A Double Life: Impersonating Chairman Mao

Hero's are born and created.  By, born I mean that these people have the inherent need to help others while those that are created exist through a mythology created by a government or a complicit media.   

Created heros are superficial based upon a false narrative manufactured to placate a populace suppressed by an authoritarian government.  Mao Zedong is a classic example of a false narrative created to placate a populace abused by their excesses. Yet, in China Mao Zedong is revered as the father of a nation that went tremendous upheaval thanks to his paranoia and an ego that was incapable of accepting that mistakes were made.  To the detriment of the country and its populace. 

After all shouldn't one be given hero status for instituting programs which killed thousands if not millions of your own citizens?  Of course because it helps preserve the myth and artificial perfection of  of the Chinese Communist Party. 

      Chen takes to the streets to meet crowds in Mianyang. Photograph: Reinhard Krause/Reuters

 

She poses for a photo with locals in Mianyang. Photograph: Reinhard Krause/Reuters

Hundred Flowers

In July 1957, Mao ordered a halt to the campaign. By that time Mao had witnessed Nikita Khrushchev denouncing Joseph Stalin and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, events by which he felt threatened. Mao's earlier speech, On the Correct Handling of the Contradictions Among the People, was significantly changed and appeared later on as an anti-rightist piece in itself.

The campaign made a lasting impact on Mao's ideological perception. Mao, who is known historically to be more ideological and theoretical, less pragmatic and practical, continued to attempt to solidify socialist ideals in future movements, and in the case of the Cultural Revolution, employed more violent means. Another result of the Hundred Flowers Campaign was that it discouraged dissent and made intellectuals reluctant to criticize Mao and his party in the future. The Anti-Rightist Movement, that shortly followed and was possibly caused by the Hundred Flowers Campaign, resulted in the persecution of intellectuals, officials, students, artists and dissidents labeled "rightists".^[9] The campaign led to a loss of individual rights, especially for any Chinese intellectuals educated in Western centers of learning.

The hundred flowers movement was the first of its kind in the history of the People's Republic of China in that the government opened up to ideological criticisms from the general public. Although its true nature has always been questioned by historians, it can be generally concluded that the events that took place alarmed the central communist leadership. The movement also represented a pattern that has emerged from Chinese history wherein free thought is promoted by the government, and then suppressed by it. A similar surge in ideological thought would not occur again until the late 1980s, leading up to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The latter surge, however, did not receive the same amount of government backing and encouragement.

Great Leap Forward

At the Lushan Conference in July/August 1959, several leaders expressed concern that the Great Leap Forward had not proved as successful as planned. The most direct of these was Minister of Defence and Korean War General Peng Dehuai. Following Peng's criticism of the Great Leap Forward, Mao orchestrated a purge of Peng and his supporters, stifling criticism of the Great Leap policies. Senior officials who reported the truth of the famine to Mao were branded as "right opportunists."^[196] A campaign against right opportunism was launched and resulted in party members and ordinary peasants being sent to camps where many would subsequently die in the famine. Years later the CPC would conclude that 6 million people were wrongly punished in the campaign

The number of deaths by starvation during the Great Leap Forward is deeply controversial. Until the mid-1980s, when official census figures were finally published by the Chinese Government, little was known about the scale of the disaster in the Chinese countryside, as the handful of Western observers allowed access during this time had been restricted to model villages where they were deceived into believing that the Great Leap Forward had been a great success. There was also an assumption that the flow of individual reports of starvation that had been reaching the West, primarily through Hong Kong and Taiwan, must have been localized or exaggerated as China was continuing to claim record harvests and was a net exporter of grain through the period. Because Mao wanted to pay back early to the Soviets debts totaling 1.973 billion yuan from 1960 to 1962,^[198] exports increased by 50%, and fellow Communist regimes in North Korea, North Vietnam and Albania were provided grain free of charge.

The Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution had a massive impact on China from 1965 to 1968. The Cultural Revolution is the name given to Mao’sattempt to reassert his beliefs in China. Mao had been less than a dynamic leader from the late 1950’s on, and feared others in the party might be taking on a leading role that weakened his power within the party and the country. This probably explains the Cultural Revolution – it was an attempt by Mao to re-impose his authority on the party and therefore the country.

The movement began in September 1965 with a speech by Lin Piao who urged pupils in schools and colleges to return to the basic principles of the revolutionary movement. Chinese youths were also encouraged to openly criticise the liberals in the Chinese Communist Party and those apparently influenced by Nikita Khruschev of the USSR. Educational establishments were considered to be too academic and, therefore, too elitist.

Mao believed that the progress China had made since 1949 had lead to a privileged class developing – engineers, scientists, factory managers etc. Mao also believed that these people were acquiring too much power at his expense. Mao was concerned that a new class of mandarins was emerging in China who had no idea about the lifestyle of the normal person in China.

Red Guards (groups of youths who banded themselves together) encouraged all the youth in China to criticise those who Mao deemed untrustworthy with regards to the direction he wanted China to take. No-one was safe from criticism: writers, economists and anyone associated with the man Mao considered his main rival – Liu Shao-chi. Anyone who was deemed to have developed a superior attitude was considered an enemy of the party and people.