China's Space Program: Another Step in the Modernist Vision

The modernist Marxist leadership in China has pushed its modernization program to a new level. They have announced an ambitious program of space development that includes a space station and a manned flight to the moon. The roots of the modernist vision that guides the current leadership can be traced back to former premier Zhou Enlai, one of the most revered leaders in the post-1949 Communist Party of China (CPC) controlled government. The Maoists were the primary opponents of the modernists, fighting to place "class struggle," rather than the adoption of "advanced" technology, at the center of Party politics and governmental action, but the death of Mao in 1976 was quickly followed by the downfall of the Maoist leadership and the rise of the modernists, led in the early stage by Deng Xiaoping. Zhou had promoted what he called "the Four Modernizations," which remains the foundation of modernist Marxism, Chinese style. The current leadership is dominated by engineers and others with a technological determinist bent. The space program, like the rapid development of other signs of modernity, is critical to making their vision a reality. It serves both as technological driver of Chinese economic development and as an ideological model of the modernist vision of the road to communism/prosperity.

I discuss these issues at greater length in my forthcoming text, Chinese Capitalism and the Modernist Vision.