Word: mao
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...truly irreconcilable, and Deng's bold experiments could dissolve into economic chaos. It is even possible that they could give way, though probably not until after his death, to at least a partial restoration of the ironfisted, xenophobic rule and extreme regimentation imposed on China by Deng's predecessor Mao Tse-tung. But in 1985 Deng gave fresh evidence of his determination to push his reforms through to their conclusion, whatever that might be. Having essentially completed a transformation in the countryside, where 80% of China's masses live, by freeing peasants to grow what they wish and to start...
...life is getting better, fast, for many Chinese. Industrial production has leaped along with food output. Early in 1985 it was increasing at an annual rate of 23%, a pace Deng and his planners judged too rapid. They ordered a slowdown to avoid shortages and worsening inflation. In Mao's days, Chinese consumers dreamed of buying the "three bigs": a bicycle, a wristwatch and a sewing machine. Now the three bigs are a refrigerator, a washing machine and a TV set. "Imagine," says a Western diplomat. "Some people living in the heart of Guizhou province now see the evening news...
...Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution. According to Lenin, Marx's call for a "dictatorship of the proletariat" meant that a tightly organized Communist Party was to be the exclusive dominating force in transforming society. Among the millions attracted by this prescription were two young Chinese, named Mao Tse-tung and Deng Xiaoping, who saw in it a way to change their country from a weak, backward state pushed around by foreign powers to a mighty modern nation. Deng has remained a model Leninist in the sense of countenancing no challenge to the Communist Party's role in leading...
...Mao's main contributions to Marxist theory was to stress the role of the peasants, rather than the industrial workers exalted by Marx. Another was the doctrine of perpetual revolution, which reached chaotic extremes during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that began in 1966. Party bureaucrats and intellectuals were banished to factories and into the countryside to "learn from the people" by working with their hands, and teenage Red Guards rampaged through China assaulting supposed "bourgeois rightists." One was Deng, who was paraded through Peking with a dunce cap on his head and mocked as a "capitalist roader...
...money is the decadent capitalist idea which has gradually prevailed in our party and society." Even if that point of view should eventually win out, a return to full-fledged Maoism seems most unlikely. The sufferings of party officials and intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution, the economic stagnation under Mao and the rapid growth achieved during the first stage of Deng's policy all argue against it, even to Chen and other conservatives. On the whole they approve of Deng's rural reforms...