Socialism or capitalism? New turning point in China?

New York Times reports that a sharp debate has erupted in China over ideologies, between leftist old guards and reformists.

A Sharp Debate Erupts in China Over Ideologies
BEIJING, March 11 — For the first time in perhaps a decade, the National People's Congress, the Communist Party-run legislature now convened in its annual two-week session, is consumed with an ideological debate over socialism and capitalism that many assumed had been buried by China's long streak of fast economic growth.

NYTimes uses the word “erupt”, but this new development in China has been going on for almost a year. The leftist old guards are using China’s rising income gap and increasing social unrest to raise doubts about economic reforms. The reformists however argue that these problems are not caused by reforms, but the results of too few reforms. They ask for more economic freedom for the private sector and “better provision of public goods” (which is equal to cleaner government and more accountable officials), which they believe is a better solution than “going back to central-planning”.

About 25 and 15 years ago respectively, there were similar debates on directions of reforms, and in both cases the reformists managed to stave off the old guards, with the help of both public sentiments and strongman politics. In both cases, some sorts of public debates were involved. Single party rule notwithstanding, debates are always needed, because “Our government only moves forward when it feels there is a strong consensus," (according to Mao Shoulong, a public- policy specialist at Tsinghua University in Beijing). In the last two times, Chinese reached consensus that “inequality of prosperity  is better than equality of poverty”. And the reason for the newly ignited debate is that "Right now, the consensus is eroding and there is a debate over ideology, which we haven't seen for some time. (again according to Mao Shoulong)" 

What are different this time is that the era of strong-man politics has ended, and there is more tolerance for different opinions, both outside and within the government, so long as what you advocate is consistent with the basic principle that things have to done within the system under the leadership of current government. What is most important is that, people and media are now allowed to talk about it openly by framing it as a debate of “efficiency vs. fairness”, a topic that seems less politics-sensitive.

No matter which side wins this time, the question of “efficiency vs. fairness” will always be raised and debated every several years when the general pubic is not happy about some of the outcomes of the reforms , even in economically and democratically well-developed countries. Thus, the most important thing we should think about is how to institutionalize the consensus-reaching and decision-making rule and process, in order to efficiently and transparently resolve the differences between the reformists and the leftists.

A positive development in recent years is that the private sector is starting to organize some forms of lobby groups attempting to influence public opinions and policy agendas, while the leftists start to rely on Internet to gain supports (although in many cases they go too far in manipulating irrational populist sentiments). Professors also are joining the debate very actively.

Differences are being resolved in a more civilized way now.