From Dualistic Opposition to Dyadic Integration: Toward a New Political Economy of Chinese Practice

Abstract

This article argues for the construction of a new political economy based on Chinese practices. It begins with an explanation of the research approach of starting from practice, and from a distinctive mode of thinking that is akin to that of medicine, rather than Newtonian physics and mathematical logic. Then it discusses the present-day Chinese practices of combining socialism with market economy, state enterprises with private enterprises, the peasant economy with an industrial economy, and the party-state with the economy—all distinctive realities about the new Chinese political-economic system. The foil for the discussion is the long-standing hegemonic ideology and worldview of Anglo-American classical and neoclassical liberal economics and law. This article suggests that we employ China’s traditional dyadic integration worldview, evident in today’s practices, to arrive at a new integrative cosmological view that rises above both. To a considerable extent, this article is also a reinterpretation of classical Marxist political economy. What the article advocates may be termed a “participatory socialist market economy,” to be distinguished from a bureaucratized and controlling socialist planned economy. This is a system that is still very much in the process of formation, its particular content and characteristics yet to be clarified and specified through a sustained period of searching through practice.

Theory of Practice and China Research: Legal and Social Science Studies

“…Such a system, to be sure, has its strengths, and is particularly well suited for a completely consistent mathematical and mechanical worldview, which played an important role in the early development of the West. (For a more detailed discussion, see Huang, 2022. ) China, on the other hand, has never really adopted such a simplified view of the universe, and has long been inclined much more to an organic view, similar to that of the modern life sciences, in contrast to the inorganic and mechanical worldview.…”

“…The latter mode of thinking is one important motive force for the West's early arrival on the path of mechanization, mathematization, and "modernization." China's organic worldview, however, was something of an obstacle to an earlier entrance into mechanical development (for a more detailed discussion, see Huang, 2022).…”

“…It is thus on the basis of Bourdieu's theory of practice that we can truly grasp the difference between the non-West and the West, the non-West's subjectivity in its path of modernization, and break out of the cage of Western subjectivity and its objectification. Only with the broadening of Bourdieu's theory of practice approach beyond monocultural analysis will we be able to grasp the Western-centrism and modernism of Weber, the distinctiveness of substantivism (see Huang, 1996Huang, , 2022; see also Huang Zongzhi and Zhou Li-An, n.d.: chap. 1).…”

“…For articles, see esp. Huang, 2019;for books Huang Zongzhi, 2007, 2022 for the edited book series: in Chinese, https://lishiyushehui.cn/book/category/81. In English, https://en.lishiyushehui.cn/book/category/44.…”

“…Such a system, to be sure, has its strengths, and is particularly well suited for a completely consistent mathematical and mechanical worldview, which played an important role in the early development of the West. (For a more detailed discussion, see Huang, 2022. )…”