Poets From China

"凡是愚弱的國民，即使體格如何健全，如何茁壯，也只能做毫無意義的示眾的材料和看客，病死多少是不必以為不幸的。"

"The Chinese revolution is indisputably one of the most important events of twentieth-century history, and its doctrine, known as Maoism, has accordingly become one of the chief elements in the contemporary war of ideas, irrespective of its intellectual value. Measured by European standards the ideological documents of Maoism, and especially the theoretical writings of Mao himself, appear in fact extremely primitive and clumsy, sometimes even childish; in comparison, even Stalin gives the impression of a powerful theorist. However, judgements of this kind must be made with some caution. Those who, like the present writer, do not know Chinese and have only a scanty and superficial knowledge of China's history and culture doubtless cannot grasp the full meaning of these texts, the various associations and allusions perceptible to a reader acquainted with Chinese thought; in this respect one must rely on the views of experts, who, however, do not always agree."

"The Cultural Revolution that broke out in 1966 is significant in the context of a discussion of Mao’s thought for several reasons. First (and as with the theory and practice of the Hundred Flowers movement), Mao indicated his willingness to depart from a central principle of Leninism by not only bunching an attack on the Party but by mobilizing non-Party elements as the spearhead of that attack. For Lenin, a communist party represented the vanguard of the working class, its most advanced and politically conscious section. In the Leninist conception, there is no suggestion that the vanguard party might itself become an agent of retrogressive ideas, policies, and actions that could threaten the attainment of the revolutionary goals of the working class. Mao, however, made no assumption that the Party was above and beyond the struggles within society; contradictions and ideologies of a class nature were inevitably reflected within the Party, and it could thus be inhabited by negative and counter-revolutionary elements. Such elements had to be struggled against, and if their position within the Party was so powerful that they could not be dislodged by an intra-party struggle, then it would be necessary to mobilize progressive forces from the wider community to defeat them. During the years of the Cultural Revolution, Mao led a coalition of nonparty elements (students, youth, the military, sections of the working class) in his attack on those within the Party deemed to have taken “the capitalist road.” However, while Mao demonstrated a rather different appreciation of the vanguard status of the communist patty than had Lenin, he would not, despite its widespread failings, permit its complete destruction."

"It is clear that Mao regarded a sinified Marxism as a union between Marxism’s universal laws and the particular “laws” that described the characterizing regularities of the Chinese context. How did he perceive this theoretical system as a “guide to action”? It must be stressed that Mao did not regard it as incorporating the formulae for automatic and necessarily correct policy responses to the various political, economic, and military contingencies that might arise in the course of revolution. The function of a sinified Marxism was to facilitate as accurate an interpretation of the Chinese context as possible. With this information, the CCP’s leaders would be in a position to formulate strategies and tactics commensurate with the objective possibilities and limitations of the concrete situation. Such strategies and tactics could only be regarded as appropriate in their conception rather than as necessarily correct. Having a clear and hopefully accurate picture of the historical situation would act as a guide to action by ruling out inappropriate policy responses and presenting certain strategies and tactics as preferable or even obvious. Here again, the influence of the inductive method is revealed in Mao’s method of formulating policies: Under no circumstances could one arbitrarily formulate strategies or tactics a priori, but only via a careful analysis of the characteristics of a historically specific situation."

"Mao thus perceived “politics” as a vitally important factor in the unfolding of history and the realization of historical goals. However, he did not perceive “politics” as autonomous from other historically generative elements within the “economic” realm of society’s “basis” (the forces and relations of production); rather, the effectivity of “politics” to accelerate the historical process was circumscribed by the “economic” realm, just as the further development of the “economic” realm was dependent on developments in the political realm. This mutual interdependence within the “basis” of society indicated the importance of political organization and action, but indicated also the objective limitations interdependence created. Guided by this framework, Mao was prepared to exploit the possibility for political action to its limit but was, during the Yan’an period, very mindful of not rushing ahead of the constraints of the objective situation. It was, nevertheless, on the possibility of exploiting the potential of “politics” to achieve short-term historical goals that Mao premised his confidence in the realization of “inevitable” long-term historical goals."

"Mao was thus not content to lead a purely rural revolution, and he strove where possible to alter the sociological composition of the Party and military in favor of the working class and during the period of the Jiangxi Soviet to construct its embryonic state institutions in ways that expressed the power of the working class. While he put great store in the peasants as the “main force" of the Chinese Revolution, he was adamant that it would not be their consciousness which dictated the long-term direction of the revolution, for this could only serve to reinforce economic, political, and cultural impediments to the modernist transformation of China's society. Mao’s frequent references from the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s to the necessity of working class leadership of the Chinese Revolution are therefore signposts indicating not only his conception of the future course and strategy of the revolution but the future of China itself. These signposts are more than sufficient to problematize the conventional accounts of Mao’s approach to China’s revolution and the orthodoxy of that approach. It remains to be seen, however, whether those who have constructed the spurious image of Mao as peasant revolutionary will choose to notice them and rethink this central dimension of Mao’s thought."

"Mao’s understanding of the Marxist theory of social change has frequently been misrepresented. It is often suggested that Mao turned his back on the materialist philosophy of Marxism, glorifying rather the capacity of ideas to transform society. He is thus depicted as an “idealist” or “voluntarist,” one who regarded the ideological-political superstructure of society and struggles within it as the primary source of social change; the economic base, which Marx had attributed with this role, became in Mao’s mind pliantly malleable to pressures for change from the superstructure. Yet, a careful exploration of this dimension of his thought does not bear out this interpretation. While his views on the capacity of politics, ideology, and culture to contribute to social change did go beyond that of a mechanical and reductionist materialism and did vary, his general perspective remained an economists one; he continued to regard the economic foundation of society—forces and relations of production—as the ultimately determining factor in history."

"Mao Zedong openly declared that "man must conquer nature," setting loose a devastating onslaught on the natural world that transitioned seamlessly from clear-cuts under communism to mega-dams under capitalism."

"On September 9, 1976, Mao succumbed to his illness, leaving his successors with his achievements and premonitions, with the legacy of his grandiosity and brutality, of great vision distorted by self-absorption. He left behind a China unified as it had not been for centuries, with most vestiges of the original regime eliminated, clearing away the underbrush for reforms never intended by the Chairman. If China remains united and emerges as a twenty-first-century superpower, Mao may hold, for many Chinese, the same ambiguous yet respected role in Chinese history as Qin Shihuang, the Emperor he personally revered: the dynasty-founding autocrat who dragged China into the next era by conscripting its population for a massive national exertion, and whose excesses were later acknowledged by some as a necessary evil. For others, the tremendous suffering Mao inflicted on his people will dwarf his achievements. Two strands of policy had been competing with each other through the turbulences of Mao’s rule. There was the revolutionary thrust that saw China as a moral and political force, insisting on dispensing its unique precepts by example to an awestruck world. There was the geopolitical China coolly assessing trends and manipulating them to its own advantage. There was a China seeking coalitions for the first time in its history but also the one defiantly challenging the entire world. Mao had taken a war-wracked country and maneuvered it between competing domestic factions, hostile superpowers, an ambivalent Third World, and suspicious neighbors. He managed to have China participate in each overlapping concentric circle but commit itself to none. China had survived wars, tensions, and doubts while its influence grew, and in the end, it became an emerging superpower whose Communist form of government survived the collapse of the Communist world. Mao achieved this at horrendous cost by relying on the tenacity and perseverance of the Chinese people, using their endurance and cohesion, which so often exasperated him, as the bedrock of his edifice."

"Mao’s study, a medium-sized room, was across the hallway. Manuscripts lined bookshelves along every wall; books covered the table and the floor; it looked more the retreat of a scholar than the audience room of the all-powerful leader of the world’s most populous nation. On my first few visits a simple wood-frame bed stood in one corner; later it disappeared. Our first sight was of a semicircle of easy chairs, all with brownish slipcovers as if a thrifty middle-class family wanted to protect upholstery too expensive to replace. Between each pair of chairs stood a V-shaped coffee table, covered with a white napkin, fitting into the angle made by adjoining arm rests. The tables next to Mao, being generally piled with books, had just enough room for the ever-present cup of jasmine tea. Two standing lamps with unusually large circular shades stood behind the chairs; in front of Mao, to his right, was a spittoon. When one entered the room, Mao rose from one of the easy chairs; on the last couple of visits he required two assistants’ help, but he never failed so to greet his visitors. One usually cannot tell when meeting a famous and powerful leader to what extent one is impressed by his personality or awed by his status and repute. In Mao’s case there could be no doubt. Except for the suddenness of the summons there was no ceremony. The interior appointments were as modest as the exterior. Mao just stood there, surrounded by books, tall and powerfully built for a Chinese. He fixed the visitor with a smile both penetrating and slightly mocking, warning by his bearing that there was no point in seeking to deceive this specialist in the foibles and duplicity of man. I have met no one, with the possible exception of Charles de Gaulle, who so distilled raw, concentrated willpower. He was planted there with a female attendant close by to help steady him (and on my last visits to hold him up); he dominated the room—not by the pomp that in most states confers a degree of majesty on the leaders, but by exuding in almost tangible form the overwhelming drive to prevail."

"[Mao] has played politics with Asian cunning. ... [and] has always been a master at concealing his true intention. ... I was always on my guard with him."

"Mao was wrong about the unique nature of his tactics. In their emphasis on isolating towns by dominating the surrounding countryside, they derived directly from the methods of the horse peoples who had been such persistent enemies of China for nearly two thousand years. But there were novel features in Mao’s methods: first, his belief in the ‘classless’ – ‘soldiers, bandits, robbers, beggars, and prostitutes’ –were grist to the revolution’s mill, ‘people capable of fighting very bravely and, if properly fed, a revolutionary force’; second, his perception that in the face of a more powerful enemy a war could nonetheless be won if one had the patience to avoid seeking a decision until the enemy’s frustration and exhaustion robbed him of the chance of victory. This theory of ‘protracted war’ will be remembered as Mao’s principal contribution to military theory. After his triumph over Chiang Kai-shek in China, it was adopted by the Vietnamese in their wars, first against the French, and then against the Americans."

"A ninety-year-old Du Bois was hopeful, too, in another way. "Today, the United States is fighting world progress, progress which must be toward socialism and against colonialism," he said, speaking to seven hundred students and faculty at Howard University in April 1958. Later in the year, having gotten his passport back, Du Bois toured Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Communist China, where he happily met Chairman Mao Tse-tung. When Mao started musing about the "diseased psychology" of African Americans, showing that he was attuned to the latest racist social science, Du Bois interjected. Blacks were not diseased psychologically; they lacked incomes, Du Bois explained, inciting a debate and a fusillade of questions from Mao. When Du Bois expressed some of his failures as an activist, Mao interjected. Activists only failed when they stopped struggling. "This, I gather," Mao said, "you have never done.""

"Today's mic-hogging, fast-talking, contentious young (and old) lefties continue to hawk little books and pamphlets on revolution, always with choice words or documents from Marx, Mao, even Malcolm. But I've never seen a broadside with "A Black Feminist Statement or even the writings of Angela Davis or June Jordan or Barbara Omolade or Flo Kennedy or Audre Lorde or bell hooks or Michelle Wallace, at least not from the groups who call themselves leftist. These women's collective wisdom has provided the richest insights into American radicalism's most fundamental questions: How can we build a multiracial movement? Who are the working class and what do they desire? How do we resolve the Negro Question and the Woman Question? What is freedom?"

"Mao is dead. Very dead. The indicator of how dead he is happens to be how much he is now cited as an “authority” for the most un-Maoist of endeavors. China is not undergoing a Maoist or even a Mao revival. It is undergoing a tragedy-to-farce progression (Marx, yes): Mao’s first coming was in many ways a tragedy, insofar as he tried to build socialism in China. He failed so miserably that he now can be called upon as an incantation to build a variety of viciously undemocratic capitalism that is so far from his own life endeavor that it would be farcically laughable if it weren’t so depressingly crass."

"Mao’s China has contradictory legacies. Mao’s party-state copied a lot of techniques of power from Stalin’s Soviet Union, heavily relying on the repressive and bureaucratic apparatus to silence intellectuals and destroy careers and lives. But Mao’s party-state also departed from Stalin’s one in significant way. Besides top-down repression, Mao also resorted over and over again to mass mobilization to achieve social control, letting the zealous and even hysterical masses to help the Party exterminate its enemies. While the kulaks in the Soviet Union were taken care of by firing squads, China’s “landlords” and “rich peasants” were humiliated in public trials, many of which led to mob violence and death. Mao’s preference for mass mobilization, added to his suspicion of a state bureaucracy over which had lost personal control, ignited the Cultural Revolution that created an unintended legacy yet to be fully understood. The experience of underprivileged kids, including those previously persecuted as bad elements, being encouraged to assault cadres and seize power from local party organs, must have generated a lasting impact and formed collective memories in Chinese society. Cadres' and their chindren's experience of being attacked by rebellious Red Guard factions must have planted the seed for a long-lasting nightmare of the party-state elite."

"Even Mao's casual remark, "Sweet potato tastes good, I like it," became a slogan seen everywhere in the countryside."

"In Los Angeles they [the Black Panthers would run classes every Saturday in "political education" in which their members had to memorize sections of Mao's little red book. If they failed to memorize their assignment, they were beaten up. The same thing would happen if they failed to sell their weekly quota of their party newspaper. The Panthers picked up the Maoist slogan "All power grows out of the barrel of a gun" and made an ideological fetish out of it. That phrase has to be one of the stupidest things Mao ever said, because what power really grows out of is the organized consciousness of millions of people. At some point guns may become important tactically in the revolutionary process in some countries, but that isn't where power comes from-and a good thing, too, because revolutionaries are always going to be outgunned by the forces defending the old order."

"He [Chairman Mao] appears to me as a father and he himself considered me as a son. [We had] very good relations. The only problem was that on many occasions, when official dinners were held, Chairman Mao always used to bring me to his side. So, then as Chinese tradition, Chairman Mao himself would use his chopsticks to put some food in my plate. So, in a way it was a great honour, but in a way I feel little fear...he coughing too much, a chain smoker, so I might get some germs [laughing]."

"Mao Zedong! Amazing man! Imagine him and his followers wandering through China day and night, fighting for their goal. What an effort. He has also written beautiful prose and excellent poems."

"Mao began to write, turned to journalism, and found himself on the threshold of politics. With his Chinese practicality, he put an advertisement in the Changsha newspaper, asking that "hardened and determined" young men interested in patriotism and politics get in touch with him. Changsha became too small for him. He had seven dollars. He bought shoes and an umbrella, and set out to see the world. His instincts were predominantly nationalist at first; he wanted to free China from foreign domination. Imperialism, he proceeded to see, was inextricably associated with capitalism, and he became a socialist. His revolutionary career began in 1927, when he was appointed president of the first Chinese Peasants Union; his rise was rapid, and by 1930 he was chairman of the Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Committee. Then came the Long March; the great years began. Chiang Kai-shek offered a reward of $250,000 (Chinese) for him, dead or alive; his first wife and sister were caught and executed. His present wife- a typical enough touch- learned many details of his life for the first time when, in her company, he dictated his autobiography to Edgar Snow. She was severely wounded during the Long March, when he walked 6,000 miles."

"Mao Tse-tung was born in 1893 in a village in Hunan. His father was a peasant, and he began to work at the age of six on the small family farm. His mother was a considerate woman, his father exceptionally severe; Mao records that he was never allowed eggs or meat, though the other farm boys had these luxuries occasionally. He had remarkable strength of character and ambition, and a fierce urgency for education; he struggled to go to school, and at seventeen tramped alone to the near-by city of Changsha where there was an academy. Came a tremendous event: where he saw for the first time a map of the world. He pored over it gluttonously. He writes, "I went to the library in the morning when it opened. At noon I paused only long enough to buy and consume two rice cakes, which were my daily lunch. I stayed in the library every day reading until it closed." He studied Adam Smith, Darwin, Spencer, Mill. One book that influenced him was Great Heroes of the World, which contained biographies of Napoleon, Peter the Great, Rousseau. He read about the American Revolution and came across a pregnant sentence: "After eight years of difficult war, Washington won a victory and built up his nation.""

"The leaders of the Chinese Soviets are Mao Tse-tung and Chu Teh. They are associated so closely that for a long time people thought they were the same man; one heard of the famous "Red general" Mao-Chu, or Chu-Mao. Mao Tse-tung (pronounced roughly "Mow Tzuh-doong"), the chairman of the Central Executive Committee, is political chief. General Chu Teh ("Joo Duh") is military leader. An odd point is that "Chu Teh" literally means- Red Virtue! The two are intimately close friends, but differ widely in character and attributes. They complement each other nicely. Mao is a philosopher, an intellectual; Chu Teh is an executive, a soldier. Mao, I heard it said, is the Red brain, Chu Teh the Red heart. A calm man, of peasant stock, Mao is a builder, a dreamer, a creator; he has never been outside China. Chu Teh, much warmer in temperament, less aloof, has traveled widely; he has great human quality, and people talk of him as they might talk of Lincoln. Mao could hold his own anywhere among Chinese intellectuals; Chu Teh talks little. Both have a considerable sense of humor, though Mao's is more sardonic; both have highly modern minds. Mao, perhaps, is the greater man; but he would not be where he is had not Chu Teh developed and led his unique army. I have heard Mao described as equal intellectually to Lenin."

"As late as 1947, Mao insisted that his program corresponded to that of Sun. Until December of that year, Mao insisted that his 'new democracy' would protect the 'bourgeoisie' and 'their industry and commerce.' Because of China's backwardness, he would continue to support capitalist development and ensure that both public and private, capital and labor, interests would benefit from the revolution."

"To find positive elements in Mao Zedong's thought and action is not to deny that he was a dictator. Although he constantly warned against indiscriminate resort to imprisonment and execution, he was ruthless when he believed he had to be; the revolutionary consensus was to be protected at all costs from its enemies. Yet to assume because most dictators are paranoics or kleptocrats or closet fascists does not mean that all are. I do not see Mao as another Stalin or another Hitler. I see him more as I see Oliver Cromwell - a man of profoundly democratic instincts forced by circumstances to play the tyrant in defence of his democratic values and ill-served by his major generals."

"M ao Zedong had more power over more people for a longer time than anyone in history. He was also a mass murderer, responsible for more deaths than any leader in history. Mao developed a new form of Communism, founding his revolution on the rural poor. He established a Soviet state in a remote corner of China, then finally united the country through a devastating civil war. From the beginning, he massacred millions of opponents, but the greatest destruction followed his path to build China by making steel in its backyards, tens of millions starved in the aftermath. His Cultural Revolution followed, destroying much of China's heritage. The subject of supreme adulation, Mao died peacefully of old age."

"That was also the case for the whole experience since the foundation of the PRC, when Mao had been Stalin, Lenin, Marx and the First Emperor rolled into one, a figure from the past who was set on being a resolutely modern revolutionary with Chinese characteristics. Though unable to regain Taiwan, he had enjoyed great successes, reunifying the mainland and making it into a major, nuclear-armed global player, which punched above its real weight as it inspired would-be emulators round the world and allowed the leaders of the greatest superpower to come to pay court. Backed by the immense cult of his personality, the charismatic, narcissistic Son of Heaven, who thought himself capable of changing human nature through his mass campaigns, could demand complete loyalty to the cause of revolution as he chose to define it. Nobody and nothing could be excused from utter dedication and readiness to contribute whatever was demanded. Private life meant nothing. People were a blank sheet of paper, mere numbers to be used as the leader saw fit. Maoist autocracy reached heights of totalitarianism unparalleled by Hitler or Stalin, accompanied by massive hypocrisy as the leader who preached simplicity, morality and proletarian values had his favourite fish flown up from Wuhan, dallied with a succession of young ladies, had rarely used villas built for him at great cost, and raked in the royalties from his Little Red Book. A potent terror organization ensured obedience, a huge gulag swallowed up real or imagined opponents, and a massive propaganda machine fed the myths. Yet it is hard to argue that Mao did not inspire adulation. He was a monster, but a monster whom people revered as the symbol of a new China that would wipe away all the suffering and weakness of the hundred years before 1949 and who offered at least a promise of an ‘iron rice bowl’ of food and welfare, however much it was contradicted by his actions."

"Future historians may conclude that Mao’s role was to try to destroy the age-old bifurcation of China between a small educated ruling stratum and the vast mass of common people. We do not yet know how far he succeeded. The economy was developing, but it was left to his successors to create a new political structure."

"An outsider’s understanding of Mao requires a feat of imagination, first to recognize the nature of his supremacy. Mao had two careers, one as rebel leader, one as an updated emperor. He had gained the power of the latter but evidently retained the self-image of the former. Because authority in China came from the top down, as was recognized even in the mass line, once the CCP had taken power its leader became sacrosanct, above all the rest of mankind, not only the object of a cult of veneration but also the acknowledged superior of everyone in the organization. So much of the CCP had been put together by Mao that it could be regarded as his creation, and if he wanted to reform it, that was his privilege. Only if we regard him as a monarch in succession to scores of emperors can we imagine why the leadership of the CCP, trained to be loyal, went along with his piecemeal assault on and destruction of them."

"Mao’s sinification of Marxism may fruitfully be compared with the failure of Taiping Christianity. In the 1850s Hong’s claim to be the younger brother of Jesus soon made him anathema to the foreign source of his vision, the Western missionaries, whom he did not even deal with in his profound arrogance. In short order he made himself both a Christian heretic and within China a foreign subversive, achieving the worst of both worlds. By contrast, Mao, though eventually anathematized by Moscow, succeeded for some time in cooperating with the Comintern, and when he sinified his Marxism, he masked it in a coating of orthodox terminology. Both Hong and Mao started out with only a rudimentary grasp of the foreign doctrine, and both broke free of the domination of foreigners—Hong of the missionaries, Mao of the Comintern. But of course the differences between them far outweigh such similarities."

"The secret of Mao’s success at Yan’an was his flexibility at combining short-term and long-term goals. In the short term he espoused in 1940 the New Democracy as a united-front doctrine that would embrace all the Chinese people who would subscribe to CCP leadership. For the long term, he steadily developed the party organization, including its control over intellectuals. The Yan’an rectification movement of 1942–1944 (more fully described below) established the campaign style of mobilization, including individual isolation, terror, struggle, confession, humiliation, and subservience. Party members would come to know it well and, in time, so would the public. It was one of Mao’s achievements, with roots both in Leninism–Stalinism and in Imperial Confucianism."

"Mao Tse-tung in his turn unified the country as a hero risen from the people, like the founders of the Han and Ming. He went them one better and swam the Yangtze to encourage his people to use and overcome nature. Mao's armies in the 1940s were not a scourge upon the peasantry but avenged their wrongs. He "won the hearts of the people" sufficiently to secure food and soldiers from territorial bases. He attracted college students to staff his administration. His ideology claimed the Mandate of History, if not of Heaven. Once in power, his regime surveyed, classified, and redistributed both the land and the populace. Rising to power with barbarian help, he yet patronized Chinese culture and employed scholars to document the record of the previous regime and point the lesson of its fall. He celebrated the revolution in classical poetry, and his calligraphy adorned public places. His example mightily affected the peripheral states. In Peking in front of the great palace built by the Ming Emperors of the fifteenth century he built a great square, whither came delegations from Southeast Asia and the Western Regions to watch the great processions. Today Mao's body lies embalmed in the center of the square."

"On the verbal level Mao's homely exhortations are studded with Chinese proverb and metaphor, both classical and colloquial. He castigates neutralists who would "sit on top of a mountain to watch the tigers fight" as well as supercilious cadres who think arguing with peasants is like "playing music to a cow." No one who has skirted a pit of nightsoil covered with maggots can fail to understand Mao's abhorrence of what he calls "the deep, stinking cesspool of Chinese reaction." To quote Confucius' sage advice, "think twice," does not necessarily promote Confucianism, but it helps to fit communism into the Chinese landscape. On the level of theory, Mao continued to warp and bend Communist doctrine to fit it to local needs. Stalin had asserted that the Soviet experience which reached socialism through the "dictatorship of the proletariat" offered the only path to socialism, which must be followed by the people's democracies of eastern Europe and presumably by all others. But the CCP after 1949 set up a "people's democratic dictatorship" and claimed that a mere "hegemony of the proletariat" at the head of a united front and a coalition government representing the whole "people," a combination of all "revolutionary classes," could lead China to socialism and moreover could do it by a gradual, persuasive, nonviolent transformation, quite unlike the abrupt and violent change postulated by Lenin and Stalin."

"The simple facts of Mao's career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28 with a dozen others to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land—history records no greater achievement. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, all the kings of Europe, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin—no predecessor can equal Mao Tse-tung's scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China. Indeed Mao's achievement is almost beyond our comprehension, unless we note the trends which culminated in his career: first, the new growth of Chinese mass nationalism in response to Western and then Japanese invasion; second, the movement of upper-class literati to lead the peasant masses toward a better life; third, Soviet Russia's transmission of its theory and practice of revolution, including united front tactics, through the Communist International (Comintern). Sun Yat-sen got Comintern help only at the end of his career in 1923, two years before his death. Mao and his colleagues began with it. They got started also with Kuomintang help."

"We shall presently argue that there is indeed a great deal to learn from China. For that to happen, however, it is crucial to have a clear view of the roots of Chinese triumphs and successes, and also of the sources of its troubles and failures. It is, of course, first of all necessary to distinguish between - and contrast - the different phases of the Chinese experience, in particular, before and after the economic reforms initiated in 1979. But going beyond that, it is also important to take note of the interdependence between the achievements in the different periods. We argue, in particular, that the accomplishments relating to education, health care, land reforms, and social change in the pre-reform period made significantly positive contributions to the achievements of the post-reform period. This is so in terms of their role not only in sustained high life expectancy and related achievements, but also in providing firm support for economic expansion based on market reforms. It may have been very far from Mao's own intentions to develop literacy and basic health care in ways that would help to promote market-based, internationally-oriented enterprises (though that dialectical contrariness must have some interest for a Marxist theorist). But these structural achievements in the pre-reform period have certainly served as direct and valuable inputs in fostering economic performance in post-reform China. In drawing lessons from China, these apparently contrary interconnections can be particularly important."

"One never left a meeting with him feeling indifferent... He spoke slowly and quietly, weighing each word. He never said anything foolish. There was something sad in him, and he often behaved strangely. Once he arrived unexpect­edly and he told me that Buddhism was a good religion; that though he was a prince, Buddha had done much to improve the lot of the poor. Then, as suddenly as he had arrived, he left. He was always very affectionate with me. [Oriana Fallaci: You're unable to see him as an enemy, isn't that true, Holiness?] Yes. Speaking as a Buddhist, I cannot accept the word enemy. ... Mao Tse-tung is neither cunning nor diplomatic. I told him what his generals were doing in Tibet, and he understood. Perhaps he couldn't stop them. Or perhaps he has changed. I am unable to reconcile the Mao Tse-tung I knew with the Mao Tse-tung of today. He must be in the grip of some madness or some infirmity. The cultural revolution, for example. The name is lovely, but there is no substance: it's the dementia of an old man. I cannot see him in this dementia."

"I suppose some people will say on balance Mao did more good than harm."

"In his enhanced identification with revolutionary youth, Mao no longer found the Party's standard" from the top down" approach to mass mobilization acceptable, and in spontaneously rebuking Liu and Deng and ordering the work teams withdrawn, he authorized a momentous departure from previous traditions of Party-mass linkage. Having ventured this innovation, however, he found it impossible either to allow the rebels to consummate their victory or to permit the entire experiment in spontaneous mobilization to be negated. Instead, from 1968 through 1976 he vacillated, sometimes permitting repression of the "revolutionary masses," sometimes kicking over the traces and permitting the masses to rise in relatively untrammeled anarchy (up to a point); as a result, mass mobilization became devalued either as a mechanism for elite implementation of policy or for the purpose of popular monitoring of deviant elites. Similarly, it was his prescient recognition of the problem of his own aging and debility that led Mao to attempt to designate his own heir apparent well in advance and to encourage the rise of revolutionary successors in a generational sense, but having undertaken such preparations he found them in direct conflict with his own fierce will to live, and thus repeatedly reversed them. On the issues of both mobilization and succession, we have argued that although part of the reason for Mao's oscillatory tendencies has to do with the constraints of a complex political reality, basically he was afflicted by his own crippling ambivalence. The result was an unusually protracted and debilitating crisis of succession."

"Mao's impact on Chinese politics will probably be reinterpreted for as long as that impact is politically significant - and it remains considerable ten years after his death, both among reformers who have redacted their own 'new text' and among the 'leftists' who resist this construal. To Deng Xiaoping and his 'practice faction', the 'living soul' of Mao Zedong Thought consists of the mass line, 'seeking truth from facts', and independence - of class struggle, Mao's 'key link', the less said the better. Mao's notions of a regenerative bourgeoisie, of 'struggle between the two lines' within the Party, of 'continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat', have been essentially repudiated, thereby removing this source of theoretical embarrassment and political anarchism. Mao's deep concern with distributive justice, as translated into economic egalitarianism and a smothering ideological conformity, has likewise gone by the board. The posthumous interpretation of what Mao was wont to call 'self-reliance' (zili gengsheng) thoroughly discounts the old economic indices therefore (eschewal of loans, investment, or very much trade) in favour of 'opening to the outside world', compensating with a more heavy-handed appeal to Chinese nationalism. The post-Mao leadership has thus in effect sought to preserve only those aspects of Mao's legacy which are utterly flexible, while dismissing those to which he attributed immortal importance."

"Mao set about ensnaring his enemies with the precision of a trapper. But once the stage was set and the Cultural Revolution erupted in the summer of 1966, it took on a life of its own, with unintended consequences that even the most consummate strategist could not have anticipated. Mao wished to purge the higher echelons of power, so he could hardly rely on the party machine to get the job done. He turned to young, radical students instead, some of them no older than fourteen, giving them licence to denounce all authority and ‘bombard the headquarters’. But party officials had honed their survival skills during decades of political infighting, and few were about to be outflanked by a group of screaming, self-righteous Red Guards. Many deflected the violence away from themselves by encouraging the youngsters to raid the homes of class enemies, stigmatised as social outcasts. Some cadres even managed to organise their own Red Guards, all in the name of Mao Zedong Thought and the Cultural Revolution. In the parlance of the time, they ‘raised the red flag in order to fight the red flag’. The Red Guards started fighting each other, divided over who the true ‘capitalist roaders’ inside the party were. In some places, party activists and factory workers rallied in support of their besieged leaders. In response, the Chairman urged the population at large to join the revolution, calling on all to ‘seize power’ and overthrow the ‘bourgeois power holders’. The result was a social explosion on an unprecedented scale, as every pent-up frustration caused by years of communist rule was released. There was no lack of people who harboured grievances against party officials. But the ‘revolutionary masses’, instead of neatly sweeping away all followers of the ‘bourgeois reactionary line’, also became divided, as different factions jostled for power and started fighting each other. Mao used the people during the Cultural Revolution; but, equally, many people manipulated the campaign to pursue their own goals. By January 1967 the chaos was such that the army intervened, seeking to push through the revolution and bring the situation under control by supporting the ‘true proletarian left’. As different military leaders supported different factions, all of them equally certain they represented the true voice of Mao Zedong, the country slid into civil war. Still, the Chairman prevailed. He was cold and calculating, but also erratic, whimsical and fitful, thriving in willed chaos. He improvised, bending and breaking millions along the way. He may not have been in control, but he was always in charge, relishing a game in which he could constantly rewrite the rules. Periodically he stepped in to rescue a loyal follower or, contrariwise, to throw a close colleague to the wolves. A mere utterance of his decided the fates of countless people, as he declared one or another faction to be ‘counter-revolutionary’. His verdict could change overnight, feeding a seemingly endless cycle of violence in which people scrambled to prove their loyalty to the Chairman."

"We know that Mao was the key architect of the Great Leap Forward, and thus bears the main responsibility for the catastrophe that followed. He had to work hard to push through his vision, bargaining, cajoling, goading, occasionally tormenting or persecuting his colleagues. Unlike Stalin, he did not drag his rivals into a dungeon to have them executed, but he did have the power to remove them from office, terminating their careers – and the many privileges which came with a top position in the party. The campaign to overtake Britain started with Chairman Mao, and it ended when he grudgingly allowed his colleagues to return to a more gradual approach in economic planning a few years later. But he would never have been able to prevail if Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai, the next two most powerful party leaders, had acted against him. They, in turn, whipped up support from other senior colleagues, as chains of interests and alliances extended all the way down to the village – as is documented here for the first time. Ferocious purges were carried out, as lacklustre cadres were replaced with hard, unscrupulous men who trimmed their sails to benefit from the radical winds blowing from Beijing."

"I should remind you that Chairman Mao dedicated most of his life to China, that he saved the party and the revolution in their most critical moments, that, in short, his contribution was so great that, without him, the Chinese people would have had a much harder time finding the right path out of the darkness. We also shouldn't forget that it was Chairman Mao who combined the teachings of Marx and Lenin with the realities of Chinese history—that it was he who applied those principles, creatively, not only to politics but to philosophy, art, literature, and military strategy. Yes, before the 1960s—or, better, up until the late 1950s—some of Chairman Mao's ideas were, for the most part, correct. Furthermore, many of his principles brought us victory and allowed us to gain power. Then, unfortunately, in the last few years of his life, he committed many grave errors—the Cultural Revolution, above all. And much disgrace was brought upon the party, the country, the people."

"The consequences of Mao’s actions were inevitably in proportion to the prodigious power he exercised, and the enormous population he ruled over. As a unifier and modernizer his achievements were immense, but his errors caused appalling suffering on a scale that is difficult to grasp. His utopian dreams, his periodic refusal to engage with reality, his ruthlessness, and his determination to win imposed terrible suffering on the Chinese people and cost millions of them their lives. He was ready to accept huge costs because he believed that suffering and death were inevitable in the pursuit of his cause. Mao’s revolution improved life for those who survived it, bringing the economic development, education, and modernization on which subsequent progress was built. It also reunified China and made the country a force to be reckoned with in the world. He left an indelible mark on history."

"Mao’s life and his character are difficult to sum up because he was a complex man who behaved in contradictory ways. He embraced an imported modernizing ideology yet remained profoundly Chinese in his outlook. He was an idealist who produced inspirational writings but was prepared to accept suffering and death on an unimaginable scale to achieve his aims. He was a despot who proclaimed that ‘it is right to rebel’. He was an ideologue who wrote poetry. Mao recognized the contradictory nature of his own character when he wrote he combined a ‘kingly’ disposition demanding to dominate and suborn, with a ‘monkey spirit’ that urged him to run riot and throw all into disorder. Henry Kissinger saw the kingly Mao, observing that he ‘distilled raw concentrated willpower’ and ‘exuded in almost tangible form the overwhelming drive to prevail’. These qualities contributed to the survival of the communist forces during the period of armed struggle and their remarkable victory. Once China was united, however, they were often harmful. Mao used his immense prestige to intimidate his colleagues and get his own way. He became increasingly autocratic, refused to listen to those who disagreed with him, and stubbornly enforced bad decisions. He bears responsibility for the horrors of the famine brought about by the Great Leap Forward, and for the tardy response to it which produced a death toll of tens of millions. His increasing tendency to interpret any criticism as a challenge to his leadership so intimidated his colleagues that in his last years many feared to express opinions at all. His Cultural Revolution caused immense suffering and social and economic disruption, yet until his death all leaders had to pay tribute to its achievements."

"It is worthwhile pointing out that even though Mao was directly responsible for the decentralization of the Chinese political and economic system, other forces, more elusive but no less decisive, were also at work. The size of the Chinese continent would make life difficult for any central planner. As an age-old Chinese axiom puts it, “Heaven is high and the emperor far away.” Some local autonomy was therefore inevitable. Historically, the tension between administrative centralization (or what is called junxian in Chinese literature) and decentralization (or what is called fengjian) has been an absorbing issue for China’s rulers ever since the First Emperor of Qin unified China in 221 BC. Even though Imperial China is remembered for its administrative innovation, a centralized bureaucracy staffed by civilians who were selected through the civil service examination, centralization coexisted with decentralization. Centralization may be the best-known aspect of traditional Chinese politics, but the political system was kept in order by balancing the competing forces of centralization and decentralization, like the Yin and Yang in Tai Chi. Even though China under Mao had built up, mostly from scratch, an impressive nationwide industrial base, its economic performance was an agonizing disappointment. But while Mao left behind poverty and a poorly functioning economic system, he also created much discontent among a large number of people, most of whom were desperate for change. At the end of Mao’s rule, China was left with a fractured society, a fragmented economy, and a confused and disoriented politics, crawling along what was once believed the golden highway to socialism. With the end of Mao’s era, China was bound to open a new chapter."

"When Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China and Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party since 1943, died on September 9th, 1976, China was in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, which Mao had initiated a decade earlier. This was meant to be the first of a series of revolutions to rejuvenate socialism, ridding it of capitalist corruption and bureaucratic rigidity. The Cultural Revolution had been preceded by a series of social and political campaigns relentlessly prosecuted by Mao to push China toward the promised paradise of socialism. Mao believed that China could shrug off poverty and jump on to the “golden highway” to socialism if, and only if, the Chinese people, united in thought and action, threw all their talents and energy behind the collective cause. Unselfish and property-less, the Chinese people would be reborn. Having shed the burden of history and Chinese feudalism on the one hand, and without the distraction of material interests and western capitalism on the other, the Chinese people would respond to nothing but the call of socialism. However, instead of paradise, Mao’s deeply flawed ideology and ill-thought-out revolutions not only brought to the Chinese people the most lethal famine in human history, but also cut them off from their cultural roots and the progress of modern times. An enterprising people were quickly reduced to lifeless cogs in the socialist machine. It can be a hard truth to accept, but the disaster Mao inflicted on the Chinese people was matched only by his ineradicable accomplishments. “In the final reckoning,” wrote The Economist, “Mao must be accepted as one of history’s great achievers: for devising a peasant-centered revolutionary strategy which enabled China’s Communist Party to seize power, against Marx’s prescriptions, from bases in the countryside; for directing the transformation of China from a feudal society, wracked by war and bled by corruption, into a unified, egalitarian state where nobody starves; and for reviving national pride and confidence so that China could, in Mao’s words, ‘stand up’ among the great powers.” While The Economist was seriously mistaken about the absence of starvation in Mao’s China, few could deny the inspiration and influence of Mao’s revolution on both China and the rest of the world. Richard Nixon, who reopened diplomatic relations between China and the United States in 1972, called Mao “a unique man in a generation of great revolutionary leaders.” Pakistani Premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the last foreign statesman to see him before his death, called Mao “the son of revolution, its very essence, indeed, its rhythm and romance, the supreme architect of a brilliant new order shaking the world,” adding, “Men like Mao come once in a century.”"

"Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?"

"In all, Mao’s memory in China today is a two-edged sword of legitimacy for the CCP: an ambivalent symbol of national pride for educated Chinese, a cool brand for middle-class youth, and a talisman of selfworth for China’s disposed who have suffered under reform and globalization. Behind these meanings reside wider historical meanings of hope and despair analyzed by scholars in Western countries, as well as the inspiration Mao provided for rural revolutions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America."

"This is the contradictory legacy of Mao: while Mao wrote the norms and rules of CCP leadership and represents its successes, he is also the voice of rebellion and the mirror that shows up the faults and failures of the Party. The social results of this contradiction, and this history of Mao’s three campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s, are profoundly important for China today. The most famous slogan of the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, ‘it’s right to rebel’ (zaofan youli), trained a generation of Chinese youth. When those former Red Guards returned to urban China from their rustication after two, three, and sometimes ten years, they had learned from Mao, though not perhaps what Mao and the Party wanted them to learn. They learned of the profound corruptibility of the Party and of leaders everywhere, they learned it was possible – and that Mao agreed – to rebel against corrupt leadership, and they learned that rural China was still very poor. Not only poor, but also superstitious. Rural China has been identified with the excesses of faith in Mao that these self-same ‘educated youth’ also displayed during the 1960s and during at least some of their time in the countryside."

"Historians have long noted that Mao Zedong, the man, was not only deeply flawed but also was not the all-powerful creator of the People’s Republic of China or even of the CCP; that real history is, naturally, much more complex than the leadership of one man. Yet he was, and remains, the most charismatic and significant leader of twentieth-century China and both the official source of legitimacy for the CCP and a powerful model of rebellion for generations of Chinese. The key point to keep in mind about the power of Mao today is this contradictory legacy. This enduring contradiction in Maoism can be summed up in two phrases: ‘leave it up to the Party’ and ‘it’s right to rebel.’ The first reflects the considerable prestige of the CCP associated with its role in China’s turbulent twentieth-century history. Even though various people in China today dismiss the extreme claims of revolutionary correctness or question the gaps in official Party histories, the CCP is broadly credited with saving China from imperialism, warlords, and poverty. For many in China, the greatest achievement of the CCP, for which Mao is the embodiment, is the establishment of the Chinese nation-state and the restoration of order in 1949. The many sins committed by Mao and the CCP since then have not – yet – utterly overshadowed this singular achievement."