The Methodology and Sinicization of Political Economy

This section argues that political economy, as a social science most closely tied to concrete reality, could not have “naturally” emerged in China under semi-feudal and semi-colonial conditions. Instead, the economics studied in China was largely imported as a finished system from advanced capitalist countries—often via Japan—making it doubly detached from China’s own socioeconomic structure. This imported character created two persistent distortions: an early, overly utilitarian understanding of economics as a manual for national enrichment, and a later swing toward metaphysical or doctrinal readings that sever theory from historical change and lived economic relations. The section further critiques the dominant pedagogical framework in mainstream textbooks—especially the fourfold division of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption and the trinitarian schema of land/rent, capital/profit, and labor/wages—arguing that these forms fragment causal explanation, obscure the primacy of production relations, and naturalize historically specific class incomes. In response, the section calls for studying political economy from the standpoint of the Chinese people: treating economics as a critical weapon for understanding modern capitalism’s laws of motion, diagnosing China’s subordinate position within the world economy, and clearing ideological obstacles to socioeconomic transformation.