China and Mao Zedong’s legend

S P SETH

It was a little surprising that Mao Zedong’s 120^th birthday, which fell on December 26^th, 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 120^th 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