Taming the Gods by Ian Buruma

Author:Ian Buruma
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2010-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Mao unified China and imposed a harsh new order, in the manner of the First Emperor. For this he is still venerated by many Chinese. Some traditionalists even worship him as a folk god, whose golden image dangles from many a rearview mirror in Chinese taxis.

In some respects Mao’s rule was a caricature of the worst aspects of traditional Chinese politics. He borrowed from the Legalists a system of draconian punishments for the merest hints of dissent. The cult of the Little Red Book was a grotesque echo of the dogmatism of Confucian ideologues. The enforced veneration of Mao’s words, especially his calligraphy, turned the respect for the written word in Chinese civilization into a cult of the ruler himself. He was worshiped as a god, especially during the Cultural Revolution, when the simple act of crumpling up a newspaper bearing his image could lead to a death sentence. If ever there was a case of religious and secular authority being one and the same, Maoism was it. As in the Soviet Union under Stalin, or Hitler’s Germany, this proved the danger of forcing people to renounce all religious beliefs and to worship a worldly leader instead.

Still, Mao was right to fear that charismatic rule cannot last. It never did in Chinese history. The messianic founders of new dynasties, who came to power through millenarian rebellions, were followed by weaker men who let the mandarins run the empire while they withdrew into their palaces to write elegant poems or play with their concubines. (Mao also conformed to this pattern for extended periods, only to reemerge as a ferocious tyrant.) Mao was followed by Deng Xiaoping, an able and sometimes ruthless leader who did not aspire to a cult of his person. And then came a succession of bureaucrats who still have their calligraphy, as well as their scholarly works (written by other bureaucrats), published to show that they are civilized men. They are far from being gods.

To most Chinese, the demise of charismatic rule must have come as a great relief. As a quasi-religious political ideology, Maoism is dead. But this loss, as well as the thorough destruction of older traditions, has left China with what many Chinese describe as a “spiritual vacuum.” There is nothing left to believe in, except the famous slogan of Deng Xiaoping that “to get rich is glorious.” Halfhearted attempts by the Communist Party to attach a higher meaning (and legitimacy) to its monopoly on power by resurrecting communist slogans and campaigns from the past are, on the whole, met with indifference and contempt.

What is not dead, however, in official circles, is the notion that secular power must be justified by a moral ideology, a kind of official state cult. The ideology currently being revived under the auspices of the Communist Party of China is, perhaps faute de mieux, none other than Confucianism—this after years of official denunciation of the ancient sage. What is stressed, however, is not the idea of the right to rebel

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