HONG KONG - Mao Zedong, founder of the
People's Republic of China, died 35 years ago, but
his ghost continues to hover over Chinese
politics. Portrayed in recent biographies
published abroad as one of the great villains of
the 20th century, he remains a revered figure at
home - and an army of devotees aims to keep it
that way.
Protectors of the Mao myth have
discovered that one of the most potent ways to
keep the Great Helmsman's memory burning bright is
to take to the Internet, where numerous Maoist
websites offer a steady stream of praise for his
rhetoric and his policies, no matter how
calamitous the results may have been.
The
Great Leap Forward may have been a giant step
backward that caused the deaths of tens of
millions of people, but for the cyber guardians of
Maoism it was a ringing success. The Cultural
Revolution may have harassed,
persecuted and killed millions more, but its
militant slogans are still celebrated by defenders
of the legendary Chairman Mao.
Despite
their efforts, however, criticism of Mao by
advocates of political reform is seeping
increasingly into the national dialogue. Indeed,
so alarmed are Mao's apologists that one
idolatrous website, named Utopia and located at
wyzxsx.com, has taken the pro-Mao campaign a step
further by calling for the "public prosecution" of
those who have mustered the temerity to ask hard
questions about his still-elevated status in
Chinese life.
So far, the site's manager,
Fan Jinggang, boasts that he has collected
thousands of signatures demanding punishment for
two prominent critics of the Chairman - economist
Mao Yushi and writer and former official at the
China National Defense University, Xin Ziling. And
Fan does not plan to stop there.
Later
this month, he plans to formally present all
complaints against Mao's detractors to the
National People's Congress, the Chinese
parliament, along with a call for legal action
against them. He is also - in an ominous echo of
the infamous "neighborhood committees" established
during the Cultural Revolution to provide accounts
of counter-revolutionary activities to authorities
- exhorting "citizens" to report Mao bashers to
local public security bureaus.
No one
knows whether the Utopia campaign has any official
backing, but we do know that one of the signatures
collected by Fan is reported to be that of Liu
Siqi, widow of Mao Anying, a son of communist
China's first leader who was killed in the Korean
War. The signature drive also corresponds with a
huge Mao revival, led by Bo Xilai, the charismatic
Communist Party chief in the sprawling
southwestern municipality Chongqing, population 33
million.
Bo, 61, has made no secret of his
desire to enter the nine-person pantheon of
China's ruling Politburo Standing Committee at
next year's party congress, during which President
Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao will step aside
and a fifth generation of leadership will be
installed. If current expectations are borne out,
Hu will be succeeded by Vice President Xi Jinping
and Wen by Vice Premier Li Keqiang, but that still
leaves lots of room for the nakedly ambitious Bo,
who hopes to use his Maoist enthusiasm, as well as
his crime-fighting credentials in triad-ridden
Chongqing, to secure one of the remaining sacred
seats.
Bo, the son of Bo Yibo, a
revolutionary leader deified as one of the Eight
Immortals of the Communist Party, became party
leader of Chongqing in 2007; two years later, he
launched the most sweeping campaign against
organized crime that any city in China has ever
seen. More than 2,000 people have been arrested -
and not just the gangsters who once enjoyed free
reign in the city but also the corrupt government
officials and police who protected them. Due
process may have been ignored and coercion and
torture used to extract confessions, but the
Chongqing party boss's war on crime made him a
national figure.
Bo's brazen anti-triad
crusade has been accompanied by his equally brash
revival of Maoist spirit and rhetoric. To
celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People's
Republic of China in October of 2009, he sent text
messages containing quotations from Mao's Little
Red Book to everyone in Chongqing with a mobile
phone. That means, thanks to Bo, the phones of 13
million people lit up with comforting Maoisms such
as "The world is ours; we should unite for
achievements" and "Responsibility and seriousness
can conquer the world, and the Chinese Communist
Party members represent these qualities."
In recent years, also thanks to Bo, more
Mao statues than trees have been sprouting up
around Chongqing. Over the past year, Bo's
Mao-inspired Red Songs campaign has taken off. Now
every television and radio station in the
municipality is required to broadcast patriotic
songs celebrating the revolution and the party,
and every government official and student - from
primary school to university - is required to sing
them. Bo and his underlings have selected a total
of 36 songs, the lyrics for which have been duly
published in the local media, for the edification
and entertainment of the general public.
"We must use every means to earnestly
organize singing lessons for all cadres and people
in order to enrich the masses with spiritual
culture," a government notice explains.
But not everyone in Chongqing - or in the
rest of China - wants to sing along. The Utopia
signature drive was sparked by Mao Yushi's recent
review of Xin's book, The Fall of the Red Sun,
which presents a critical view of the Mao Zedong
years. The 5,000-character review, posted last
month on Caing.com, is just as hostile toward
Mao's legacy as the book it presents.
At
one point, Mao Yushi writes: "[Mao Zedong] was not
a god, and he will be removed from the altar,
divested of all the myth that used to shroud him,
and receive a just evaluation as ordinary man."
That's what Mao romanticists are worried
about - a thorough, official debunking of the
mythology of the Great Helmsman. And their fears
have been heightened by unconfirmed reports of a
politburo decision last December to eliminate all
references to "Mao Zedong thought" in future party
communiques.
In the end, while Bo's
politically astute enthusiasm for the spirit of
the Mao era - its songs and tamer aphorisms - may
help to make him one of the most powerful men in
China at next year's all-important party congress,
it is unlikely that the web campaign to persecute
Mao's 21st-century detractors will ever gain
official traction. The current Chinese leadership,
like Bo, uses Mao when they need him and ignores
him when they don't.
That - rather than
Xin's book or Mao Yushi's review - is what really
troubles the neo-Maoists of today. The spirit of
Chairman Mao may be alive and well in Chongqing -
but his policies are dead and buried, there and
elsewhere in China.
Kent Ewing
is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be
reached at kewing@netvigator.com
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
