Authored by Willy Wo-lap Lam, reviewed by RFA Executive Editor Dan Southerland:
In late 2003, China’s new president Hu Jintao made a speech celebrating the late Mao Zedong. He said not a word about Mao’s disastrous mistakes.
According to author Willy Lam, this was a wake-up call for many Chinese intellectuals, who until then had regarded Hu as a reformer who would eventually open up China’s political system.
Although Marxism has been discredited around the world, Hu still believes that it is a scientific system. And, in Lam’s view, Hu is more a disciple of Mao than of the pragmatic Deng Xiaoping. [Full Text]
