While we were waiting for the bus from Guilin to Changsha, one of our fellow passengers asked what places in Hunan province we planned to visit, and when he found out that we were headed towards Mao’s home village Shaoshan, he offered his own assessment of the chairman. He began by talking at length about Mao’s great achievements as a poet and the importance of remembering his role in literature. When I asked him if he agreed that Mao was “70% right and 30% wrong” (which is supposed to be the official line), he answered that Mao was like Napoleon, and deserves respect for being a strong figure who unified the country.
I’ve heard this point of view before in China – an admiration for strong leaders who bring glory to their nations, and a sense that whatever bad things they’ve done need to be weighed against the positive of their work towards building a strong nation. In Europe, this kind of assessment would be unthinkable, maybe because the memories of World War II and the result of overly fervent nationalism are still so fresh in our memories (and more importantly, taught so thoroughly in our schools).
In the end though, our fellow bus passenger concluded that he likes Deng Xiaoping better, because Deng was much more pragmatic (although he also pointed out that Deng was responsible for the events of 1989, and so he wasn’t all good either). He also told us that a friend who had been abroad said that he was surprised to discover that the roads in European cities are less wide than roads in some Chinese cities, and concluded that some Chinese cities are more developed than European cities. Mao is out and growth is in, and wide roads and big infrastructure projects are the new objects of worship — the future is dark for pedestrians in Chinese cities.
Mao memorabilia on sale at a tourist shop in Shaoshan
I think Mao will become more controversial in the future. Although he built up the PRC, there were lots of things wrong done by him. We Chinese were living suffering life. He waged culture revolultion; he set up a very bad ideology which restrains free speech and innovation; he encouraged childbirth.And now the problem arises. We young generation face an aging society and have huge pressure only because there are so many people. I prefer to Deng, too. And the 89 event can not be totally attributed to him. It is the whole system that restrain better economy running. In a word, I hate nationalism. It is very stupid to worship such an ordinary person, just as the old generation did.
My father predicts that it is very likely China now faces a recession, because the Americans set quota on many our exported products, and also because some potential problem such as more and more concentrated natioanlization, unemployment. So he persuades me to go aboad as quickly as possible. I think what he says is possible but a little bit subjective. What do you think?
I think you’re completely right about Mao. And the government needs to allow open and honest discussion of China’s past — if it can’t admit or allow people to talk about the horrible things that happened, it’s that much harder to stop those kinds of things from happening again. When I was in middle school, we spent a lot of time learning about the Holocaust and World War II (and reading books like George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm), so that if we were ever in a situation where people were singled out and attacked by a mob — like what happened in Europe during World War II, and in China during the Cultural Revolution — we would be better prepared to stand up for those being attacked.
A friend gave me a copy of a book about Mao, written by his personal doctor, which was really interesting. It’s called The Private Life of Chairman Mao, by Li Zhisui. My copy is the English translation of the book — if you don’t mind reading it in English, let me know and I can give it to you when I’m back in Wuhan
. There’s also another biography of Mao that sold a lot of copies in the West when it came out, called Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. It was controversial because it’s so extremely critical of Mao, but they did an incredible amount of research for the book and it’s very detailed, so it’s interesting to read, even if some of their arguments maybe need to be taken with a grain of salt (my copy of that book is at home in England, but you can borrow it when you come to visit 
).
About the economy, to be honest I have no idea… a lot of people are worried that there’s a big property bubble in China, and if that bursts it could lead to a recession, but I don’t know enough about the details to have an opinion. The economies in the US and Western Europe are still struggling as well, so I’m not sure if it’s better there… it’s probably a good time to be in grad school.