Modest Mao

(I came up with the idea for this scenario about a year ago, but never posted it. In the meantime, all my references have been taken back to the library. Errors can be expected to result.)

“Mao was quite modest,” General Zhang Zeng recalled, marvelling a bit that this could have been true. “He took the advice of his commanders.” This attitude would vanish in the mid 1950s.

Harrison Salisbury, The New Emperors



Everyone here should know Mao Zedong. Leader of mainland China from 1949 to 1976, his record is dominated by two incidents: The Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.

The Great Leap Forward was a plan to transform mainland China from a primarily agrarian economy
into a modern and industrialized communist society. It was a complete and utter failure, with a death toll possibly over forty million. As a result, Mao was sidelined, allowing modest reforms to be enacted by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

In response, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, which was, in turn, a complete disaster for China, with millions killed, unmatched destruction of historical artifacts, and an entire generation of inadequately educated individuals. It did, however, firmly recement Mao’s hold on power.

Now. Suppose that instead of becoming consumed with megalomania, Mao retains the relatively humble attitude suggested by the quote above. Unlikely due to the near-absolute power he wielded by this time, but it should be within the boundaries laid out by human psychology. What happens next?

Firstly, there is no Great Leap Forward. Instead, we see the focus on Soviet-style heavy industry advocated by others in the party. Consequently, there is no Cultural Revolution. Mao remains in firm control of the party until declining health forces him to take a more passive role in the early seventies. Due to the lack of both the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, Deng Xiaoping finds it harder to oust Hua Guofeng. Instead, they compromise. China continues the policies of Soviet-style industrial planning and party control of the economy, but many smaller measures (Such as the responsibility system, and the opening of China to trade and FDI) are implemented.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, various protégés of Deng put China through a more thorough programme of economic liberalization. By the present day, China is at least as developed, but has got there with far less suffering and destruction.

Any thoughts?
 
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It's an interesting thought to entertain, but you have to remember two important facts:

One: Stalin dies in 1953. Khrushchev's rise to power amidst a temporary struggle within the ranks of the Party is seen by Mao as a signal that the international bulwark of Communism is, in fact, relocating to Beijing.

Two: The Sino-Soviet Territorial Dispute began hundreds of years ago and wasn't laid to rest until 1993. Mao had an axe to grind, and he had as much nationalistic sentiment as he did Marxist rhetoric at his disposal. He wanted all of China to be China, and that includes a fair bit of Siberia (if Mao's and Chiang's separate and independent calculations of "lost" Chinese territory are to be believed). Mao came of age in the revolutionary struggle against colonialism in China. Chiang and Mao both addressed grievances with Russia, and though the Soviet Union did its best to dissolve and liquify all heritage of their Imperial past, there is no amount of human psychology that would have made Mao look at Russia any differently than he did the British, French, Americans, and Japan during WWII and the ensuing years until '49.

Mao would not have seen as moderate a course as you describe as remotely possible after 1953. If we could somehow strip him of some of his power before Stalin dies, it becomes a possibility, but the Sino-Soviet Territorial Dispute still presents a major problem in the fact that Mao would need incredibly strong leadership to negotiate those waters.

Though an interesting question is raised: if Mao did follow a more modest, less deadly route, would he still have felt compelled to welcome Nixon with open arms? Or would he have maintained the international struggle against Communism and America? If the latter is true (and I believe it would be, because a modest Mao cancels out his vehemence against Moscow, at least in part) there is no way China would be as developed as it is now. Absolutely butterflied away. So you need to somehow keep tension between Beijing and Moscow high enough that Nixon succeeds in detente and the opening of China. But, keeping in mind the two largest reasons that tensions remained high, I don't see how a modest Mao would allow for a political climate that required collusion with the US in the 60's, thus enabling Deng's reforms to seem so appealing, or even to allow Deng to succeed at all.
 
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He wouldn't make himself a cult of personality which, and this is the paradox, means he will have to do something else to stay in power (if he even manage to get to it in the first place). And that would most likely be a even more oppresive rule.
 
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