Op-Ed Contributors

Political reform and Mao today

By He Bolin (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-01 07:52

Xiao says Mao led the grassroots people to challenge the authorities and establish the People's Republic of China, and as Chairman of the CPC believed China's revolution has be continued through this continuous challenge of authority.

Mao was a maverick in many ways. He shone in the battles in which he led people to destroy the old, decaying systems. But even though times and situations changed when he turned from a challenger to the authority, Mao didn't. Rather, he enjoyed absolute power in his later years. This meant any wrong decision taken by Mao could have led to dire consequences.

Liberal scholars are among the most ardent critics of Mao's rule. For example, they say that instead of reflecting on his role in the "Great Leap Forward", he became more self-opinionated and suppressed dissenting Party leaders. The situation went out of control in early the 1970s during the "cultural revolution".

In sharp contrast, "neo-leftists" say Mao's ideology of continuous struggle and challenging of authority is the right way to keep officials clean and their affairs transparent. There was no corruption - the root of all social evils - during Mao's time, they say, because people's vigil kept the officials on tenterhooks.

In fact, Mao had the foresight to see that an unchallenged ruling party could become corrupt, and often kept challenging two vital groups of people: intellectuals and high-level party leaders, the ones that wielded social and political power.

It was Mao who resumed diplomatic ties with the US and chose the CPC vice-chairman, which was to change China in later years. It was Mao who re-established China's dignity and pride in the world. But Chinese people's pride in their country seems to be waning today because of the rising social problems and contradictions. People are recalling Mao because neither China's political reform nor building of an ideal society (according to Mao) has been successful.

So, instead of assessing Chairman Mao either as an authoritarian or the great savior, it would be wise to reflect on what systematic and stabilizing factors the two extreme assessments lack. People talk about Mao not because they want to go back to the economic stagnation and the political frenzy of those times. What they want is a society that guarantees equal rights and offers equal opportunities in contrast to the egalitarianism of Mao's time and rich-poor polarization of today.

The crux of all the problems lies in the lack of political reform, highlighted so often by the "Mao fever". China's economy has developed at an unprecedented pace for 30 years. What is needed now is a fair distribution of the fruits of the economic growth.

Xiao repudiates the contention of some officials that too fast paced political reform could lead to chaos in a large country like China. He says the prevailing tension and intensifying social conflicts and increasing number of mass incidents have to be addressed immediately in order to deepen the political reform.

Mao once expressed serious concern over the possibility of a few people possessing most of the wealth of society, Xiao says. And though Mao didn't find a way of correcting such a situation (because such a situation didn't exist then), the central leadership has to keep trying to achieve institutional breakthroughs to correct it. And we can do so by studying the Mao and post-Mao periods, which can also teach us how to assess Mao.

(China Daily 07/01/2010 page9)