Three Represents

The Three Represents, officially the Theory of Three Represents, is a political doctrine that defines the role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Chinese society. It legitimized the entry of private business owners and bourgeois elements into the CCP.

The theory was first introduced by Jiang Zemin—then the General Secretary of the CCP—on 25 February 2000, while he was on the inspection tour in Gaozhou, Guangdong. During Jiang's leadership, the Three Represents was officially described as the "Marxism for contemporary China" and the development of Marxism–Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory. The theory was ratified by the party at the 16th Party Congress in November 2002. It was also written to the Chinese Constitution on March 14, 2004.

History and development

Following the tenure of Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin articulated a new theory to define the new relationship between the party and the people, which is named Three Represents. The Three Represents was devised by a small team including the political theorist Wang Huning. Jiang first delivered a speech about the Three Represents on 25 February 2000 during a symposium on party building in Guangzhou. It brought wide attention and many interpretations of the meaning of the speech.

The Three Represents results from Jiang Zemin's efforts to grapple with the diverse class backgrounds of party members and their sometimes conflicting material interests. Based on Mao's premise that the Communist Party should serve the people, it became important as China's private sector grew to bring "worthy people from all sectors who are loyal to the motherland and to socialism" into the Party.

In Jiang's speech on the Three Represents on the 80th anniversary of the founding of the CCP in 2001, he claimed that the expansion of "working class" would help the party remain advanced as the vanguard of the working class by expanding its popular support and increasing its social influence. Jiang made a statement on the concept of the working class that it includes intellectuals:

"With intellectuals being part of the working class, the scientific, technical and educational level of the working class has been raised considerably... Consequently some workers have changed their jobs. But this has not changed the status of the Chinese working class. On the contrary, this will serve to improve the overall quality of the working class and give play to its advantages as a group in the long run. The Chinese working class has always been the basic force for promoting the advanced productive forces in China. Our Party must remain the vanguard of the working class and unswervingly and wholeheartedly rely on the working class."

The Three Represents were written into the CCP constitution to be part of CCP's guiding ideology during the 16th Party National Congress in November 2002. It was also written to the Chinese Constitution on March 14, 2004.

Content

The theory requires the CCP to:
# Represent the development trend of China's advanced productive forces.
# Represent the orientation of China's advanced culture.
# Represent the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people.
In this context, to "represent" means to incorporate.

Influence and reception

Jiang's theory was the subject of significant internal debate. Supporters viewed it as a further development of socialism with Chinese characteristics or a mechanism to incorporate bourgeois elements into the discipline of the party. Certain segments within the CCP criticized the Three Represents as being un-Marxist and a betrayal of basic Marxist values. Criticism originated on all ideological sides of the party.

Three Represents was officially described by Li Changchun, a member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee, as the "Marxism for contemporary China". The theory officially is continuation and development of Marxism–Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory.

Jiang said that by representing Chinese people in three levels, the party used the interests and demands of the overwhelming majority of the people to replace the specific interests of people from different quarters, especially the class nature of the working class. As Xiao Gongqin argues, the innovation of the "Three Represents" theory was meant to complete the historical ideology transformation of CCP from a revolutionary party to a ruling party. The CCP can keep its legitimacy under the 'socialist market economy' or any system that is conducive to the development of advanced productive forces, without promoting any revolutionary movement or keeping the ideal of egalitarianism.

Jiang disagreed with the assertion that his theories were not Marxist, and concluded that attaining the communist mode of production (as formulated by earlier communists) was more complex than had been realized; it was useless to try to force a change, as it had to develop naturally by following the economic laws of history. The theory is most notable for allowing capitalists, officially referred to as the "new social strata", to join the party on the grounds that they engaged in "honest labour and work" and through their labour contributed "to build ngsocialism with Chinese characteristics." Jiang's decision to allow capitalists into the CCP was criticized as "political misconduct" and "ideological confusions". These critiques helped fuel the rise of the Chinese New Left movement.

Zheng Bijian, the executive vice president of the Central Party School who has been active in helping to create the Three Represents, argued that a party of the whole people would be a catch-all party that would include diverse and conflicting interests. To include all of the broad mass of contemporary Chinese intellectuals, science and technology workers, cultural workers, and economic managers, in the category of the so-called 'middle class' would weaken or even obliterate the working class.

At the time Jiang announced the theory, most entrepreneurs who were members of the CCP had been party members before starting their businesses. This change allowed for a new cohort of party members who could join after having had success in business. The greatest jump in the numbers of party members who are also entrepreneurs came in 2001, not long after the announcement of the Three Represents. In recent years (as of 2022), around 30-35% of Chinese entrepreneurs have been party members.

Academic Lin Chun writes that while "nothing was politically incorrect in this banal statement" of the Three Represents, "it simply signaled that the party no longer even pretended to be the vanguard of the working class."

Academics Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung observe that the Three Represents helped co-opt economic elites and extend the party's reach into the growing private sector. Academic Pang Laikwan describes the Three Represents as legitimating privately-owned enterprises in the context of the socialist market economy.

References

Further reading

* '' On the “Three Represents”'', a collection of speeches by Jiang Zemin
*
Jiang Zemin's Speech at the Meeting Celebrating the 80th Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist Party of China
(2001). China Internet Information Center.
{{Jiang Zemin

Jiang Zemin
Socialism with Chinese characteristics
Ideology of the Chinese Communist Party
Wang Huning