What happens if Mao Zedong dies in 1953? How will China evolve without the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution (or, how does the Great Leap Forward differ, and does the Cultural Revolution still happen)? Further, how would Mao be viewed by the Chinese and by Westerners? Will his cult of personality be as developed, and how much of an authoritarian would modern historians see him as? Who would take up the mantle as de facto leader of China, and how would they differ in leadership style from Mao? Does China open up faster than OTL, and what is the long-term fate of the CPC?
WI: Mao Dies in 1953?
- Thread starter Tripledot
- Start date
Well, let's take your questions into account one by one.
1. Mao would likely be replaced by a high-up in the CCP.
2. Without the GLF, China would prosper. The GLF was a massive waste. The CR doesn't happen at all, since that was Mao's attempt at knocking down the government to gain power.
3. Mao would be beloved by everyone in China, and likely remembered well in the West. Keep in mind, Mao didn't become an idiotic buffoon in the minds of the Chinese government until the late 50s.
4. Will Mao's cult of personality be as developed? The PRC would make use of it, but it wouldn't approach the levels OTL. He'd still have a huge founding-father mythos about him, though.
5. Authoritarian? In such a world, he would be seen as downright libertarian. He was genuinely interested in establishing village-level democracy - it's just that he was Mao, and as such, a fucking asshole.
6. Who would take up the mantle? Either Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi, or one of the other ones. I doubt Deng would get the job, sadly.
7. Does China fix itself faster? Probably. If only because Mao isn't competing with Stalin to see who can get a higher killcount, China would do much better. Furthermore, the leadership's more moderate/less radical, meaning they'd be more willing to embrace capitalism (although then again, without the trauma of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese leadership might not get pushed to capitalism).
8. Long-term fate? Better, along with the rest of China.
1. Mao would likely be replaced by a high-up in the CCP.
2. Without the GLF, China would prosper. The GLF was a massive waste. The CR doesn't happen at all, since that was Mao's attempt at knocking down the government to gain power.
3. Mao would be beloved by everyone in China, and likely remembered well in the West. Keep in mind, Mao didn't become an idiotic buffoon in the minds of the Chinese government until the late 50s.
4. Will Mao's cult of personality be as developed? The PRC would make use of it, but it wouldn't approach the levels OTL. He'd still have a huge founding-father mythos about him, though.
5. Authoritarian? In such a world, he would be seen as downright libertarian. He was genuinely interested in establishing village-level democracy - it's just that he was Mao, and as such, a fucking asshole.
6. Who would take up the mantle? Either Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi, or one of the other ones. I doubt Deng would get the job, sadly.
7. Does China fix itself faster? Probably. If only because Mao isn't competing with Stalin to see who can get a higher killcount, China would do much better. Furthermore, the leadership's more moderate/less radical, meaning they'd be more willing to embrace capitalism (although then again, without the trauma of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese leadership might not get pushed to capitalism).
8. Long-term fate? Better, along with the rest of China.
Towelie
Banned
He was a pragmatist when it came to foreign affairs. Not nearly as much when it came to domestic matters, so I would not say so. He played a part in the Great Leap Forward, after all.
However, the truth of the matter might have been that Mao would say something stupid, and instruct that something stupid should be done, and Zhou would to the best of his ability carry it out in the best manner possible. Zhou seemed to have the respect of the most ardent Maoists, at least until the very end, as well as the moderates and reformers, and his death was privately grieved and felt.
So we don't actually know how he would have functioned if in charge. He didn't seem like someone who wanted to rock the boat. But it is very possible that China, being the civilization that it was, to be organized along the Communist lines that the party wanted, needed the Maoist excesses. So I think Zhou would have had his corpse mounds as well.
Conservation efforts worldwide would be in far better shape, for one thing (I can't resist posting this in every thread where Mao dies early). When he was Chairman, the PRC was critically short of actual, scientifically valid medical infrastructure, supplies, and personnel. To fill the gap, he directed an effort to bring together a whole bunch of ancient folk remedies and healing practices that pretty much had no value, standardized them, and called it "Traditional Chinese Medicine." Yeah, that's right, Traditional Chinese Medicine including acupuncture and all that good stuff is astroturfed pseudo-medicine brought to you by the CCP. Mao, for the record, neither took TCM treatments nor believed they worked.
This was what started the demand for the body parts of endangered animals in healing rituals. So all those rhinos who are getting hunted for their horns for medicinal purposes, tigers whose bones are sought for the same reason, etc.? Yeah, it's *all* Mao's fault.
So if he was out of the way, we'd probably still have herds of white rhinos roaming Africa and all kinds of other animals would be far more numerous. Given how many unsavory armed groups, corrupt officials, and organized crime groups have made bank on poaching, the benefits of this would extend quite a bit to people as well.
This was what started the demand for the body parts of endangered animals in healing rituals. So all those rhinos who are getting hunted for their horns for medicinal purposes, tigers whose bones are sought for the same reason, etc.? Yeah, it's *all* Mao's fault.
So if he was out of the way, we'd probably still have herds of white rhinos roaming Africa and all kinds of other animals would be far more numerous. Given how many unsavory armed groups, corrupt officials, and organized crime groups have made bank on poaching, the benefits of this would extend quite a bit to people as well.
Zhou was clever and pragmatic by the standards of the day, and he was loved on both sides of the party lines. That being said, Mao found him to be overly capitalist, and he only survived by doing whatever Mao asked of him. His death was publically mourned, by thousands, at Tianmen.
As for his piles of corpses, I suspect that they, at the bare minimum, would have been outside of China. It takes special degrees of incompetence to go to Maoist levels of Communist thought. More likely than not, Zhou would try the less-lethal methods of Soviet communism, and start to politically liberalize after Stalin dies.
You do need to draw the lines between the CCP, and Mao. Mao wanted Maoist communism, the party only wanted soviet-line communism. Furthermore, after the GLF, sweeping reforms were made, and Mao was essentially cut out of the loop - that's what gave us the CR. Zhou, at the very minimum, would be friendly to reform (The Four Modernizations was his idea), and wouldn't try to retake power by overthrowing authority.
I think the GLF and the Cultural Revolution could both be butterflied away.
The question is how the PRC's economic model evolves. Without Mao to curb the Soviet influence, would they have adopted something more along the Soviet lines?
One could argue that the failure of the GLF was needed for certain PRC cadres to become "capitalist roaders". For instance, prior to 1961, Deng was one of Mao's most fervent supporters, being an important part of the Anti-Rightist purges of the 1950s. Would he have had his "Saul on the Road to Damascus?" moment?
The question is how the PRC's economic model evolves. Without Mao to curb the Soviet influence, would they have adopted something more along the Soviet lines?
One could argue that the failure of the GLF was needed for certain PRC cadres to become "capitalist roaders". For instance, prior to 1961, Deng was one of Mao's most fervent supporters, being an important part of the Anti-Rightist purges of the 1950s. Would he have had his "Saul on the Road to Damascus?" moment?
Without Mao, would Deng have become a Paul? That depends on what other factors come into play. It took a national tragedy on the level of the GLF to convert Deng, Liu, and others.
But yeah, I'd agree that the GLF was instrumental in undermining Mao and setting the foundation for attempts at fixing China.