The Garbage Time of History: Is China Still Marxist?

In the latest in our series on belief, we're looking at China's official belief system—Marxism. In recent years, netizens have argued China has entered the 'garbage time' of history, a phrase borrowed from the dying minutes of a basketball game, which now references a crisis of trust in the Communist Party and its official ideology. To ask whether Marxism still exists in China, and how Marx influences the Chinese state, we're joined by two guests: Alison Sile Chen Zhao, a University of California political analyst and the author of Her Battles, and Professor Xu Chenggang, a senior research fellow at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, and the author of Institutional Genes: Origins of China's Institutions and Totalitarianism. Episode art: Portrait of Karl Marx. c/- Wikimedia Commons. Transcripts available at

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The Garbage Time of History: Is China Still Marxist? is an episode from The Little Red Podcast by The Little Red Podcast.

This episode is 41:44 long.

This episode was published on Jun 26, 2025.

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