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Mao’s legacy splits China

At the center of the centre of China lies a corpse that nobody dares remove.”

So runs the memorable opening line of “Behind the Forbidden Door,” a book published in 1985 by the Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani.

Today, 35 years after Mao Zedong’s death, his corpse still lies in the grandiose Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in the centre of Tiananmen Square, the granite plain that is the symbolic centre of this nation of more than 1.3 billion. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people stand in line, sometimes for hours, to view, for a few seconds, the embalmed body of the man so many Chinese still revere.

Yet 45 years ago, on May 16, 1966, this same man began the Cultural Revolution, an orgy of political violence that killed perhaps two million Chinese.

Mao’s preeminence in China is linked to his role in founding the People’s Republic in 1949. Yet his controversial political legacy, of which the Cultural Revolution is just one example, is growing more, not less, disputed, with time.

At stake is nothing less than long-stalled political reform, say some Chinese analysts and retired Communist Party officials.

“An honest, earnest, serious assessment of Mao based on facts” is “necessary,” Yawei Liu, director of the Carter 
Center’s China Programme in Atlanta, 
said in an e-mail.

Mao’s legacy overshadows China to this day, so “without such a thorough verdict, it would be hard for China to launch meaningful political reform,” Liu said. In China, the debate over Mao’s legacy is growing increasingly heated, conducted via Web sites, articles and books.

Broadly, liberals and pro-market forces stand on one side; leftists and Maoists on the other. The leftists, perhaps better organised, operate scores of Web sites, including the popular Utopia (www.wyzxsx.com), Mao Zedong Flag (www.maoflag.net) and Red China (www.redchinacn.com). Behind this florescence of often-aggressive debate lies the pressure of decades of fast economic growth on the country’s rigid political framework, little changed since Mao’s day. The government has responded by trying to better manage social conflict and increasing repression.

The liberal faction harbours a wide range of opinion. Some see Mao as a deeply flawed figure who had his achievements. Others see him as merely power-mad, even a Machiavellian killer. Leftists see Mao as a symbol of days when people were more equal and many things, including basic social services, were free or subsidised. Curiously, some rich businessmen belong here, too, having benefited enormously from the political stasis of the last decades.

“All this stuff indicates how central Mao is to China’s political orthodoxy,” said Mr. Liu of the Carter Center. “A clear verdict and break with Mao will pave the way for real political reform to take place.”

“Separated from Mao, the Communist Party has no glory left!” said one commentator, Li Lin, in a typical entry on maoflag.net. In Tiananmen Square, Wang Yanjuan, 50, was one of thousands inching forward in line outside the mausoleum.

“For us, Mao Zedong is the founder of our country. We deeply admire him. He lives in our hearts,” said Ms. Wang, who is from the northeastern city of Shenyang. “In his day, education was free,” she added.

Her 76-year-old mother, in Beijing for the first time, had only one request: to see Mao’s body.

“She doesn’t want to do anything else,” Wang said. “When we’ve done this, we can go home.”

Inside the mausoleum, suddenly, he’s there, flat on his back inside a thick crystal coffin. His face glows orangeish under bright lights.

His springy gray hair is neatly combed back at the sides. He is dressed in a gray tunic, the Communist Party flag – gold hammer and sickle on a red background – draping his body from the chest down. An armed honour guard of two soldiers stares somberly ahead.

Back outside, Wang, for whom this is a second visit, appeared satisfied. “That was very good,” she said.

What does her mother think?

“It’s the same for her. Very good,” Wang said. But, pointing at her 20-year-old daughter, up ahead, she said: “My daughter, she’s young and doesn’t care so much. I don’t think young people could accept Mao’s times as we did.”

© IHT