If anyone should be critical of Mao it is Xi. Instead, Xi lauds Mao's legacy.
Around 200,000 Chinese soldiers, including Mao's son, died to save what evolved into a weird totalitarian hybrid of monarchy and communism, which Mao later criticized.
Ian Johnson noted that "On the Chinese side, this involves a cottage industry of Mao apologists willing to do whatever it takes to keep the Mao name sacred: historians working at Chinese institutions who argue that the numbers have been inflated by bad statistical work." But official Chinese population statistics tell a different story.
Mao was not finished, however: in 1966 he instigated the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, supposedly to upend the new ruling class and stultifying bureaucracy and instill permanent revolutionary fervor in China.
Minimizing Mao's crimes reflects Xi Jinping, who, Johnson wrote, "Has held fast to this view of Mao in recent years. In Xi's way of looking at China, the country had roughly thirty years of Maoism and thirty years of Deng Xiaoping's economic liberalization and rapid growth. Xi has warned that neither era can negate the other; they are inseparable."
Only after many attempts was he able to join the CCP. If anyone should be critical of Mao, it is Xi. Instead, Xi lauds Mao's legacy.
Although more circumspect then and with far less authority, he called on Chinese people to follow the "Spirit" of Mao Zedong Thought and whitewashed Mao's philosophy, which he said involved "Being practical and factual, staying close to the ordinary people and staying independent and autonomous."
Around 200,000 Chinese soldiers, including Mao's son, died to save what evolved into a weird totalitarian hybrid of monarchy and communism, which Mao later criticized.
Ian Johnson noted that "On the Chinese side, this involves a cottage industry of Mao apologists willing to do whatever it takes to keep the Mao name sacred: historians working at Chinese institutions who argue that the numbers have been inflated by bad statistical work." But official Chinese population statistics tell a different story.
Mao was not finished, however: in 1966 he instigated the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, supposedly to upend the new ruling class and stultifying bureaucracy and instill permanent revolutionary fervor in China.
Minimizing Mao's crimes reflects Xi Jinping, who, Johnson wrote, "Has held fast to this view of Mao in recent years. In Xi's way of looking at China, the country had roughly thirty years of Maoism and thirty years of Deng Xiaoping's economic liberalization and rapid growth. Xi has warned that neither era can negate the other; they are inseparable."
Only after many attempts was he able to join the CCP. If anyone should be critical of Mao, it is Xi. Instead, Xi lauds Mao's legacy.
Although more circumspect then and with far less authority, he called on Chinese people to follow the "Spirit" of Mao Zedong Thought and whitewashed Mao's philosophy, which he said involved "Being practical and factual, staying close to the ordinary people and staying independent and autonomous."
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