BEIJING - To many outside China, he is a
monster spoken of in the same breath as Adolf
Hitler and Joseph Stalin, held responsible for 30
million or more deaths. So it may seem surprising
that, as the September 9 anniversary marking 30
years since his death approaches, Mao Zedong, who
was deified as "the Sun on the East" or even the
emperor-like "Son of the Heaven" during his own
lifetime, remains an iconic figure.
Saint-like images of Mao are ubiquitous.
The imperial portrait
posted
at the Gate to the Forbidden City in Beijing's
Tiananmen Square is but his most famous likeness.
During any visit to a rural Chinese home, the late
chairman is likely to seen, normally in poster
form, somewhere below the family altar or above
the modern household god, the television set.
His image has even taken on a supernatural
role. "For farmers, Mao has already wafted into
folklore," said Professor Ross Terrill of Harvard
University. "For some rural kids in Fujian
[province], Mao is the guy on the altar at the
local temple." His pictures have even been used to
ward off floodwaters.
What accounts for
Mao's lasting resonance in a Chinese context? For
those struggling to understand the phenomenon,
several recent controversies stirred by the images
of the late chairman have provided telling clues.
The most widely reported furor occurred in
May, when it was announced that a state portrait
of Mao that served as a model for portraits
previously displayed in Tiananmen was to go under
the auctioneer's hammer in Beijing on June 3. The
prospect of the communist leader becoming grist to
the mill of capitalism inspired glee in the
international press.
But thousands of
Chinese bloggers failed to see the joke. "I
strongly oppose the auction of Chairman Mao's
portrait because it is neither a mere piece of
artistic work nor a commercial activity. Mao
Zedong is the spirit of our great nation," railed
an anonymous netizen quoted by Xinhua.
Nationalistic sentiments also came to the
fore during the state-portrait affair. The China
Daily caught the mood in the anti- camp by
carping, "As the current owner of this painting is
an American, there is the possibility that it may
end up in the hands of another foreigner at
auction."
Even proponents of the sale
laced their arguments with professions of love for
the late Helmsman. "I keep Chairman Mao in my
heart, he isn't dead," effused one.
After
the outcry in the blogosphere, the auction was
canceled at the government's behest. The episode
bears testimony to the long shadow that Mao casts
over China.
The late chairman resonates
even with Chinese too young to remember Maoism.
This was illustrated in an incident that occurred
at New Zealand's Massey University. In mid-May,
about 50 angry Chinese students staged a heated
demonstration to protest the front-cover design of
the latest issue of the Massey student magazine,
Caff. The offensive image? Chairman Mao, hand on
hip, posing Cosmopolitan-style in a fetching
summer dress beneath the punning title
"Commupolitan", accompanied by satirical captions
such as: "273 ways to conform to mass
standardization while staying FABULOUS".
Harmless student fun, one might have
thought. An anonymous letter posted on campus,
apparently by a Chinese student, however,
explained why the image was "an open affront
toward all Chinese and our nation ... Chairman Mao
and his Red Army have blocked back Japanese
invaders ... he led the successful Chinese
liberation and announced the establishment of
People's Republic of China."
The Massey
student neatly explained the nexus between Mao and
nationalism, which partly also explains his
continued relevance to the younger generation. As
Chicago University's Lee Feigon, director of the
irreverent documentary The Passion of the
Mao, put it, Mao is "a national symbol. It's
not unusual for people in almost any country to
get emotional about what they imagine to be the
maltreatment of a national symbol."
If Mao
embodies national pride, this is not least because
he is given credit for allowing China to stand
tall after a century of colonial ignominy. Given
that one of the most resented grievances of the
imperial era remains the plundering of Chinese
national treasures, the thought that this historic
portrait of the man credited with saving China
from foreign domination should be carried off like
so much colonial loot may have been too bitter an
irony for some.
In a society where even
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership has
abandoned its core ideology in all but name, the
resulting moral vacuum tends to be filled by the
secular religions of nationalism and extreme
materialism. Concern over the latter was
illustrated by an opponent of the portrait auction
complaining to a Phoenix television talk show,
"Chinese will sell anything for a profit."
In contrast, said Harvard Professor
Roderick MacFarquhar, "For many ordinary Chinese
it seems Mao represents a less corrupt and more
egalitarian era than the present."
The
portrait auction seems to have set this
distinction between a mythical Golden Age and the
cut-and-thrust of modern China in sharp relief.
"The reaction against the sale says as much about
the ambivalence in today's China about the crass
materialism that now characterizes much of the
society as about feelings about Mao," Lee Feigon
concluded.
Nevertheless, the current
keepers of Mao's image have a powerful incentive
to protect it. "With the loss of faith in
Marxism-Leninism, Mao is the principal claim of
the CCP to legitimacy," said MacFarquhar.
And protect it they do - quite literally.
When three demonstrators threw paint at Mao's
portrait on the Tiananmen Gate during the
pro-democracy movement in 1989, they received
especially severe punishments. The last of the
three, Yu Dongyue, was released from jail this
April after serving 17 years of a 20- year
sentence. MacFarquhar believes that Yu was given
such a lengthy sentence because "he did the
equivalent of burning the flag". Physical abuse in
captivity left Yu with serious mental damage.
Also in April, a painting by artist Gao
Qiang depicting a yellow Mao swimming in a red
Yangtze River was banned from Beijing's Dashanzi
International Art Festival. The censors offered no
explanations. Perhaps they interpreted Gao's
yellow-and-red color scheme, reminiscent of the
Chinese national flag, as an ironic statement
about the way the CCP uses Mao's status as a
national symbol to wrap itself in the flag.
The greater irony may be that Gao, who
sees it as his life's mission to present a more
rounded image of the late chairman, in fact partly
admires Mao, the self-educated philosopher, poet
and calligrapher, as a paragon of Chinese culture.
This cultural adulation is shared by many Chinese,
including the Massey student: "In some cases, the
words, [and] especially the photos, of Chairman
Mao represent our highest national regards and
pride that [are] part of our culture."
Mao's sayings still occur in everyday
conversation and even as graffiti. Professor Kurt
Radtke, a China expert at Waseda University in
Tokyo, explained why the author of the Little
Red Book's cultural resonance is another
factor behind his enduring appeal: "Mao ...
relived expectations of a country used to the
image of philosopher-kings. Many of his writings
are now laughed at - certainly abroad - but their
style, their contents, fit Chinese traditions very
neatly."
The ways in which Mao's heirs
seek to preserve and benefit from his popularity
extend far beyond matters of art. Chinese
textbooks still employ Mao's poems, for instance,
to cement a propagandist view of history.
But whatever Mao's uses, symbols are by
nature slippery, and the legacy of the man who led
the attack on his own party during the Cultural
Revolution (1966-76) could yet prove difficult for
China's leaders to control.
"The use of
Mao's image by the party is a triple-edged thing,"
warned Radtke. "He very often appealed to popular
moral standards - for instance, in his struggle
against corruption in, by and for the party. Many
of his writings could easily be used to attack
current government policies."
In a country
where political protest has often been led by the
educated youth, Mao could cause the party some
discomfort. "The younger generation of Chinese is
very conscious of how much the symbol of Mao means
to China," said Lee Feigon. "Since the government
can't really disavow Mao ... students are aware
that they can use Mao the symbol to protest
against injustice and the inequities of the
present."
Whatever the potential dangers,
however, the CCP is married to Mao. In addition to
his cultural and patriotic appeal, political
realities make Mao unassailable.
"Mao's
function for the CCP is one of Marx-Lenin-Stalin
wrapped into one for the Chinese revolution,"
Terrill explained. "That's why they can't denounce
him simply as a Stalin, because that would also be
to attack their own Lenin, the founder of the
state - a state that has no alternative legitimacy
in elections from below."
As long as the
political system he created survives, Mao's
privileged position in Tiananmen, in living rooms
and hearts and minds across the country, is
assured.
Martin Adams is a
Beijing-based freelance writer. His credits
include articles published in the Wall Street
Journal Asia, That's Beijing magazine and That's
Beijing Excursions Guide.
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2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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