Beijing recently commemorated the anniversary of the birth of Mao Zedong, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Compared with previous years, the activities this year were significantly larger in scale. Analysts believe the importance given to honoring Mao indicates that the current CCP head Xi Jinping is determined to make a full left turn.
On Dec. 26, the 130th anniversary of the birthday of Mao Zedong, the CCP held a symposium at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Xi delivered a speech at the symposium, and all seven members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau attended it.
In his speech, Xi touted Mao as not only a Marxist and proletarian revolutionary who revolutionized China’s destiny and the country’s landscape, but also honored him with two new titles—“the great founder of China’s modern socialist construction” and “a great internationalist.” He added that the best way to honor Mao “is to continue to push forward the cause he started.”
Unlike his speech on Mao’s 120th birthday a decade ago, Xi did not cite Deng Xiaoping’s assessment of Mao in his speech, but rather, he directly set the tone for Mao’s historical status.
This tone is consistent with an article commemorating Mao published earlier in Qiushi, a leading theoretical journal and news magazine of the CCP. While touting Mao’s so-called “great achievements,” the article shifted the focus to Xi, claiming that since the 18th National Congress of the CCP, having a leader like Xi in the Party has been a “blessing” for the Party, the country, and the people.
Some critics believe that by exalting both Mao and Xi, but avoiding mentioning Deng, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao, the three former leaders of the CCP, the article seems to hint that there are only “two great leaders” in China, and that the purpose is to use Mao as a pretext to elevate Xi.
Before the symposium, Xi led other Politburo Standing Committee members and officials to pay homage at the Mao Zedong Memorial Hall. The officials bowed three times to the seated statue of Mao and paid homage to Mao’s corpse.
In addition to the CCP Central Committee, commemorative activities were also held in many parts of China. There was also an intense stream of commemorative articles and documentaries in the lead-up to Mao’s birthday.
Compared with the past few years, the scale of commemorative activities this year has increased significantly.
In 2013, on the 120th anniversary of Mao’s birthday, commemorating articles did not appear on the front page of People’s Daily, but on an inside page. Moreover, a large-scale concert called “The Sun is the Reddest, Chairman Mao is the Kindest,” which was originally scheduled to be held at the Great Hall of the People on Dec. 26th, was renamed “Singing for the Motherland” following the directives of the Central Propaganda Department.
In an interview with The Epoch Times on Dec. 27, Li Yuanhua, a former professor at Capital Normal University, said that Xi actually admires Mao deep in his heart, and many of his practices are imitating Mao. Xi aspires to be the lifelong leader of the CCP, and his high-profile commemoration of Mao is actually an indirect way of touting himself.
Lai Jianping, a former Beijing lawyer and chairman of the Civil Human Rights Front of Canada, also told The Epoch Times on Dec. 28 that the CCP’s high-profile Mao tribute demonstrates that the CCP leadership, led by Xi, is determined to make a full turn to the left and embrace Mao’s ultra-leftist line.
“This shows that there is no room to reverse the current political trend in China, which has completely abandoned the so-called Deng Xiaoping’s path of reform and opening up, and returned to the era of Mao’s fundamentalism, an era of extreme authoritarianism and planned economy. This is also a sign that the situation of China will become even more critical in the future, and that it will face a much worse environment both at home and abroad,” Mr. Lai said.
According to Mr. Lai, Mao’s seizure of power did not bring real liberation to the Chinese people, nor did it render them real freedom and democracy. Never in the history of China have the Chinese people been in such a low political and economic condition as they were under Mao’s rule, when tens of millions of people were starved to death and the entire country was reduced to slavery by the CCP.
Persecuted during the Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, which began on May 16, 1966, was one of a series of political campaigns initiated by Mao Zedong. Both Xi Jinping and his father, Xi Zhongxun, a former vice premier of the CCP, were brutally persecuted and denounced during the Cultural Revolution.Xi Zhongxun was designated a member of an “anti-party group” in 1963 and was subsequently sent down to Luoyang, Henan Province. He was later sent back to the Beijing Garrison in 1968, where he was detained in a prison cell as small as 7 to 8 square meters (75 to 86 square feet).
More than a year after Mao’s death, Xi Zhongxun finally returned to Beijing in February 1978.
Xi was classified as a “gangster child” in 1966 because of his father. At that time, he was only 13 years old. Sometime later, just because he said a few words against the Cultural Revolution, he was labeled as a “current counter-revolutionary” and imprisoned in the Party School.
At a party school meeting to denounce six “capitalist roaders,” Xi was the only child among them. All six were forced to wear heavy iron hats. Because the hat was too heavy and the pressure was unbearable, Xi had to hold it with both hands. Eventually, he was sent to a “gangster child” class in a juvenile detention center. In 1969, Xi was sent to work in Liangjiahe, a village in Shaanxi Province.
During his time in the countryside, Xi often faced hunger and cold due to difficult rural conditions. One day, Xi’s younger brother Xi Yuanping went to visit him, and he developed blisters all over his body in just one day. Xi told his brother that in order to prevent flea bites, he sprinkled a thick layer of 666 powder, a potent insecticide, under his mat, and he slept on the powder all year round.
Mr. Lai said that even though both Xi and his father suffered because of Mao, he still believed in Mao, the most notorious evil in human history because Xi simply is serving his own political purpose, which is to consolidate his own power and become a lifelong CCP emperor.
“His father, many of his friends and colleagues, and the vast number of Chinese people have suffered persecution from Mao, but these things have not touched him in any way, and he still has no reflection on it, because he needs this spiritual tablet to serve his own purpose, it’s as simple as that,” Mr. Lai commented.
