5. The Ashtray of History

Posted September 20, 2006

Beijing, China

Outside of Tienamen and the national currency, Mao Zedong has now been reduced to a cultural relic. Mao ashtrays are the height of Beijing kitsch, available in the local flea markets. Mao statuary, posters, and Little Red Books are available as well, but these sell mainly to tourists.

Vendor: "Get Little Red Book! You need Little Red Book. Very good price!!"

Me: "Have you read it?"

Vendor, blushing: "Just a little bit. This book not for reading"

Mao is not yet officially a political relic, but this seems certain to come. Occasionally my hosts would make mention of the "Gang of Four", the ultra-leftists who rose to power during the Cultural Revolution and were purged for it following Mao’s death. The gang included Mao’s wife, the much-despised Jiang Qing. I would refer to them as the Gang of Five, which always got a smile — but never a laugh.

Widespread publication of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s Mao: The Unknown Story will help that cause along. The book, the result of a decade of careful research including exclusive access to Chinese and Soviet archives, is a devastating account of the level of deception and thievery carried out by Mao and his cronies. It is the political counterpart to Jung’s earlier personal story as told in Wild Swans, the international bestselling account of three generations of Chinese women. Jung tells of her grandmother who lived under warlords, her mother who lived through the revolution, and her own life as a daughter of the Cultural Revolution in Sichuan Province. Wild Swans was available in English in China and Mao: The Unknown Story was available in Hong Kong. Although I would not give Jung or her husband high points for dispassionate scholarship, the research is credible and the findings important even if the book reads like Jung’s best shot at sweet revenge for her undoubted suffering. Both books are compelling and highly recommended.

While we are at it, two other books published in the last year served as excellent updates to China. The first was John Pomfret’s Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China. Pomfret studied Chinese as an American at Nanjing University in the 1980s and tells the story of his classmate’s lives two decades later as he returned as a Washington Post correspondent. Pomfret loves China, speaks Chinese well, and was kicked out of the country for his fact-based coverage of the massacre at Tienanmen Square in 1989. Fine and touching account of his classmates and the five very different lives they ended up leading.

I also enjoyed James McGregor’s One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China. McGregor is not only a China hand, having served as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal in China for more than a decade, he also helped start and advise dozens of businesses in China as an investor and venture capitalist. It’s a great combination because he knows business, knows China, and writes well. Much of his experience was gained in a business environment that was more savage than today, so the lessons ring as a bit stark and over general (example: "Chinese live all over the world, but the only place you will find poor Chinese is in China"). Ultimately the book is a great read and McGregor has the battle scars to back up his grim business outlook.

As China consigns Maoism to the flea market, the country is at risk of losing something – as a few Chinese are starting to acknowledge. At his best, (1945-49?) Mao gave China something to be proud of and he gave the country a noncommercial soul that is now completely gone. Despite his obvious pathologies, he promoted health care and education more heavily (albeit less effectively) than the current government.

Mao gave visible priority to the status of women (although like most emperors, he kept a stable of them handy). He declared that "Women hold up half the sky" — even though Chinese sexism was not significantly reduced in practice. A woman executive confided to me her complete exasperation at seeing less competent men promoted over her and expressed amazement that not only could women become both CEO and chairman of Hewlett-Packard, but both could be fired when they screwed up just like men were. I assured her that that we had a ways yet to travel before women in the US did not share her concerns, but that women in the US have made steady progress and that we expect and hope to see progress in China as well.

The current regime would do well to set high and measurable standards for itself to make sure that government effectively serves its least powerful citizens, since the powerful don’t need government services, except to protect property. The same is true, of course, of our own government. Hear that, President "Bu-Xing"?

Continue to concluding post, 6. Walling and Ducking