Chinese keep sheen on portraits of the Great Helmsman

JUST what would Chairman Mao, founder of the Chinese Communist Party, think if he could see today, on the 20th anniversary of…

JUST what would Chairman Mao, founder of the Chinese Communist Party, think if he could see today, on the 20th anniversary of his death, the brash symbols of modern capitalism which have sprung up around Tiananmen Square? These include McDonalds, a Pizza Hut, neon advertisements for Japanese electronics and glittering office blocks built with venture capital from Hong Kong and Singapore.

Mao's famous portrait still hangs over the entrance to the Forbidden City in Tiananmen Square, specially treated so that it can endure the summer rains and winter dust storms that whip through the Chinese capital. But since it was erected there after his death in 1976, Beijing has changed beyond the worst imaginings of Mao's Red Guards.

In the Hard Rock Cafe, which was opened in April 1994 beside the Sheraton Great Wall Hotel, a new set of icons look down on the young Chinese from its domed ceiling - Chuck Berry, the Beatles and Elvis Presley.

But the question of Mao's likely reaction to all this to Prof Han Rong Zhang, as we sat in deep green armchairs sipping lukewarm tea in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences one afternoon last week.

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"He would not have disapproved of the symbols of capitalism in China today," said Prof Han, who is vice president of the Institute for the Theory and Practice of Mao Zedong's Thought in China.

"You have to change your ideas with the passing of time, and with the changing of time our understanding of reality becomes different.

"China is at the initial stage of socialism," he went on. "We persist in the mainstream of public ownership, but we allow private individual enterprise. That's why you see the capitalist phenomenon everywhere. Capitalism is just a supplement to the mainstream of public ownership."

Many young people in China today would put it differently. One businessman in his 20s whom I interviewed as we drove through the city said: "Mao Zedong and the party are becoming irrelevant now, except as a Ishbol of unity for China and for the Communist Party. Free enterprise is here to stay and a new middle class is emerging. Our aspirations will have to be taken into account in future."

But Mao's relevance today extends beyond his role as the founder of the nation. As China strives to become a world economic superpower, using the market and investment tools of late 20th century capitalism, an extraordinary cult has grown up around the communist leader, despite the revelations which have emerged since he died 20 years ago about his role in the darkest episodes of modern Chinese history. Millions died at the time of Mao's Great Leap Forward in 1958, and in the decade of chaos which accompanied his Cultural Revolution 10 years later.

After the return of Mr Deng Xiaoping to power, Mao was downgraded to the ranks of elderly revolutionaries and publicly criticised, though he could not be completely abandoned. The most outstanding Chinese figure of the 20th century was inextricably linked with the party, the army and the creation of the People's Republic, and his rejection could threaten the foundations of the party itself.

With the typical Chinese inclination for numbers, the party assessed Mao as 70 per cent right and 30 per cent wrong. This allowed it to retain the former Chairman as a leader and distance itself from his excesses and the sufferings he caused when he tore apart the fabric of society in the Cultural Revolution by encouraging radical Red Guards to turn on "capitalist roaders".

"His exaggeration of the class struggle hurt a lot of people's feelings and forced many people into the labour camps and prisons," Prof Han acknowledged. "His other mistake was that in the economic sphere he was too hasty in making economic decisions which have been proved to, be completely wrong. He didn't implement democratic centralism. That is, a lot of things were decided by himself alone. But you can understand that mistakes would occur under those circumstances at the beginning of a new China.

"We persist, in the ideology of Marxism Leninism," he said, "but had we persisted with Mao's theory and with going along with his line" people would turn away from Mao as they did from Lenin in Russia.

The professor cited the prescription of Mr Deng Xiaoping (who inspired the post Mao reforms, saying "It is glorious to be rich") that socialism should be built "with Chinese characteristics" as the logical sequel to Mao's call to adapt Marxism "to the practical situation of China".

Despite - or perhaps because of - the official party criticisms of the Great Leader, a spontaneous Maocraze" took the authorities by surprise in the late 1980s. It was not officially initiated by the party, but by diverse groups, from "bad-boy" rock musicians to party veterans eager for a positive assessment of their own role, and commercial outfits who saw the potential in marketing Mao watches and T shirts.

The phenomenon was marked by a rush to buy the likeness of the legendary former party chairman. In 1989 only 370,000 copies of the official Mao portrait were sold. Next year, 20 million were snapped up and a year later the number was 50 million. In parts of China every house has a picture of Mao on the wall.

In 1990 the cult took a new twist when taxi drivers all over this vast country began hanging pictures of Mao inside their cars as protection from accidents, like St Christopher medals. This followed rumours that a car driver who had displayed a picture of the Great Leader walked away uninjured from a smash with a lorry in southern China.

Academics and China watchers came up with many reasons for the occurrence of Mao worship. The Australian based scholar Geremie Barme speculated in his recent hook Shades of Mao: the Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader, that there was nostalgia for a simpler past, anger at high level corruption, curiosity about previously forbidden information concerning party leaders and their private lives, and a popular longing for a new sage king.

As China was gripped with uncertainty in the 1989 period, Mao represented an age of certainty and confidence. A living monument in his day, Mao is still a physical presence in Beijing. The masses, capitalist roaders among them, queue up every day to see the preserved body of the Great Helmsman in a crystal sarcophagus in Tiananmen Square. And in the streets around the tomb, the Mao souvenir sellers do brisk business.