Entitled Official Ideology of Communist China since the Open and
Reform Polocy:Degeneration and Regeneration, this dissertation
aims at explicating the de- velopment and changes in Communist
China''s official ideology since it initiated its Open
and Reform Policy. By attempting to construct a theoreticalmodel
for the analysis of Communist China''s official ideology, and by
focusing on content, characteristic, limitations and
developmental crisis of such an official ideology, this
dissertation hopes to increase our understanding of Communist
China. Textually divided into eight chapters, the dissertation
actually comprises six main parts:
Part one discusses the meaning of ideology that will be used in
the disseration by tracing the origin and development
of the term in western thought. Part two reviews
previous researches on Communist China''s ideology to present the
characteristics and trends in this field of research.
Part three attempts to construct a theoretical model for the
analysis of Communist China''s official ideology by focusing on
three different perspectives: the life of official ideology, the
meaning and value of official ideology, the binary structure
of fundamental and operative dimension of official ideology.
Part four focuses on the changes of official ideology since the
Open and Reform Policy. The concept of "degeneration" and
"regeneration" is introduced to depict such changes. This
dissertation presents as degeneration aspects such as the re-
evaluation of official ideology since the Six Plenum of the
Eleventh Central Committee, the alienation of social ideology
after Chinese Cultural Revolution, the challenge by youth
democratic movements, the discussion of the alienation between
humanism and socialism by intellectuals in Chinese Communist
Party, disagreement among Chinese Communist leaders upon
ideology, controversy on the "bourgeois liberalization,"
challenge from the collapse of Soviet Union and the changes of
easton Europe. This dissertation presents as a regeneration
spects such as the Open and Reform Policy and map of
modernization which originated from the debate over "the
Criterion of Truth" in the Third Plenum of the Eleventch Central
Committee, "emancipation thought" and "insistence on four basic
principles," "the preliminary stage theory of socialism" which
originated from the Thirteenth Congress of CCP," the emphasis
placed on nationalism and patriotism by Chinese Communist, "Deng
Xiao-Ping Theory" and "Socialism with Chiense Characteristics."
Part five utilizes the interactive concept of "degeneration"
and "regeneration" to explicate the inherent contradictions and
difficulties in the official ideoloy reconstructed by Chinese
Communist. Through systematic analysis, this part highlights the
"dilemma" and " paradox" that exist in Communist China''s
official ideology discernible in the conflict between/among
"collectivism and individualism," "socialism and capitalism,"
"communism and nationalism," "tradition, modernism and post-
modernism." Part six concludes the special characteristics of
Communist China''s official ideology and attempts to extrapolate
the future development of Communist China when developmental
crisis befalls its official ideology.