Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Monday, September 24, 2012

New old revolutionaries

They're aging, their numbers are dwindling and their influence has evaporated, but Mao's true believers are still around and they still want revolution.

Rebecca Small, who teaches at Oakton High School in Virginia recommended this article as one that offers some important context for contemporary change in China.

Some old Maoists feel like dissidents in modern China

At a country inn in southern China, several dozen Maoists met for a Communist study session one evening in early September… Most of the Maoists were men in their 60s filled with nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution – a turbulent period they lived through along with the next generation of Chinese leaders who will be named next month.

But 36 years after Mao’s death, his loyal followers often feel more like dissidents.

“Today’s leaders are capitalist-roaders and revisionists,” says one retired worker surnamed Zhou, resurrecting terms used during the Cultural Revolution, which wreaked havoc on China from 1966 until Mao’s death in 1976…

“They call it socialism, but Deng Xiaoping, [the architect of China’s market reforms], has created a system that combines the worst of all worlds: hyper-capitalism, corruption and fascism,” says Zhou…

Many on the left saw a leader in Bo Xilai, the charismatic politician who took over as Communist party secretary of Chongqing in 2005. After Bo launched policies that resonated with leftist ideals, including a low-income housing programme and a campaign that sought to revive Maoist traditions such as singing “red” songs and sending cadres to learn from peasants, they rallied around him – only to see him purged in March this year…

“Bo Xilai led a political struggle in the party, but the centre has hit back with a political counter-struggle against him,” says Fan Jinggang, manager of Utopia, a leftwing bookstore in Beijing…

Many Maoists say that China needs more than popular discontent to engineer change, but regret that there is nobody to lead their cause nationally.

“We need another revolution. You can’t bring about change without some violence,” says Mao Jianhui, a Maoist who lost his Communist party membership after siding with Tiananmen student protesters in 1989…