Who Will Mourn Chairman Mao?

Current reports that Chairman Mao is suffering from throat cancer, plus the fact that he is seventy-seven, make it seem likely that he will not live many more years.

Mao is certainly one of the most charismatic political leaders of this century. This charisma, added to his unwavering dedication to the goal of communizing and strengthening his nation, gives him greater stature than any other national leader today has in his own country.

The young Communist lieutenant who captured us and then lived in our home between battles during the Chinese civil war mirrored his chairman’s dedication. Just before he left us to join a battle in which he knew the odds against survival were twenty to one, I had a short conversation with this nineteen-year-old farm boy turned Communist.

“Sir, the defending army is better equipped than your army. It is protected by a moat, high walls, and iron gates that are heavily sandbagged.”

“I know that,” he replied, “but our enemy has no great cause to fight for and they will turn and run when the battle warms up.”

“What, really, do you have to fight for?” I asked.

“We are going to change the world in my generation.”

“But, sir, it won’t do you any good if you get killed during your attack on the city tonight.”

“Chairman Mao has told us we should be willing to die to change the world, and I am quite prepared to die to carry Communism a mile further.”

Today this young zealot lies beneath the soft dirt of the plains of central Honan Province. His dedication to his leader was typical of that shown by hundreds of thousands of other idealistic, and often deceived, youth.

Chairman Mao’s magnetism goes much deeper than simply passing his dedication on to his followers. The largest political party in the world has set out to deify him. He is the only god that millions of people have ever known. The old gods, the ancestral tablets, the temples and household shrines are all replaced by the all-seeing eye of Chairman Mao. Today it is the chairman and not the old gods whom the people thank for food, clothing, work, the birth of a child, a roof over their heads.

Does all this mean that Mao’s dynasty will last a thousand years? Are all the people of China really persuaded that Mao’s Communism is right for them and for their country? Will his passing be marked by an enormous display of grief among all the mainland Chinese?

The answer is a resounding No. Mao has many enemies. More than twenty years ago Chairman Mao promised his newly formed youth party that if they would follow him they would soon be in the saddle, helping him build and rule “the strongest nation in the world.” Millions of Chinese youth believed him. They sacrificed personal ambitions, education, and family to help him gain dictatorial power. They gave the best twenty years of their lives to their chairman, only to find he had deceived them. What did they receive from their sacrifice and struggles? Only disappointment. In their frustration and disillusionment they switched their allegiance to other national leaders.

The chairman sensed this threat to his own security and organized the new youth party in 1966. He named them “Red Guards” or “Little Generals.” He then ordered his youthful army of high school and college kids to sweep across their homeland, seeking out and destroying the “four olds”: old ideas, old customs, old habits, and old practices. The young zealots were also to wipe out anyone suspected of being anti-Mao. As an incentive they were promised promotions and positions in Mao’s paradise.

The Red Guards moved across China like a plague of locusts, destroying anything and anybody they didn’t like. For better than two years the devastation was terrible. Neither life nor property was safe from their wanton destruction.

And what was the reward for their work? Mao ordered the Red Army to transport the “Little Generals” to faraway farming communes, in effect putting them under detention. Out of the Cultural Revolution was born a quiet but deep hate for the “old pig” (a word only courageous youth would dare use against their former idol). The venom of hate flows through the bloodstream of the former “Little Generals” and their relatives, and also through the families of the so-called revisionists that the Red Guards had “struggled” to death. (“Struggled” is the Chinese Communist expression for accusation, persecution, trial, and often execution of any imagined enemy of the state.)

Mao has other enemies, including some who were among his earliest and most trusted comrades. He became obsessed with the notion that his close friend Liu Shao-chi, the president of Red China, was out to double-cross him and take over leadership of the country. To destroy Liu Shao-chi, Mao organized a massive propaganda campaign against the “Chinese Khrushchev” in his camp. He even allowed the Little Generals to “struggle” Liu’s wife. Later he was able to strip Liu Shao-chi of all authority and place him under house arrest. Does that look like a victory? Perhaps! But though Mao won a skirmish, he may have lost the battle. By mistreating Liu Shao-chi, the “fat god” (another Red Guard name for Mao) on his Peking throne made enemies of most of the Chinese with the surname Liu. The Liu clan number in the millions, and they share a hate for the man who toppled the most prominent member of their family.

The tightrope on which Mao was balanced was fraying in the middle. The party was no longer united solidly behind him. Its strands were unraveling before his dimming eyes.

Needing an heir, Chairman Mao turned to Marshal Lin Piao. This decision angered other military men who regarded Lin Piao as a “yes” man given his position because of his part in deifying Mao. More strands in the political tightrope snapped, and the list of highly placed malcontents increased.

To pile insult upon injury, Mao’s hand-picked heir apparently conspired with other military leaders and party members in an abortive attempt to assassinate Mao and seize power. Lin Piao’s intrigues backfired when a friend (possibly his daughter) betrayed him. It is believed that Lin Piao was killed as he fled to Russia in a jet plane. In any case, the Communist news media announced he was dead.

With the doing away of Lin Piao, the inevitable happened. Mao added a whole new clan of enemies, further weakening his personal security and the unity of his already splintered party.

Today Premier Chou En-lai is Chairman Mao’s most trusted lieutenant. He is a shrewd Communist politician and carries on most of the state business for the ailing chairman. Is he strong enough to hold China together when Mao dies? Is he enough of a diplomat to make friends of Mao’s many enemies? The answer to these questions is anybody’s guess. One thing is certain: No one man is strong enough to control China on his own. Only with the solid backing of the Communist party and the unwavering cooperation of the Red Army can Chou keep the country strong and united. Furthermore, to exist economically, Chou must tear down the bamboo curtain Chairman Mao so carefully constructed.

What does all this have to do with us as Christians? We remind ourselves that even during the tyrannical reign of Mao our God in no way relinquished his sovereignty. Scripture asserts, “For not from the east, nor from the west, nor from the desert comes exaltation; but God is the Judge; he puts down one, and exalts another” (Ps. 75:6, 7, New American Standard Version); “he it is who reduces rulers to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. Scarcely have they been planted, scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, but he merely blows on them, and they wither, and the storm carries them away like stubble” (Isa. 40:23, 24, NASV).

As Chairman Mao slammed shut the front gate of China to the promulgation of the Gospel, so the man who succeeds him might in God’s sovereign plan kick the gate open.

Remember Indonesia! President Sukarno was busy turning his densely populated country over to the Communists when God blew on him and he withered away. President Suharto replaced him, and that land, once on the verge of closing to the Gospel, is now wide open. The God who did it in Indonesia could repeat the event in China.

In any case, we are given a prayer priority to pray “for kings, and for all that are in authority” (1 Tim. 2:2). The purpose of this prayer is twofold: “that we might lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty,” and that men might “be saved, and … come unto the knowledge of the truth.”

As God used nothing but a “noise” to cause the mighty army of Syria to flee and to bring deliverance to the starving people of Samaria (2 Kings 7:6), so God can use ping pong balls or economic pressures to bend and even flatten China’s bamboo fence. We must pray that the Lord will call out many of his Oriental servants to cross the downed fence and feed a starving nation with the Bread of Life.

As Christians we must view China from God’s point of view, not man’s. Our faith should be motivated by the spiritual, not smothered by the political. Righteous indignation against Chairman Mao’s God-hating ideology is right, but hatred or even indifference for the people who have been enslaved by this ideology is sinful and inexcusable.

At present, “the least” you can do is pray for China. It may be “the most” you can do, for prayer is the greatest weapon God has entrusted to man. I believe that if the persecuted Christian of China were asked, “What is your greatest need?,” without a moment’s hesitation he would reply, “Brethren, pray for us.”

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

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