No. 1, 2020

CONTENTS

A Banner of Contemporary Trends and Cultural-Ethical ProgressChen Li（1）

Capitalizing on Institutional Advantages and Governance Effectiveness in Response to Major Changes in the New Era    Han Qingxiang（14）

Development and Governance： Two Approaches to Examining Socialism with Chinese CharacteristicsLiu Jianjun（21）

Multi-Perspective Thinking on Institution Building in the New EraChen Jinlong（27）

Editing and Researching MEGA2， Part II， Vol. 12 and 13  Omura Izumi（40）

On the Foundation of Historical Materialism in Marxian Political Philosophy Wu Xiaoming（47）

Maurice Blanchot and the Tradition of “Discontinuity”： An Interview with Alain Milon

Zhao Yong & Zhao Tianshu（83）

Why Is It Necessary to Revisit Henri Lefebvre Today？ Liu Huaiyu（93）

The Logic and Experience of the Evolution of the Farmland Management Rights System in the People’s Republic of China  Chen Xiaofeng & Chen Ruixu（155）

The Advantages and Execution of the New System of Political Parties：an Analysis from the Perspective of the CPPCC    Luo Feng（177）

MAIN ABSTRACTS

Comments on Promoting the Human Community with a Shared Future

Chen Li, et al.

To mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and give full play to the unique role of the national think tank of the Beijing-based CPC Central Committee Institute of Party History and Literature in guidance on public communication, the think tank held the Think Tank Forum for Marking the 70th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic of China and Promoting the Human Community with a Shared Future in Beijing on November 18, 2019.

Attending the meeting were think tank researchers from the Institute’s departments, and famous scholars from universities and other think tanks such as the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, Peking University and Wuhan University.

The attendees carried out in-dept discussion on the themes including the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the theoretical connotation and practical achievements of promoting the human community with a shared future from the perspectives of theoretical positioning and analysis, preservation and innovation of ideas, foreign translation strategies, external communication practices, and “Belt and Road Initiative” practice.

Capitalizing on Institutional Advantages and Governance Effectiveness in Response to Major Changes in the New Era

Han Qingxiang

The resolution adopted at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee is a programmatic document that uses the advantages of national institutions and the effectiveness of national governance to respond to risks and challenges amidst major changes in the new era. Three major conclusions can be drawn from the resolution, namely, highlighting institutional advantages with achievements and experiences, supporting the rule of China with the Chinese system, and responding to the contemporary changes with the rule of China.

One of the most distinctive innovations of the Resolution is that it provides the first-ever systematic summary of 13 remarkable advantages of China’s national institutions and its national governance system. The advantages include:

· centralized and unified CPC leadership,

· the people-centered value orientation,

· the strategy of carrying the blueprint through to the end,

· the ability to concentrate resources on implementation,

· the ability to pool national resources for major missions,

· the organizational framework and system that are interconnected, highly efficient, widely connected, and strong in execution,

· the general principle of pursuing progress while ensuring stability,

· the dominant basic system that combines primary and secondary aspects and ensures that they complement each other,

· ethnic unity that ensures all ethnic groups develop the ideal that the Chinese nation is a community formed by them all, and work together for common prosperity and development,

· the governance strategy that can consciously grasp the main social problem, solve fundamental problems and define work priorities, and

·the principle that the CPC commands the gun.

The 13 remarkable advantages have inherent logic. They first emphasize the essential characteristics and overall leadership of the system of upholding centralized and unified CPC leadership, ensuring the people run the country, and governing the country based on law. This is the general principle and soul of the other 12 advantages and leads them all. Due to its essential characteristics and overall leadership, this system will inevitably endogenously develop overall effectiveness and functions. That is, it will promote national coordination and arouse the enthusiasm of all to pool resources for major missions.

The overall effectiveness and functions of this system are manifested and realized not only through its national characteristics and common struggle, but also through its strategic goals and overall layout and through its quality and overall vitality. The overall effectiveness and functions of the system, its national characteristics and common struggle, its strategic goals and overall layout, and its quality and overall vitality all need to have a comprehensive institutional guarantee. It is necessary to better translate the advantages of national institutions into the effectiveness of national governance.

Since the founding of the CPC, it has worked hard to address evils with the rule of China, and has made every effort to become a strong political party that is loved and supported by the people.

Development and Governance: Two Approaches to Examining Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

Liu Jianjun

At the Fourth Plenary Session of its 19th Central Committee, the CPC highlighted the issue of national governance and defined the goals and tasks of China’s national governance in the new era. In addition, when reviewing the historical achievements the People’s Republic of China has made over the past 70 years, the CPC spoke of the two miracles in China: rapid economic development and long-term social stability. This is great theoretical significance: socialism with Chinese characteristics can be approached from two dimensions. One is development with the degree of economic and social development as the standard, and the other is governance with the level of national social governance as the standard.

In the past, development has been emphasized as a standard. This is reasonable, but if governance is neglected as a standard, a comprehensive understanding and evaluation of socialism with Chinese characteristics cannot be reached. Taking governance as an important dimension, and linking it with development to form dual dimensions has a solid theoretical foundation: Chinese history and culture highlight the dimension of governance, so taking “governance” and “disorder” as evaluation criteria is reasonable; Marxist theory not only emphasizes productivity and economic development, but also pays great attention to social relations and national governance. Taking development and governance as dual dimensions for evaluating socialism with Chinese characteristics is of great methodological value. This helps comprehensively review the historical achievements the People’s Republic of China have made over the past 70 years, especially over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, comprehensively grasp the objectives and missions of adhering to and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, and fully understand the rich connotation of building a human community with a shared future. This also helps deepen the understanding of some important theoretical issues from the perspective of historical materialism and scientific socialism, such as the rich connotation of social progress, the conditions of the socialist revolution, and the superiority of the socialist system.

Multi-Perspective Thinking on Institution Building in the New Era

Chen Jinlong

The planning and layout for institution building in the new era made at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee are based on strategic thinking, historical thinking, systematic thinking, dialectical thinking, rule of law thinking and innovative thinking.

It is strategic thinking to plan institution building as a strategic task and create a layout for it amidst major changes in the international situation of a kind unseen in a century. It is historical thinking to interpret the historical and cultural foundation of the formation of national institutions and governance systems, review the historical experiences in institutional evolution, and reveal institutional support for China’s two miracles of rapid economic development and long-term social stability. It is systematic thinking to define the significant advantages, overall objectives and key tasks of national institutions and governance systems. It is dialectical thinking to combine institutional preservation and innovation, the scientific nature and value of institutions, and institutional making and execution. It is rule of law thinking to take the law-based governance as a significant advantage, emphasize the combination of the rule of law with the rule of virtue, and attach importance to developing the rule of law system and raising public awareness of the rule of law. It is innovative thinking to define the level and meaning of institutions, and the key tasks of institution building.

Fully grasping the thinking method for promoting institution building in the new era is conducive to developing the specific practice of institution building.

On the Foundation of Historical Materialism in Marxian Political Philosophy

Wu Xiaoming

The development of contemporary issues and the introduction of contemporary political philosophic topics have led to an unprecedented increase in the research interest in Marxian political philosophy. The ideology of modernity and its dominant form of knowledge pose tremendous obstacles to implementing historical materialism in political philosophy. The mythology of ideology is the main obstacle, which has modern concepts or categories, especially justice, equality, and freedom, as its entire theoretical foundation.

In contrast, the firm foundation of Marxian political philosophy is not any or all of the world of ideas, but social-historical reality. The standpoint of historical materialism, while critically appropriating Hegel’s concept of reality, reveals the abstract universality based on sacred ideas as a kind of trans-historical illusion, that is, “the primordial intention, the mystical tendency, the providential aim.” Therefore, to research political philosophy in the name of Marx, the most important thing is to engage with social-historical reality to show its ideological line and theoretical tasks so that while a truly critical dialogue is conducted with contemporary thought, the contemporary significance of Marx’s political philosophy can be clarified in a positive way.

Why Is It Necessary to Revisit Henri Lefebvre Today?

Liu Huaiyu

Why is it necessary to revisit Henri Lefebvre today? Because he was either forgotten, misunderstood, reproduced, or believed to have many ideas and great practical potential. In other words, Lefebvre was abandoned by structuralism, post-Marxism, and neoliberal dystopia; transformed by post-modernism and post-Marxism; urbanized and globalized; and finally got involved in the radical new dialectics of Marxism in the 21st century.

With regard to the potential of Lefebvre’s thinking, this article explains, based only on his book The Production of Space, that it is a post-modern misunderstanding to consider ternary space dialectics as the core of this book. Actually, the most valuable thought of this book is to reveal the social problems or spatial problems exposed by the abstract space of capitalism from the historical perspective of space.

The Logic and Experience of the Evolution of the Farmland Management Rights System in the People’s Republic of China

Chen Xiaofeng and Chen Ruixu

During the 70 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, China’s farmland management rights system has evolved from being owned and run by farmers to being owned and run by the collective, being owned by the collective and run by families, and being owned by the collective and run by multiple operators. The evolution is characterized by its bi-direction—from top to bottom and the other way around, the gradualness of evolution, and the negation of negation.

The evolution of the farmland management rights system is the result of the interaction of different factors such as the adjustment of the national development strategy, the transformation of economic operation mechanisms and the pursuit of management system performance. It has accumulated extensive experience for improving China’s farmland management rights system. To further the reform of this system, it is necessary to improve the powers and function of farmland management rights, develop a transfer mechanism for these rights that combines market allocation and macro-control, cultivate new agricultural management entities, and strengthen the system and capacity for rural governance.

Integration and Flow of Rural Production Factors since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China:Evolution and Relevance

Chen Yishan

Before the inception of reform and opening up in 1978, the People’s Republic of China achieved a high level of integration of scattered production factors in rural areas. This provided strong support for national industrialization and overall development, but it also restricted the freedom of flow for rural labor and curtailed rural income growth.

Since the inception of reform and opening up, the mobility of rural production factors has increased, their outflow has occurred in large quantities, and rural labor income have increased. However, many hollow villages have also emerged. History shows that the integration and flow of rural production factors are not mutually exclusive, and coordinating and unifying them will be more conducive to promoting rural development and improving rural residents' lives. Under CPC leadership, it is necessary to continue to develop and improve the collective ownership of rural land and integrate rural production factors in various forms. Meanwhile, the two-way and mutually beneficial mode of factor flow between cities and villages should be strengthened to promote rural revitalization and urban-rural coordination.

The Advantages of the New Party System and the Exploitation of the Consultative Resources of the CPPCC

Luo Feng

There are several advantages lying in China’s new party system, such as true representation, effective mobilization, high-level integration and tremendous inclusiveness. As a special consultative body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference(CPPCC) sets the structural conditions for its operation, namely, the goal orientation of consultation, the institutional framework of consultation, the democratic basis of consultation and the governance system in consultation. Structurally, the CPPCC is political, public, consultative, specialized and institutional. In the new era, the CPPCC develops consultative resources for representation, mobilization, integration and inclusiveness, which will further demonstrate the multiple advantages of China’s new party system.