MCLC: Mao's spell and the need to break it

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: han meng (hanmeng at gmail.com)
Subject: Mao's spell and the need to break it
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (12/28/11):
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/world/asia/29iht-letter29.html

Letter from China
Mao's Spell and the Need to Break It
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

XIAN, CHINA ‹ For Sun Shengan, the hundreds of life-size terra-cotta
warriors guarding the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi, the emperor who unified
China in 221 B.C., are impressive, but sad.

³Look carefully at their faces, and you will see each is different,²
Mr. Sun, a former government employee now working as a private guide,
said while showing visitors around recently. Yet, ³not a single one
looks happy. Perhaps because they were too oppressed,² he said,
nodding meaningfully.

For more than 2,200 years, the terra-cotta army in the central Chinese
city of Xian has stood as a ghostly, underground guard for its
tyrannical emperor, a chilling illustration of how ³History is a
nightmare from which I am trying to awake,² as Stephen Dedalus says in
the James Joyce novel ³Ulysses.²

China, too, is trying to awake from its history, as evidenced by a
growing push-and-pull over political rights and the spoils of economic
reform.

As people search for happiness and freedom, spiritual traditions are
flourishing, including Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism and folk
religions, as well as Christianity and even Bahai.

But according to Robert N. Bellah, one of the world¹s foremost
sociologists of religion, to establish true freedom through a
societywide, ethical framework that is connected to Chinese
traditions, the country first must break the tyrannical spell cast by
Mao Zedong, who led the Communists to victory in the civil war in 1949
and ruled with an iron fist until his death in 1976.

Mr. Bellah, 84, spoke by telephone from California shortly after a
trip to China, where he discussed his new book, ³Religion in Human
Evolution.² The book traces the roots of belief and ethics in human
society and examines four cultures ‹ Israel, Greece, China and India ‹
from 800 B.C. to 200 B.C., when major world philosophies were formed.

In the book, Mr. Bellah notes the parallels between Mao and Qin
Shihuangdi, a follower of the Legalist philosophy, which taught that
only harsh punishments could keep people in line and provide effective
government. The Qin emperor silenced criticism, burned books and
buried scholars alive, while Mao, who admired the emperor, once
boasted that he had caused the death of more scholars than Qin
Shihuangdi.

³Turning away from Legalism and Mao is going to be a challenge,
because they haven¹t worked their way through the Mao period,² said
Mr. Bellah, a sociology professor emeritus at the University of
California, Berkeley.

³His picture is still there, and they want to separate the good from
the bad part of Mao Thought. Well, sorry, you can¹t. You¹ve got to
break the spell,² said Mr. Bellah.

Mr. Bellah said he was deeply impressed by the forward-looking
optimism and ‹ relatively ‹ free debate he saw in China among
intellectuals and students.

Yet people also seem to be morally adrift, with the ³eviscerated²
Marxism of the Communist Party failing to provide the framework for a
functioning set of beliefs, Mr. Bellah said.

Chinese leaders, who are officially atheist, assume that they have a
moral system in place already, he said.

³The fact that Marx is taught at every level, from kindergarten to
university, shows that they think they have a civil religion. The fact
that to many Chinese it¹s a joke and they don¹t take it seriously
shows they have a problem on their hands.²

³I think China has to face the fact that Mao was a monster, one of the
worst people in human history,² said Mr. Bellah.

He compared China¹s situation today to that of Germany and Japan after
World War II.

³In a curious way, it¹s like the war guilt of Germany or Japan. I
think in Germany they¹ve come to terms with it, whereas in Japan
there¹s almost a dramatic lack of any sense of responsibility,² said
Mr. Bellah, who is also a Japan scholar.

³There is so much self-pity in China about the Western powers and the
150 years of imperialism, and about the Japanese aggression² of World
War II, said Mr. Bellah. ³And it¹s justified in a way.²

³But God knows what Mao did can¹t be blamed on the Westerners or the
Japanese,² he said. ³The Chinese have their own guilt, and it requires
a complex symbolic, ideological and psychological change, and that¹s
hard.²

Why do morals matter? Because tyranny does not work. Qin Shihuangdi¹s
short-lived reign proved that, Mr. Bellah writes in ³Religion in Human
Evolution.²

³Somehow a moral basis of rule was necessary after all,² he wrote.

What, then, might China¹s ³moral basis² look like, as the country
looks to the future as an increasingly important member of the world
community?

Mr. Bellah offered the traditional Chinese concepts of tian, or
heaven; li, manners or rituals; and yi, justice, as some building
blocks of morality.

The emphasis in his book on Chinese tradition as a contemporary guide
was warmly welcomed in a recent essay in the state-run newspaper China
Daily, in which the writer, Zhang Zhouxiang, argued, perhaps
pointedly, that li justifies the ruler¹s right to rule but that the
ruler also has an obligation to treat his subjects well.

³The ruled are asked to maintain order, but they also have the right
to choose another ruler if the covenant is broken,² Mr. Zhang wrote.

Importantly, the Confucian tradition of individual self-improvement
also provides ³a moral resource, no question,² said Mr. Bellah.

³In this way, China is deeply egalitarian. I think there are great
moral resources in China for moving ahead in good directions, but you
can¹t predict these things,² he said, noting that the Communist Party
relies on people¹s fear of social chaos to justify its controls.

³But there¹s a certain point at which that argument isn¹t enough,² he
said. ³You need something more substantial than that.²

True ethical standards ‹ in fact, a new civil religion ‹ must develop
³if China is to fulfill its ability to be one of the great powers of
the 21st century,² Mr. Bellah said.