It is accepted wisdom that after the Chinese walked out of the mists of the personality cult Mao once more became a man. He is no longer a god. The author of "The Mao Phenomenon," however, applies his "perspicacity and sensitivity" in an attempt ''to make Mao into a Chinese once more." This is hardly a creative endeavour worthy of comment.
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When one has plodded through this article what manifests itself in the mind's eye is certainly not the image of an endearing and lovable Chinese. What we are presented with is "a violent father," a Qin Shihuang-esque autocrat, "a genius of strife," a master of internal attrition, a "political leader drunk on power," a "willful child," "a peasant boy spoilt by mass adulation," an abnormal individual who was "mentally unstable." . . .
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But enough of all that! We can't tolerate quoting any more of this stuff. No matter what people say, Mao Zedong is a Proletarian Revolutionary Leader who, in the final analysis, deserves the respect of the whole nation and should be a source of pride. Are all of these deprecations, satirical slurs, slanders and attacks typical of the "scientific attitude" of a serious scholar?
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At the very outset, the author makes it more than clear that he thinks the "Mao phenomenon" is nothing more than an "academic exercise." The reader hardly need bother picking up the political subtext of the author's argument, however, since the text is strewn with provocative expressions like those quoted in the above. Rather than claiming this to be academic research, let's call it what it really is: an expression of political disgruntlement.
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| 1. Mao once made the comparison to Qin Shihuang himself. "So what's the big deal about Qin Shihuang? He only buried 460 Confucians alive; well, we've buried 46,000. . . . We're a hundred times greater than Qin Shihuang." At the time the comparison was regarded as risible, although both Lin Biao's followers and the Li Yizhe group in Guangzhou were to make the same comparison, for somewhat different reasons, in the 1970s. See Mao Zedong, "Zai bada erci huiyishangde jianghua, di yici jiang hua (1958 nian 5 yue 8 ri)," in Mao Zedong tongzhi shi dangdai zui weidade Makesi-Lieningzhuyizhe, p. 195.
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