A POPULAR song about Xi Jinping, China’s president, begins “From China comes Papa Xi”. It is a deliberate echo of an anthem of the Cultural Revolution that begins “The East is Red. The Sun is rising. From China comes Mao Zedong.”
The idea that Mr Xi has Mao-like attributes is common currency. The manifesto of America’s Republican Party, which Donald Trump professed to espouse when he was campaigning for the presidency last year, talks about China’s “return to Maoism” and its “cult of Mao revived”. The Economist has illustrated its cover with a drawing of Mr Xi in a Mao suit, albeit with the reservation that “Xi is no Mao”. Now the doyenne of American academic China-watchers, Alice Miller of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, has proposed an alternative comparison. In an article for Hoover’s online journal, China Leadership Monitor,* she argues that Xi’s model is not Mao, but rather Deng Xiaoping.
Ms Miller makes short work of claims that Mr Xi is Mao 2.0. The late chairman said he wanted to create “great disorder under heaven”. Mr Xi, by contrast, is a control freak. Mao...Continue reading
Source: China http://ift.tt/2meA72e
EmoticonEmoticon