Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Thursday, June 02, 2011

Chinese Tea Party Communists

Jeremiah Jenne, an American historian studying and teaching in China, has a whack at explaining Mao and Chinese politics. It's probably good for teacher background.

Mao more than ever: On the legacy of Mao and the moonbat denunciations of Mao Yushi (no relation)

What do I think of Mao?

It’s the question I get asked most often after “How can a white dude from New Hampshire be teaching Chinese history in Beijing?” and “How’s the dissertation coming?”*

My usual answer is that if Mao had exited the stage in the early 1950s, his historical legacy might have been relatively secure as a brilliant, if often ruthless, revolutionary general and master propagandist. But as is too often the case in history, great revolutionaries seldom make good leaders of the nations they found. The skill sets required are just too different…

The Party has always had a hard time dealing with memories of Mao. On one hand, most of the people in power today had a difficult go of it during the Cultural Revolution. They came of age and came to power under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, who cagily egged on resentment over the excesses of the Mao era to consolidate his own hold on power.

(Part of the reason for Mao going batshit crazy in the 1960s was just such a fear: that members of his own Party would do to his legacy what Khrushchev had done to Stalin. There were many suspected “Khrushchevs” in the CCP… )…

What is Mao’s legacy today?… It is a complex legacy, and one fraught with conflict. There is a group in China today who seeks at all costs to protect the memory of the Chairman…

The boys and girls who write their “We Love Mao and anybody else can suck it” posts and comments on Utopia recently convened a whole lynch mob/pep rally in Shanxi over the weekend. Seriously, these yahoos come across like the Chinese version of those American wing nuts who claim their love of the Confederacy and flying the Stars and Bars has nothing to do with race…

David Bandurski had an excellent post last week looking at some of the proximate and immediate causes for the recent boom in “Leftisim” in China, and this week The Economist chimes in under the typically histrionic headline “Boundlessly loyal to the great monster.”…