Marxism Still Matters: The Chinese Communist Party's Ideological Description of Democracy

The role of ideology is a disputed topic among scholars interested in the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. By means of investigating the description of foreign democracies in the party’s prominent newspaper, Renmin ribao the ‘People’s Daily’, the ideological strategy of the Hu Jintao administration is analysed in the present study. This description is compared with the concept of liberal democracy as perceived by some prominent representatives of liberalism, Marxism, and Confucianism. The results show that the description of foreign democracies in the ‘People’s Daily’ to a high extent complies with traditional Marxist perspectives. It seems plausible that the party still relates to Marxism in order to legitimise its own rule and delegitimise liberal democracy. Marxist strategy, thus, still seems to be of great importance to the party’s legitimacy.