Nice lipstick.
There's an article in the Washington Post today; It's consistent with other reporting done since the Bo Xilai scandal broke. The gist of the article is that Bo was and remains a popular figure in Chongqing. That is, Bo's "Red Revival" movement was popular. That is, the Cultural Revolution still has a constituency in China. That is, bad.
Mao Zedong was a ruthless dictator who killed millions of Chinese. The Cultural Revolution was Mao's revenge on the party elite who, in Mao's view, had gone pink (only red lipstick allowed). It was the people who took Mao's revenge for him. Shortly after Mao's death the CCP officially declared the CR the most disastrous event in the history of the Party and the PRC.
Why on earth then would Bo's invocation of CR history be popular with any Chinese?
Because Mao was popular among Chinese even though he killed millions. Read as many histories of modern China as you want, you will not find one that argues that Mao did not have the people's support. Ask any historian what he or she thinks would have been the result of a free election in China at the time; you'll likely get an honest dodge, "We don't know, how could we know?" If you get any of them to drop their honest dodge they'd "guess" that Mao would have been elected. And Mao is still popular, as evidenced by Bo Xilai's popularity, among other indications.
As I know no Chinese "assholes" I know no Chinese totalitarians. They are there, however. Are they a majority? If there were free elections now, would the Communist Party candidate for Paramount Leader be elected? "We don't know." Don't we? Really? As in the Muslim world, there is a critical mass of liberal democrats in China. But, on the evidence, do we have any more faith in Chinese to choose a liberal democrat than we do in the Muslim world? I have more faith. A little more. Not enough. The pro-democracy Tiananmen martyrs are not popular in China today. Even some of them opposed the PLA soldiers-- who were shortly to massacre them--by singing...the Internationale. And that of course was in intellectual, worldly, Beijing. What of in other cities? What of the fifty percent who still live in the countryside, about which we in the West, and maybe even in China, know so little?
Theodor Adorno, a German, surveyed America after World War II and pronounced the existence of "The Authoritarian Personality" among ordinary Americans. What if we surveyed ordinary Chinese using the same (hopefully better) methodology as did Adorno? I think we'd find a more authoritarian personality and if pushed beyond an honest dodge on the question of elections, I think a Communist would be elected.
Image: Mao, by Andy Warhol.
