Claude Arpi
Daily News and Analysis
November 2, 2012
‘Mao will lead China forever’ was the title of a famous poster during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution led by its great helmsman, who in Problems of War and Strategy, affirmed:
“Some people have ridiculed us as the advocates of omnipotence of war … we are the advocates of the omnipotence of the revolutionary war, which is not bad at all, but good and is Marxist.”
This was one of the many ‘thoughts’ of ‘Chairman Mao’. “To include Mao or not to include Mao? That is the tough question China’s rulers are facing as the nation prepares for the once-a-decade leadership transition”, writes Cary Huang in The South China Morning Post. One can understand that Xi Jinping, theman expected to be China’s new leader, does not really believe in Mao’s cult. Xi was nine when he saw his father, Xi Zhongxun, then PRC’s vice premier unfairly purged by Mao in 1962. Xi Zhongxun only reappeared in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping handed him the task of starting economic reforms in the coastal areas.
The ‘Great Leap Forward’, which began in China in February 1958 and resulted in the largest man-made starvation in human history. Mao Zedong’s objective was to surpass Great Britain in industrial production in 15 years; every citizen had to start producing steel at home, with a backyard furnace. In agriculture, Mao thought that very large communes would cater to a many-fold increase in the cereal production to make China a heaven of abundance. Introduced and managed with frantic fanaticism, the programme collapsed soon enough.
In 1959, the defence minister and an old companion of Mao, Peng Denhai, raised his voice against the general madness and sycophancy of the plan. Mao immediately ‘purged’ Peng for daring to criticise him. The Great Leap Forward continued for three years and over 40-50 million died of hunger.
As tension increased on the border with India in the early 1960’s, did Nehru realise that China was a starving nation? Moreover, the ‘great’ Indian intelligence chief, BN Mullik was blissfully unaware that by the end of 1961 Mao was practically out of power?
Dr Zhisui Li, his personal physician recounts that the Chairman was: “…depressed over the agricultural crisis … Mao was in temporary eclipse, spending most his time in bed”.In January 1962,Dr Li noted: “… he convened another expanded Central Committee work conference to discuss the continuing disaster, his support within the party was at its lowest.” It is only by the Fall of 1962 that Mao would return with a bang. The conflict with India was closely linked with his comeback.
Mao decided to first ‘fix’ Marshal Peng; for the purpose, he used the Machiavellian Kang Sheng, later responsible for the security and intelligence during the Cultural Revolution, to do the dirty job.
The pretext was the Gao Gang affair. Gao, a senior Communist leader, had been the victim of the first major purge within the CCP in 1953-54. Mao believed thatPeng had been involved in the Gao Gang episode. The easiest way to get Peng out was to attack one of his closest collaborators, Xi Zhongxun, who had served as his Political Commissar, when the First Field Army entered Eastern Tibet in 1949.
Kang Sheng suggested a flimsy pretext (Xi Zhongxun would have edited a novel mentioning a character similar to Gao Gang). In The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Roderick MacFarquhar wrote: “ … Kang Sheng was thus free to lead the attack on Xi, and thereafter to lead the second special case review commission in its investigation of the supposed ‘anti-party group’ led by Xi.” ThusXi Zhongxunwas ‘sent in the wilderness’.
During the last few days, China’s watchers have been analysing the omission of Mao Zedong’s name in a Xinhua communique about the CCP’s 18th Congress, which is to begin on November 8. The statement made references to president Hu Jintao , his predecessor Jiang Zemin , and Deng Xiaoping, the architect of the ‘reform and opening up policy’, but no trace of Mao.
The future will tell us if the Chinese Constitution is amended and Mao’s name is forever dropped, but one can understand that Xi Jinping, the next leader of China, has some reservations about the greatness of Mao’s Thoughts.
