1. Mao Now
21st Century Perspectives on Mao
and the Chinese Revolution
Rebecca Cairns, Deakin University
Painting by Gao Jiang

2. Session Overview
 My in-country inspiration
 Questions
 CCP perspectives on Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong
Thought
 Recent Chinese Historiography
 The New Left
 Striking a Balance: Red Tourism
 Never Forget National Humiliation
 Nationalism and the Patriotic Education Campaign
 Further Reading and Resources

3. Questions
 The theme of the conference is ‘our shared history’: How are our
students being positioned in the sharing of Chinese history?
 How do we avoid ‘Orientalist’ or ethnocentric perspectives?
 How is historical memory shaped in contemporary China?
 How have official perspectives of Mao and the Chinese
Revolution shifted?
 How has Chinese historiography changed in recent decades?
 What is the relationship between CCP perspectives, Chinese
historians and non-Chinese historians?

4. How does the CCP view
Mao today?
 “Mao has been demoted but never officially repudiated….. The CCP sees itself as continuing
the work Mao started in the 1930s but acknowledge it went astray from the mid 1950s to late
1970s.” Dirlik Arlif (2012)
 “The China Story” (Zhongguode gushi 中国的故事), itself a relatively recent conceit, has been
concocted. It is a story that has been interwoven intimately with the grand romantic narrative
of communism. This narrative speaks to the history of the Party in the context of national
revolution and independence; it cleaves to Mao Zedong (and a panoply of lesser leaders) as
well as many aspects of his career, thought, and politics.” Geremie Barme (2012)
 Since his death, Mao’s image has begun to be taken down from the sacred alter. However, if
he is removed completely from the sacred alter, this will involve too many practical interests.
The ruling party needs Mao in order to guarantee a legitimate base for itself to hold power. The
army, the state, and other fundamental institutions, in order to guarantee their authority and
continuation, also require Mao.” Jiang Yihua, Fudan University, Shanghai (2010)
 Mao was “a great patriot and a national hero”……..“Revolutionary leaders are not gods, but
human beings; [we] cannot worship them like gods or refuse to allow people to point out and
correct their errors just because they are great; neither can we totally repudiate them and
erase their historical feats just because they made mistakes” President Xi Jinping (2012)

5. 1981 Resolution on Certain Questions in
the History of Our Party since the Founding
of the People’s Republic of China:
 “Chief responsibility for the grave ‘left’ error of the
‘Cultural Revolution’, an error comprehensive in
magnitude and protracted in duration, does indeed
lie with Comrade Mao Zedong [...] Far from making a
correct analysis of many problems, he confused right
and wrong and the people with the enemy [...]
Herein lies his tragedy.”
 “Comrade Mao Zedong was a great Marxist and a
great proletarian revolutionary, strategist and
theorist. It is true that he made gross mistakes during
the “cultural revolution", but, if we judge his activities
as a whole, his contributions to the Chinese
revolution far outweigh his mistakes. His merits are
primary and his errors secondary.”
Access the 1981 Resolution:
https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/cpc/history/01.
htm

6. Reconstructing Chinese Marxism: Dirlik, A. (2012)
Stage 1 Gone astray…. Stage 2
1930s – mid 1950s
New Democracy
historical and ideological
foundation
Mao’s “correct” thought
mid 1950s to late 1970s
Ideology went astray
Now viewed as a
“negative example” from
which to learn what not to
do
Leftist errors and radical
policies
“It is true that he made
gross mistakes during the
Cultural Revolution” 1981
Resolution
post 1978 - period of reform
and opening up
“Chinese Marxism”: the
most advanced form of
Marxism
Socialism with Chinese
characteristics is
constituted by Deng
Xiaoping Theory, the Three
Represents, and the
Scientific Outlook
Reinterpretation and
restoration of the the
“correct” line of Mao
Zedong Thought

7. CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao
Seventeenth National Congress of the
Party in 2007:
“The theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics constitutes a system of
scientific theories including Deng Xiaoping Theory, the important thought of
the Three Represents, and the Scientific outlook on Development and other
major strategic thought. This system represents the party’s adherence to
and development of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought and
embodies the wisdom and hard work of several generations of Chinese
Communists leading the people in carrying out tireless exploration and
practice. It is the latest achievement in adapting Marxism to Chinese
conditions, the party’s invaluable political and intellectual asset, and the
common ideological foundation for the concerted endeavor of the people
of all ethnic groups.”
Xiao (2010) and Barme (2012) both highlight that the CCP is indicating
that Mao Zedong Thought is no longer part of the Theory of Socialism
with Chinese Characteristics. It is influential but has been replaced by
new ideology.

8. Mao Zedong
• Mao the CCP leader
• Mao the individual
• Mao the human
• Mao the fallible
Mao Zedong
Thought
• Abstract
• Foundation for
Chinese Marxism
• Collective wisdom of
the Party
Delineating Mao
How does
the leftist
legacy
distinguish
itself from
a failed
Maoism?
(Barme,
G. 2012)

9. Recent Chinese Mao Scholarship
1. Official ideology: the CCP’s interpretation which controls political discourse
in Chinese Mao scholarship; although Mao’s thought and image are still a
sensitive areas, in the framework of the official ideology, Mao Zedong
Thought seems merely to be a symbol for political legitimacy.
2. Liberal school: critical of Mao, especially his later years; Li Rui, a famous Mao
scholar in China, is typical of this school: “He contributed to China’s
Revolution, made mistakes in his reign, and committed a crime in launching
the Cultural Revolution.”
3. New Left scholars: are critical of Western liberalism and the new economic
reforms which need to be remedied by “the real spirit of Mao.”
4. Historical school: believe historical interpretation must be based on fact and
evidence and disapprove of ideological power intruding on historical
narratives
Xiao, Y. (2010). ‘Recent Mao Zedong Scholarship in China’ in Cheek, T. (Ed.) A
Critical Introduction to Mao. New York: Cambridge University Press.

10. The New Left
 A large, loosely knit group who sometimes reject the label New Left
(Zhu, 2014)
 Key idea: China has gone too far in embracing a neoliberal
capitalist model (Zhu, 2014)
 New Left scholars can be separated into the moderate wing
(postmodernism / neo-Marxism) and the radical wing (populism)
 The New Left advocates reforming the system from within the
system
 Leftist websites, such as Utopia, Mao Flag and Red Culture are
regularly shut down by the government
http://www.maoflag.org/portal.php

11. Top left: Anti-Japanese protests, Wuhan, 2012
http://www.ibtimes.com/anti-japanese-protests-erupts-across-china-
beijing-raises-trade-threats-over-disputed-islands-789678
Bottom left: Residents singing red songs in a park
in Chongqing
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/22/red-songs-chinese-
cultural-revolution
Bottom right: Performers in Red Army uniforms to
celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Party,
Chongqing http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/china-in-pictures-the-
communist-party-celebrates-90th-anniversary-172760
Mao: “wave the red flag to
oppose the red flag”
(da hongqi fan hongqi 打红旗反
红旗).

12.  Professor Wang Hui, Tsinghua University, Beijing
 Famous moderate New Left scholar - decries “depoliticised politics.”
 He is critical of the the way in which discourses of modernity, such as the market
economy and globalisation, try to disguise the reality of party politics and class
problems.
 Wang argues that the Cultural Revolution was a politicising force (cf.Xiao, 2010).
 He says, “the Chinese capitalist model has been based on the intense
exploitation of a large cheap labor force as well as cheap energy and natural
resources. But within a decade, we’re likely to see the surge of working class
militancy.”
 Read more:
Zhu, W. (2014). ‘China’s New Left.’ China Dispatch. 2014 (1). Beijing.
Mobo, G. (2008). The Battle for China’s Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution.
London: Pluto Press.
The New Left cont’d

13. The Bo Xilai
Story
 Party chief in Chongqing, one of top 25 most senior party officials
 A ‘princeling’ - hails from elite communist circles
 Scandal: Bo’s wife was convicted of killing a British businessman
(suspended death sentence) and Bo was convicted of bribery and
corruption (lifetime sentence)
 Chongqing model of development; crackdown on crime; and revival
of Red Culture (singing red songs, TV programs, sending millions of text
messages containing quotes from the Little Red Book)
 The threat of a ‘red revival’: Due to Mao’s deep association with the
Cultural Revolution any Mao revival is seen as a potential threat to
Party power; to draw attention to the Cultural Revolution is to draw
attention to class difference.

14. Striking a balance:
Red Tourism
 Promotion of sites that are significant
from 1921 to 1949
 Launched by the government in 2005
 Boosts the economy in poorer
provinces
 Zhang Xiqin, vice-president of the
National Tourism Bureau:
"It is an economic project, a cultural
project and at the same time, a
political project."

16. On tour in Shaoshan, Mao’s
ancestral village

17. “Sunrise in Shaoshan: this drama is large music drama. It brings audience
the feeling of beauty and perfect audio-visual effect through combination
of red classic element and modern hi-tech stage and creates gorgeous
and vivid stage effect by sound, light and digital modulation.”

19. For the last three years mass ‘red
weddings’ have taken place in Mao
Zedong’s home village of Shaoshan,
in front of his bronze statue.
Read more at:
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/1
1/12/seeking-maos-matrimonial-
blessing/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

20. Mao statue, Tianfu Square,
Chengdu, Sichuan
Province:
Prior to being erected in
1968, this was the site of a
Ming palace. Many of
these statues which were
erected during the
Cultural Revolution, have
been quietly removed
from city squares across
China.
Read more:
http://chinarev.tumblr.com/post/56126
544519/no-reconstruction-without-
destruction-a-giant

21. Youth Mao Zedong Statue
Changsha, Hunan Province:
• Mao’s home province
• 32 metres tall
• Located on Juzi (Orange) Isle
in the middle of the Xiang River
• Based on a poem in which
Mao describes the view of
Yuelu mountain, however it
faces the wrong way
• Built 2007 – 2009
• Symbolic of delineated Mao
and Mao Zedong Thought?

22. This jade and gold statue was unveiled in December 2013 to celebrate
the 120th birthday of Mao. 80cm tall and worth more than US$16 million,
it is not known publically by whom it was commissioned or paid for. In
the lead up to the celebrations President Xi called for celebrations to be
“solemn, simple and pragmatic.” Source: Shanghai Daily
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/national/Gold-jade-statue-to-mark-Mao-anniversary/shdaily.shtml

23. 2013 Will Mao’s portrait continue to hang on the Tiananmen?

24. 1919

25. 1925

26. 1948 - 1945

27. 1949

28. 1953

29. “勿忘国耻 wuwang
guochi “never forget
national humiliation”
 “the Chinese people’s historical
consciousness and its complex of
myth and trauma are the
dominant ideas in China’s public
rhetoric” (Wang, 2012)
 “understanding a people’s
collective memory can help us
to better understand their
national interests and political
actions” (Wang, 2012)
 “modern historical consciousness
in China is powerfully influenced
by the “century of humiliation”
from the mid 1800s to the mid
1900s” (Wang, 2012)

30. Source: http://japanfocus.org/-Jeff-Kingston/2859 Source: http://english.sina.com/china/p/2012/0917/507572.html
Source: http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1548632/xi-jinping-blasts-
japan-77th-anniversary-ceremony-marco-polo-bridge?page=all
Top: President Xi
commemorating the 77th
anniversary of the War of
Resistance, July 2014
Left: a group of students
being photographed at the
Nanjing Massacre Memorial
Right: Primary students
signing a banner to
commemorate the
Manchurian Incident

31. Shaping the new nationalism:
Patriotic Education
Campaign
 Outline for Conducting Patriotic Education issued by the Central Committee of
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP):
“boosting the nation’s spirit, enhancing its cohesion, fostering its self-esteem and
sense of pride, consolidating and developing a patriotic united front to the
broadest extent possible, and directing and rallying the masses’ patriotic passions to
the great cause of building socialism with Chinese characteristics [and] helping the
motherland become unified, prosperous and strong.” (cf Vickers, E. 2007)
 The State Education Commission named ‘One Hundred Patriotic Education Bases’
- mostly museums and historic sites, but also national celebrations and Learn from
Lei Feng Day
 “This broader programme of ‘patriotic education’ is fundamentally aimed at
legitimising the CCP project of rapid but inegalitarian modernization and
industrialization, while maintaining unaltered the Party’s grip on power and the
absolute insistence on the unity of the ‘nation’ as the Party defines it. The Chinese
revolution is now commemorated much more as a national than as a socialist
achievement….” (Vickers, E. 2007)

32. The Road to Rejuvenation
 The description of the exhibition ‘The Road to Rejuvenation’ at the refurbished
National Museum of China (Tiananmen Square, Beijing), gives a good sense of
the official historical narrative at present:
The Road of Rejuvenation is one of the museum’s permanent exhibitions that
reflects the Opium War of 1840 onward, the consequent downfall into an abyss of
semi-imperial and semi-feudal society, the protests of people of all social strata
who had suffered, and the many attempts at national rejuvenation - particularly
the Communist Party of China’s fight for the liberation and independence of
people of every ethnicity. The exhibition demonstrates the glorious but long
course of achieving national happiness and prosperity and fully reveals how the
people chose Marxism, the Communist Party of China, socialism, and the reform
and opening-up policy. It attests to the Chinese priority of holding high the
unswerving banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and of remaining
firmly committed to the Chinese socialist road and theory.
Who and what is missing from this narrative?
http://en.chnmuseum.cn/Default.aspxTabId=520&ExhibitionLanguageID=83&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport= 1

33. Unit 731: Japanese War Crimes
in Northeast China
Read more:
http://chinarev.tumblr.com/po
st/70885230393/unit-731-
japanese-war-crimes-in-
northeast-china

35. Nanjing Massacre Memorial

36. Monument to the Revolutionary
Martyrs, Nanjing

37. • Lei Feng Memorial in Lei
Feng Town, a suburb of
Changsha
• 5th March: Learn From Lei
Feng Day

41. Concluding remarks and
further questions…..
Untitled #2 by Guo Jian 2009

42. Further reading – less time
 Ang Xiangshu; Bi Lijun (2013). Higher Education of Social Science, 4(2), 25-29
 Arlif, D. (2012) Mao Zedong in Contemporary Chinese Official Discourse and
History. China Perspectives. 2. 17-27.
 Barme, G. (2012). Red Allure and the Crimson Blindfold. Chinese
Perspectives. 2. 29-40.
 Gerwirtz, P. (2014). Xi, Mao, and China’s Search for a Usable Past. China File.
http://www.chinafile.com/xi-mao-and-chinas-search-usable-past
 Smith, S. A. (2011) Recent historiography of the People’s Republic of China,
1949-76. Twentieth Century Communism. 196-216
 Wang, Z. (2008). National Humiliation, History Education and the Politics of
Historical Memory:Patriotic Education Campaign in China. International
Studies Quarterly. 52. 783 – 806 http://www.risingpowersinitiative.org/wp-
content/uploads/National-Humiliation-History-Education.pdf

43. Further reading – more time
 Cheek, T. (2010). A Critical Introduction to Mao. New York: Cambridge University
Press
 CCP (1981) Resolution on certain questions in the history
of our party since the founding of the People’s Republic of China 1981. Retrieved
from https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/cpc/history/01.htm
 Mobo, G. (2008). The Battle for China’s Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution.
London: Pluto Press.
 Schmidt-Glintzer, H., Mittag, A., & Rüsen, J. (2005). Historical Truth Historical Criticism
and Ideology : Chinese Historiography and Historical Culture From a New
Comparative Perspective. Leiden: Brill.
 Wang X. ((2012). Fifty Years of Chinese Historiography. Chinese Studies in History.
45(2-3). 7- 69.
 Wang, Zheng (2012). Never Forget National Humiliation. New York: Columbia
University Press.
 Ye, S., Barmé, G., & Lang, M. (2006). China candid : the people on the People's
Republic / Sang Ye ; edited by Geremie R. Barmʹe with Miriam Lang: Berkeley :
University of California Press, 2006.
 Zhu, W. (2014). ‘China’s New Left.’ China Dispatch. 2014 (1). Beijing.

44. Online Resources
 Gémìng – my blog for teachers of the Chinese Revolution
http://chinarev.tumblr.com/
 Alpha History (see Chinese Revolution section)
http://alphahistory.com/
 In the Footsteps of Chairman Mao Study Tour
http://www.asiaeducation.edu.au/teachers/study_programs/china.
html
 The China Story / Australian Centre for China in the World
http://www.thechinastory.org/
 China Dispatch (subscribe on iTunes)
http://www.theworldofchinese.com/digital-version/