“So, did you find this week’s readings difficult?” I asked the Chinese student. Today we were looking at Marxist literary criticism.

“Not really,” she replied, with a grin. “I mean we’ve been learning about Marxism since we were in school, so we’re really familiar with all this.”

I nodded, but inwardly felt a prickle. Three years ago I was in New York, and gatecrashed my flatmate’s tutorial (yes, I’m an old hand at this!) which too was about this very subject. But back then I was in a country very similar to my own. And in that class Marxism felt like someone else’s ideology. It belonged to people of the past, or people of another world.

But now I was in that world.

In this topsy-turvy parallel universe, not only was communism not banished to the history books, 60 years later the party who brought it to the people are still in charge of the biggest nation in the world. And unlike America where socialism is a fringe movement, and used as a dirty word to tar an opponent (as we saw in Obama’s run) – here the socialist party is not just a major party – it’s the ONLY party.

And as someone from Australia – probably one of those greedy, selfish, exploitative capitalists, infected with dangerous ideas of individuality and civil liberties – wasn’t I currently sitting in enemy territory?

Of course, of course, this turned out to hardly be the case. Real life never draws lines that clear cut.

The student presentation ran through the ideas behind Marxist literary criticism (one of the central concepts being economic determinism), and in the discussion the class spoke about its application, popularity and decline here in China.

Yes, decline. It’s been 33 years since the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of the economic reforms that began opening this country up. And so this country is hardly a colour-by-numbers version of the communist utopia Marx would have originally envisioned.

The class began discussing if “class struggle” was still a relevant topic in China today. After all, the implementation of communism was meant to completely eliminate the class system. But with a widening gap between rich and poor in this country, clearly this was not the case. Even if groups were given different names now, such as “the private sector” or the “rural-urban divide.”

I asked the tutor, yes there are more people well off in China than before, but are the poorer actually becoming even more poor?

She explained, “now there are some who are rich, and many who are poor. Before we were all poor together!” We laughed at this grim tale.

“So, I guess it’s still a good thing, right? I mean at least some people are better off?”

A student jumped in, “the Party says, let some get rich, and they’ll be able to help the rest.”

The tutor added, “the problem is when these class divides become entrenched. I have no problem that there’s a second generation of rich people in this country, but it’s of concern that there is a second, and even third generation of still-poor. At least before we were all in this together.”

I nodded. I was familiar with the growing tension between the country’s majority peasant population, and the increasingly upwardly mobile, educated urban dwellers. I asked, “and how does the Party fit this into their picture of socialist ideology?”

“You have to remember we’re not really pure socialist anymore.” She paused, then perked up and grinned – (I really dig this lady) – “it’s the Chinese model!” She’d brought out the familiar term (“socialism with Chinese characteristics“) that the Party today used to explain their strange blend of free-market economies with socialist twists.

But it’s getting late, I’ll continue this tomorrow …