The first version of this article was written after the first three months of being back in China after too long away. The version written then contained many immediate impressions and experiences, which I interpreted on the basis of extensive earlier research. There is an…
Roland Boer is a superb Marxist scholar.
I recommend his works “Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance” and “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners.”. The first is a fantastic overview of the theoretical bases of actually existing Socialism within Marx, Engels and Lenin; an primer on socialist governance in the USSR, DPRK and China; capping it off with a case study evaluation of Chinese socialist governance in response to Hong Kong and Xinjiang. In the second book, he provides a comprehensive overview of every major facet of Chinese socialist philosophy.
His evaluation of the material conditions that led to the 2019 Hong Kong protests is exceptionally cogent and cuts through the noise of Western ideological takes that clogged coverage on the issue. The precipitating problem wasn’t that there was too much “Communist China” in Hong Kong, but, quite oppositely, that there wasn’t enough of it, through the “One Country Two Systems” policy that essentially keeps Hong Kong in a hyper-capitalist time capsule unable to benefit from China’s socialist governance through the obligations of the Sino-British Joint Declaration: