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| More than Mao to China |
The West’s obsession with Mao Tse Tung is
distorting our understanding of the new China, writes Frances Wood
The Changing Face of China: from Mao to Market by John Gittings.
Oxford, 2005. £18.99
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Red Army veteran from Nanniwan, Shaanxi province, 1980.
The soldiers of Nanniwan were renowned for their “hard
struggle” and grew their own food
A portrait of Zhang Zhixin, a victim of the Cultural Revolution,
placed unofficially in Tiananmen Square in March 1980
Schoolchildren queue to enter the temple of Yue Fu, Henan
province in 1991. The large character denotes ‘filial
piety’
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THIS is an enormously important book which offers the best possible
way of looking at China now through its exploration of the effect
of Mao on a massive nation that is fast becoming the most significant
economy in the world.
Much writing about China now concentrates on the present moment,
without any thought of how China arrived at her present situation.
Journalists stress the new rich, the urban entrepreneurs whose factories
turn out most of the consumer goods available to us now; though
often admitting a slight worry as to where the Communist Party might
be in this capitalist paradise, or what the future might hold when
China’s workers demand their share of this soaring prosperity.
Endless stories are related about factory owners building themselves
mansions modelled on the White House or the new fashion for cosmetic
surgery in China’s major cities.
The rest of our attention is concentrated on Mao, partly through
the enormous success of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s thick
biography.
Without writing a biography of Mao, John Gittings describes the
modern history of China as a background to the contemporary scene.
It could never have been a one-man show and, using recently released
Chinese sources, Gittings set out many of the key moments when Mao
faced opposition. Marshall Ye Jianying broke bones in his hand as
he hammered the table in fury at the idea of the army being involved
in the Cultural Revolution and the Minister of Agriculture walked
out of a meeting saying he didn’t care if they cut his head
off, he wasn’t staying.
Gittings relates how Mao noted Deng Xiaoping’s intelligence
(and his small stature) even as Deng was moving away from him.
He also uses stories of Chinese people, the unreliable Chen Lining,
the eloquent tripartite Guangdong poster-writer and the crusading
journalist Liu Binyan, as well as the better-known astrophysicist
Fang Lizhi. It is very important indeed to be able to understand
China as its own people see it, to see its recent history as it
has been seen by the Chinese, whether you are a businessman wishing
to do deals or a student, or a visitor.
Gittings sets out recent Chinese events using Chinese sources above
all, and his own long experience. Whether one agrees or disagrees,
he presents the history that we face when we meet Chinese people.
He doesn’t necessarily sympathise but he offer various versions
of the truth, particularly from the Chinese side, that need to be
understood.
It would be patronising in the extreme to try to understand a Chinese
businessman by referring to an entirely Western view of China without
understanding where he came from and what he grew up with, on his
own terms.
This is a book about politics, and greatly refreshing as such. It
presents politics as history and history as politics, with all its
implication for the present day, rather than trying to analyse the
incomprehensible personality of Mao or a Chinese entrepreneur determined
to live in his version of the White House, whilst boarding his workers
in slum dormitories.
• Frances Wood is Head of Chinese, Manchu and Mongolian
Collections at the British Library and has written extensively about
China. |
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