At the very least, it means Marx isn’t anathema.

Given the circumstances, it’s no surprise that at least some would turn to the most comprehensive, powerful critique of capitalism and markets yet developed: Marxism. To a degree, this leftward shift feels like a return to form. Young leftists are reclaiming the ideological heritage of their country, which was after all founded on the notion of ending the capitalist class’s oppression and exploitation of workers and peasants. And because they grew up in an educational system with mandatory courses on Marxism and socialism, even seemingly impractical or outdated concepts like class and “surplus value” become handy analytical frameworks when many students encounter difficulties later in life.

But the current trend goes beyond the classroom. Indeed, many students complain that their mandated Marxism classes — long treated as pro forma exercises by teachers and students alike — aren’t doing enough to prepare them or give them the knowledge they really want.

They have a point. “If you want to be the masses’ teacher, first you must be their student,” Mao once exhorted. But many teachers of Marxism on Chinese campuses have grown too comfortable with their marginalization to adapt to the changing circumstances and increased demand for their subject matter; others actively belittle Marx, lionizing libertarians like Friedrich Hayek or even KMT princelings like Chiang Ching-kuo in his place.

This forces their students, who generally have little patience for either libertarianism or KMT nostalgia, to look elsewhere. This ironically has driven many to move past the country’s textbooks and start reading figures like Marx and Lenin in their own words. For others, online videos purporting to explain the core tenets of Marxism-Leninism have proliferated, many of them attracting millions of views.

Interestingly, one of the most popular interpreters of the Marxist tradition isn’t Chinese at all, but the American academic Richard D. Wolff. Netizens have pulled videos of his lectures from YouTube and re-uploaded subtitled versions to sites like Bilibili under titles like “Why Aren’t You a Marxist?” Despite his academic background, Wolff has garnered praise for his clear-eyed analysis and accessible explanations of core concepts, and some of his videos on Bilibili have gone on to rack up more views than the originals.

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