does it work toward meeting people's needs? The US and many Western democracies performed much worse than China.

How do Chinese people feel about their society? Is it democratic in the broader sense of government serving the people's needs? If you stop any Chinese person on the street, you would find a favorable answer. That's my own experience living in China as well.

IUS: I always think back to a Princeton study showing essentially no correlation between voting preferences and political outcomes. Elections are neither necessary nor sufficient for democracy. Elections and democracy aren't synonymous.

Tings Chak: We see this crisis increasingly—not just in the era of Trump. Are US people's opinions considered when Trump decides to invade a country like Venezuela or the other seven countries he's bombed? I don't think voters voted for those invasions. We're seeing a huge crisis in liberal electoral democracy. This is a time for deep reflection on what political systems have a right to exist and what systems actually deliver on needs that reflect everyday people's concerns.

IUS: Many people view China's reform from the 1980s as resulting in an ultra-capitalist system. However, others view the current system as socialism with Chinese characteristics. How does one reconcile these two views? Is China both highly capitalist and commercial, yet also socialist? Is China socialist?

Tings Chak: This is one of the core questions people ask—next to questions about democracy and authoritarianism, socialist or capitalist. We need to complexify these questions to understand China, a very complex society with its own problems and contradictions like any society.

One first question: who holds state power? We were talking about the Communist Party—this 100-million-person organization that runs the country. It was formed as an entity of the working class, defined at that time as industrial workers in alliance with the peasant masses. The Communist Party enjoys huge public support, linked to whether people see themselves living in a democracy. There's huge support and legitimacy based on what it has delivered—eradicating extreme poverty for 1.4 billion people, for example.

Sometimes we hear Western media headlines saying the Communist Party will fall, there'll be a color revolution. That's just not true. Chinese people are living the best 40 years they've lived in 4,000 years—from countryside to city.

That said, I think a second question is more materialist—a Marxist analysis of relations of production. The Opening and Reform period that began in the late '70s and took off in the '80s and '90s confused a lot of people on the left. Is this a restoration of capital, because capitalist elements were being reintegrated into a society that had largely removed them in the earlier Mao period?

One important thing: it wasn't shock therapy like we saw with the Soviet Union's collapse. It was much more controlled. A key principle of the Opening and Reform is "grasp the big and let go of the small." The state sector maintains firm control over strategic sectors that have never been privatized or opened to private capital. This includes energy, finance, telecommunications, transportation, infrastructure, and heavy industries—the commanding heights of the economy under Mao. The major strategic backbone is still very much state-owned. These are key for any country maintaining national sovereignty. They never sold the State Grid, CNOPC, or PetroChina. All are state-owned institutions.

The "small"—the non-strategic consumer areas, some aspects of technology to learn from the West in IT sectors—that's where private capital entered. Forty years ago, there was little to speak of. Now China is in competition in the highest advanced sectors—AI, chip-making. We have to understand where private capital enters Chinese society to assess whether it's socialist or capitalist. There are capitalist elements, but that doesn't make it a capitalist system—both from the question of who controls the state and which sectors.

I also want to take us back to what socialism is. Socialism was always understood as a transitional process. It's not communism. Marx and Engels writing The Communist Manifesto never told us how long this transition would take. In China, we're still understood to be in the primary stage of socialism—not even socialism as a whole, just the primary stage. Under the CPC's own planning, by 2049—100 years since the PRC's founding—we will leave this primary stage but still be in socialism.

This long period where private and public capital coexist has always been part of socialism. Just because there are billionaires and capitalists doesn't make the system itself capitalist. That's where socialism with Chinese characteristics is important. This has long roots, even back to Mao. In the 1950s, he talked about coexisting economies—five economies: state-owned as the backbone, but also private capitalist, state capitalist, individual, and cooperative economies. This helps us understand and complicate the socialism-versus-capitalism question. I don't think it's a useful question, and it doesn't help us understand how the Communist Party or government intervenes to guide market elements.

One article we published in Wenhua Zongheng by an economist named Meng Jie, a political economist at Fudan University, writes a fascinating article about how the new energy vehicle sector developed—exactly how the state creates what he calls "constructive markets." The state doesn't just regulate but actually constructs markets for specific strategic objectives. I highly recommend reading that for a more nuanced understanding of how the state engages in the market side of the Chinese economy.

IUS: Some think of socialism as a fixed ideological system. But articles in Wenhua Zongheng describe Chinese socialism as a process of experimentation—learning from failure. Would you say this empirical approach is a defining characteristic of Chinese socialism?

Tings Chak: I think this is especially relevant for the International Union of Scientists—you're empiricists who understand the importance of testing theory through practice. This is very much the history of the People's Republic of China and socialist construction. Deng Xiaoping framed it as "crossing the river by feeling the stones."

A country of this complexity, a civilization of 4,000 years, with such large territory—it requires experimentation. There's no one guidebook for building socialism. "Crossing the river by feeling the stones" summarizes this scientific empirical process.

The last two issues of Wenhua Zongheng before the current one on Trump 2.0 focused on Chinese socialist experimentation. There's an interesting article by someone named Li Tuo outlining this historical lineage of experimentation—from the Paris Commune, through the Soviet Union under Lenin, to how China has adapted to concrete conditions.

We see experimentation in many ways. When Opening and Reform came, it wasn't across the board or shock therapy. There was experimentation with special economic zones—Shenzhen being the most famous. It began in select coastal cities with specific geographic, historical, and economic ties. Only through creating these zones, pilot testing, then testing in nearby cities or regions, would a model be expanded to other parts of the country.

Similarly with poverty alleviation methods—different pathways are tested locally, evaluated, improved upon before applying elsewhere. You see this across all Chinese policy and implementation.

IUS: I like the idea of governance as experimentation—an empirical feedback loop. How do they balance Marxist ideology with all this experimentation?

Tings Chak: The Chinese Communist Party has, over 77 years since the PRC was formed, created different guideposts to understand main tasks under the framework of "principal contradictions"—a concept from Mao. There are many contradictions in any period, many antagonisms, but there's a principal contradiction that determines how you organize strategies and policies. That's the ideological part.

Over the last 77 years, there have been three different principal contradictions. Under Mao, it was class struggle—seizing land from landlords, land reform. In the Deng period, after huge improvements in life expectancy, education, and land reform, China was still extremely poor. So the principal contradiction shifted to rapidly expanding productive forces—a growth-at-all-costs mentality.

When Xi Jinping came in 2012, there was an official shift. Now it's not just growth at all costs but addressing unequal and uneven development—questions of inequality, the East-West divide, rural-urban gaps. This ideological framing updates as the stage of development changes, impacting how the Party implements policies.

Changing that principal contradiction brought huge focus on eradicating extreme poverty—massive redirection of human, technological, and financial resources from developed to less developed regions. It's not that there were mistakes in the past, though there's lots of self-criticism. You rechart a course based on new evidence and material conditions. You see constant updating, resetting, drawing back or expanding. It's quite fascinating to study Chinese policy this way.

IUS: Fifteen years ago, China had severe air pollution and other forms of pollution, with reports of widespread environmental protests. Now China leads in decarbonization of the energy economy. You co-edited a Wenhua Zongheng issue on environmental changes. How did addressing the crisis go from what the West reported as a protest movement to becoming an official leadership position? What does ecological civilization mean?

Tings Chak: I actually live in Beijing now. I first visited in 2005—basically the period of "apocalypse," the word used to describe the air pollution. When I visited, it was really bleak. I didn't think there would be a good solution. I thought this was the cost—the ugly side of rapid economic growth, the "Chinese miracle," which I don't like as a term—it's magical thinking rather than understanding socialist construction.

Living in Beijing now, I've had to unlearn things about what I imagined was possible with state leadership. If the Chinese Communist Party wants to take environmental problems seriously—it really does.

Looking back, around 2014, there were already efforts during the Beijing Olympics to address air pollution. People were cynical, saying it was decorative—trying to save face for tourists. But real improvements began when the War on Pollution was declared in 2014 under Li Keqiang.

From 2014 to 2022—not even a decade—improvements in air quality were equivalent to improvements in the US over 40 years. Average life expectancy increased by 2.2 years for the average Chinese person just because of air quality improvements.

How do you respond to protests, complaints, dissatisfaction with environmental problems? With very swift and decisive government action. But the idea that there was already an environmental problem preceded that. There was a very important Minister of Environmental Protection, Pan Yue, who in the late 2000s was saying China's development path was unsustainable—environmental problems would have social, economic, and political impacts that would eventually impose limits.

We see this repeated in the CPC's own understandings. In 2022 at the last major CPC congress, Xi Jinping talked about imbalanced, uncoordinated, unsustainable growth with a focus on ecological civilization.

"Ecological civilization" was brought into the Chinese constitution in 2018. Then you see policies not only on air pollution but restoration of damaged areas, desertification, and water quality. We published an article on the Erhai Lake experience in Yunnan province. There are also massive campaigns on reforestation—in the last 20 years, China planted 25% of the world's new forests or green areas. NASA has documented this; you can visibly see the greening of deserts and of China.

Ecological civilization isn't just restoring damaged areas but transitioning to a new energy economy. You see huge investments in wind, solar—China is now a leader in all these areas. Investments in new energy vehicles created an entire market ecosystem for supply and demand.

Living in Beijing or Shanghai, you're in a highly electrified city. All buses are electric. Probably half the cars on the road are electric. People visiting China say they don't hear noise pollution anymore. They worry about getting run over because they're not used to the silence from electrification.

Ecological civilization translates from a top-level understanding of the major contradictions from rapid economic expansion, understanding that the growth model has limits. It gets enshrined in the constitution and other policy-making bodies, then translates to restoration and investments in new energy—technologies, markets, supply, and public education.

One thing that's interesting: if you go to less industrialized areas, communities sometimes had to be convinced that pollution doesn't mean economic growth. They'd say, "Bring us pollution—that means jobs." Helping them understand they can skip past that stage and enter a new energy economy where "new quality productive forces"—not growth at all costs—can benefit development.

IUS: It's interesting that there was already complaining from within the Party early on. The Party has so many people and diverse thinking that there's quite a lot of discussion inside it—that party leader who was complaining about pollution from the beginning.

Tings Chak: Can I add something? Since you mentioned the Party—it's a huge organization. Everyone has a family member in the Party. There are many scientists who are Party members.

This made me think of Kong Hainan, a scientist. He really led the Erhai Lake restoration experience. He studied in Japan, learned about lake restoration technologies, then led a team when the State Council decided this was a priority project—to pilot how to restore one of the largest freshwater lakes that was on the edge of collapse.

He led scientists in 17 different units to study and understand, but it was also engaged in research. Because they're Party members, they have political and social responsibility. They would live among residents, understand pollution sources, lifestyles, fertilizer use, runoff sources. They helped build consensus from below.

They realized one main pollution source was runoff from planting a certain type of garlic special to the region, planted at the lake's edge. How do you convince people that their livelihood has something wrong in the production method? You go door-to-door, lead by example, convince your own family members first—this is the expectation of Party members leading the way, often scientists.

Later they created "Science and Technology Courtyards" in collaboration with China Agricultural University—little research centers in villages where graduate students spend two years living and working among peasant farmers. They help develop bio-inputs, natural fertilizers, resolve material questions while building consensus by being among the people. It's not parachuting in from above.

That system has been applied across the country. Professors and students engage in real material problems, getting out of classrooms and laboratories. I thought that might be interesting for this audience. It's in an article we wrote about the Erhai Lake experience.

IUS: Many IUS members are refusing contracts with arms manufacturers and opposing university-military partnerships. In China, like everywhere, there's dual-use research and a military-industrial sector. But China hasn't fought a war in decades. For scientists trying to oppose militarism, how does China connect with this? Does China's experience offer any lessons?

Tings Chak: This is the question of our times—militarism and how to oppose especially US militarism.

It's important to have a historical lens. Last year was the 80th anniversary of victory in the World Anti-Fascist War. It's often called World War II, but that's sometimes a misnomer—it looks only at the European front, framing that war from a Western lens, neglecting the Asia front and contributions of the Soviet Union or China.

Twenty-four million Chinese people died resisting Japanese fascism and aggression. The war wasn't four years—it didn't start when Nazis invaded Poland. It started in 1931 when Japan launched its first attack against China. It was a 14-year war.

How China sees peace, peaceful coexistence, and the military as a defensive measure is very much informed by this history that's alive. Every Chinese person remembers—even if they didn't live it—through family what war costs. The People's Republic of China emerges out of this period of war and devastation, 100 years of imperialist occupation, and specifically fighting Japanese fascism.

This shapes Chinese foreign policy since then. Shortly after, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence were enshrined at the Bandung Conference of 1955—which also had an anniversary last year. Peaceful coexistence, mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression—these have become principles not only of China's foreign policy but of many Global South countries that came out of independence and liberation struggles understanding the cost of war and why defending national sovereignty matters.

We see this in China's record. It basically hasn't fought a war in half a century. It engages with countries through building infrastructure via the Belt and Road Initiative or different economic and political partnerships. You don't see invasions, bombings, coups, or regime changes. You don't see mass externalization of foreign military bases around the world. It's not power projection, despite what Western media claims.

But we're living in a very dangerous period. At Tricontinental, we call it "hyperimperialism"—a decadent stage of imperialism where the US, with its decreasing influence on economic, production, and even technological and political fronts, increasingly relies on its main hegemonic arm: militarism.

In our study, we documented 92 US military bases around the world. The global military spend controlled by US or US interests is 75% of global spending. US military spending per capita is 21 times more than China's. We've seen the bombing and kidnapping of a president and first lady of a sovereign country, bombing of countries left and right.

In this moment, we have to be very alert about what the military threat in this world is—undeniably, it's US militarism against the peoples of the world. China will do everything, learning from its history, to defend its territory and people. It will invest in military capability for that defense, knowing the cost from history. Even the average Chinese person knows and wants and expects this from the government—coming out of a very shameful, humiliating, and dark history of imperialist aggression.

What we're seeing today—increasing US aggressions and this so-called new Cold War—has historical legacy.

I recently went to Okinawa as part of a small trip with people from Tricontinental Asia to understand firsthand what US militarism looks like in this region. The US has put more bases in the Philippines after 30 years of not creating new bases. New bases are being built in Okinawa, already one of the most occupied areas of the world. It has 0.6% of Japanese territory but 70% of US bases. There were communities I visited where 80% of the territory was a base. Calling it a base is actually a misnomer—it's military occupation of an entire society. They're increasing. You see places that openly display missiles, all aimed at China.

We should be very clear about where military aggression is. Even as we're seeing violent aggressions against Latin America and the Caribbean, the ultimate aim is containing China. We have to be very alert to oppose US militarism wherever it exists.

IUS: China has achieved what no socialist project has before. That also means there's no roadmap. What do you see as the genuinely open questions?

Tings Chak: So many. Of course, there are many achievements people can see in China—not just convincing Chinese people but the world, whether it's technological achievements or eradicating extreme poverty in a country so large. That's a pressing question of our time, not only in the Global South but increasingly in the Global North.

But one open question: in this heightened hyperimperialist phase, how does China continue to chart its path to advance its development? Much is still needed. When we say China is a developing country, let us not be fooled by Shanghai's skyscrapers looking like a Global North city. In rural areas and central-western areas, despite huge improvements, there's so much needed to consolidate and advance the gains made over seven decades.

The government's big focus on "new quality productive forces" links back to coming out of the growth-at-all-costs period into thinking about green energy, AI, biotechnology—areas important for China's increasing development. But this is happening while the country is under siege. It's not a hot war, but there are all aspects of hybrid warfare—tariffs, sanctions, deliberate cutting of supply chains.

How do you continue to chart a path to consolidate socialist construction, increase quality of life, advance on key sectors of new quality production, while defending the nation against much more US military and other aggressions? That's important.

There are also domestic questions—housing prices, education, youth unemployment. In the last 12 years under Xi Jinping, we've seen a leftward correction addressing many contradictions accumulated from the reform period. But there's still much that needs to be addressed on larger social questions. That's going to be something we continuously confront.

IUS: That's fantastic. Thanks so much, Tings, for explaining these things to us. Thanks again for joining.

Tings Chak: Thanks very much, Adam, and to everyone at the IUS. It was a pleasure to be here.

IUS: That's great. Thanks so much. Take care. Bye.