CP of China Puts Marxist Theory Online

from People's Daily

The Communist Party of China (CPC) on Wednesday launched an online database on Marxist theory by uploading the Party's major political doctrines to an Internet website, an effort that analysts said is promoting its ideology through information technology.

Uploaded contents to www.ccpph.com.cn include collected works in Chinese of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, as well as former CPC leaders Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin.

All the works are available free of charge for Internet users to read, while visually impaired readers can listen to recorded voices reciting the content in Chinese.

The website also contains dozens of works explaining the doctrines, research of the communist party as well as the CPC's important documents, files and speeches of General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Hu Jintao and other current leaders.

The database is sponsored by People's Publishing House, copyright owner of those Chinese works and major publisher of translated works of foreign political figures in China.

Liu Binjie, Director of General Administration of Press and Publication, said that the official launch of these works on the Internet would expand the spread of Marxist theories.

The world has entered an era when information, digitalization and other new communication methods are booming, said Huang Shuyuan, president of the People's Publishing House.

The more advanced and powerful communication methods a party uses, the more influential it will be, Huang said.

To help online readers find a classic Marxist reading, the database of the website provides a smart search function which finds the origin based on fractional words that readers input.

"It will greatly help researchers on Marxist doctrines like me, since many of those works could only be available in libraries," said Professor Zhang Guangming with the School of International Relations of Peking University.

"We could search for information about Marxist works at any time in my reading room," Zhang said.

Prof. Zhang Xixian with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee said that the online database represents a new trend for the Party to promote its theories in a more attractive way.

By the end of last year, the number of Internet users in China had reached 384 million users, covering about 28.9 percent of the country's total population.

Li Changchun, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, also attached great importance to the publication of the Party's theories by using multimedia technologies.

The People's Publishing House plans to digitalize its 3.6 billion-word Marxist theories books within two years to complete the database and provide it free of charge to the public.

Source:Xinhua