Modernization: Common Properties and Chinese Characteristics

ABSTRACT

Modernization is the process of transformation and development from traditional agricultural society to modern industrial society and information society. A necessary path and inevitable choice for human society in its development to an advanced stage, modernization represents the direction of progress and driving force of development for human civilization. At once a reflection and critique, a dialectical sublation, and an overall transcendence of traditional society, modernization is led by an advanced class that embodies the contemporary spirit. For its promotion, modernization relies principally on the three levers of science and technology, capital, and the market, and as its goal, it posits the realization of industrialization, urbanization, and informatization. Led by the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Chinese path to modernization is socialist in its essence, and possesses not only the common properties of modernization, but also Chinese characteristics based on China’s particular national conditions. Specifically, this path embodies the people-centered concept of modernization, is committed to achieving all-round human development and social progress, surpasses the object-centered model of Western modernization guided by the logic of capital, and provides a new choice and development direction for humanity in achieving modernization.

KEYWORDS:

• Modernization
• common properties
• Chinese characteristics

Acknowledgements

This article was translated from Chinese by Zixu Liu, associate researcher at the Academy of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See the Constitution of the Communist Party of China. http://en.qstheory.cn/2022-10/27/c_824864.htm.

2 See “Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century.” China Daily, November 18, 2021. https://language.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202111/18/WS6195aa45a310cdd39bc75fe0_1.html.

3 Ibid.

Additional information

Funding

This article is among the results of the major project of the National Social Science Fund of China, “Research on the Construction of a System of Marxist Ideological Discourse in the New Era” (project No. 19ZDA004).

Notes on contributors

Yinchuan Yuan

Yinchuan Yuan is a professor at the School of Marxism, Wuhan University, and the director of the Research Center of Twenty-First Century Marxism at Wuhan University. He holds the Changjiang Distinguished Professorship granted by the Ministry of Education, and is also the vice-president of the Chinese Association of Historical Materialism. His research focuses mainly on the basic tenets of Marxism and on socialism with Chinese characteristics. His major publications include A Study of the Basic Properties of the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (Wuhan University Press, 2014), A Study of the Cultivation and Practice of the Core Values of Chinese Socialism (People’s Publishing House, 2019), Small Peasant Consciousness and Chinese Modernization (Wuhan Publishing House, 2000), and Decoding the Chinese Path to Modernization (Wuhan Publishing House, 2023).