http://www.nytimes.com
December 25, 2013
China Must Purge Mao's Ghost
By Gao Wenqian
NEW YORK — Thursday marks the 120th birthday of Mao Zedong, founding father of the People’s Republic of China, but the leadership’s celebrations of his legacy are an alarming reminder that China has a long way to go before it can join the league of modern nations.
President Xi Jinping has called for Mao commemorations that are “solemn, austere and practical.” The Communist Party machine is publishing essays, signed by high-level members of the official policy think tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The Great Hall of the People in Beijing, seat of China’s legislature, is organizing a concert of revolutionary songs in praise of Mao for 10,000 people.
These displays of ardor extend across the country. Mao’s hometown, Xiangtan City, in Hunan Province, is spending $2.5 billion on public events celebrating him. In the southern city of Shenzhen, a gold statue of Mao on a jade pedestal, costing $16.5 million, has just been unveiled.
It’s no surprise that China’s leaders have chosen to honor Mao with such pomp. In the decades following the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, Mao’s cult of personality formed the cornerstone of the one-party system. Under the next paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, the cult of Mao moderated, and limited criticism of his worst disasters was permitted. Chinese rule became more consensus-based: by no means democratic, but guided by the Politburo Standing Committee rather than a single person’s whims. But now, as the economy has slowed, China’s leaders have found it necessary to defend the Community Party’s monopoly on power by invoking the nation’s “glorious” history — with Mao’s legacy its most potent tool.
It is certainly not taught in textbooks, but Mao’s record was nothing short of a disaster: The Great Famine of 1958-61 — the result of a course of industrialization known as the Great Leap Forward — caused starvation not seen on a scale since Stalin’s collectivization. Meticulous research by the journalist Yang Jisheng and the historian Frank Dikötter has estimated the death toll at anywhere from 36 million to 45 million.
Meanwhile, Mao lived in luxury. As a young cadre inside the system in the late 1970s, I visited several of “Mao’s No. 1 guesthouses” when I accompanied high-ranking Chinese officials on work trips. Built during the years of the Great Famine, they were surrounded by lush courtyard gardens and furnished with wall-to-wall carpeting and red velvet curtains.
Politically weakened by the economic disaster, Mao in 1966 launched the Cultural Revolution, plunging the country into a decade of turmoil, tearing families apart and eliminating what decency remained in society. His death in 1976 — and the subsequent ouster of the radical Gang of Four, led by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing — brought a halt to the chaos.
Given this blood-soaked legacy, why does Mao continue to hold a spell over much of the population? Why does his portrait still adorn the Gate of Heavenly Peace on Tiananmen Square?
The primary reason, ironically, is economics. Mao was an ideologue who was committed to social and political transformation but understood nothing about the factors that contribute to economic growth. The “reform and opening” that Deng began in the late 1970s, after Mao’s death, led to unprecedented economic growth, but also yawning imbalances in the distribution of wealth and soaring inequality. Coupled with a lack of respect for land rights, many peasants and workers have felt powerless in the midst of head-spinning economic change, internal migration and choking pollution.
Therefore, many Chinese became nostalgic for the leftism of the Mao era — when the “iron rice bowl,” a position in a state-owned enterprise or a government agency — guaranteed job security from cradle to grave. Today, social protections from health insurance to old-age pensions have been eroded, leaving the elderly increasingly on their own.
China’s growth rate is still the envy of the world, but it is falling. That expresses itself as discontent: An estimated 180,000 “mass protests” were recorded in China in 2010. Ordinary Chinese try to make their way to Beijing to present petitions seeking redress of local injustices and corruption. They want economic fairness and the rule of law.
Bo Xilai, the former high-level official now in prison for corruption, showed the extent of Maoism’s current appeal. Before his downfall, he led a Maoist-revival campaign in the southwestern city of Chongqing, urging public singing of Mao-era songs and promoting populist social policies, such as more public housing. Mr. Xi and the current leaders may have purged Mr. Bo, but far from disavowing his Maoist tactics, they have absorbed them.
Mr. Xi has no intention of following Mao’s economic model. A recent high-level party conference affirmed the primacy of market forces over the economy. At the same time, he has not shied from invoking Mao’s legacy to serve his political ends. In a speech in January to the newly selected members of the Party’s Central Committee, he said that the revolutionary era of 1949-1979 should not negate the reform era that followed Mao. Mr. Xi has begun a “rectification” campaign against corruption and even revived the Maoist practice of “self-criticism” (so far with limited success).
And yet invoking Mao is an ill-advised path for Mr. Xi — and for all of China. What if another charismatic, disruptive politician like Mr. Bo were to emerge within the party? Would Mr. Xi be forced to tack to the left of this politician? Could another Cultural Revolution be far behind?
Deng, who was a political authoritarian but an economic liberal, led the official evaluation of Mao’s legacy, faulting Mao for the “error” of the Cultural Revolution but stressing that his “immortal” contributions to China far outweighed his errors. While Deng went on to radically alter Mao’s policies, he allowed the Mao myth to live on.
It was an uneasy attempt to leave the past behind, but now it’s time to shatter the myth. The cult of Mao is the greatest obstacle to social transformation in China. Looking backward will lead China away from what it needs today: real political reform. China must embrace the rule of law, not the lawlessness that could lead to a modern-day Cultural Revolution.
Gao Wenqian, a senior policy adviser at Human Rights in China, was a member of the executive committee of the Research Center on Party Literature of the Communist Party of China. He emigrated to the United States in 1993 and subsequently wrote “Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary,” which is banned in China. This article was translated by Mi Ling Tsui from the Chinese.
