By Steve Otto
Unlike Mao, Deng had a position that was supposed to be ceremonial. He was on a board of Eight Elders. When Mao died they did away with his post because they did not want such a powerful leader. But Deng set himself up to be just as powerful. He ran China the way Al Capone ran Chicago. He did not have a powerful position as Mao did. But he ran the country anyway. And the comparison of him with that of a gangster is a fair one.
Politicians and pundits here in the US and other Western countries loved Deng. He opened his country to Western economies. Under Deng, China no longer supported revolutionaries in other countries. He introduced a lot of capitalism in China. He came up with the slogan "To get rich is glorious." Naturally leaders and pundits in the West just loved him when he said that. After all, nothing is more important to Western leaders than getting rich. That is what the United States of America and other Western nations are all about. Deng was so pro-Western that he convinced Ronald Reagan that China was no longer a threat to the Western countries and the US could now just focus on Russia and its satellites as the main cold war enemy.
To be fair, Deng was a communist. He presided over the Anit-Rightist Campain launched by Mao. And yet his economic policies caused him to fall out of favor with Mao so he was purged twice during the Cultural Revolution.[1] However he built up a right-wing faction in China's Communist Party. Mao had designated Hua Guofeng/ 华国锋 to take over after he died. However Deng out maneuvered him. Deng was shrewd and clever. However his brand of communism looked way more like Josip Tito's of Yugoslavia than anything Mao tried to do.
Deng's handling of the Tiananmen Spuare protests demonstrated just how brutal he could be. When such protests took place under Mao, the helmsman co-opted the students into a roll for the Cultural Revolution. But Deng chose to crush the students and he did it violently and brutally. He showed no sympathy for the students. Deng declared martial law.[2] He had finally done something that western leaders and pundits could not justify.
While the West claimed that Deng had opened the country up, both economically and politically, it was all just smoke and mirrors. Deng did open up the economy for Western corporations and for local business people. But politically it was more repressive than life under Mao. That's right— more repressive, not less!
Under Mao, China had two factions within the party. He balanced them off each other, taking some influence from Taoism and Lao Tzu/ 老子, especially from the concept of the yin and yang. He ran an anti-rightist campaign, but never actually closed down the right-wing faction. It was as if China was a two party system. When Deng took over, he completely shut down the left-wing faction that Mao had favored. He started with the Gang of Four and then he slowly purged out all the members of the left faction.
Maoism was then crushed in China. He still kept some pictures and some statues of Mao to give some tribute to the late founder of the People's Republic of China. Mao is still pictured on their money today. But all those pictures are more or less, "George Washington Mao." That is to say he is only a hollow symbol, much like Washington is today.
President Washington was against all political parties. He never joined one, even though he is often listed as being a Federalist, when all the presidents are listed in order. He is the only US president in history who did not belong to a party. He also warned people against foreign entanglements. He didn't believe in the separation of religion and state. These are all the things that US politicians ignore. But they do tell a story of him chopping down a cherry tree belonging to his dad. When his dad asked he supposedly said "I can't tell a lie. I did it." In reality that story started in a biography written after his death. No one knows where it really came from or if it is true. The point here is that, just as Washington is more of a myth to US culture than fact, Mao today is known mostly as myth. The real Mao is gone, leaving just a hollow image.
Not everyone I consider a revisionist is bad. I consider Castro a revisionist, but I like him and I have a lot of respect for him. Since the fall of the Soviet Empire, leaders look very different to me. Castro seems like a good guy. I have mixed feelings about Brezhnev.
Today China is run by Xi Jinping / 习近平. He is considered to the left of the past leaders and to the left of Deng. He is not considered to the left of, and not even close to as far left as Mao. It may be many years before China has a REAL leftist leader. I have mixed feelings about Xi. Earlier in his reign he created a tribute to Marx. Such a tribute angered many Western pundits who hate Marx and everything he stands for. But I am sure of one thing. He is not as bad as Deng. He may not be a good leader, but Deng really sucked and he sucked real bad. Xi could do a much better job, but he is no Deng and we can be thankful for that.
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After looking at that article I realized it was not only biased against the Cultural Revolution, it was wrong. Much of what is written about that event is wrong and misleading. Any article that starts out telling the reader that the Cultural Revolution was: "The Cultural Revolution, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a violent sociopolitical purge movement in China from 1966 until 1976." is pure bullshit. The link I replaced it with actually explains the Cultural Revolution.
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