Comparing the Influences of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping

Mark Godges 高勉正

March 18th, 2020

Mao said that true revolution is permanent and continual, however, neither him nor Deng followed the advice of turning the revolution on their own structure, or allowing it to invert itself. This meant that since 1949 there have been aspects of the Chinese Communist Party power apparatus that have The Maoist period had played a more important role than the Deng period in revolutionizing party-sanctioned violence and the propaganda that justified it, but the Deng period played a more important role in setting the foundation for modern Chinese economic policy. As history shows, both Mao and Deng revolutionized China in very different but significant ways, as Mao built the foundation for party control and Deng modified and expanded in order to adjust to the modern era, but neither have been able to revolutionize China into joining the rest of the world as a modern social democracy.

After World War II, in his conquest of Modern China, Mao revolutionized the commmunist party structure, as well as the operating procedure of which China chooses its alliances. The first major way that Mao revolutionized the party structure of the PRC was creating it’s foundation to begin with. The contrast that Mao drew between the CCP and the GMD set the stage for the justification of absolute party power in the decades to follow. This is articulated in “Morality, Coercion and State Building by Campaign in the Early PRC”, explaining; “The PRC built on the institutional and ideational legacy of the KMT. Like all revolutionary regimes, its rhetoric drew a sharp line between it and the immediately preceding and now de-legitimized regime. But in fact the PRC was a revolutionary regime that substantially conformed to de Tocqueville’s key reflection on the French revolution: the revolution quite literally completed the work of the old regime, with ‘a central authority with powers stricter, wider, and more absolute.’” (Strauss, 894) This foundation that Mao built of the origins of the state and party are then crucial to his ability to silence dissent, especially when looking at the “purges” relating to remnants of the GMD within party ranks. However this disciplinary behavior is also relevant to Mao’s conquests moving forward, and the ability to galvanize already fervent popular support to aid allied regimes in the common anti-Western mission. Therefore, the next way that Mao revolutionized China was throughout its actions during the Cold War. Even in the recent years prior, for most of history before 1949 China’s empire was divided into multiple futile states, but in the wars Mao fought once he had already conquered China, China acted as a united front and that in itself was revolutionary. These examples can be found throughout the Cold War facing South Korea, South Vietnam through the Northern fronts, as well as unilaterally facing Taiwan. However in order to maintain popular support, Mao consistently engaged in brutal crackdowns, revolutionizing the way a unified centralized party state manages dissent, setting the foundation for a system that persists to this day. In “The Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People”, Mao describes a paradox from which he recognizes his own hypocrisy, but decides to punish those who criticize him anyways. The peak of this contradiction, described in his response to the campaign to let “a hundred flowers bloom” in the “hundred schools of thought”, is “We are against poisonous weeds of whatever kind, but we must carefully distinguish between what is really a poisonous weed and what is really a fragrant flower”. (Mao, 411) Mao, of course, had no idea. In brief, Mao revolutionized China, and his regime revolutionized China, because he set the standards of behavior for what a newly unified China would be, and how it would interact with the world in the post-feudalism era.

Deng, however, is the one who truly brought China from the economic pits of hell into the path of becoming a rising superpower. What arguably made Deng a more revolutionary actor in the history of Chinese political development, is that the response to Mao’s foundational regime in succession to it was nearly as important as the PRC’s formation. Deng, piggybacking off of a series of Chinese officials (including the Gang of Four) that were disappointed and aghast at the horrific implementation methods of the great leap forward, decided to very much shift China’s economic strategy and how it interacted with the world. The most dramatic reforms that differed from Mao during the Deng era were economic reforms in the liberalizing of markets to push China forward while maintaining a strong authoritarian grip. The first of these measures was the investment in industries such as the sciences and technologies which were considered overly “intellectual” during the Mao era, and this allowed China to grow the educated workforce necessary for the 30+ year race with the United States that is climaxing right now. In doing this, Deng paved the way for “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” which largely differs from Mao’s theory that Stalinesque policies would allow China to compete with the West. In observing the past it could be inferred that it was Deng’s profound desire to push China into the 21st century that allowed him to take a realistic approach to the most obvious mistakes of his former boss. Both in raising the GDP by 11% through rapid economic development, and in creating special economic zones for foreign investment, Deng’s policies prioritized lifting China’s stature as a whole over laser focusing on the situations of workers, farmers, and peasants, and this created a new hope for China and a new fear in the West after it was for a brief time thought China had been decimated economically and socially by the great leap forward, before Deng was able to build confidence in the people both through the show-trial of the gang of four and the 70/30 principle; while simultaneously doing a complete 180 on the economic direction of China in order to facilitate its rise from the ashes.

In these ways both Mao and Deng played revolutionary roles in the formation of the Modern PRC, however Mao was more influential in building military, party, and communication structures whereas Deng was more influential in building sustainable economic policy in the wake of the global and domestic shame felt in the wake of the great leap forward. But keeping this in mind, it is key to recognize the two ways Mao and Deng revolutionized and reshaped China in many ways have left it the same as it has been for thousands of years. The party bureaucracy of the relationships between commerce centers and 3-year appointments has maintained its operating system for multiple dynasties. Despite a political and economic restructuring, the psychological restructuring of distributing thought and tolerating dissent has never occurred, and in this way the third stage of the Chinese revolution has actually never completed, and therefore is a reason that neither Mao nor Deng were truly revolutionary, as they simply copied models of the dynasties in centralizing the system around a rotating “emperor” despite the emperor not being called an emperor in a given systemic code. Many things have stayed the same within the party establishment, including the lack of toleration of increasing power of political, religious, or sexual minorities, the subjugation of women, and the overwhelming censorship and propaganda machine that quashes the will of the people to create their own destiny. One laser-focused example of one of these things maintaining a similar form throughout eras is the idea of democracy. In the era of emperors, people were afraid of their government, but governments instilled fear in their people, much like King George instilled fear in his subjects of the American colonies. The difference is America, along with many other countries resisting colonialism, stood up and rejected these ideals, and despite history coming back to haunt the traumatized land and people of former empires, we never stopped trying to shake it off. The revolutionary war of America was truly revolutionary in that it marked a point in history where America would try to be better than a Monarchy through an evolving system of democracy. In the case of China neither Mao nor Deng are actually revolutionaries of a country, as they maintained the monarchy of a dynastic era while putting on a new mask. In Deng’s case, as he suppressed the voices of real revolutionaries like Wei Jingsheng, he revealed the shallow shell that is a cage of fear around China’s true Democratic heart. So yes, both Mao and Deng revolutionized China in revolutionizing their governing and economic systems, but neither, and no leader of China since Sun Yat-sen has revolutionized the soul of China through reforming the constitution to match a federalist ideal built by all the people of China, not simply those among the Beijing elite.