The Chinese Communist Party's dramatic shift from Mao Zedong's Chinese Revolution to Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream remains under-examined and even misunderstood or mispresented despite its enormous impact on every aspect of national life in the People's Republic of China. There is a clear need for in-depth analysis of the extent to which the CCP has departed from the philosophical foundation of Marxism and Maoism, abandoned socialism and communism, inverted its long tradition of iconoclasm, transformed its own identity and altered its subject position. Part of the CCP's philosophical departure from Marxism and Maoism is its increasing conversion to nationalism. The new nationalism underpinning the Chinese Dream, in particular, operates against the grain of Marxism and Maoism, and vice versa, and is logically irreconcilable with the latter — so much so that the CCP cannot be nationalists and Marxists, Maoists or communists at the same time. The contradictory logics between nationalism and Marxism can be best seen from their respective conceptions of permanence and change, the unity and conflict of opposites, and conceptions of, and approaches to, tradition and the past, which have had major ramifications in political-cultural change in post-Mao China, especially in Xi's New Era.

Using survey data collected from a larger comparative survey project employing a multistage, stratified, random sampling design administered in 1994, this article analyzes the gender gap in political culture and participation in China. We found a persistent gender difference, with male respondents scoring significantly higher on media attention, political knowledge, interest, internal, and external efficacy, and non-electoral participation. In accounting for the gender gap, the article also attempts to validate the prevailing socialization, situational, and structural theories. In terms of socialization theory, we found that women respondents were more passive towards achievement, more accommodating in conflict situations, and had a higher preference for conflict mediation by traditional authority. These traits were also found to be negatively correlated with political culture and participation measures. There is also empirical support for structural explanations, where we found that (1) higher socio-economic groups were more politically engaged than those in the lower strata; (2) higher socio-economic status women are more politically engaged than those of lower socio-economic status women and men. For both socialization and structural theories, the gender gap persisted even when passivity and socio-economic status were controlled. Our tests of situation theory did not find that the level of domestic burden had a significant dampening effect on women political culture and participation, nor did we find that women in the child-bearing and rearing cohort had the widest gender gap in political culture and participation.

Based on our reassessment of existing studies on political interest and apathy in various societies, we argue the urgent need for a more systematic and focused examination of mass political interest—as psychological involvement in politics—in China. Utilizing data collected from a public opinion survey conducted in Beijing, China in late 1995, we intend to shed some light on the level and sources of political interest in contemporary China. Contrary to the prevalent argument that most Chinese are politically apathetic, we have found that there was a rather high level of political interest within our sample. We have also found that both conventional variables (i.e. age, gender, education, income, political efficacy, and dissatisfaction with government performance) and variables unique to the Chinese setting (i.e. being a farmer, becoming a private entrepreneur, joining the Chinese Communist Party and holding leading position in the party/government) have significant effects on the levels of political interest.