Verheißung unbeschadeten Fortschritts

Description

The promise of unblemished progress is consistently maintained in the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), albeit the understanding of political-social and scientific-technological progress among the rulers from Mao Zedong to Hu Jintao is modified and weighted differently, in adaptation to their conceptions. In order to examine how ideologemes contribute to stabilization and persistence of conviction of a determinate course of development and unlimited progress, progress and development ideologemes are identified and their functions analyzed in different contexts. Investigated are ideologemes in the CCP since 1949 and their emergence in case studies (discussion of nuclear energy in the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 and the Three Gorges Dam project) and especially the discourse of critical voices.

The ideologemes, which are demonstrated in this work, include vocabulary related to evaluation of the state of development, realization of progress, paths of catching-up modernization, and speed of development and progress.

They express the CCP's belief that under their authority development and progress are predictable and feasible, that development goals can be achieved and future progress can be generated. Ideologemes as legitimizing tools imply actions and requests how to achieve goals as well as a belief that the development path of the PRC and the aspired progress are right.

In the case studies a persistence of this belief in progress can be stated. A questioning of it occurs only to a small extent. The different levels of criticism and the way in which positions are expressed reflect the range of the discussions: from the use of numerous ideologemes to complete absence; from constructive to radical; from ideological proximity to the party to deviations and distance.

Ideologemes have a meaningful effect on particular contexts and create ideological coherence between the CCP, the government, party-affiliated voices and critics who use them.

The use of the ideologemes, despite the intentions they pursue, ensures the continuity of their ideological content even beyond the Party's statements. This contributes to the fact that the propagated understanding of development and progress in the written sources endures, thus also strengthening the claim to power of the CCP and provides for an implicit rooting of a certain mindset, which, apart from dissidents and bloggers, is not questioned at all.