With his legacy in flux, some Chinese people are appropriating the life and words of Chairman Mao to meet the challenges of modern life ON HIGH: A painting depicting Mao Zedong launching workers’ movements in the 1920s is on display at an exhibition showing art from the era of Mao last year in Guangzhou His face is no longer ubiquitous in China, but it remains by far the most recognizable. The image of the Great Helmsman, Mao Zedong, is the only one on the country’s currency.
　　A massive portrait of him still hangs over Tiananmen Gate, 30 years after his death.Yu Hai, 38, a basketball teacher at a Beijing middle school, says even his 3-year-old daughter knows who he is. As he put away old magazines recently, he found one with Mao’s portrait on the cover. He asked his daughter to guess who the man was, and the toddler answered “Chairman Mao,” to the surprise of Yu, who hadn’t even taught her about him. Despite this, Yu said that most children of his daughter’s age or a little older are able to recognize banknotes, but not the face on them.
　　“I think my generation, the same with my father’s generation, holds an inborn reverence of Mao,” said Yu, who was a child when Mao died and couldn’t understand how such a deified man could pass away. When Yu was young, he and his friends would swear on Mao’s name as if it were that of God. Countryside connectionChen Fang, a 53-year-old professor at Renmin University of China, buys old copies of Mao’s selected works at the Panjiayuan antique market in Beijing. In 1967, the second year of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the city-born Chen was sent to work in the countryside according to Mao’s instructions. Although it took Chen time and grueling effort to escape from the countryside, he refuses to criticize Mao.
　　Chen insists that Mao’s initial intention of sending young people to a harsh environment to refine their temperament remains correct. During those days in the countryside, Chen had nothing to read but Mao’s little red book, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung.
　　“I practically grew up reciting Mao’s sayings and Mao’s thinking has always been my source of spiritual strength.” Chen said that although he isn’t wealthy, he holds a positive attitude toward life in spite of setbacks and difficulties, thanks to the encouragement of Mao Zedong thought, once a mandatory part of daily life for many Chinese. Mao, the son of a prosperous farmer family, was known for having a special relationship with the Chinese farmers. He started his revolution by cultivating a farmers’ movement in Hunan, his home province.
　　Subjects of his early revolutionary doctrines include dividing land among farmers and taking over the regime by first storing strength in the countryside. “Mao sincerely hoped that all Chinese people could live a happy life, although the actual situations went against his will,” said Chen, adding that nowadays Mao is still the most popular among the farmers, many of whom face growing hardship. “Through holding memorial activities for Mao, the farmers hope the gap between urban and rural areas will narrow.” 　　“Mao realized that farmers are revolutionary forces and called on the public to fight against bureaucracy. This is how Mao tried to awaken the democratic consciousness,” said Zhang Tianguang, 40, a freelance playwright. As a student at the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the 1980s, he was a firm believer in Western democracy. He said he changed his mind later in life after studying Mao’s works.
　　“I admire his saying that rebellion is fully justified,” said Zhang. Different from the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, who understood it as encouragement for violent destruction, Zhang interpreted the line as, “the people’s request for liberation is sensible.” Zhang sees it as the localization of Marxism by Mao.
　　Mao as business guru RED COLLECTOR: Zhang Yuhuai, a retired worker from Tianjin, has collected over 100,000 Mao Zedong badges and over 1,000 Mao portraits since 1978 Ren Zhengfei, the founder of major Chinese telecom equipment provider Huawei, said he reads Mao’s works for “the spirit of rebellion,” which he believes is important to his company’s innovation and development. The nascent company once had to compete with such well-established foreign brands as Alcatel and Lucent, which had dominated the Chinese market for years.
　　Ren successfully directed the company to grab market share by adopting Mao’s military tactic of “using the countryside to encircle cities.” He said he even uses Mao’s theory of criticism and self-criticism at staff meetings.Zong Qinghou, founder of homegrown soft-drink giant Hangzhou Wahaha Group, is also a loyal believer of Mao’s idea of “using the countryside to encircle cities.”
　　This is how he developed his company, by first occupying the market of rural areas. Future Cola, a carbonated drink the company designed for the domestic market, has broken the monopoly of Pepsi and Coca-Cola since its launch in the late 1990s. Zong’s management style is quite bossy, which he admitted is “l(fā)earned from Mao.”The founder of computer giant Lenovo, Liu Chuanzhi, also borrowed Mao’s style in managing his company.
　　He once said half-jokingly, “Legend has its commercial secrets, but not to those who understand Mao’s theories.”Even some up-and-coming Chinese entrepreneurs, who didn’t experience the Cultural Revolution, are looking to Mao in their business dealings. Chen Tianqiao, 33, CEO and cofounder of Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd., was listed as the richest man in China for running the country’s most successful online gaming company. He wrote an article on company management that mimicked Mao’s style of language.
　　Top Shanda executive Tang Jun, former president of Microsoft China, is yet another admitted fan of Mao. He once organized all employees of his company for a package tour to Jinggangshan, location of the Communist Party’s outpost against the Kuomintang in the 1920s and 1930s and now a nationalistic tourist site. Chen Tianqiao said one of the reasons he hired Tang to be the president of Shanda was that they had a common affinity for Mao.
　　However, Tang Can, a researcher for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that younger people worship Mao only as an idol, different from the total devotion to Mao of the previous generation.Young people tend to like Mao for his rebellious and defiant spirit. Tang Gang, a university student from the western city of Xi’an, said, “He was a man of strong will and feared nothing, which was part of American journalist Edgar Snow’s conclusion about China’s future half a century ago.”Mao’s charisma also makes him interesting to university students.
　　“Mao’s sayings are deep as well as colloquial and vivid,” said Han Tian, a Peking University student. Han gave an example: “When Mao talked about the role of heavy industry in the country’s development, he used vivid metaphors―If the economy is a human body, agriculture is one fist, military defense is the other fist; to punch your enemies hard, you need to steady yourself, and that is the role of heavy industry.”
　　“Mao’s emphasis on patriotism is an important reason why he led the Chinese revolution to victory. But this revolutionary movement failed to overcome patriarchal traditions in Chinese culture later in his life, which fuels the unfavorable personal worship and abuse of power,” said a university teacher who refused to give her name.Image overhaulMao’s image has gone through several transitions since his death, starting officially in China with Mao Zedong Man, Not God, a book first published in 1989 that brought him down to the realm of the people after being viewed for years as a god-like figure.According to Gao Hua, a history professor at Nanjing University, there is a new wave of commemoration of Mao, related to social realities such as the widening gap between rich and poor.
　　He said that against the background of a large number of workers being laid-off from state-run companies and the collapse of the social welfare systems in cities, as well as skyrocketing costs for health care and education, people left behind by China’s reforms are nostalgic about Mao’s era. Gao said that some people have a selective memory of Mao, screening out such events in the later years of his rule as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and taking Mao as a token of social justice to express their dissatisfaction over the current reality.Zhang Suhua, a historian who studied Mao’s life and works for 27 years, has summarized four reasons why Chinese people have a lasting interest in Mao. First of all, she said, Mao’s status as one of the founding fathers both of the Communist Party and of the country is prominent and unique.
　　The adherence to Mao’s way of thinking has been written into the Constitution and the Party Constitution. Second, Mao is a complicated figure, whose life involves great historical achievements and severe mistakes. “People are intrigued by the evaluation of such a controversial figure,” she said. Third, he used to be glorified and restoring him into an earthly man involves a lot of work and debate. Fourth, she added, Mao is a man of great wisdom and reflects an entire epoch. Studying Mao’s successes and failures is still meaningful for today.“When studying the failures of Mao, it is important to distinguish those caused by the system, those by his shallow understandings of socialism, those by his miscalculation of the situation and those by his personal reasons,” Zhang said.Professor Gao regards Mao as an important historical phenomenon worthy of reflection and study by future generations.
　　“Mao’s phenomenon is the outcome of China in a transitional period, from an imperial country to a republic. At the turn of the new century, China is facing new challenges, which requires new thinking and new systems,” he said. “So all the reflections on Mao should be future-oriented.”

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