Roderick MacFarquhar is Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science at Harvard University. He is currently Chair of the Government Department and a former director of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research.

Contemplating a 50-year period invites periodization. How can we divide up the five decades in order to make better sense of what has happened to the People's Republic and its people during those years? As it happens, the half-century divides neatly into near halves: the 27 years of the Maoist era and the 23 years dominated by Deng Xiaoping and his legacy.

Immediately, one sees the stark contrast between the two segments. To use the terminology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the first was "leftist" ­ the CCP always put leftism in quotes because it is seen more as excessive enthusiasm rather than political error ­ and the second, rightist. During the first period, collectivism and statism were the order of the day; during the second capitalism ruled and the regime struggled to rid itself of the burden of loss-making state industries. Mao preferred class struggle; Deng used a united front strategy. Looking back, one sees the Maoist era as characterized by a series of massive disasters for people, party and state. As a result of Deng's policies, on the contrary, Chinese are richer and freer than ever before and the party presides over a nation internationally recognized as a great power.

What explains the contrast? Did China have to endure Mao to reach Deng?

Of course, no CCP member can condemn its onetime Chairman outright. The party published its verdict on the Mao era in 1981:

Comrade Mao Zedong was a great Marxist and a great proletarian revolutionary, strategist and theorist. It is true that he made gross mistakes during the "cultural revolution," but, if we judge his activities as a whole, his contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweigh his mistakes. His merits are primary and his errors secondary.

Nor is it difficult to understand why Mao's errors were judged secondary. While an outside historian might conclude that without the Japanese invasion, the communist revolution would have been suppressed ­ and Mao once acknowledged that debt to Japanese visitors ­ CCP members believe rather that, without Mao, there would have been no People's Republic. He rendered "indelible meritorious service," according to the official verdict, in building up the CCP and the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and in devising the political and military strategy that led both to victory. Or, more crassly, without Mao, the 55 million members of today's CCP would not occupy their positions of power and privilege and be readying for the PRC's 50th anniversary.

The Maoist Era

From a CCP member's point of view, the Maoist era was not all bad. It too is officially divided into segments, the first eight years and the subsequent 19 years. By its 8th Congress in September of 1956, the CCP had engineered a smooth socialist transition: its peasants had been herded into collective farms, its traders and peddlers were also collectivized and its industries were owned either wholly or partially by the state. Agricultural collectivization, which had triggered the whole process, represented a personal triumph for Mao, who pressed forward despite the worries of his colleagues that going too fast would have the same disastrous results as in the Soviet Union ­ millions of dead peasants and slaughtered livestock, a calamity to set back the rural economy for decades.

The Great Helmsman, no longer at the wheel...

In those early years under Mao, the CCP had also recovered all the continental territories ruled under the alien Qing imperial dynasty, including Tibet. Taiwan was still protected by the US 7th Fleet, but by fighting the Americans and their UN allies to a draw in the Korean War (1950-53), the Chinese had engendered a healthy respect for the new regime internationally. Mao saw the PRC as a loyal ally of the Soviet Union at the center of an ever-expanding and more powerful communist bloc. He proclaimed in Moscow in 1957, the "East Wind" is prevailing over the "West Wind." As Chen Yun, one of the founding fathers who survived Mao well into the 1990s, once said, if the Chairman had died at that point ­ roughly as soon after the revolution as Lenin ­ his reputation would have been glorious and secure. But he did not.

Moreover, if one looks at that early "golden age" of the regime through the eyes of a Chinese citizen, the picture is far bleaker. The socialist triumph was achieved on the basis of class struggle through campaigns which terrified segments of the population and alerted all to the hazards of opposing CCP policy. There was land reform directed against landlords and rich peasants, ideological remolding of the intellectuals, the three-anti/five-anti campaign against businessmen and corrupt cadres, and two big campaigns against counter-revolutionaries. Speaking on camera in early 1957, Mao admitted to 770,000 executions, a figure knowledgeable Chinese believe was a severe underestimate, and there were also innumerable suicides. The toll was considerably less than in the Soviet Union, but sufficient to explain the relative ease with which the final spurt of socialization was engineered. 

From Triumph to Tragedy

Socialist transformation fulfilled one major goal of the revolution. The other was economic transformation, so that in due course China could become a modern socialist country, never again to be a victim of Western imperialism as in the 19th century. It would also be able to stand up for itself on the world scene and become a worthy ally of the Soviet Union in the struggle against the Western capitalist world led by the United States.

Yet for economic development, Mao knew, China needed the talents and knowledge of everyone, especially those of the "bourgeois" intellectuals, despite their Western training. Whereas the assertion of CCP control and authority had required class struggle against actual or potential enemies and doubters, China's prosperity was a cause behind which most of the population could be rallied. Already, a Soviet-style Five-Year Plan was well advanced, and to rally support, Mao initiated a brief united front period, the so-called 100 Flowers from January 1956 to June 1957.

Had the Chairman limited its scope to academic and technical subjects, the 100 Flowers could well have fulfilled its original purpose of enabling intellectuals and former capitalists to debate the best measures to be taken to further economic growth. But Mao was troubled by unrest in the world communist movement, especially the nationalist revolt in Hungary, which followed the denunciation of Stalin by 1st secretary Khrushchev in his notorious "secret" speech. Mao decided to open a safety valve to avert similar troubles in China. But when he therefore expanded the 100 Flowers movement by inviting the educated elite to comment on how the CCP was ruling China, the upsurge of criticism and the backlash among party members soon convinced him to abandon such united front tactics. Over half a million people were denounced as "rightists" and sent away for some type of "labor reform."

But Mao was not prepared to abandon the aim of rapidly developing the Chinese economy. Disenchanted with the intellectuals, Mao turned to that segment of the population which had given him his two great triumphs, the conquest of power and collectivization. The Great Leap Forward (GLF, 1958-60) was premised on the proposition that, though China was short of capital and land, her disciplined peasants, the backbone of the PLA and the new collective society, could be mobilized by the CCP to achieve an economic breakthrough never before seen in history. Carried away by the pipe-dream that China could double its grain production in a year and quickly overtake the Soviet Union and even the United States in steel production, Mao conceived the even more utopian notion that the Chinese could leap past the Russians to enter communism first. This would be achieved by the creation of "people's communes" to raise collectivism to new levels.

Sadly for the Chinese people, the combination of crushing workloads, disastrous agricultural techniques, misbegotten attempts to reach steel targets in crude backyard furnaces, coupled with the upheaval associated with unprecedented collective living arrangements, led to the worst man-made famine in human history. The weather did not help, but Chinese economists later agreed that it was not the main reason why some 30 million people died during and after the GLF.

During the ensuing economic depression, Mao permitted the use of united front tactics (1961-62) to aid recovery. Collectivism was reduced; incentives were restored. But as soon as production began to pick up, Mao denounced backdoor attempts to reintroduce family farming and demanded a return to class struggle.

The End of the Soviet Alliance

By this time, Mao had become totally disenchanted with his Soviet allies. Instead of leading an all-out struggle against US "imperialism," Moscow's leaders seemed like wimps to the Chairman. In successive confrontations ­ in the Middle East, over Berlin, and in the Cuban missile crisis, and on the issue of nuclear weapons ­ the Russians reached compromises with the Americans. Worse still, when China was involved in her border struggles with "reactionary" India in 1959 and 1962, the Russians took a neutral stance, jettisoning proletarian internationalism.

In Mao's eyes, the root of the problem was the Soviet leaders' betrayal of their Leninist-Stalinist heritage. They had become "revisionists" who were already leading the Soviet Union back to capitalism. Angered by some of the policies that many of his old comrades had advocated during 1961-62, he began to suspect that they too would emulate the Russians if he were not there. He determined to rid the CCP of its internal revisionists and to rear a successor generation loyal to his most radical ideas. He devised the Cultural Revolution.

The Cultural Revolution

Stalin had carried out many purges, but always by pitting one arm of the bureaucracy against another. Mao, too, started the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) by purging key leaders, in Beijing, including Deng Xiaoping, by crafty political tactics, and then promoting radicals like his own wife to power. But the striking novelty of this new campaign was that Mao, unlike Stalin, then unleashed society in the form of the student Red Guards against the CCP and other parts of the bureaucracy. Since he wanted to rear revolutionary successors, Mao reasoned, he had to give the youth the opportunity to make revolution. The result was anarchy.

The Red Guards successfully obeyed Mao's injunction to "bombard the headquarters." Egged on by Mme. Mao and her allies, within a few months they toppled party and government leaders up and down the country. In many provinces, civilian institutions effectively ceased to function, and after two years of bloody chaos and internecine warfare, Mao was forced to exile the Red Guards to the countryside and allow the PLA to restore order.

But though Mao had chosen a marshal ­ Lin Biao ­ as his new successor at the outset of the Cultural Revolution, he now realized that the CCP being rebuilt after the disappearance of the Red Guards was dominated by the PLA. If Lin did succeed him, one of his worst nightmares would have occurred. China would be run by the military as it had been under Chiang Kai-shek. The Chairman spent his declining years attempting to rectify his error. By the end of Mao's life, Lin Biao had died, apparently defecting to the Soviet Union. Lin's allies among the generals had been purged, and Mao had chosen a new civilian successor, Hua Guofeng. However, the continuing importance of the PLA was underlined by its coup against the radicals who survived Mao, the Gang of Four. Hua was spared the ignominy of arrest, but he was tainted by his connection to the Cultural Revolution. His brief rule effectively ended when a rehabilitated Deng Xiaoping swept him aside in December 1978.

Deng "Seeks Truth from Facts"

The Deng era can also be neatly bisected, pre- and post-Tiananmen (1989), but unlike under Mao the basic policies remained much the same on either side of that crucial event. Deng knew that after the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, there had to be a new deal for the people or there might be an uprising against the de-legitimized CCP and weakened communist state. Though he had been a loyal follower of Mao during the four decades up to the Cultural Revolution, Deng had learned from the disasters which the Chairman had wrought. Deng observed the economic miracles that had taken place in the old Chinese cultural area, in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, places which had been in terrible shape when the CCP came to power. Instead of tearing itself apart, China would now emulate those success stories, proclaiming that "practice is the sole criterion of truth," effectively consigning Mao Zedong Thought, the bible of the Cultural Revolution, to the dustbin of history. Whereas Mao had unleashed the people to make political mayhem, Deng unleashed them to make economic progress. Peasants were permitted to dismantle the collectives and farm as families. "To get rich is glorious" replaced "serve the people" as the new watchword of the CCP; for the first time in Chinese history, profit became a permissible and overriding goal. Township and village enterprises were given tax breaks, and a start was made on refurbishing the loss-making state industrial sector. Deng promised that there would be no more political campaigns.

Conscious that China had turned inward during Mao's second period with calamitous results, Deng opened up the country, sending students abroad and inviting foreign firms in. Not since the May 4th Movement in the first quarter of the 20th century had China been so receptive to foreign ideas and investment, particularly from America. Even under Mao, the United States had lost its demon status, once the Chairman had realized that he could not defy both superpowers simultaneously. But while the Nixon visit had initiated a new era in Sino-American relations, it required Deng's barnstorming US tour in January 1979 after normalization of diplomatic ties to unleash American enthusiasm and tourism. For many Chinese, America became the model to copy.

Deng was warned by colleagues that he was going too far too fast. Chen Yun, regarded as a rightist under Mao, now found himself a leftist; he had not changed his views since the 1950s, but Deng had outflanked him. Chen feared Deng was in danger of throwing out the socialist baby with the Maoist bath water. The people had no creed to live by. The party was morally bankrupt. Party members, who might earlier have adhered to a strict code of conduct, made up for the beating they had received during the Cultural Revolution by "looking out for number one." Capitalist-style development spawned massive official corruption.

Between them, in their different ways, Mao and Deng undermined the legitimacy and self-confidence of the CCP, and encouraged the people to disrespect its authority, Mao explicitly, Deng implicitly. The denouement came in the Tiananmen democracy movement in the spring of 1989, when the PLA, which Deng following Mao had sent back to the barracks, was once more called out in defense of CCP rule.

China under Jiang Zemin

Deng's policies did not change after Tiananmen; though determined not to concede political power, Deng felt the need to placate the people with economic advancement was now even more urgent. His conviction was strengthened when the Soviet satellite empire in Eastern Europe disappeared in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed two years later. Though formally retired, Deng pressed his cautious successor Jiang Zemin to speed up economic reform.

As a Soviet-trained engineer, Jiang seemed more comfortable with the old Stalinist economic model, but by temperament he seemed readier to enter into personal dialogues with US leaders and visitors, treating them indiscriminately to recitations of the Gettysburg Address or American cafe songs of the pre-World War II era. Uncharismatic, and without compelling personal authority, Jiang had the good fortune to have Deng survive to buttress his authority for eight years after he formally took over in mid-1989.

During the 1990s, there seemed to be a critical shift in attitudes on economic models. Even before the Asian financial crisis tarnished the image of the East Asian tigers, China's leaders seemed increasingly impressed by the stellar performance of the US economy, especially in its ability to create jobs. While Premier Zhu Rongji attempted to recapture tax revenues from the provinces, he showed no signs of reverting to East Asian-style dirigisme. By striking a deal to enter the WTO, Zhu indicated his willingness to expose China's domestic market to unprecedented competition, while simultaneously closing down the rust belt industries of the centrally planned era. If the deal goes through despite the bombing of China's Belgrade embassy, the impact on the Chinese economy will be massive. The political impact will be less immediate but doubtless no less profound.

Conclusions

To answer the question at the outset of this article, China probably did need to endure Mao to reach Deng. Had Mao indeed died in 1956, China might well have persisted with a modified Soviet model under Chen Yun's guidance, and grown up to emulate East Germany, the economically most successful communist state hitherto. Instead, the political and economic disasters imposed by Mao finally woke the Chinese leadership to the ultimate danger to their regime if there were no radical change. The East Asian miracles forced Deng to remember that he joined the revolution to bring about a similar miracle in China. An end to utopianism ­ prosperity would have to do!

Deng's reforms, however, unleashed a new threat from an awakened population. Encouraged by Mao and permitted by Deng, young people have "dared to think, dared to speak, and dared to act." Their demonstrations in April-June 1989 in dozens of cities, cheered on by millions of ordinary citizens, indicated that, like Deng, they knew there were better ways to run a country than Maoist class struggle. What alarmed Deng was that they seemed to have no love for Leninist party dictatorship either. The threat that the Beijing Spring represented to the PRC regime was suppressed but not eliminated, as the extraordinary precautions currently being taken by the regime on the eve of its 10th anniversary demonstrate. Whatever happens in this year of protean anniversaries, one great reform demanded by the May 4th generation which founded the CCP remains to be enacted. "Mr. Science" now bestrides the Chinese landscape. But "Mr. Democracy" still waits to make his entrance.