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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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And of course, the very idea that individuals may have innate differences that cannot be attributed to their environment is utter anathema to Marxist orthodoxy—

This is a common point I see repeated about Communism, but in practice it's more promoted by liberals and Western Marxists then actual Communist regimes. Both the Soviet and Chinese education system are hugely based around finding talented students and elevating them through intense educations. The actual implementation of blank slate equity type programs and elimination of gifted tracks is an oddity of Western capitalist countries neither the Soviets or Chinese ever attempted to put anything like that into practice. And the leaders of both were willing to make statements about people groups that would make most Western leaders faint.

Your absolutely right that the Chinese and especially Xi Jinping are true believers in Marxism but it's a syncretized and Sinicized, Marxism full of Han chauvinism. Very few Chinese ascribe to blank slate ideology and I don't think the government particularly cares about promoting it or even subscribes to it themselves. I feel like trying to predict the CCP based on "Orthodox Marxism" Is like trying to predict the behavior of Evangelicals based on the Catechism Catholic Church, you might get some hits but it's not a useful way to go about it. For example the CCP is comfortable not suppressing theories about Chinese being a separate race of humans descended from a different ancestor, while these theories are not mainstream they aren't taboo either. The PRC is a national project for Chinese and nationalism and pride in China are off the charts, it's not a self hating liberal western country but neither is it a post national experiment like the Soviet Union. The CCP is out to benefit Chinese and justifies it's rule as a meritocratic rule of experts.

I agree the CCP reaction will be interesting and they may very well be hard against all this, but if they are it's not going to be against based on a slaveish adherence to blank state theories that they don't subscribe to and their entire society is organized in opposition to.