China
and Mao Zedong’s legend
S P
SETH
It was a little surprising that Mao Zedong’s 120th
birthday, which fell on December 26th, didn’t receive much
international media attention. Even more surprising that it wasn’t celebrated
with as much gusto and on a grand scale all over China. Which might explain the
subdued international attention. But
what might be the explanation for less than grandiose celebrations in China? There
had been reports earlier that the event was going to be a grand and gala affair
all over the country, but it ended up being a much smaller but dignified affair
with the country’s leaders paying homage to Mao in Beijing. President Xi
Jinping sought to put it in perspective in his speech on the occasion at the
Great Hall of People in Beijing when talking of Mao, as well as other
revolutionary leaders, who led China’s communist revolution. He reportedly
said, “Revolutionary leaders [particularly Mao whose birthday it was] are not
gods, but human beings. [We] cannot worship them like gods or refuse to allow
people to point out and correct their errors just because they are great;
neither can we totally repudiate them and erase their historical feats just
because they made mistakes…”
Ever since Bo Xilai, who ruled Chongqing and invoked Mao and his
legend to destabilize the political transition from President
Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping, the Communist Party of China (CPC) is wrestling with
balancing Mao’s deified image with facts on the ground. Which is that while Mao
was a great revolutionary leader, he was still a human being and prone to make
mistakes like other human beings. But what those mistakes/frailties might have
been remain a mystery because China’s post-Mao generations have no knowledge of
it in the absence of any discussion or debate. Hence, Mao’s deification
continues.
Bo Xilai sought to use Mao’s legend as the people’s man to promote
his own political ambitions to make it to the top but lost, was purged and is
now behind bars. President Xi Jinping has been watching his back from the likes
of Bo who rallied around him, like China’s former security czar and Standing
Committee member, Zhou Yongkang, who is being investigated for corruption which,
in political terms, would mean anything and everything. But Xi Jinping himself
was toying with Mao’s image and legend
after he became China’s top leader because it was a populist thing to do, judging
by how Bo was seemingly doing a good job of it before he was undone by his
former police chief and his wife, Gu Kailai, the latter now serving a suspended death sentence for
poisoning her British business associate, Neil Heywood.
However, now that Xi is feeling more secure and has decided to liberalize
China’s economy, relatively speaking, by giving private sector a greater role,
he feels the need to strike a certain balance between Mao’s popular image as a
god-like figure who couldn’t and didn’t make mistakes, and a human being likely
to err at times. But that is about as far as any Chinese leader will go in
assessing Mao’s role. Even Deng Xiaoping, who like many other Chinese communist
leaders suffered when Mao launched his Great Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and
might be considered the father of modern China in terms of its economic
transformation, went only as far as telling the Italian journalist, Oriana
Fallaci, that Mao was 70 per cent good and his mistakes amounted to only 30 per
cent.
Since Mao died in 1976, his
successors, starting with Deng Xiaoping, have made a complete about-turn from
his theory and practice of ‘perpetual revolution’ to keep the revolution safe. Deng
Xiaoping was for ‘learning from facts’ and not ideologically bound. And the
facts dictated a more pragmatic model of making use of capitalist practices to
make China economically strong. And that is what China has done since eighties
with spectacular results, making it into the world’s second largest economy and
an emerging superpower. And Deng was all in favor of people becoming rich,
though he realized that it wouldn’t lead to an egalitarian society for a long
time to come, if at all.
The consequent income gaps between rich and poor, urban and rural
areas, among coastal regions and the interior as well as the periphery (border
areas) have caused widespread social tensions, frustration and, even, unrest. Such
unrest is further fueled with widespread corruption at all levels of the Party
and the government by blurring the line between politics and economics. For
instance, reporting by the New York Times and Bloomberg recently revealed that
the families of the then prime minister Wen Jiabao, and the present President
Xi Jinping, had made millions through political connections, though neither Wen
nor Xi were said to be personally involved.
Coming back to Mao’s god-like image, there is a sense among many
Chinese, with new generations having grown up with no knowledge or experience
of convulsive events of that time, that when Mao was China’s ‘helmsman’ things
were simple and everybody lived happily with guaranteed employment for life. But
there were awful things happening. For instance, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, of
the late-fifties and into early sixties, to leapfrog development process
seriously contributed to China’s famine at the time that resulted in millions
of deaths from starvation. And when Communist Party of China (CPC) sought to
reverse Mao’s policies, he unleashed his Great Cultural Revolution (1966-76)
against the party leadership to reassert his control. It was a lost decade with
Red Guards, Mao’s storm troopers, turning on the party’s veteran political leaders
who had fought for the revolution alongside Mao. Among those hounded to a
miserable death was Liu Shaoqi, then president of China, among others. In other
words, while Mao was a great leader who spearheaded the communist revolution
and helped establish the People’s Republic of China, his record in the
post-revolutionary period was, by and large, disappointing, to put it mildly.
And it was not until after Mao’s death in 1976 that China’s new leader,
Deng Xiaoping, who had also been sent to purgatory during Cultural Revolution,
was able to turn things around to build China into a successful and strong
nation with emphasis on economic growth. And, as we can see, it has worked so
far. But the new China also faced a new dilemma, which continues to dog it
today. Which is: how to reconcile the
virtual abandonment of its communist ideology by following the capitalist mode
of production while still insisting on maintaining the CPC’s monopoly power.
This is where China’s post-Mao leadership finds itself in a difficult position,
and where Mao’s legend (even with some caveat here and there) is useful.
Because if Mao is delegitimized as erratic, his successors to the great CPC that
brought about the revolution, might also stand delegitimized, especially in the
midst of pervasive cynicism among many Chinese about the party leadership at
all levels with reports of widespread corruption and so on.
Xi Jinping’s speech on Mao’s 120th birthday, quoted
earlier in the article, neatly encapsulates this contradiction and dilemma
faced by the party.
Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.
Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au
