Xi Jinping now wields almost sovereign power in China, commanding full control over the Chinese Communist Party as its general secretary; the country’s formidable military as chairman of the Central Military Commission; and China’s government as its president.

No one has wielded so much power in the Middle Kingdom since the days of Deng Xiaoping.

So, what was the need for him to celebrate Mao’s 120 birth anniversary with such pomp, including the commissioning of a 100 million yuan golden image of the former chairman?

More than three decades ago, Deng himself had pronounced judgment on Mao Zedong, terming his actions “70 per cent positive, 30 per cent negative”.

Accepting this verdict, the Chinese concentrated all their powers on generating an incredible pace of economic growth, transforming a poor third world country into the most dynamic economy of today.

The miseries caused by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution have been recorded in detail, with Western commentators continuing to denigrate the ‘great helmsman’ as a cruel tyrant, no better than Hitler and Stalin.

Nostalgia trip Of late, many sections of common Russians seem to be looking back with nostalgia on the Stalinist days of steady prices and full employment when there was no mafia except the secret police, feared by the elite but not by the poor.

The same contempt for corrupt leaders and nostalgia for a ‘vision’ of society now seems to animate the Chinese masses who have long forgotten the harshness of the early decades and think only of liberation from feudalism, colonialism, war, vice and corruption.

The recently discredited Bo Xilai, whose ambitions scared the others in the politburo, cashed in on this sentiment and attempted to start a Maoist revival.

Having safely got rid of that threat to his leadership, Xi undoubtedly wishes to be seen as the true inheritor of Mao’s liberation legacy, while at the same time retaining the direct line of descent from Deng’s economic policies. Hence, the sudden recognition of the 120th year of Mao’s birth as significant, and display of the most expensive piece of kitsch in the world!

What’s behind it? But is there more to this than meets the eye, especially in a culture where hidden symbolism carries subtle meanings? Does this image signify that the Chinese leadership wishes to convey to the people that Mao was no austere Daoist who despised the pursuit of wealth to which the elite are so clearly dedicated?

Perhaps. And showing him seated in a chair finally relegates him to the ranks of a dead ancestor.

In Mobo Gao’s eloquent phrase, the “battle for China’s past” continues, the manipulative leadership itself giving credence to many flawed Western readings, coloured by the West’s traumatised experience of Nazis, and the bloody emergence of their racial and religious prejudices.

Western scholars can see only ruthless tyranny in the Maoist era, they are unable to separate the Chinese communist vision from the failures caused by ingrained feudal obeisance to authority and the weaknesses of a newly formed bureaucracy.

Economic punditry has dismissed as impractical the various innovations at quickened development during the early years of Chinese self-rule. Perhaps only the late historian, Jack Gray, held out against this established view. He studied Mao following Confucian principles: “no preconceived assumptions, no foregone conclusions, no egotism and no obstinacy”.

What emerges as distinctive from the Maoist era is a process of latent development among the masses, where the growth factor is not economic but socio-psychological imbuing the beaten down peasantry with a sense of self-dignity and a new belief in their own communitarian capabilities.

Misreading Mao However, Western antipathy towards revolution and a hidden dread of the ‘Yellow Peril’ made them read Chinese events in perverse ways.

The most tragically well-known being Mao’s warning to the Red Guards not to go to extremes: “A head is not like a leek, if you cut it off it will not grow again.” The Western interpretation was to read this as an inducement to murder!

While Jack Gray assessed Mao as a dictator, he did not see him as a Stalin or 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.”

By rewriting history to serve present-day politics, as the Chinese have frequently done, China’s leadership is happy to distance itself from its revolutionary past and be seen as raising a fully adult capitalist State from the days of Deng Xiao-Ping.

They have secured American cooperation on their march towards superpower status and world economic hegemony. The subtle handling by the Chinese of Hong Kong’s status through a ‘two systems’ approach has further reassured the West that somehow Chinese socialism will wither away though Chinese intentions are exactly the opposite.

The few Indian commentators who have studied Chinese affairs and the Indian leadership have aligned themselves with Western interpretations and stances.

Further, futile posturing has distanced India from its powerful neighbour and the lessons India needs to learn. The Indian leadership does not possess a similar tight hold, either over the administrative machinery, or over the emotions of its people.

From the great days of unity under Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership, the polity has degenerated into atomised conflicting segments led by self-centred leaders who are unable to unify the people for progress.

However, many examples of people’s successful organisation at the grassroots, and sustainable micro-growth have emerged from confused NGO experiences.

The 73rd and the 74th amendments to the Constitution exist as unutilised channels for concentrating grassroots developmental energies. And the meteoric rise of the Aam Aadmi Party gives us a hint that, like the forgotten Chinese peasants of the 1950s, the people of India also may have the social energy to seize the political initiative and reconstruct the country.

(The author was part of an international group of economists who visited China during the Cultural Revolution to study it.)

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