From Knight Ridder, via Mercury News:
One can only imagine the shock that the Great Helmsman would feel if he came back to life and strolled through China’s cities. But that misses the broader point: Whatever the Chinese Communist Party’s orientation, it retains Mao’s propensity for authoritarian rule and uses him as a buttress to its own legitimacy.
The result is one of the world’s great dramas: The party wants to maintain its iron grip on political power, but it also must permit China’s economy to grow within a global system to meet the sky-high hopes of the Chinese people for better lives.
