Understanding China Begins With a Look at Mao
The Los Angeles Times’ Susan Spano travels to Mao Zedong’s hometown of Shaoshan and looks at the lingering impact of his policies on China today:
In the West, however, he is remembered as the instigator of bloody purges, disastrous agrarian reforms and that heinous episode of national self-violation known as the Cultural Revolution. The first sentence of “Mao: The Unknown Story,” a unilaterally condemning biography of the Chinese leader published in 2005 by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, puts it this way: “Mao . . . who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other 20th century leader.”
There is no hint of this at his immaculately preserved birthplace in Shaoshan, the first stop on a trip across China I took last spring to try to resolve in my own mind the apparently irreconcilable contradictions that surround Mao’s legacy and modern China. If I were ever to understand why the Communist government acts as it does in matters as consequential as press freedom, the recent crackdown on protesters in Tibet and its vilification of the Dalai Lama, it seemed necessary to me, as a foreigner, to try see China’s recent past as the Chinese might see it.
Origin: Susan Spano, Los Angeles Times
POSTED COMMENTS: 2 Responses
The Dalai Lama represents a precedent for China: a breaking away from the integrity of the ‘fabric’ of nationalism and ‘Middle Kingdom’. The Tibetan question is indeed a critical issue. On one hand, the Dalai Lama has added wealth of spiritual insight to many souls in this world. On the other hand, one could understand China’s sentiment that one icon of such stature could unravel the fragile integrity of an enormous, complex country with ongoing sensitive issues that China has faced historically. Perhaps the simile might be called the ‘Gulliver problem’; the challenges to this giant will go on through time. Still, China is part of the world and one of its key actors; policy towards Tibet has to reflect consistent moderation that might be demonstrated by an independent press. Perhaps the world at large is asking China to transcend above its earthly limitations. It may be that small steps can be taken with judiciousness, humanity and an eye on the world fraternity to which we all belong. There is, after all, only heaven and earth.. with man in the middle who must reconcile existence on earth with the harmony of this often difficult-to- comprehend universe.
yes yes Don, CHina needs to become transcendent, a pure spiritual space, a big freaking shangri-la. but with starbucks and English, yes? Then it will find its destiny as the mirror or orientalist desire.