There was one aspect of Chinese life that did not
change after the communist victory in 1949:
China continued to be ruled autocratically by a
powerful leader who used the threat of punish-
ment to keep the people under control. Mao
Zedong manipulated a tight group of supporters
in the central party apparatus, ridding himself of
‘enemies’. During the twenty-seven years from
1949 to his death in 1976, his was the guiding
spirit. He made clever use of the Politburo
members to represent a variety of policies, from
the radical and revolutionary socialist to the more
pragmatic reformist. Mao would back one group
against another according to what suited his
immediate purpose; he felt no personal loyalties.
This way of operating allowed him every option,
and a change of policy would discredit yesterday’s
men rather than the chairman. Mao believed in
driving the revolution forward by appeals to the
masses, but just as important was the exercise of
control through coercion. The great surges of
revolutionary fervour were masterminded by Mao
himself, though at crisis-points he expediently
accepted pauses, even temporary reversals. Thus
the revolutionary drives were interspersed with
periods of retrenchment during which economic
recovery was permitted to take precedence over
revolution. But Mao feared that too long a
soft period would weaken mass revolutionary
ardour and lead China back onto the capitalist
road to ‘bourgeois values’, instead of advancing
it towards a communist utopia.Continuous revolution, faith in the power of
the masses and in his ability to compel them to
follow his lead, self-help if foreign aid was not
available without unacceptable strings, the need
to propel China irrevocably towards its commu-
nist goal – these remained Mao’s consistent guide-
lines even when abrupt changes of direction
bewildered the outside world. Those who oppos-
ed him were ruthlessly eliminated. The picture of
the benign, fatherly Mao was as much a product
of propaganda as that of ‘Uncle Joe’.
Soon after Mao’s death in 1976, the concepts
of ‘revolution’ and ‘socialism’ were replaced by
new ideas about modernisation; class conflict was
dropped from the official vocabulary; capitalist
experiments were encouraged. Much of Mao’s
revolutionary Marxism was now condemned. Yet
in one crucial respect there was no change. The
all-powerful inner group of party leaders could
alone decide on the proper course China should
follow. As none of Mao’s successors could hope
to achieve his prestige, the struggles within the
party leadership assumed a new significance.
Mobilising the masses involved the use of ter-
ror against those designated as the enemy. Whole
families were made to suffer for the alleged delin-
quency or opposition of any one of its members.
Revolutions require enemies and after 1949 these
enemies were ‘uncovered’ not only outside the
continental confines of China but also within. The
first target was the hated landlord class, who were
delivered up to peasant vengeance. During the(^1) Chapter 56
CONTINUOUS REVOLUTION
MAO’S CHINA