China and the New Maoists

Few figures in world history were as revered and detested as China's Mao Zedong (1893–1976), known as Chairman Mao. From communist revolutionary to founding ruler of the People's Republic of China, Mao was a multifaceted individual whose policies were not always clear but whose power was irrefutable. He proved a brilliant tactician and revolutionary but "[a]s an economist, Mao was wholly ineffective." Coauthors Brown (Chinese studies, King's Coll. London, UK; CEO, China) and van Nieuwenhuizen (project officer, Sydney Suzhou Ctr., Univ. of Sydney) set out to answer the question of why Mao's influence is still so prevalent when modern China is "strikingly different" from the China he formed. One answer is that neo-Maoists celebrate his revolutionary persona and ideology based upon Marxist and Leninist philosophy: "as Mao's time grows more remote and memories of it fade, the more useful elements for modern leaders [are] its dramatic story of national liberation [and] the heroism of Chinese people after 1949 in creating a modern economy."