Chinese whittle more off Mao’s reputation

Press, 27 December 1979, Page 6

Chinese whittle more off Mao’s reputation

NZPA Peking The Chinese Communist Party paper, the “People’s Daily,” has said that the late Chairman Mao Tse Tung objected to the idea of “Maoism” and insisted that his thought was the product of collective effort. Marking the eigthty-sixth anniversary of his birth, the article represented yet another move to whittle the “Great Helmsman" down to human, size. Bom on December 26, 1893, Mao died September 9, 1976, and was dne of the most extraordinary and controversial men of his time. One of the founders of the Communist Party in 1921, he led peasant armies to victory in 1949, launched grandiose schemes of quick industrialisation in the ' 1950 s which failed, lost much of his power as a consequence and in the last years of his life unleashed a struggle to reassert himself and his values which’ brought China to chaos.

The article carefully avoided this dark phase of his career, but it obviously aimed at destroying the myth of infallibility built up by his followers.

Since the present moderate regime which succeeded him has undertaken an industrial great leap of its own and applied methods contrary to Mao’s thought, it has carefully sought to dispel the idea that everything he said was gospel. Written by the Data Research Office on party history

of the party’s central archives, the article appeared on page two of the paper. In 1943, they said, it had been proposed that Mao’s birthday be celebrated on a national scale annually and that his thought be published as the guiding principle Of the Chinese Communist Revolution. Mao had resisted both proposals — he never permitted a public celebration of his birthday — and said his thought was not then mature and should not be advocated as a system. He was then 50. In August. 1958, one of the Communist leaders wished to refer to Maoism but had got a message from the chairman that this would be inappropriate: “There is no such thing as Maoism nor should we study Mao Tse-Tung thought daily’.” Mao listed a series of pamphlets by party members, including his own, which could be the basis for study along with Marxism Leninism and Stalinism.

Though he had done nothing publicly to prevent, it, the researchers insisted that Mao abhorred the cult of the individual launched by Lin Piao in his last years. He had been disgusted with it, it said, and opposed using such titles as the “Highest,” the “Most Living,” and the “Peak,” and supreme instructions.

Checking a news release, he had struck out the phrase, “Chairman Mao’s instructions are most powerful and every sentence is truth.” the article said.