Mrs. Hu was born the same year that Mao Zedong, at the head of the communist troops, arrived in Beijing and proclaimed the People’s Republic of China from Tiananmen Square on October 1, 1949. This Tuesday marks the 75th anniversary. And Mrs. Hu, who celebrated hers a few months ago, believes that China has changed a lot: “The economy has grown, there is progress, infrastructure, high-speed trains…”. She was born into a peasant family, she taught herself to read and write: “almost all the women who were born in 1949 could not go to school.” During the Cultural Revolution, the decade of chaos and purges that left, according to experts’ calculations, nearly two million dead, she was the lead actress in her town’s theater company. He hums one of the “red songs” he performed: “The Red Army is not afraid of the trials of the Long March… a thousand cliffs and torrents are easy enough for them…”.
His voice floats over the pond covered in lotus leaves, and over the yellow stems of the rice fields, where tourists are photographed at the foot of the house where Mao was born in 1893. The house, rebuilt, is made of adobe; Every minute a river of people passes through it; It is difficult to stop in the rooms without being pushed by the crowd. In the kitchen, spacious and humble, made up of a stone hearth and a few simple wooden furniture, a sign explains that Mao gathered his family there: “He encouraged them to devote themselves to the cause of the liberation of the Chinese people.”
Mrs. Hu has just finished the visit and is resting in the shade with her husband and daughter in Shaoshan, the birthplace of the leader: a village in Hunan province nestled in a valley surrounded by hills lush with maples, camphors and ginkgos. It is one of the meccas of “red tourism”. In 2023, it received more than seven million visitors. In this place, propaganda and history merge and produce an exalted hagiography, with nationalist touches and theme park overtones. Here almost everything comes together on that October 1, 1949: it is the high point of the museum, where the moment in which Mao appears on the balcony of Tiananmen and gives his speech is reproduced with wax dolls; It is the epic finale of the two propaganda musical shows that trace the leader’s life (one of them directed by filmmaker Zhang Yimou).
Without Mao, today’s China would not exist.
Without Mao, today’s China would not exist, the building would collapse. His figure admits minor criticism, but not total questioning. “The Cultural Revolution was a mistake,” admits Mr. Hu, for example. “The final judgment is that his achievements outweigh his mistakes,” his wife intervenes. They both consider him “a spiritual leader,” says their daughter. And his ideas sustain the Party-State three quarters of a century later. “The thought of Mao Zedong is the precious spiritual wealth of our Party, which will guide our actions for a long time,” says the inscription of Xi Jinping, the current president, in red characters on white marble, which closes the museum dedicated to the life of Mao.
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“We are very lucky to live in this era,” says the daughter, who was born in the seventies and works as an accountant in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, where the family moved in the eighties. With Mao dead in 1976, the new leader, Deng Xiaoping, launched the policy of opening and reform, renounced the cult of personality, brought counterweights to the party leadership, allowed private businesses and catapulted the meteoric growth of the following decades. Nearly 300 million people would migrate from the countryside to the cities. The following are supported on the shoulders of this generation: the granddaughter of the Hu family, 23 years old, lives in Beijing and studies at Tsinghua University, one of the most prestigious. “It’s the best of times,” says his mother. If anything, the Hu complain because they would like a stronger China, and because of the “restrictions” imposed on them by other countries. Read: West.
In Shaoshan there is an almost religious fervor. A couple of tourists kneel before the immense sculpture of Mao erected in the square; Another group joins their palms and bows, offering flowers, circling around them just as Buddhists circle stupas. “We live in the most peaceful times in the 5,000 years of our history,” says Huo Xing Chao, a former military man, at the foot of the statue. “If we can keep the country at peace, we will surpass the United States one day.”
Patriotic exaltation
The return of the anti-imperialist message and patriotic exaltation are features of today’s China, say Mario Esteban, principal researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute, and Rafael Martín, doctor in Contemporary History and specialist in Asia-Pacific International Relations, in their recent Introduction to today’s China (Editorial alliance). They also perceive phenomena that “point towards incipient totalitarianism” since Xi took power in 2012, such as the cult of personality, a concentration of power and the intensification of control, propaganda and ideological education. “All this to create a sense of unity and loyalty to the regime.”
But they recognize the high levels of support for the Government: 89% of Chinese trust that the authorities do the right thing, according to the 2022 World Values Survey. “This legitimacy is based on the Party’s success in presenting itself as the political organization capable of improving the living conditions of the population and turning China into a great international power.” In the last three decades, they add, it has been the only country capable of going from a low level to a high level on the Human Development Index, and from being an international pariah after the repression of the Tiananmen student movement to being unanimously considered as the second largest international power, only behind the United States.
“To put it bluntly: we make money because of Mao,” says Xiao Xiping, 62, owner and founder with her husband of the largest bronze Mao sculpture factory in Shaoshan. They produce them in all sizes, they sell them all over the country, he doesn’t even know how many they make: “Tens of millions a year.” They started selling souvenirs in 1992 next to Mao’s house. In 1996 they set up the factory. They bought the license to produce the official sculpture. Apparently the streaming market is heavily regulated. They specialized in the one depicting Mao with his arm raised, haranguing the masses of Tiananmen 75 years ago.
Governments and companies are among its regular customers. And the owner recognizes that they are affected by the bursting of the real estate bubble: before, when someone bought a house in the province, they used to buy a statue of Mao to give them his “blessing.” But property sales have been falling for months. “The economic tension definitely impacts us.” This, he says, is one of the country’s great current challenges.
The fight against the pandemic, which kept China under the strict zero covid policy, also dealt a severe blow. Mrs. Tang, founder of a restaurant empire known as Mao Jia (Mao House), was forced to close a hundred of the 400 branches she had throughout China. This 96-year-old woman, talkative and energetic, receives in the living room of her house, located above the well-known Shaoshan establishment. He founded it in 1984, during the opening period, and it serves the dishes that Mao liked. His favorite was the braised red pork belly, whose gelatinous pieces of meat slide off the chopsticks. She claims to have often cooked for him. He treated the family a lot. He met the leader in 1959, when he returned to Shaoshan 32 years later. The room is full of images of Mao, to whom he even dedicates an altar, and in his speech he intersperses numerous phrases of flattery: “He is number one!”
Watching her use the phone is perhaps the best summary of China 75 years later. His bony fingers slide across the screen while he searches his Douyin channel, the Chinese version of TikTok, one of the applications with which the Asian giant has expanded around the globe, and the object of one of its technological struggles with the United States. . He has more than 224,000 followers. Finally she finds the video: it is her shouting slogans against Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the American House of Representatives who visited Taiwan. Beijing considered the gesture an affront, deployed military exercises and surrounded the self-governed island. Accumulate more than 7,000 likes.
