The People’s Republic of China, through the force of Mao Zedong, “The Great Helmsman,” came into being on Oct. 1, 1949. China turns 64 and 120 years ago, this December, Mao was born.
My fascination with China was sparked by a great fourth grade teacher 50 years ago. How could one man, Mao, lead a revolution that would capture the heart, soul, minds and ultimately overthrow the most populated place on the planet, home to one-fifth of all humanity, I wondered.
From the first time I recall hearing about China, I was captivated. How could it be so wrong to believe everyone was equal, my 10-year-old mind pondered.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is a slogan popularised by Karl Marx in 1875. Yet, when I first heard the phrase, it was attributed to Communist China, as I recall.
You see, in my youthful world, along the axis from my grandma’s house in the shadow of our nation’s capitol to my working class neighborhood in suburban Maryland, I saw inequity all around me. My eyes recorded daily that healthy people were treated better than poor people and white people better than black.
Why was “communism,” where people were supposedly equal, such a bad thing?
In the Marxist communist view, such an arrangement was to be made possible by the abundance of goods and services that a developed communist society would produce. The idea is that, with the full development of scientific socialism and unfettered productive forces, there will be enough to satisfy everyone’s needs.
Sure, reality and the maturation process proved the theory wrong — but, before then, I had become hooked on all things China — and fascinated by the plump little guy named Mao that led the country. How could one person from the backwaters of Shaoshan City, Hunan Provence, China, take over an entire country?
That Mao radically altered China’s course is indisputable. What has transpired in China over its 5,000 year history is mind boggling. China’s rise to economic and military superpower status over the last thirty years is nothing short of remarkable.
Many would argue that if Mao would have taken a bow and left the scene after declaring the founding of The People’s Republic of China standing at the Gates of Tiananmen Square on October 1, 1949, he would have gone down in history a one if the world’s great leaders. Yet, he stayed on, putting his country through a convulsion of craziness for a quarter of a century.
Mao’s ideological campaigns, The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, were a disaster and wrought devastation on his own people and is documented by a meticulous accumulation of evidence and fact.
Yet, relatively few average people in the People’s Republic of China really know about Mao Zedong’s record and his tumultuous Cultural Revolution and the Great Famine his policies caused.
Mao’s ideological insanity is responsible for the death of up to 70 million of his own people and tying an anchor to China’s development and the ability to recapture its “fuqiang” (wealth and power) that would not begin to emerge until after his death and Deng Xiaoping’s rise opened China to the world.
Preparations are under way for big celebrations of Mao’s 120th birthday on Dec. 26th. His hometown has become one big tourist trap and a shrine more of a spirited toast to entrepreneurialism and capitalism than the birthplace of a socialist warrior.
Deng Xiaoping's ideological concept “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” with state-owned enterprises and an open-market economy, is alive and well in Mao’s birthplace.
I still break out in laughter thinking about being accosted by an over enthusiastic Amway (short for: the American Way) sales woman in a market in Mao’s hometown of Shaoshan frantically flipping through a Amway catalog pointing excitingly attempting to sell me various “American Way” products.
Amway has a sales force approximately 300,000 people in China along with 9,000 company employees and sales of $4 billion — a third of the company’s 2012 global sales of $11.3 billion. Amway relies on direct sales and 300 retail outlets throughout China.
According to a recent Economist Magazine article, “Last year the (Hunan) province earned nearly $4.6 billion from “red tourism,” as pilgrimages to historic communist sites are known (a local newspaper, in Chinese, describes hopes to boost this by more than 20 percent in 2013).”
President Xi is walking a tight rope between hard liners that want to hold on to Mao’s legacy as the founder and leader of the Communist Party and modern China and the rising middle class and liberals and intellectuals that want to shake Mao’s ideological shackles and to end one-party rule, further opening the country to more democratic opportunities.
While Xi talks reform, he has tightened ideological control and cracked down on dissents.
There remains a great fear among China’s ruling class holding the reigns of power that a slowing economy and deep rooted corruption could lead to the unraveling of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Associated Press reports, “China’s new leader Xi Jinping is commanding wayward Communist Party cadres to purify themselves of corruption, and he’s summed it up in a pithy slogan as Mao Zedong might have done: "Look in the mirror, take a bath." The article continues, "China's leadership wants to show a cynical public that it's modernizing and serious about graft, but it appears to be favoring a top-down ideological campaign — with study sessions, self-criticism and propaganda — over imposing real checks on power. That worries many observers, not only because they doubt it will work, but because the tactic appears to be ripped out of the playbook of Mao, the founder of Communist China."
President Xi, who's own life's was thrown into turmoil by Mao has spoken out against attempts to discredit Mao Zedong, warning that doing so could topple the political regime and plunge the country into chaos. He has "also urged people not to use China's achievements of the past 30 years as a way to call into question the record of the three decades when Mao reigned."
China must confront its past. As George Santayana, the philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist reminds us, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Sooner or later, China's leaders will be forced to "seek truth from facts" when it comes to Mao's legacy.
It has been said you can't move boldly into the future with your eyes fixed on the rearview mirror.
As great teachers educate us, all of humanity has a stake in China's continued peaceful rise and not repeating history where it stumbles and spins out of control.