Decision time for China...

Sixty years ago, his army victorious, Mao Zedong stood at the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen Square and announced a new era for China after a terrible civil war and the horrors of Japanese occupation.

The new national anthem urged the Chinese: "Stand up, those who refuse to be slaves!" and the Communists confidently proclaimed the People's Republic of China, "the people's government".

As Mao's doctor, Li Zhisui, later wrote in her memoirs, the leader was "China's saviour, the messiah in the flesh".

But revolutions, like Saturn, devour their own children. By a cruel irony of history, there followed 30 years, when the Chinese people were crushed and repressed, with a debauched and brutal Mao presiding over the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which between them claimed tens of millions of lives.

The whitewashed Mao now being presented to Chinese people is a myth based on lies.

The China of today was made not so much by the advent of Mao in 1949, but by that of Deng Xiaoping 30 years later.

It was Deng who in 1979 had the courage and vision to introduce economic reforms that put China on the road to the free market, giving it wealth at home and influence abroad. It should be a subject of great joy and celebration, not just to the Chinese but to people around the world, that hundreds of millions have been lifted out of misery to new lives of health, wealth and, at least in material terms, choice.

Yet Deng himself, fearful that reform would lead to the collapse of Communism, perpetuated the founding myth of Mao by declaring in 1981 that 70 per cent of what the "Great helmsman" had done was right, even if 30 per cent of it was wrong. This, too, was not just a lie but an absurd oversimplification.

A nation that cannot debate its past and cannot be candid about its present failings and achievements will struggle to make the most of its future and, in the case of China, build a society worthy of a 21st-century superpower.

Many younger Chinese are not taken in by the airbrushed cult of Mao the revolutionary hero. They are more interested in opportunities to get rich offered by the market economy - sometimes to the point of capitalist excess. For them, Mao is simply a face on kitsch mugs and T-shirts.

China's current rulers cling to the belief that they can combine Mao with McDonalds, capitalism with one-party rule, for which the official euphemism is "socialism with Chinese characteristics".

But they do not trust their own people: 60th anniversary regimented parade took place in streets cleared of all but approved spectators, with residents of Beijing told to watch the celebrations on television behind closed doors.

China's leaders were desperate to prevent any repetition of the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests of 20 years ago. They have still not learnt to tolerate dissent or to treat all citizens equally, from Tibet to the ethnic Uighurs of the Xinjiang region. President Hu Jintao's China can take pride in its huge advances. But it is not confident enough to give the Chinese people freedom of choice in a democratic vote. Until the rule of law is introduced, it will lack full legitimacy.

China also has to face up to its world role. Mr Hu made a good start at the UN General Assembly by taking the lead on climate change, and Beijing has another chance to pull its weight by helping the West to confront Iran over its nuclear programme.

Unless Beijing accepts the need for a firm stand on Iran, Zimbabwe or Darfur, it will fail to live up to the world power status it craves.

Too often it sees the world purely in terms of its interests and economic advantage. If this is to be "the Chinese century", it must put aside myth and confront its responsibilities.

The Chinese people have stood up - but for what?

Copyright 2009 Gulf Daily News

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