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The de-Maoization of
China
By Francesco Sisci
 BEIJING - It is the congress of de-Maoization.
Mao Zedong is the father of modern China. He
saved the Communist Party of China (CPC) from
extermination in the 1930s, and led it to victory a
decade later. Yet he was repeatedly and bitterly
defeated in the three following decades while ruling the
country and trying to develop China (the Great Leap
Forward in the late 1950s) or establish communism on the
ground (the Great Cultural Revolution in the 1960s). A
warrior, not a ruler, a philosopher, not a statesman,
his long, heavy shadow was obscured, however discreetly,
in the news conference before the opening on Friday of
the 16th Party Congress.
The new director of the
Information Bureau under the State Council, Ji Bingxuan,
quoted Deng Xiaoping's thoughts and Jiang Zemin's theory
of the Three Represents as the main political references
of the party ideology. He was forgetting what until the
1997 congress five years ago, when Deng's thoughts were
enshrined in the Party constitution, had been the CPC's
only real compass - Mao's thoughts. This was certainly
no slip of tongue in a country that for centuries kept a
Ministry of Ceremony, although the lack of reference
could have been easily defended by arguing that Deng's
and Jiang's ideas were a development of Mao's.
Certainly, papers and websites about the current
congress and preparations for the change in the Party
constitution that will put the Three Represents
alongside Deng's and Mao's theories show all three
leaders - Jiang, Deng and Mao. But there is no doubt
that the goal of altering the constitution twice in two
congresses in a row, the 15th and the 16th, adding
Deng's and Jiang's theories on top of Mao's, is to erase
Maoist ideological influence. The party, very much like
a church, needs to change its ideology/theology in order
to proceed later with relevant political reforms.
However, these changes can't be an utter
betrayal and denial of the past. The present leadership
has gained its present posts thanks to Mao's feats.
Their very actions for ideological reforms are now
possible thanks to an interrupted chain of events going
back to the heroic Long March. In other words: their
very erasure of Mao is justified by the fact that Mao
brought the Party, and thus them, to power. However,
their dependence on Mao's legacy is today much weaker
than their predecessors'. Mao brought the country to the
verge of collapse, and when he died its economic size
had decreased comparatively. The international political
status of China in 1976 was minimal, as Mao himself
implicitly recognized by seeking first the support of
the Soviet Union and then that of the United States. In
the past 20 years these leaders - Deng and Jiang - have
succeeded where Mao failed: developing the country.
This contrasting legacy thus imposes a
de-Maoization and yet not a clean cut from the old man,
whose portrait still hangs on the gates of Tiananmen,
while his mausoleum still occupies the center of the
square. Furthermore, a bunch of Long March veterans well
in their 80s, often spurned by their younger ideological
siblings, remind the present leadership of their
personal debt to them.
However, Jiang in his
speech to the congress underscored that "the persistent
implementation of the Three Represents is the foundation
for building the Party, the cornerstone for its
governance and the source of its strength". A whole
chapter of his speech was dedicated to his theory, while
ignoring Mao and paying tribute to Deng. This was
because, as Jiang remarked: "Keeping pace with the times
means that all the theory and work of the Party must
conform to the times, follow the law of development and
display great creativity. Whether we can persist in
doing this bears on the future and destiny of the Party
and state."
In fact the challenge ahead for the
party is to retain power, and to do that it is necessary
to keep the economy growing, something that demands the
active support of the efficient non-state sector. Here
Jiang said that it was necessary that "the public sector
and non-public sectors of the economy should not be set
against each other and that they can very well develop
side by side ... All sectors of the economy can very
well display their respective advantages in market
competition and stimulate one another for common
development." They were coded words meaning that the
state sector should no longer compete and take resources
away from the weaker private sector.
The last
chapter was dedicated to Taiwan, which was encouraged
once more to accept the principle of "one China". Jiang
did not launch any threats and further argued what
appears as an important overture to the principle of
unification. Taiwan and the People's Republic are both
part of one China, he said, shunning the usual wording
according to which Taiwan should simply come back under
the mainland's aegis. In other words, while according to
the previous formula Beijing was superior to Taipei, the
new formula implies an equal footing for the two.
It is difficult to see that the new idea will
work in Taipei any time soon, but certainly this could
be another olive branch to the United States, which is
very attentive about any show of force or provocation by
either side of the Taiwan Strait. If Beijing is
mellowing its position, showering the island with sweet
words and shelving the old saber-rattling, Taipei has no
reason to step up its diplomatic initiatives and thus
force a drift away from the mainland.
These are
political tasks that could well keep the Communist Party
in power. And on all these fronts, Maoism is just a
hurdle.
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