Yes they exist! But have mostly banished to the humanities/social sciences departments.

A bit of nomenclature first: in China, nobody says Marxist economics, it’s instead called political economy (政治经济学). Similarly, Western neoclassical economics is called Western economics (西方经济学).

I have also made clear in the past that my primary influence came from Prof. Jia Genliang (贾根良) who is a highly respected professor in People’s University, whose combination of Marx (class analysis), MMT (monetary theory) and List (international trade) that I have found to be very useful when understanding Chinese economy. He has two major works on the US-China trade war (using the Great Internal Circulation aka domestic consumption to reduce reliance on exports) and MMT in China (mostly about how monetary system works) but published in Chinese only. He was also the first to translate Michael Hudson’s work into Chinese.

Unfortunately MMT hasn’t gained traction among Chinese economists, most of the academia are filled with mostly Western educated neoclassical economists who think MMT is stupid.

As for why Marxist economists don’t have prominent influence in the government, Michael Hudson has said that when he visited China for a Marxism Conference a few years back, they told him that during the reform and opening up, the Chinese leadership was worried that if they had invited Western Marxists, they could interfere with their domestic policies, so they explicitly hired neoclassicals to help with the liberal reforms. The Chicago boys were the ones that designed Shanghai’s financial architecture. Milton Friedman was even invited twice to lecture in China during the 1980s. Hudson said he was shocked when he learned that Capital Vol. 2 and 3 are practically not taught in China, which is why they don’t understand much about rent and land speculation.

From a historical standpoint, there was a brief moment when reform was nearly halted. There were two major players during the reform era: Deng Xiaoping (liberal reformist) and Chen Yun (conservative aka Mao era planner advocate). When Deng screwed up the 1988 price reform (basically the price liberalization, but it was leaked before hand and led to spiraling inflation), he was forced into taking a back seat, and during which Chen Yun came to take a center stage.

A year later, following the June 4th incident (aka Tiananmen Square incident), Deng was forced into retirement and the party split into two embittered factions: those who call for a halt to reform and return to Mao era planning (Chen Yun) and those who insisted on reform at all cost (Deng Xiaoping).

However, soon Chen Yun also screwed up with his economic policy and there was a stalemate between the two factions. At the time, amidst party struggle, Jiang Zemin (Chen Yun’s protege) was chosen as the party leader and had to move north from his Zhejiang base with only very precarious support within the government. By 1992, Deng would come out of his retirement and began his infamous Southern Tour, and insinuated at a coup if reform were to be halted. Jiang Zemin folded and soon the rest of the conservative gang (Chen Yun et al.) were purged. This was pretty much the end of the Mao era planner faction, and liberal reform would continue without much resistance afterwards.