Roland, largely in reaction to anti-Mao birthday messages posted here, at Simon World and the Peking “Mao sucked the brains out of his people’s skulls” Duck, posts a translation revealing the source of much of the nostalgia felt toward Mao Zedong.:

In today’s China, we must say that it is much more open than that bygone era. Society has progressed, people have greater freedom and life is more prosperous. There are tall buildings everywhere, there are neon lights everywhere and there are the sounds of music everywhere. Compared to that bygone era, this seems to be a different world. Most people now live differently from back then, so why are people still nostalgic about that era?

Someone gave me an apt analogy as the answer: “When there are too many rats, people naturally think about the cat.”

The rat is one of the “Four Pests” in China. Today, there are “Four New Pests” in China, and they are respectively:

1. Public security/procuratorate/court of law

2. National and local taxation

3. Doctors/teachers

4. Organized criminals

Actually, while the organized criminals are bad, their damage is much less than that from the preceding three groups.

In that bygone era, “public security/procuratorate/court of law” and “national and local taxation” were both imperfect, but they did not persecute people. In fact, public security was even a very respected occupation. Today, “public security/procuratorate/court of law” and “national and local taxation” are disaster areas for corruption.

In that bygone era, “doctors and teachers” once assumed the role of victims. The synopsis of that era may be “If you have to work with a knife, you are better off being a butcher than a surgeon; if you have to manage a herd, you are better being a sheep shepherd than a school teacher.” But today, even city workers cannot afford to send their children to university, as education expenses have become a huge family burden. If you are sick, you won’t dare visit a hospital because it isn’t big news if a few days of stay cost you a few hundred thousand yuan.

Someone said that in the Mao era, people lived in relative poverty. However, the social order and security situations were extraordinarily good. Everything was simple and people lived in a relaxed fashion. Nowadays, things are more complicated. People feel bored and oppressed. A counter-argument was that since everybody was so poor back then, there was nothing to steal or rob. “Sameness” was obviously a characteristic of that era, but the severe inequality of wealth today has affected social stability in China.

Actually, no matter how people argue about the pros and cons of the person Mao Zedong or the era of Mao Zedong, the fact is that Mao has returned to Chinese society, whether it is on the altar of a peasant home or by the city taxi driver’s seat. Mao images proliferate among the people. Yet, there is a difference. In Mao’s era, we treated him as the Absolute God. Later on, we determined that he was a person who could make mistakes. Today people are looking at Mao as a god who could provide peace and security.

This is a fairly common line of reasoning among contemporary Chinese, and it is worth noting for other reasons than sociology. While it is true that many Chinese do want more freedom, prosperity and a representative government, there are others that would like to see a return to the ’security’ that was offered by the Mao era. And there are, of course, people who will claim to want both. There’s no opinion polling here so how large each of the respective groups are would be guesswork.

But those who do want to see a downfall of the CCP should keep that in mind. There is no guarantee that the contemporary CCP would be replaced by the liberal forces.

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