Executive Summary

• Ideology matters in China; and matters more than it does in many political systems. Not least because it is made to matter by the way that it is disseminated and promoted by the party.
• Changes in the nature of the party’s guiding thinking are an essential pre-requisite for key policy changes, and establish new objectives and benchmarks that the party wants to be judged against.
• Studying ideological changes helps us understand the party’s preferred direction of travel.
• Even radical changes are explained as representing a form of continuity with the past, by emphasising the supposed methodology of theorising, with Marxism needing to be integrated with practical national conditions to become a usable guide to action. As times and circumstances change, so Chinese Marxism needs to change too.
• Attaining national goals and protecting national interests, have long been an important component of Chinese Marxism. So too has a focus on China’s pre-revolutionary past as a source of Chinese greatness and of a distinct and unique way of thinking. However, Xi has taken this emphasis on China’s traditional culture to a new level.
• The Two Integrates formally establishes the need to integrate Marxism with not only China’s specific national circumstances at any given moment in time, but also China’s traditional culture, thinking and values. Xi’s version of Chinese Marxism seems to be much more influenced by his understanding of China’s pre-revolutionary past than it is by the writings of Marx and Engels.
• Xi has identified what he argues are core elements of Chinese culture. One consequence is an increasing focus on China’s uniqueness, exceptionalism and fundamental difference from other countries and societies; a focus and argument that is likely to increase in the future.
• From the Autumn of 2023, Xi’s speech on “Cultural Inheritance and Development” (originally given in June 2023) has been widely reported and re-printed, and represents that start of a new emphasis on the importance of China’s pre-revolutionary past for its present and future.