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The Helmsman and the Swindlers: Notes on the Passing of the “Era of Mao Tse-tung”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
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King Hsuan of Ch'u said to his ministers: “I have heard that the people in the north fear Chao Hsi-hsu. Why is this?” None of his ministers could answer. Then Chiang I said: “The tiger feeds on the hundred beasts. One day the tiger caught a fox. The fox said: ‘Your honor dare not eat me. God has made me the strongest of the animals, and were you to eat me, you would violate the law of God. If you don't believe me, let me walk before you. Follow along, and you will see that none of the animals dare do anything but run away when they see me coming.’ The tiger agreed, and walked behind the fox; and, indeed, the other beasts all fled. The tiger did not realize that it was he the hundred beasts feared, but thought it was the fox. Now the king controls 5,000 square miles of territory and has a million men under arms. But all of this has been entrusted to Chao Hsi-hsu. The northerners fear Hsi-hsu, but what they really fear are the king's armed men—just as the hundred beasts feared the tiger.”
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References
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69 This would mean, of course, the realization of what Mao used to claim were his worst fears, that China would “change color.” The Communists in China can take credit for many things, but few of their accomplishments would seem to be a direct result of the totalitarian nature of the regime, and in many cases the accomplishments may have come about despite totalitarianism.
Mao's fear of “revisionism” (remembering all the caveats discussed above concerning attributing anything to Mao) led him to move away from any attempt to insure social harmony, and to stress “struggle” instead. There is something compelling in Mao's view of progress as resulting from ceaseless struggle, although this struggle should perhaps be balanced by some Confucian concepts of harmony. But in the totalitarian context this “struggle” is a travesty. It involves, among the “masses,” the mobilization of the force of the state and of manipulated public opinion against persons both unable to defend themselves or threaten others; and among the Party members it involves the heaping of calumny upon men rendered helpless, whose crime was to have had the wrong affiliations or simply to have been available for scapegoating. A looser type of regime might allow a more meaningful kind of “struggle.”
This sort of regime, of course, would hardly lead to the “liberation of mankind.” But I doubt the present system will either, and perhaps Mao Tse-tung himself doubts it: “With the advent of communism will there be no more struggle? I don't believe it. With the advent of communism there will still be the struggle between old and new, between truth and error. Ten thousand years hence error will still be no good, and will not be able to stand.” (“Mao's Speeches”) A people that has now undergone more than a century of internal turmoil and external aggression may find such a vision less than Utopian, and may wonder whether this is the sort of thing worth striving for.