China marks Mao’s birthday with controlled tribute

Milestones: Helped found the Chinese Communist Party in 1921; became party chairman in 1945; was top leader of the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death.

Legacy: Even in China, Mao is remembered as much for his sins that his achievements. His 1958-1961 Great Leap Forward, which sought to impose rapid industrialization and collectivization of agriculture, resulted in starvation for millions, and his 1966-1969 Cultural Revolution, a massive political purge, was a further, bloody setback. But Mao also challenged Soviet hegemony in the Communist world and permitted the 1972 opening to the United States that, after his death, helped propel it toward market-oriented reforms. Despite its economic transformation, China remains a communist-ruled country almost 40 years after Mao's demise.

China’s leaders bowed three times before a statue of Mao Zedong on the 120th anniversary of his birth Thursday in carefully controlled celebrations that also sought to uphold the market-style reforms he would have opposed.

The approach underscores the delicate balancing act the latest generation of Communist Party leadership — installed last year — has to perform in managing perceptions of Mao’s legacy.

As heirs of the authoritarian one-party political system imposed by Mao and his party comrades, the current leadership has a strong interest in venerating his memory to bolster their own legitimacy. But they have also pledged to expand market reforms needed to rejuvenate a slowing economy, measures that would have been anathema to Mao.

President and Communist Party chief Xi Jinping and other top leaders paid tribute to the founder of the communist state with a visit to his mausoleum on Tiananmen Square in the heart of the capital, Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The leaders “revered” Mao’s embalmed body which lies in state in the mausoleum and “jointly recalled the glorious achievements of comrade Mao Zedong,” Xinhua reported.

In a sign of the relatively understated approach the party is taking with the anniversary, there was no mention of Mao’s birthday on the front page of the party’s flagship People’s Daily. A commentary on page seven hailed Mao as a brilliant “proletarian revolutionary, strategist and theorist,” but it was accompanied by an editorial that said the “best commemoration” of Mao would be to keep advancing economic reforms that were launched by his successor.

In a speech to party leaders Thursday, Xi sought to affirm Mao’s legacy while acknowledging vaguely that the revolutionary leader had made mistakes, though Xi said they should be assessed in the context of his time.

“We should not judge and make demands of our predecessors based on today’s conditions, level of development and level of understanding, nor should we make excessive demands for them to achieve what only the descendants could achieve,” Xi said.

But Xi’s speech neglected to note that Mao’s critics compare China’s situation in his time not with the present day but with other countries which had been going through similar post-war challenges, said Beijing-based Chinese historian Zhang Lifan.

“While China was busy with power struggles and political campaigns, others were wholeheartedly building their countries,” Zhang said. “In Mao’s hands, China’s modernization was delayed by at least 20 years. This problem is one they’re not willing to discuss.”