The Rehabilitation of Mao and Whether China Really Wants to Enter the Global Marketplace
Power struggle behind revival of Maoism
By Willy Lam
As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership tries to convince United States President Barack Obama and other world leaders that China is eagerly integrating itself with the global marketplace, the ultra-conservative norms and worldview of Chairman Mao Zedong are making a big comeback in public life.
Lam writes of how the rehabilitation of Mao speaks to the competition between t
wo major Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “cliques” – the Gang of Princelings and the Communist Youth League (CYL) Faction. The Gang of Princelings are so called because they are the descendents of party elders. The Princelings favor the prominence of Mao. Lam says that “the contributions of Mao were played up in this year’s blockbuster movie Lofty Ambitions of Founding a Republic, which was specially commissioned by party authorities.
The Telegraph published an article on the movie, Epic film The Founding of a Republic marks 60 years of Chinese Communism, noting appearances in the film by Jackie Chan and Jet Li.
A Time article on the movie titled, Reshooting History in a New China Film, accuses the movie of doing just that stating, “Because the CCP now gains its legitimacy almost solely from the material wealth it has created and is communist only in name, it has to recast the past to justify the present.”
France 24 also writes of the rehabilitation of Mao in its article, Mao makes a comeback amid economic crisis.
