Comparing Xi Jinping to Mao Zedong is “absurd,” scoffs Rebecca Karl, professor of Chinese history at New York University.
“If you’re going to compare two people, it has to show something. It’s like comparing Putin to Stalin or Liz Truss to Margaret Thatcher.”
At first glance, the parallels are striking. Chairman Mao, as he was known, was the defining political figure of 20th century China. He ran the Communist Party – and the country – from the founding of the Republic in 1949 until his death in 1976. No other Chinese leader has come close since. So far.
Today, Xi Jinping became the first leader since Mao to be elected for a third term as party chief. At the top of his decade, he centralized power in his hands, ruthlessly eliminated rivals, promoted personality differences, shut down criticism, and had his ideology – Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era – Constitution. He is known, only half-jokingly, as the chairman of all things.
But Professor Karl says that drawing a straight line from Mao to Xi is still a mistake, because it dismisses all that came in between – and the Chinese who dreamed of or fought for a different country. was
“It shows that autonomy is in their blood, it’s in their water or it’s in their culture,” she says.
The reality is that XI’s rise to power was inevitable. And it is defined as much by their ambitions as by the party’s failure to do what they did not want – a repeat of Mao’s disastrous one-man rule.
“My first introduction to China was in the 1980s, when debates about China’s future were huge, important and productive,” says Professor Carl. The party itself was involved in these discussions. But 1989 brought it to a close.
In 1989 – as the Soviet Union was collapsing – China’s hopes for change were dashed by tanks and automatic bullets.
‘We Came Too Late’
The country was still recovering in the decade or so after Mao’s death. Tens of millions of people died on his watch – first from starvation due to his disastrous mission to industrialize China overnight. And then by the violent, maddening of his rivals, naysayers, intellectuals and “class enemies.”
Mao’s mantle eventually fell to Deng Xiaoping, who had survived two purges, and insisted on collective leadership that would change every 10 years.
By 1989, it included General Secretary Zhao Xiang, a reformist.
In the spring of this year, hundreds of thousands of students and activists occupied central Beijing to protest corruption and rising prices and demand reforms. Behind the high walls of the Communist Party leadership compound, Zhongnanhai, the party’s largest division. Moderates led by Zhao tried to use the protests to push for further reforms. Hardliners led by Premier Li Peng believed that the students’ goal was to destroy the party, and they wanted the protests to end.
Zhao met with the protesters, urging them to end their strike in what is now a historic speech: “We came too late. It is right for you to talk about us and the way we are.” Criticize all you want… We are all old and it doesn’t matter to us. But you are still young, you should take care of yourself.”
At the end of May the hardliners won. Early on the morning of June 4, the tanks rolled in. The Tiananmen Square massacre ended the debate about political reform. Instead, the Communist Party turned to economic reforms.
