Alan M. Field: Troubling Commercial-Historical Lessons About China
Can multinational companies confidently entrust the long-term future of their supply chains to a country founded on the Communist legacy of Mao Zedong? I asked myself that question recently while reading "Mao: The Unknown Story," a riveting biography of the Chinese leader that is still banned in China but is a runaway bestseller in Europe and Asia.
Authors Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, both reputable historians, portray Mao as a craven, egomaniacal monster who had no genuine interest in Communist ideology or the welfare of his own people. His life was totally devoted to murdering, blackmailing and poisoning rivals - and terrorizing the entire population. The authors estimate Mao was responsible for 38 million deaths in the greatest famine in history, and 70 million deaths overall, exceeding even Stalin, the Soviet leader who supplied the military firepower that enabled Mao to take over China in 1949. Chang and Halliday interviewed hundreds of participants, and examined countless documents never before studied.
Why are Chinese intellectuals eagerly devouring smuggled editions of "Mao"? China has significantly deregulated its economy and opened it to global trade and investment, but China's leadership still enshrines Mao Zedong as the regime's founding father and guiding light. Absurd as it may seem, China is still nominally a Communist country. Its senior political leaders are the direct descendants and disciples of Mao. In Russia, Stalin is totally discredited, outside a small lunatic fringe. In Germany, the mere denial of Hitler's Holocaust is a crime. Yet Mao lives on as a god in the new China.
As portrayed by Chang and Halliday, Mao was the devil incarnate; a hypocrite of epic proportions. Mao enforced egalitarian poverty on the populace, but he lived like an emperor on 50 private estates. Mao forced married couples into prolonged separations to meet his ultra-puritanical public agenda, but he feasted off a steady supply of female concubines. Mao spent far more on military hardware than on infrastructure or education. When Mao died in 1976, China's economy was in ruins, and its population thoroughly traumatized. Yet Mao died a rich man, in part because he had cornered the Chinese book market by forcing the entire population to buy his own works. "Mao was the only millionaire created in Mao's China," the authors write.
Why does the Mao myth persist? China's leaders want to open their economy to the world, but they have good reason to fear that dismantling the Mao myth will lead to prolonged political unrest that shatters their dreams of economic growth. Without Mao, what kind of "Communist" China is possible? Russia shattered the myth of Communism by falling back on the emotional pull of the Russian Orthodox Church and the ancient myth of Mother Russia. China's situation is far more complicated. An alternative vision of China's future still exists in Taiwan, a prosperous democracy.
"Mao" directly attacks the legitimacy of the Mao regime, portraying Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader who established the Taiwan regime, as severely flawed but far more humane and popular than Mao. The authors document how Chiang lost the civil war because he lacked Mao's ruthless will to power. "There was not a single uprising, urban or rural, in the Chinese Communist Party's favor in the whole of China - unlike in Russia, Vietnam or Cuba during their revolutions," they write.
The book shatters several other cornerstones of Communist legitimacy, revealing how Mao fabricated his "heroic" role in the Long March, and how he played a far less important military role in the struggle against Japanese invaders than Chiang's Nationalists.
...
The controversy over "Mao" also reminds us that China's political condition is more delicate than we usually assume, and its future may not be as stable as its recent past suggests.
Authors Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, both reputable historians, portray Mao as a craven, egomaniacal monster who had no genuine interest in Communist ideology or the welfare of his own people. His life was totally devoted to murdering, blackmailing and poisoning rivals - and terrorizing the entire population. The authors estimate Mao was responsible for 38 million deaths in the greatest famine in history, and 70 million deaths overall, exceeding even Stalin, the Soviet leader who supplied the military firepower that enabled Mao to take over China in 1949. Chang and Halliday interviewed hundreds of participants, and examined countless documents never before studied.
Why are Chinese intellectuals eagerly devouring smuggled editions of "Mao"? China has significantly deregulated its economy and opened it to global trade and investment, but China's leadership still enshrines Mao Zedong as the regime's founding father and guiding light. Absurd as it may seem, China is still nominally a Communist country. Its senior political leaders are the direct descendants and disciples of Mao. In Russia, Stalin is totally discredited, outside a small lunatic fringe. In Germany, the mere denial of Hitler's Holocaust is a crime. Yet Mao lives on as a god in the new China.
As portrayed by Chang and Halliday, Mao was the devil incarnate; a hypocrite of epic proportions. Mao enforced egalitarian poverty on the populace, but he lived like an emperor on 50 private estates. Mao forced married couples into prolonged separations to meet his ultra-puritanical public agenda, but he feasted off a steady supply of female concubines. Mao spent far more on military hardware than on infrastructure or education. When Mao died in 1976, China's economy was in ruins, and its population thoroughly traumatized. Yet Mao died a rich man, in part because he had cornered the Chinese book market by forcing the entire population to buy his own works. "Mao was the only millionaire created in Mao's China," the authors write.
Why does the Mao myth persist? China's leaders want to open their economy to the world, but they have good reason to fear that dismantling the Mao myth will lead to prolonged political unrest that shatters their dreams of economic growth. Without Mao, what kind of "Communist" China is possible? Russia shattered the myth of Communism by falling back on the emotional pull of the Russian Orthodox Church and the ancient myth of Mother Russia. China's situation is far more complicated. An alternative vision of China's future still exists in Taiwan, a prosperous democracy.
"Mao" directly attacks the legitimacy of the Mao regime, portraying Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader who established the Taiwan regime, as severely flawed but far more humane and popular than Mao. The authors document how Chiang lost the civil war because he lacked Mao's ruthless will to power. "There was not a single uprising, urban or rural, in the Chinese Communist Party's favor in the whole of China - unlike in Russia, Vietnam or Cuba during their revolutions," they write.
The book shatters several other cornerstones of Communist legitimacy, revealing how Mao fabricated his "heroic" role in the Long March, and how he played a far less important military role in the struggle against Japanese invaders than Chiang's Nationalists.
...
The controversy over "Mao" also reminds us that China's political condition is more delicate than we usually assume, and its future may not be as stable as its recent past suggests.