Battle for China's Past : Mao and the Cultural Revolution

THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
Mao’s stated intention to suit the theme of personal power struggle is
a different matter.
Once the theme of personal power struggle is set up as a theoretical
framework, there is a tendency to argue that every move by Mao was
designed to underpin his personal power. In his Foreword to Li’s book,
Nathan states that ‘After the famine began, Mao retreated to a
secondary position of power’ (Li Zhisui 1994: xii). What is not said but
implied in this statement is that Mao had lost power and had to launch
the Cultural Revolution to re-gain it. In fact by giving up the Chairmanship
of the State and by retreating to the second line of
government, Mao did not retreat to a ‘secondary position of power’.
The Chinese term er xian (second line), a term used, again, by Mao
himself to refer to his resignation of the post the chairmanship of the
State, does not mean a second line of power. Anyone who knows the
real nature of Chinese politics should know that the real power lay in
the hands of the Chairman of the CCP. Liu Shaoqi as Chairman of the
State and Zhou Enlai as Premier of the State Council were at the forefront
of day-to-day affairs. But the Chairman of the CCP was meant to
be pulling the strings behind the curtain (Teiwes 1988).
The statement by Nathan quoted above also implies that Mao
retreated because of the failure of the Great Leap Forward. However, it
was Mao himself who raised the issue of er xian and volunteered to
give up the State Chairmanship as early as 1956. In April 1959, when
Liu Shaoqi was publicly declared to have taken over the post of
Chairman of the State, Mao’s prestige both in name and in reality
remained intact. A serious crack in his prestige began to appear only
after the Lushan Conference later in 1959 when Peng Dehuai mounted
a challenge to him. Even that challenge was not serious because the full
effect of the disastrous Great Leap Foreword was not manifest until a
year or so later.
Here are another couple of damming statements by Nathan: ‘He
[Mao] thought there was more to learn about leadership from the
pages of Chinese history than from textbooks of modern engineering.
While people starved, he imagined that they had more than they could
eat’ (Li Zhisui 1994: xi). The first sentence again implies more than it
states. Even today no Chinese leader, or Western leader for that matter,
would think textbooks of modern engineering can teach them how to
lead their country. The point Nathan wants to make is that Mao was to
blame for the boasting and falsification of agricultural productivity
and the backyard furnaces making iron and steel during the Great
Leap Forward that led to disastrous consequences. However, the
reality was more complex than this criticism implies. To start with,
backyard furnaces were not Mao’s invention. Nor did they come about
because of Mao’s order. In fact, as even Li has to admit, Mao was very
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