Page 188 - Communism in Ambush

COMMUNISM IN AMBUSH
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posedly. But in China, such has never happened. From Mao's death in
1976 to the present, the Communist Party still governs. China adopted
the rules of a capitalist economy and has made great economic advances
as a result, but its political system is still Communist. And strangely,
Mao, the murderer of tens of millions of Chinese, is still regarded by the
Chinese as a holy figure.
On January 10, 1994, Time magazine published an article, "Mao
Lives!" reporting a mass pro-Mao movement in China that it termed
"Mao-mania":
M Mao to ordinary Chinese is still a sphinx, an idol with a hundred faces
whose words, like Scripture, are quoted to almost any purpose. . . . A wave
of retrochic has washed over the country as collectors grab up recordings
of Mao's preachments, as well as badges, books, cigarette lighters and even
yo-yos bearing his image. Not all the souvenirs are gimcrackery: some
5,000 gold-and-diamond watches commemorating his Dec.26 birthday
have been selling at the lucky-eight but eye-popping figure of 8,888 yuan:
$ 1,530, or 30 times the average monthly wage. . . . In the south-central
province of Hunan, the Great Helmsman's birthplace of Shaoshan draws
swelling numbers of pilgrims: more than 1 million in 1992 alone. The town
recently unveiled a 10-m-high bronze statue of its favorite son. 133
In 1997, the American magazine New Republic published an im-
portant article entitled "Mao More Than Ever," describing the "idoliza-
tion" of Mao in China:
Mao Zedong remains the central, dominant figure in Chinese political cul-
ture: he is still an imperial presence; he is still revered; he is, even, still cool.
The evidence is everywhere in China. In a 1994 poll, 40 percent of Chinese
respondents picked Mao as their favorite leader, compared to less than 10
percent for Deng Xiaoping. "Today Chinese youths don't know or take se-
riously Mao's mistakes," Yan Jiaqi, a former member of the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences, told Asiaweek. "They think he was a great
leader. They only know Deng's mistakes." In the countryside, new and
massive temples have been built to Mao in the Fujian and Guangdong
provinces, and another temple is under construction in the northern
Shaanxi province of Gushuicun. The temples are frequented by party offi-
cials and peasants who believe Mao can do everything from cure illnesses