memes

First of all, yes it absolutely does matter, because there are fundamental failures on the part of western economists to understand elements of their field with serious social consequences (see the second quote for an example), and if these are the only real voice, what the hell can you do?

But second, and I probably should have emphasized this more, as much as I don't like that Marxism is gone from Chinese economic study, a worse element is that those politicians you mention are also plainly not Marxists and are debating, again, mainly in terms of western economics. The National People's Congress is a bunch of liberals (not all created equal, mind you) who are debating policy on western economic, nationalist terms rather than Marxist[, nationalist] ones. That's part of why I suggested looking at Qiushi more, because the government really does not hide this, it just also uses the terms "socialism" and sometimes "Marxism" here and there. Probably the most effort that I've seen them put into red-washing was when I was reading a debate from ~2006 where someone suggests that "risk-labor" must be added to the LTV, with their meaning being identical to how the western bourgeoisie justify their wealth by citing "risk." I don't think that's really representative of the contemporary discourse, but that's mainly because it acknowledges substance from Marx to make its liberal point instead of just making its liberal point directly.