While I picked up Julia Lovell’s “Maoism: A Global History" specifically to learn about the export of Chinese communism, one of the most fascinating sections focused on Mao’s legacy within his own country. In the wake of the Helmsman’s passing, his successor Deng Xiaoping ensured that the notorious “Gang of Four,” who had led the Cultural Revolution, were all tried and imprisoned. Likewise, the collective farms were unraveled and replaced by private land plots and warehouses full of Mao’s mouldering works were destroyed. Xiaoping shrunk and ended almost the entirety of Chinese foreign aid, carefully maintaining a few relationships for nationalist reasons, such as supporting the Khmer Rouge in absentia as a bulwark against Vietnam. China was both turning inwards from its previous role as a global ideological force, and simultaneously beginning to turn outwards to join the global economy.
However, while Xiaoping undid most of his predecessor’s economic policies and de-emphasized the quasi-religious dedication to Maoist philosophy, he maintained the overall structural shell of Maoist statehood. Between 1949 and 1980, when Xiaoping came to power, Maoism had become the unifying ideology that tied the nascent nation together and there was a limit to how much that ideology could be dismantled without hurting the credibility of the state. Significantly, Xiaoping retained the authoritarian, single party structure he had inherited, even as he used his largely unchecked power to advance large scale reforms.
“The Soviet Union could discard Stalin and still have Lenin as revolutionary founder; the CCP only had Mao
. . .
‘We shall not do to Mao Zedong what Krushchev did to Stalin at the 20th Soviet Communist Party Congress’ Deng told the Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci, who served as one of his principal conduits to Western audiences, in the 1890s. As the CCP’s reception rooms underwent a political spring clean after Deng’s rise, party elders insisted that at least some of Mao’s portraits had to stay, for ‘we were there too . . . if Mao goes, our actions will be questioned’”
Faced with enduring economic stagnation, Deng reconceived of the Chinese Communist Party as one that would maintain its credibility by bringing material wealth and prosperity. He oversaw market reforms which helped China achieve rapid economic growth, but which inevitably clashed hard with the communist philosophy. Maoist groups the world over denounced Xiaoping as a revisionist; the Shining Path in Peru in fact made their first public move by stuffing dead dogs on electric poles with Xiaoping’s name written on the corpse. The CCP had embraced capitalism in all but name, and now mostly paid lip service to Maoism to justify the continued centralization of power.
As China grew with leaps and bounds, this led to the parallel formation of a fascinating group called the Neo-Maoists, who find themselves disillusioned with China’s present levels of inequality, greed and pollution. While the Maoists of Yore were considered far left radicals, hellbent on overturning tradition and striding into the future, the Neo-Maoists occupy a position that, at least in the U.S., we would recognize as socially conservative. They worry about moral decay and exposure to foreign influence and customs, they fret that the new generation is exposed to too much sexual media; some explicitly advocate for a return to more traditional gender roles. Given that the original Maoists would lambast anyone questioning their reforms as a “reactionary,” there is more than a little irony to the Neo-Maoist’s insistence on a return to older ways.
The Neo-Maoists are deeply critical of the state of modern China, but because the central party uses Mao as the anchor point for their authority, there is a limit to how much the CCP can crack down on Mao’s biggest cheerleaders. This puts the Neo-Maoists in the unique position of being one of the only groups in China that publicly criticizes the government without censorship. This strange tension between the modernized government attempting to justify their top down rule through Mao’s legacy, only to suffer resistance from a bottom up movement that actually wants Maoism, is perhaps symptomatic of trying to establish nationwide cohesion and stability through the philosophy of a man who celebrated chaos and contradiction.
However, the Neo-Maoists have finally found their candidate in Xi Jinping, ‘the most Maoist leader since Mao.’ Unlike many of the ranking party members who came before him, Jinping seems to be a dyed in the wool socialist. His own upbringing and views are complex and cannot neatly be summarized here, but he is the son of a party member who suffered through the Cultural Revolution and was exiled to hard labor. Xi is particularly well poised to understand the darker sides of Mao’s rule; nonetheless, he seems to be trying to recreate crucial elements of the regime he was born into.
Over the past forty years the strength of the party has waxed and waned as the economy became steadily more decentralized; Jinping has re-asserted and re-established the central party’s role as the locus of command and control. He has endeavoured to craft his own personality cult, abolishing term limits and rehabilitating Maoist practices like the criticism-self criticism sessions. However, Jinping’s China truly is lightyears away from Mao’s, teaming with multinational companies and deeply interwoven into the global economy. Likewise, Jinping’s cult of personality has fallen short; where once Mao’s Little Red Books were read on every continent, Jinping’s collection of philosophical essays met with tepid sales on release.
Because Jinping’s legacy may only just be beginning, I don’t really want to speculate too much on the future, but I think there may be significance to the fact that the current leader of China is the first to be welcomed by those who truly miss Mao.