Maoism summary

In 1936, China was in the midst of a civil war pitting Mao’s Communist Party against the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. At the time, Communist forces were mostly holed up in caves in the northwest of the country, trying to rebuild their army after a series of defeats against their nationalist foes.

During this delicate period, Mao received an American visitor. Edgar Snow was an American copywriter who’d washed up in Shanghai and, by luck and pluck, maneuvered himself into the position of respected English-language journalist.

In 1966, a publishing house in China issued a new map of the world – with China at the center. This reflected a new prong in the Chinese propaganda machine: beginning in the late 1950s, Mao was portrayed as the savior of world revolution, battling imperialism, capitalism, and Soviet revisionism. In creating a global cult for the chairman, the propaganda would underline an increasingly obvious rift between China and the Soviet Union.

This Sino-Soviet split had wide-ranging implications. It pushed the Soviets toward imperial overreach as the two competed for influence in the developing world, and it fueled aggressive nationalism across the Communist bloc, especially in Vietnam and Cambodia. The author even holds that the Sino-Soviet split was the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

The Indonesia that emerged from Dutch colonialism, and then Japanese occupation during World War II, was one scarred by violence. The country’s post-war leader was Sukarno, a statesman who’d previously been a leading figure in the independence movement against the Dutch. According to the author, by the late 1950s, he was holding onto power by playing Indonesia’s Communist Party, or PKI, and its army off each other.

From 1965 to 1966, Communists in Indonesia were subjected to mass violence at the hands of Indonesian Army death squads. At least half a million were killed, many tortured in front of their families first. The UK and US played a shameful role in providing financial support and equipment for the Indonesian Army.

During the Great Leap Forward, the CCP began inviting African leaders to China. In the first half of 1960 alone, Mao met 111 African representatives. These relationships soon translated into foreign aid. In 1965, China offered to back the Tan-Zam Railway, running from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to Zambia’s copper mines. The whole construction project was financed by an interest-free loan of $415 million.

It wasn’t just Tanzania and Zambia either: between 1950 and 1978, China gave out more than $24 billion in international aid to African countries. But the aid didn’t accomplish China’s goals. The outcome of Chinese aid for Tanzania and Zambia, for example, didn’t do anything to help create stable governance structures and reliable allies.

In the 1950s, domino theory was all the rage in American political circles. The idea was that if one country in a region turned Communist, it was only a matter of time before all the rest did too. And the biggest risk for Asia was Vietnam. Blinded by this faulty theory, the US ended up committing hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars to waging war in Vietnam.

But contrary to popular belief, the domino theory wasn’t only espoused by the US. The leaders of China also subscribed to the idea that Vietnam and other countries in Southeast Asia were pawns in the world revolution. And some in Cambodia, just west of Vietnam, feared that their neighbors wanted to dominate the region.

In Western Europe and the US, Mao’s ideas of continuous peasant revolution appealed to left-wing rebels, criminal megalomaniacs, and civil rights campaigners alike. The popularity of Maoism has led to some positive effects, such as concepts like serving the people and consciousness-raising. These have led to the development and strengthening of feminism, gay rights, and radical environmental movements outside China.

The key message here is: In the West, Maoism has influenced a wide range of groups and individuals.

Throughout the Americas, Peru probably suffered the most as a result of the Maoist thought diaspora. The Shining Path insurgency in the 1980s, helmed by the portly professor Abimael Guzmán, was the country’s most destructive conflict. Rural populations were utterly devastated by revolutionary violence, as well as brutal state retaliation. The conflict led to more than 69,000 deaths, and, according to the author, essentially eliminated the possibility for democracy in Peru.

The Shining Path was incepted in 1969 in the poverty-stricken region of Ayacucho. Guzmán saw the concentration of marginalized ethnic groups, as well as newly educated students, as a huge potential base for revolutionary insurgency. As he predicted, his easy, militant solutions appealed to the disenfranchised ethnic minorities of the region, concentrated around the university where he was professor of philosophy.

Sino-Indian relations have been uneasy for decades, ever since the Dalai Lama fled to India from Tibet in 1959. But Maoism is perhaps the most troubling factor in the ongoing relationship between the superpowers. For nearly 20 years, politicians in India have cited Maoist insurgents as the “biggest internal security threat facing our country.”

The Indian Maoist insurgency was made possible by three elements: an impatient, militant wing of the Communist Party of India, a deep socio-economic crisis in the subcontinent, and the eagerness of the Chinese Communist Party to support a Maoist Indian revolution.

After Mao’s death in 1976, China’s politicians focused their efforts on de-Maoification. The economy began to be privatized, first slowly, then quickly; by 1982, the communes had been dissolved. The government also mulched up to 90 percent of the warehoused copies of Mao’s Little Red Book. They were replaced on bookshelves with new editions depicting the horrors of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.

But in recent years, Mao’s legacy has experienced a complex resurgence in China. Under Xi Jinping, China has reasserted its global ambitions, renormalized criticism and self-criticism sessions, as well as the personality cult. Plus, under Xi, the Central Committee has abolished the two-term limit, essentially granting Xi lifetime rule.