For many reasons, the lack of complete freedom of speech in China did not stop a wide range of schools of thought, ideologies and social and political doctrines from developing in China. According to He Li's position, some significant intellectual threads such as Liberalism, Neo-Authoritarianism, New Left, Democratic Socialism and New Confucianism have emerged (2015; see also e.g. Frenkiel, 2015). Each of them provides a different vision of a political system desirable for China. From the China's governing elite perspective, this relative pluralism of visions of political system is just as desirable as potentially destructive. That can be perfectly seen in the current mode of governance, where the need of experimenting and searching for new ideas on governance (including ideas regarding the form of official ideology) involves the risk that it may potentially lead to overthrowing of the ruling party. In fact, the role and significance of CCP's vision of political system and ideologies linked to them, does not exclude the possibility of searching for, and experimenting with unorthodox sources (due to the economic requirements, international commitments, situational necessities etc.). On the one hand, the eclectic and ‘open’ nature of the official political ideology which developed after 1978 provides relative flexibility, and on the other hand, it does not lead to the development of a coherent and stable ideological and axiological ‘guidance’ (Benedikter, 2014, p. 2). This is the perfect example of China's political practice known as ‘guerrilla policy style’ (Heilmann & Perry 2011, pp. 12–13, 23).
With that in mind, let's focus on current debates among the Chinese intellectuals on constitutionalism, or the so called constitutional rule (xianzheng 宪政). For a long time, the role of the term xianzheng was rather marginal, though the term itself, along with the vision of political reforms related to it, was present in the debates on China's modernization since the late nineteenth century. Since 1978, other concepts, next to the official ones, dominated the narrative of the reforms (democracy, rule of law, human rights etc.). In the first and second decade of the twenty-first century, the idea of xianzheng became increasingly popular. A vibrant debate on that issue has developed, in which it is possible to distinguish three broad schools of thought: Liberal, Socialistic (or Sinized Marxist) and Confucian Constitutionalism (see e.g. Peng Chengyi, 2011b, 2011a, 2013).