Socialist patriotism
The Communist Party of China and the government of China advocate socialist patriotism. The Communist Party of China describes the policy of socialist patriotism as the following: "Socialist patriotism has three levels. At the first level, individuals should subordinate their personal interests to the interests of the state. At the second level, individuals should subordinate their personal destiny to the destiny of our socialist system. At the third level, individuals should subordinate their personal future to the future of our communist cause." The PRC portrays the Communist government as the embodiment of the will of the Chinese people.
Primary stage of socialism
While the CPC pursued non-orthodox economic policies, it believed the party would be able to safeguard China's goal of socialist development by transforming Marxism into a dominant value system. This was reflected by the introduction of the term "socialist spiritual civilization", a concept introduced in 1981 and mentioned in the Political Report to the 13th National Congress. The main function of socialist spiritual civilization was to check against the dangers of ideological retreat in the party's effort to progress toward socialism. A CPC resolution in 1986 said, "we will be not able to guarantee the socialist direction of our modernization course, and our socialist society will lose its goals and ideals" if the party stopped upholding Marxist doctrine. However, because the material base, officially referred to as material civilization, created by the economic reforms did not conform with Marxist analysis of socialism, the CPC concluded that in the new era Marxism would be given the role as the dominant value system, which entailed that other value systems could be accepted but these systems could not negate Marxism.