Mao Zedong: The disaster of being deleted and the “education of gratitude”

A newborn man recently gave flowers, bowed deeply and cried with tears in front of the statue of Mao Zedong. In the video, he said:

“I am the son of a peasant, thank you to Chairman Mao, let us turn ourselves to be masters.”

This scene quickly sparked online discussion. In the commentary area, there are netizens who say "I am reassured to see such a building in the motherland", there are people who humiliate them with words such as "I want to progress too much", and there are netizens who suspect that the man is really only 18 years old. More netizens respond with laughter and crying, showing a clear sense of humiliation to his performance in Mao Zedong as a former tear as a spring.

The real question is not why a young man is crying, but why a person born in the 21st century, who has never experienced the era of Mao Zedong, so strongly attributes his status as a peasant family to a political leader who has died for half a century.

Is this gratitude based on complete history, or on highly selected historical narratives?

Great Leap and Great Hunger: Farmers are also the most direct bearers of disaster

In 1958, Mao Zedong led the "Big Jump" and the people's communization movement to pursue steel and grain production at an extreme rate.The grassroots layers subsequently experienced severe exaggeration, fake news output, high index acquisition and other problems, and China's rural areas experienced massive famine in the following years.

Different scholars differ in the number of deaths, so no single number should be written as an uncontested final conclusion.World Peace Foundation History of HungerCurrent estimates suggest that the “big leap” hunger from 1958 to 1962 killed about 36 million people; the data also highlighted that the historical number of deaths from hunger is clearly uncertain.

A young man today who calls himself the “son of a peasant” must also know that in the period of the Great Leap and the communization of the people, Chinese peasants were precisely one of the most widespread bearers of disaster.

Anti-right movement: When “the people are masters” encounter political cleansing

In the anti-right movement of 1957, a large number of intellectuals, cadres and ordinary citizens were classified as “right” and were subjected to political punishment, labor transformation, loss of jobs and long-term political persecution.

If historical education only tells young people who have “liberated the people” but does not tell them how the same political system can combat disagreement and create fear through movemental governance, then the so-called “complete history” is useless.

The Cultural Revolution: Even the Chinese Communist Party’s own historical resolutions recognize the primary responsibility of Mao Zedong.

In 1966, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution.The following decade, Chinese society experienced massive political struggle, clashes, copying, illegal detention, faction struggle, and widespread persecution of intellectuals, cadres and the general public.

1981 Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Historical Issues of the Party Since Its FoundingThe resolution clearly stated that the “Cultural Revolution” was initiated and led by Mao Zedong, and that the movement suffered the worst setbacks and losses of the Party, the country and the people since the founding of the country; at the same time, it clearly stated that Mao Zedong “has the primary responsibility” for this global and long-lasting serious mistake.

This is not an assessment imposed by overseas anti-Communists on Mao Zedong, but a formal historical conclusion made by the Communist Party of China after Mao Zedong’s death.

* Personal worship is not a historical coincidence

The same historical resolution also acknowledged that the personal self-determination style of Mao Zedong’s late years undermined the party’s democratic centralism and the phenomenon of personal worship progressively developed. During the Cultural Revolution, political loyalty to the individual leaders was constantly strengthened and spread to social life through mass movements, political ceremonies and propaganda systems.

Therefore, today’s young people crying in front of Mao’s statue can’t only be seen as an isolated expression of personal emotions.It also reminds us to re-examine how a society shapes the next generation’s feelings for historical figures through school education, commemorative events, film, political slogans and symbols of leaders in public space.

What Happened After “The Farmers’ Reverse”?

The land reform has indeed changed the land relations in rural China, which is a historical fact, but the history has not ended here. Since then, the rural areas have rapidly experienced agricultural cooperation, collectivization and communalization of the people, and the rural population has long been bound by the system of households, food acquisition and expropriation.

A truly complete historical query should include at least:

• Can farmers freely dispose of land for a long time when they have land?
• Do farmers really have the right to produce independently when they enter the People's Commune?
• Why does the Great Famine occur, and who has formulated and enforced policies that have serious consequences?
• Do ordinary farmers have free media, independent judiciary and effective political mechanisms to pursue policy responsibility when disasters occur?

These questions are much more important than how many tears are shed in front of the statue.

Why are people still crying for Mao Zedong half a century later?

Mao Zedong has died for 50 years, but his political symbols have never really pulled out of China's public space. School teaching materials, revolutionary memorial sites, film and video, songs and political commemorative activities continuously strengthen the image of "liberators", "people's leaders" and "peasant rescuers".

Meanwhile, the big leap into famine, anti-right persecution, the Cultural Revolution, and Mao’s personal responsibilities in these historical events have not always been publicly presented with the same intensity as the narrative of leaders’ achievements.

There was a very political memory decline: some young people were familiar with the political language of “turning back as masters,” but did not have to have systematic exposure to the population research of the Great Famine; knowing that “the Cultural Revolution was a mistake,” but did not have to know that the Chinese Communist Party’s own historical resolution had clearly written that Mao Zedong “has the primary responsibility.”

The question is not whether a college student has the right to worship Mao Zedong, but whether his political worship comes from a judgment made after fully understanding the positive two sides of the history, or from an education that requires only to remember “who liberated you” and rarely ask “who started those disasters”.

If young people, after reading the full history of the Great Leap, anti-right and cultural revolution, and after learning about the famine, persecution and political movements experienced by tens of millions of families, still choose to praise Mao Zedong, that is at least his information-based personal stance.

But if a society only teaches young people to give flowers, to bow and to be grateful, but does not encourage them to ask why the Great Famine occurred, who initiated the cultural revolution, and why personal worship could spread across the country, then this “touch” itself is worthy of caution.

“True respect for history is not about asking young people to cry for a political leader, but to let them decide for whom to give flowers and for whom to cry after seeing the full facts.”