Mao and then: 40 years on
Unlike
most dictators, Mao Zedong continues to evoke nostalgia among his own
countryfolk 40 years after his death. The Chinese Communist Party’s
official assessment of him as “70% right, 30% wrong” has allowed many to
gloss over his worst excesses (tens of millions died in the famine
after the Great Leap Forward and during the Cultural Revolution). Two
years after Mao died, Deng Xiaoping started ushering in the economic
reforms that launched China on a path of breakneck growth. Mao would
probably be appalled at the materialism of present-day China—he
preferred the dialectical sort—yet the Communist Party has found no
replacement figurehead. Banknotes still bear his face; his giant
portrait presides over Tiananmen Square at the political heart of
Beijing, where his embalmed body remains too; and tens of thousands of
Chinese pay homage at his birthplace in Hunan every year. Dead, then,
but not buried.
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