Mao's many legacies

Literature Compass, 2015

This essay departs from the figure of exoticism to theorize chinoiserie for the twenty-first century, so we may better address the new realities and forces at work in the context surrounding the (re) creation and redefinition of the “orient.” The paper takes as its focus the cult of posthumous Mao that became fervent in the 1990s and has since the turn of the millennium created a nexus in which global capitalism and “effective authoritarianism” negotiate conf licting interests and, together, create a line of development in their search for a global modernity. I argue that Chinese state capitalism in the twenty-first century took advantage of cultural consumerism made possible by global capital while working upon and with the genealogy of orientalism, of chinoiserie, in the so-called West. I seek to show that the commodity industry of posthumous Mao today witnesses chinoiserie’s transformation from a western fantasy into a policed imagination – a chinoiserie with Chinese characteristics. For the first time, perhaps, in the case of “China,” the orient constructs itself, for its own purposes, as the “Orient,” the product of a new chinoiserie that serves the state along the lines of its nationalist and uni- versalizing ambitions.

A current collector’s view of the Mao Badge phenomenon that produced five billion badges in 50,000 different designs in less than four years, and some observations concerning the interpretation of some of the symbolism employed.

1997

On the 120th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth in December 2013, the whole of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee, led by new installed leader Xi Jinping, attended commemorations held in Beijing. Commentators inside and outside China were calling Xi a new kind of Mao, noting his eagerness to use some of Mao’s political techniques to mobilise people, and often referring to the supreme leader of the People’s Republic from 1949 to 1976 in highly complementary ways. As I try to show in this paper, Mao Zedong’s legacy today remains profound, but complex. That so many were critical of Xi’s willingness to refer to the former leader is one indication of this. Mao was perhaps the modern leader of China who forged the deepest emotional link with people in the country. But he was also someone associated with campaigns from the 1950s onwards that carried huge social costs. The most epic of these, the Cultural Revolution, was one that Xi himself suffered in, becoming a send down youth in 1969 and moving from Beijing down to the Shaanxi countryside. Many, many others have similar experiences. Those that appeal to the Chairman these days tend to do so not because, like Xi, they want to make a clear link between pre and post-1978 history, when the reform and opening up process is meant to have started, but because the feel that modern China has lost its path. It has forsaken the Utopian, idealistic goals that Mao set it, allowing elites to re-emerge, and the Party to end up as the sort of self-serving, bureaucratic entity that he strove so much to avoid it turning into. The language contained in documents like the statement put out after the Third Plenum in Beijing in October 2013 of `perfecting the market’ in China and saying that a free market is necessary for implementation of socialism with Chinese characteristics alienates and antagonises them. They want public ownership of assets restored, and a welfare system that covers everyone and drives for equality imposed again. They feel that while some have gained form the post 1978 deal, there are many more Chinese who have suffered, been pushed into poverty and injustice, and betrayed. Some of these voices find their way onto the internet, and have social influence. I look at these in this paper, and try to answer just how influential and representative they are. For the question of Mao and his continuing impact, the answer is partly that he continues to escape the boundaries that people claiming his name try to put on him. For this reason, understanding him and those that try to speak in his name even to this day, is important. I hope this study helps a little in understand just why the red sun of Mao Zedong is still very much alive in some Chinese people’s hearts, and why people as senior as Xi chose to appeal to Mao when they conduct politics in the era when China has become the sort of economic and political powerhouse that Mao could only ever dream about.

Harvard Asia Quarterly, 2008

open access: http://www.leibniz-publik.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb00055109_00001.html

The Columbia Journal of Asia

This paper explores the relationship activists in America and China had with Quotations from Chairman Mao, arguing that the book became a symbol of liberation and freedom for political activists in 1966 - 71 Capitalist America, while simultaneously existing as a symbol of conformity for political activists, and a symbol of oppression for many in Communist China. The paper analyses three aspects: revolution and political activism and their difference in meaning within Capitalist America and Communist China, Mao’s aim in releasing the book at home and abroad and race, anti-imperialism and their influence on the interpretation of the Red Book in America and China. Furthermore, the paper discusses the impact these three aspects had on the symbolism the book harboured within either society. The article aims to take the reader on a journey, exploring these central themes; reaching the conclusion that all three factors equally impacted the meaning attached to the Red Book during the Cultur...

Experiments with Marxism-Leninism in Cold War Southeast Asia