(Speech delivered at the “Asian Socialism Workshop: Hong Kong/Taiwan” at Sungkonghoe University, Seoul, Korea, February 27, 2015)
Qiu Shijie=추스제=邱士杰
Participants from Hong Kong and Taiwan at the workshop.
Introduction
On January 15, 2015, People’s Daily published a biographical profile focusing on Chen Mingzhong (陳明忠), a leading figure of Taiwan’s socialist-reunificationist faction.[1] In the history of People’s Daily, it was likely the first time such a lengthy article introduced a figure from Taiwan’s socialist-reunificationist movement. Shortly afterward, renowned mainland Chinese scholar Wang Hui (汪暉) also gave considerable attention to the issue of Taiwan’s reunificationists—particularly the socialist-reunificationists—in his long essay titled “The Taiwan Issue in the Great Historical Transformation of Contemporary China.” Although it is still too early to assess the implications of Taiwan’s socialist-reunificationists entering the view of mainland officials and scholars, this belated attention undoubtedly helps us reflect on the past and look to the future.
This paper focuses on how the prospect of social transformation in Taiwan has been hollowed out due to an excessive focus on the practices of the People’s Republic of China, and how an overreaction against the PRC has led to the rejection of Taiwan’s own potential for social transformation, ultimately leading to a dilemma of maintaining the status quo.
I. Several Approaches to Interpreting the Practice of Chinese Socialism
When Taiwan’s socialist movement became part of the Chinese revolution, the mainstream approach within the movement was to seek prospects for Taiwan’s social transformation through the lens of the PRC’s socialist practice, and to continually offer new interpretations or engage in debates centered on that practice. Although this is a logical extension of the “one-country socialist construction” thesis, during the era when the socialist bloc led by the Soviet Union still existed, the “one-country (China) socialist construction” perspective also served as a gateway for Taiwanese socialists to enter the international communist movement.
Wang Hui has offered his interpretation regarding the relationship between the PRC’s socialist practice and Taiwan’s socialist movement. He essentially divides the history of the PRC into two periods, asserting that socialist practice suffered setbacks in the earlier period, leading to a new era in which socialism increasingly became a kind of “legacy.” The transition of the PRC from the earlier to the later period, according to Wang, also brought serious setbacks to Taiwan’s socialist-reunificationists. At the same time, he argues that Taiwan’s anti-communist reunificationists also declined due to changes in Sino-American-Soviet relations. Wang Hui’s analysis essentially treats Taiwan as a methodological tool—a route to reinterpret Chinese socialist practice. The focus, in other words, is not so much Taiwan itself, but the Chinese mainland that is rearticulated through the lens of Taiwan.
Thus, while Wang Hui’s analysis helps explain some aspects of the historical situation, on the whole he adopts an approach that neglects Taiwan’s internal factors. He simplifies the weakening of Taiwan’s various pro-reunification factions as consequences externally induced by the PRC, thereby implying that various forms of separatism (Taiwan independence and “Taiwan-centrism”) have risen in response to this weakening. However, in the actual context of Taiwan, the only genuine reunificationist faction is the socialist-reunificationist one—and this force has always been quite marginal, not something that only declined recently. Moreover, over the past three decades, the contraction of reunificationist forces, the modest growth of Taiwan independence, and the dramatic expansion of Taiwan-centrism do not form a necessary causal chain; each has its own decisive material foundations. Therefore, although internal political developments and external diplomatic shifts in the PRC may have influenced various reunificationist factions, to truly explain the rise of separatism—especially the emergence of Taiwan-centrism as the dominant mode of separatism—one must look elsewhere. For example, one could explain it by analyzing how postwar Taiwan, as a new colony under U.S.-Japanese influence, underwent capitalist transformation and thereby reshaped its internal class structure.
Wang Hui’s logic of historical periodization is essentially consistent with frameworks such as the “Two Thirty Years,” all of which approach the issue by identifying a rupture in the socialist practice of the PRC. A new conceptual entry point he has recently adopted in addressing this issue is the notion of the “workers’ state.” In Wang Hui’s usage, the “workers’ state” is associated with a certain kind of socialist practice, and the gradual “bankruptcy” of the workers’ state after the end of the Cultural Revolution marks the progressive disappearance of that socialist practice. In other words, Wang Hui uses the concept of the “workers’ state” to rearticulate a periodization of the PRC’s history into “old” and “new” periods.
However, Wang’s use of the concept of the “workers’ state” departs significantly from its original meaning. As is well known, the term “workers’ state” is more commonly used within Trotskyist discourse and is essentially equivalent to the notion of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” The reason Trotskyists prefer this term is to highlight the possibility (or even inevitability) that the “workers’ state” may produce—or tolerate—non-socialist outcomes in practice. These outcomes are often linked to the workers’ state’s failure to carry out social transformation to its fullest extent. For instance, after the establishment of a workers’ state, it might coexist with other classes (such as smallholding peasants) in conditions where the means of production have not yet been fully collectivized. Even when the most socialist-oriented form of collectivization is achieved, if the workers’ state becomes bureaucratized and transforms into what Trotskyists call a “deformed workers’ state,” its actions cannot be automatically labeled as “socialist.” In short, preserving a normative and idealized space for “socialism” is precisely why Trotskyists prefer the term “workers’ state” over “socialist state” or “socialist society.”
Although Wang Hui’s theory of the “workers’ state” differs considerably from the original Trotskyist formulation, one could say that both offer differing interpretations of the PRC’s historical development. Wang Hui’s theory represents a “socialism suffered setbacks” position, using the division between old and new periods as its structural backbone. By contrast, the original theory of the workers’ state corresponds to a “socialism yet to be realized” position. According to this view, the entire history of the PRC to date need not be divided into two periods, but can be understood as the continued existence of a workers’ state that has become increasingly bureaucratically deformed—a process always harboring both revolutionary potential and the risk of counterrevolution.
While the marginalization of Taiwan’s socialist movement is primarily determined by internal factors—such as a century of colonial and neo-colonial experiences, White Terror repression, and the postwar class structure—rather than by the series of revolutionary setbacks emphasized by Wang Hui (such as the failure of the Cultural Revolution, the reform and opening-up, and the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown), it is true that these Chinese revolutionary setbacks have deepened or even caused splits within Taiwan’s socialist ranks. These divisions not only emerged between pro-reunification and pro-independence positions, but each line also anchored itself in either the “socialism suffered setbacks” thesis or the “socialism not yet realized” perspective, depending on subjective identifications. Notably, many of Taiwan’s right-wing figures also share these two interpretive frameworks and use them as rhetorical weapons to criticize China. This appropriation of leftist theory by the right reflects, on the one hand, how the Chinese revolution is internally entangled with Taiwan, and on the other, the weakness of Taiwan’s socialist movement—which has been too feeble to firmly claim discursive authority over either perspective.
A representative figure of the “socialism suffered setbacks” position is Hsu Teng-yuan (許登源), who identifies as part of the so-called “overseas Taiwanese leftist movement.” Hsu was an active participant in the Taiwan independence and China reunification movements of the 1970s. However, after the end of the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of the reform era, he began vehemently criticizing the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s line. From his perspective, China’s socialist practice has suffered significant setbacks, and therefore, it is necessary to criticize the revisionist line of the new era—such as the CPC’s post-reform conceptual separation between “communism” and “socialism” under the so-called “socialist system theory.” As Hsu puts it: “From my point of view, socialism and communism are essentially the same thing—just two terms for the same process. ‘Socialism’ primarily refers to the transition, the process, while ‘communism’ typically designates the ultimate goal. The development of society as a whole moves from the pre-communist stage toward the communist stage.” Therefore, “socialism is not a system.”[2]
Hsu Teng-yuan’s above critique clearly reflects his inheritance of Mao Zedong’s “Great Transition” thesis. According to the logic of the “Great Transition,” the entire period from the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat (i.e., the workers’ state) until the eventual withering away of the dictatorship is considered a transitional period—one in which the risk of counterrevolutionary restoration is ever present, and the revolution can fail.[3] In contrast, the “Small Transition” thesis—typified by the Stalinist model—defines the transitional period more narrowly, encompassing only the time from the establishment of proletarian rule to the collectivization of the means of production and the elimination of the exploiting classes.[4] The “Great Transition” formed the theoretical foundation for Mao’s launching of the Cultural Revolution. According to this perspective, revolution is not irreversible; it does not mean that after the “small transition,” the rest is a perpetual festival. Yet since the Cultural Revolution was a cultural revolution rather than a social or economic one, it also implied that Mao in fact acknowledged that socialism had been preliminarily established at the social and economic levels following the small transition (which is precisely why there was something to “defend” during the Cultural Revolution).[5]
If the unique vision of the Cultural Revolution era was to affirm both the provisional realization of socialism and the possibility of its collapse, then that vision was dismantled after the failure of the Cultural Revolution. For the CPC, it remained necessary to affirm the reality of socialism’s preliminary establishment, which is why it repackaged the post-reform policy shift in the theoretical form of the “primary stage of socialism,”[6] rather than adopting the “New Democracy” thesis, which might have better matched the substance of the new line but would have signified a theoretical regression. In short, the more socialism can be depicted as a tangible, nameable system, the better. But for the “socialism encountered setbacks” thesis and the “socialism not yet realized” thesis, the reality of socialism’s preliminary achievement no longer exists. Whether it never existed in the first place, or later ceased to exist, the point is: it no longer exists now.
Although the “socialism not yet realized” thesis does not, in itself, carry inherently positive or negative connotations, in the majority of cases in Taiwan it tends to function as a means of criticizing the CPC—and at times even serves as a rationale for rejecting reunification.
In recent years, the “socialism not yet realized” thesis has taken on new forms. A representative formulation is the “wartime preparedness system” proposed by Chen Mingzhong, a leading figure of Taiwan’s socialist-reunificationist faction. Chen argues that post-1949 China established a wartime preparedness system aimed at resisting imperialism and hegemony. While this system is not itself socialism, the long-term leadership of the Communist Party could ensure that the system would “move toward socialism” (he characterizes the current situation in China as one of state capitalism under CPC leadership). Although Chen is not well-versed in the theory of the workers’ state, his analysis, which focuses on the progressive or regressive nature of the superstructure as a basis for assessing the future of Chinese socialism, is in fact very similar in logic to that of the workers’ state theory.[7]
Chen’s “socialism not yet realized” thesis takes the “socialism encountered setbacks” thesis as its interlocutor. Precisely because some theorists argue that socialist practice in China “encountered setbacks,” Chen responds by asserting that “socialism has not yet been realized,” and therefore “there are no setbacks to speak of.” In other words, Chen’s effort to propose his own version of the “socialism not yet realized” thesis highlights just how deeply the “socialism encountered setbacks” thesis has shaped Taiwanese socialist thinking. Whether or not the practice of the Chinese revolution truly possesses a “socialist” character is ultimately beside the point. What matters is this: because the Chinese revolution achieved actual social transformation, and because “socialism” is generally understood to mean social transformation, the practices of the Chinese revolution were naturally perceived by many Taiwanese socialists as “socialism”—and even became the symbolic object of aspiration in their pursuit of Taiwan’s own social transformation. In this sense, when the vision of Taiwan’s social transformation disappears from Beijing’s policy toward Taiwan, and when the social transformation accomplished by the Chinese revolution becomes increasingly difficult to evaluate, it also becomes more and more difficult to imagine Taiwan’s social transformation from the perspective of an “entire China” that includes Taiwan.
For today’s Taiwanese socialists, the greatest challenge lies in the absence of any concrete vision for social transformation in Taiwan. Not only is there a lack of thinking from the perspective of social transformation for “all of China, including Taiwan,” but even proposals focused solely on Taiwan itself—what might be called an “island-based transformation thesis”—are virtually nonexistent. The term “island-based transformation thesis” was coined by Chen Yingzhen to describe the orientation of thinkers such as Hsu Teng-yuan, who advocate the “socialism encountered setbacks” position. He characterized them as holding an “island-based transformation” line because, after the failure of the Cultural Revolution and the launch of economic reforms, they engaged in intense critiques of China, adopting a posture resembling that of socialist-leaning separatists. However, strictly speaking, while Hsu and others formulated relatively systematic critiques of China, they did not explain how social transformation might actually occur within Taiwan itself. Thus, in a strict sense, an “island-based transformation thesis” does not truly exist. The key reason, of course, is that they are not separatists.[8] Conversely, even socialist-reunificationists such as Chen Mingzhong and Chen Yingzhen—despite their strong Chinese vision and attempts to theorize Taiwan’s transformation within a broader framework of “all China”—ultimately ended up focusing only on whether the CPC practice was good or bad, without offering a concrete proposal for how Taiwanese society, as part of a unified China, might achieve transformation. In this sense, one could argue that Taiwan’s socialist-reunificationists have not fully lived up to their responsibility as advocates of reunification.
While the lack of a transformative vision is primarily the result of theoretical and practical limitations, it is also largely due to the fact that Taiwan’s future cannot realistically be considered in isolation from the rest of China. Since the late 1970s, the CPC has removed “exporting revolution” from its cross-strait policy agenda and instead centered its “One Country, Two Systems” approach on “maintaining the status quo.” As a result, the possibility of imagining Taiwan’s social transformation from the perspective of “an entire China including Taiwan” has been objectively undermined. This, in turn, has rendered the very question of Taiwan’s transformation increasingly unthinkable. The passive aspect of the current CPC policy toward Taiwan lies precisely in this.
In fact, viewed historically, the CPC’s practice of “One Country, Two Systems” has not always centered on “maintaining the status quo.” Take Tibet as an example: prior to 1959, Tibet implemented a textbook case of One Country, Two Systems. Even after 1959, the principle remained. When Tibet launched democratic reforms in 1959, the vast majority of other regions in China had already undergone socialist transformation. Tibet’s own socialist transformation did not begin until 1970.[9] In other words, between 1959 and 1970, Tibet implemented a form of social transformation adapted to its own socioeconomic conditions, rather than blindly following the pace of transformation in other regions. This experience in Tibet should serve as a valuable reference point for the Taiwan issue.
If One Country, Two Systems is to function effectively in Taiwan, it must be oriented toward Taiwan’s social transformation. Even if the content of this transformation differs from that of the mainland, it must nonetheless dismantle Taiwan’s current status quo. In this regard, One Country, Two Systems could very well become a path for future Taiwanese socialists to imagine Taiwan’s transformation. Conversely, if one wishes to address the current crisis that One Country, Two Systems is facing in Hong Kong, then dismantling the status quo in Hong Kong must also be the only possible path forward.
II. Taiwan’s Diverging Paths: “Maintaining the Status Quo” or Social Transformation?
In general, the lack of vision for social transformation among Taiwanese socialists is not only due to their own low level of theoretical and practical development, but also stems largely from two external factors: first, that the socialist practice of the mainland either cannot or refuses to offer such a vision; and second, the general compromise that most of the global left has made with reality since the decline of the international workers’ movement in the 1990s. The former has led to Taiwanese versions of both the “socialism not yet realized” thesis and the “socialism encountered setbacks” thesis; the latter has resulted in many Taiwanese socialists passively conforming, to varying degrees, to the dominant public sentiment of “maintaining the status quo.”
The 2014 anti–Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement (CSSTA) movement was a typical “status quo” movement. By rejecting the People’s Republic of China, and consequently rejecting the social transformation that would inevitably be brought about by deeper cross-strait economic integration, the movement positioned “maintaining the status quo” as a solution to Taiwan’s political predicament. The “status quo” it aimed to preserve includes continued cross-strait division, Taiwan’s ongoing status as a new colony under U.S.-Japanese influence, and the sustained profitability of Taiwanese capitalists (and thereby Taiwan as a whole) under that arrangement. Many commentators, including Wang Hui, viewed the mainland’s economic concessions to Taiwanese capital as the primary driver of warmer cross-strait relations since 2008, and interpreted the anti-CSSTA protests as a failure of that logic of concession. Yet from a historical perspective, the logic of concession did not begin in 2008. From the separation of the two sides in 1949 to the mid-1980s, cross-strait trade was nearly nonexistent and could only occur through intermediaries and transshipment points. After the mid-1980s, trade resumed, but it would be more accurate to say that the dominant axis of this revival was the mainland offering economic concessions that enabled Taiwanese capital to invest in China and exploit its cheap labor. This kind of trade relationship was not intended to overcome the structural economic separation created during the previous thirty years, but rather to extract as much profit as possible from it while it remained usable. Thus, genuine cross-strait economic integration did not exist during the first thirty years, nor was it realized in the subsequent thirty. What was realized was a peace mechanism built on the immense profits that Taiwanese capitalists reaped in China, preventing the outbreak of war.[10] Therefore, instead of dating the logic of concession to 2008, one should trace it back to the mid-1980s. That such a logic was even possible owes itself to the deep structural division created after 1949 by the Cold War and civil war, and Taiwan’s resulting dependence on the U.S.-Japan economic bloc. Thus, any critique of the concessionary logic must necessarily critique this historical division, which is what made that logic possible in the first place.
Before debating whether Taiwan’s social transformation should be imagined as a localized, island-based project or as one rooted in the vision of an integrated China, the most pressing issue facing Taiwanese socialists is the question of cross-strait economic integration—because such integration necessarily renders the status quo unsustainable. In fact, cross-strait integration constitutes the PRC’s new entry point into the problem of Taiwan’s transformation. The Labor Party and other socialist-reunificationists have argued that the left cannot ignore the employment opportunities created by such integration, nor assume that unemployed workers are somehow more revolutionary than employed ones. However, they also reject the idea that cross-strait integration will produce the so-called “trickle-down effect” touted by Ma Ying-jeou—a rhetoric that fuses “economic concessions” with the logic of mutual benefit for capital and labor. The socialist-reunificationist position holds that labor’s engagement with integration should not be to reject it outright, but rather to intensify class struggle in everyday life. Only through such struggle can workers seize the benefits produced by integration. Unfortunately, apart from the socialist-reunificationist camp, the rest of the so-called “left” has fallen into a simplistic equation: trade = free trade = neoliberalism. These forces have rebranded “local protectionism” as a supposedly leftist stance and put it forward as a political line. This uncritical equation not only ignores the fact that cross-strait trade is still fundamentally unequal, but also whitewashes the massive profits Taiwanese capitalists have extracted from this inequality over the past thirty years. As such, these “leftists” who adopt local protectionism are, in reality, nothing more than attack dogs for Taiwanese capitalists resisting foreign capital—nothing more, nothing less. Worse still, because many grassroots unions opposed the anti-CSSTA movement, these “leftists” rebranded their position as “anti–free trade” in an effort to muddy the waters and escape scrutiny.[11]
Although the anti-CSSTA movement was quintessentially a “status quo” movement, it was dressed up in so many seemingly fresh and novel elements that many perceived it as an embodiment of new politics. Some scholars highly praised the students’ occupation of the Legislative Yuan, viewing it as a rejection of representative politics. But this interpretation ignores the fact that representative politics can easily tolerate such low-level symbolic rejections. Parliament was never paralyzed. In fact, one could argue that the occupation actually reinforced the legitimacy of Taiwan’s representative system. Moreover, the more the students tried to distinguish themselves from mainstream parties (particularly the Democratic Progressive Party and KMT legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng), the more entangled they became. From then until now, the students have never displayed a truly independent posture from the mainstream political parties; on the contrary, they often functioned as a supplement to those parties.[12] A similar logic applies to the students’ stance on violence. From the March 18 Legislative Yuan occupation to the September 28 Occupy Central protests in Hong Kong, students have consistently championed “nonviolence.” But “nonviolence” in these contexts is actually a coded call for violence—whether state violence or counterviolence against the state. The closer one’s essence is to something, the more insistently one must draw a line to separate oneself from it. This is the shared logic from 3/18 to 9/28.
From 3/18 in Taiwan to 9/28 in Hong Kong, neither movement succeeded in mobilizing the working class. But the terrain of class struggle in each locale remains significantly different.
First, regarding the “left”: In Taiwan, the intensification of economic crisis has sharpened social contradictions, so many student movements—including the anti-CSSTA protests—have been eager to label themselves as “leftist.” In other words, the weakness of Taiwan’s socialist movement has created a situation in which even nativists whose ideas border on fascism can appropriate the “leftist” label. This phenomenon stands in stark contrast to Hong Kong, where localists have been bold in attacking “left plastic” (zuo jiao)—even if these so-called “leftists” were not genuine leftists.
Second, regarding counter-movements: In Taiwan, the anti-CSSTA protests generated a climate of near-total ideological conformity, leaving almost no room for dissent. Even those with opposing views mostly acquiesced to the dominant discourse through silence. In Hong Kong, by contrast, a counter–Occupy Central movement emerged in the streets. No matter how mainstream media smeared these anti-Occupy protesters as gangsters or police lackeys, their presence revealed a level of mass power that simply does not exist in Taiwan. Without a doubt, this force responded with its own violence to the space Occupy Central had long reserved for violence, thereby reinforcing the movement’s self-fashioned legitimacy. Yet if we abandon any effort to positively assess and understand this kind of mass force, we will be poorly equipped to grasp the future trajectory and possibilities of mass movements in Hong Kong.
III. National Reunification and Economic Integration — A Concluding Note
South Korean Marxist economist Park Hyun Chae (朴玄埰) once articulated his vision of an ideal “autonomous national economy” in the context of debates over Korean capitalism. He proposed four key elements:
The autonomous establishment of the conditions for reproduction of the national economy;
The formation of a self-sufficient, self-regulating mechanism of reproduction;
The institutionalization of a mechanism whereby the fruits of economic growth are distributed among the people and the nation;
The unification of the national economy (kukmin gyeongje) and the ethnic or national economy (minjok gyeongje) [13].
—Among these, the fourth point is particularly noteworthy: Park’s distinction between a national economy and a national/ethnic economy. His proposal was that national capital should control the key conditions of a country’s economic reproduction, excluding foreign capital from dominating the national economy, and preventing the outflow of economic surplus. Instead, surplus should circulate internally within the members of the same ethnic nation. In this way, North and South Korea could form a mutually complementary, autonomous, and self-contained reproductive economic unit, rendering the opposition between the two national economies gradually meaningless.
In Taiwan, the figure with the most similar views to Park Hyun Chae was Chen Yingzhen, who advocated for the formation of a cross-strait ethnic/national reproduction zone. However, strictly speaking, Chen’s theory of ethnic reproduction may not have been directly influenced by the Korean debates on capitalism.
(1) Chen Yingzhen did not distinguish between a national economy and an ethnic economy. His vision of forming a pan-national economic zone across the Taiwan Strait was entirely a counter-conception derived from Taiwan’s dependency on the U.S.-Japan economic bloc. In other words, if Taiwan could be economically dependent on the U.S. and Japan, then it could certainly “return” to the economic orbit of the motherland.
(2) Chen rarely discussed how a division of labor internal to the ethnic nation might be structured across the strait. For him, as long as cross-strait economic exchange continued, a national economic zone could be formed. But as discussed earlier in this paper: to this day, Taiwan’s condition for engaging in trade with the mainland has always been the prevention of any genuinely reciprocal or mutually beneficial integration. Nearly thirty years of “concessionary logic” have only demonstrated that even if both sides of the strait belong to the same ethnic nation, a functional national economic zone still cannot be formed.
The prospects for Taiwan’s social transformation may well lie within the possibility of genuine economic integration across the strait. For Taiwanese socialists, it is thus an urgent task to confront head-on the structural rupture created by the Cold War and civil war, to break out of the theoretical trap that equates “trade = free trade = neoliberalism,” and to reclaim interpretive authority over regional economic integration. Inevitably, this task will continue to revolve around a renewed round of debate on the nature of contemporary Chinese society—centered on the theses of “socialism encountered setbacks” versus “socialism not yet realized.” Judging from the reverberations of the recent anti-CSSTA protests across the Taiwan Strait, it is clear that the current theoretical capacity of the left on both sides remains insufficient to support a full-fledged debate on the nature of Chinese society today. The anti-CSSTA movement, which sought to preserve Taiwan’s current status, has already shown through its own contradictions just how unstable the “status quo” truly is. The situation is pressing. All those around the world who care about how divided nations might achieve national reunification should actively engage with this issue. History is once again preparing to reorganize our ranks.
[1] Sun Liji, “He Deserves the Suffering He Endured—A Profile of Taiwan’s Prominent Reunificationist Chen Mingzhong,” People’s Daily, January 15, 2015, p. 19.
[2] He Qing [Hsu Teng-yuan], Modern Dialectics: A New Interpretation of Capital (Taipei: Weixiu Publishing, 2007), p. 229.
[3] Mao Zedong: “At the 1962 7,000 Cadres Conference, I said: ‘The struggle between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism has yet to be decided; it is entirely possible that revisionism may win and we may lose. Acknowledging the possibility of failure is helpful in raising our vigilance against revisionism, which is beneficial for anti-revisionist struggle…’ In reality, the two-line struggle between two classes within the Communist Party has always existed and cannot be denied by anyone.” See: Mao Zedong, “Talk with the Albanian Military Delegation” (May 1967), in Long Live Mao Zedong Thought (1961–1968), p. 311. For further discussion on Mao’s notion of “possible defeat” in relation to the linear view of historical evolution, see Luo Gang’s response to Italian scholar Russo: Luo Gang, The People Above All: From ‘People as Masters of the Country’ to ‘Common Prosperity’ (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2012), pp. 159–160.
[4] For a brief discussion, see: Xue Hanwei, “Key Debates on the Notions of Intermediate Transition, Small Transition, and Great Transition,” Scientific Socialism, no. 5 (1987).
[5] The fate of “socialist political economy” after 1949 illustrates the coexistence of the “great transition” and “small transition” theses. Like in the Soviet Union, China’s socialist political economy enumerated the “basic economic laws” following the conclusion of the small transition period, emphasizing their superiority and irreversibility. Yet at the same time, there was no settled definition of what constituted the “socialist mode of production.” In Xu Dixin’s Dictionary of Political Economy, for example, the term is explained only through references to other entries. This reflects how socialism, under the lens of the great transition thesis, resists schematization. Hsu Teng-yuan’s claim that “socialism is not a system” also expresses this logic. Mao Zedong’s decision to rename the “Socialist Cultural Revolution” to the “Proletarian Cultural Revolution” reflected his awareness of socialism’s conceptual ambiguity. More broadly, Mao’s critique of Liu Shaoqi’s efforts to “consolidate the New Democratic economic order,” and his skepticism toward constitutionalism (arguing that socialist transition could not proceed strictly according to the constitution), can all be understood as manifestations of the great transition thesis.
[6] The “primary stage of socialism” thesis also implies a kind of irreversibility once socialism is achieved—aligning it with the same logic that affirms the superiority of the “socialist mode of production.”
[7] Chen Mingzhong, The Road to Socialism in China (Taipei: Renjian Publishing, 2011).
[8] Some may argue that a true “island-based transformation thesis” does exist. But to what extent do these versions differ from the existing Blue-Green (KMT–DPP) political framework?
[9] See: “Directive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Policy for Work in Tibet” (April 21, 1961), and “Directive of the Central Committee on the Question of Socialist Transformation in Tibet” (December 8, 1970).
[10] However, this peace mechanism does not constrain the PRC. Taiwanese capital investment in China has not played a decisive role in the mainland’s economic development. Over the past three decades, China’s economic growth has mainly relied on domestic investment. Therefore, the mainland still retains the full capacity to regard “armed liberation” as the final solution to the Taiwan issue.
[11] Throughout the anti-CSSTA movement, the leadership transformed it into a “movement against the trade pact that was not really against the trade pact,” shifting its main demand toward “procedural justice” rather than opposition to the agreement itself. As for some so-called “leftists” who merely functioned as appendages to the leadership, they initially called for “opposing free trade through opposition to the CSSTA,” but later used abstract condemnations of “free trade” to avoid concretely addressing the CSSTA. In short, both the leadership and these “tail-leftists” evaded substantive discussion of the agreement.
[12] What stood out most during the entire anti-CSSTA movement was not the March 18 occupation of the Legislative Yuan, but rather the March 23 storming of the Executive Yuan. By March 23, the Legislative Yuan occupation had already lost momentum, but the surprise action at the Executive Yuan reversed the decline and disrupted the mainstream parties’ political calculations.
[13] Park Hyun Chae, “The Direction of an Autonomous National Economy as a Theory of Reunification,” in Kenkichi Honda (ed.), The Debate on Korean Capitalism (Tokyo: Sekai Shoin, 1990), pp. 132–133.
