Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 2, 2023

The Nature of Socialism and Chinese-Style Modernization

(Abstract)

Ren Bai

The comprehensive promotion of Chinese-style modernization has not only created a new form of human civilization and rewritten the world pattern of modernization, but has also fundamentally rewritten modernization’s theoretical genealogy. The traditional path of modernization was based on the modernity of capital, while historical materialism, having started with analysis of the modernity of capital, formed a scientific socialism that aimed to push human civilization beyond the modernity of capital and achieve the emancipation of man. Chinese-style modernization under the overall leadership of the Communist Party of China is the unfolding form of scientific socialism in the practice of Chinese modernization, reflecting the unity of the essence of socialism and the development and progress of modern civilization, and focusing on Chinese-style modernization’s transcendence of the traditional worldview and methodology of modernization and the understanding that the essence of socialism is “based on past experience and exploring new developments.” The new form of human civilization created by Chinese-style modernization has replaced more than a century of passive involvement in world history with active intervention, gradually assuming a universal world historical significance. Hence, it is no longer a competition between two models of social systems, socialism and capitalism, or two paths of modernization at the same level. It is the beginning of the iterative upgrading of human civilization, the beginning of the redefinition of the meaning of “modernization” by Marxism in the 21st century.