'The Emperor Needs Several Sets of New Clothes'

During the 1940s, a lot of observers were concerned that China's burgeoning population was a big problem. Only Mao Zedong, who took the dialectical materialist view of history, as opposed to the idealist view, said that China's huge population is an excellent thing.

Who had it right, the idealists or the materialists? Mao showed by his actions at the end of his life that the essence of the world is will power. But he did have a point about the population.

There is rarely much common ground between militarists and the average person. Mao made a hobby of warfare, and for that he needed manpower—the more, the merrier.

"The people and the army are united: let's see who can withstand them." The population was the nation: all you had to do was mobilize them, and they'd be invincible!

Of course, unity was a serious problem. Mao seized control of the country through a brutal military struggle, during which a lot of things got smashed.

In his first 28 years, from 1921-1949, he smashed the old army and government, and during the next 28 years (1949-1977), he smashed the old society, including all its markets, schools and colleges, knowledge, traditions and customs.

He even smashed up everyone in his own family who he judged likely to turn into a criminal suspect in future: all the "Chinese Khrushchevs," big or small.

At the very least, we can say that China was pulverized under the Maoist hammer. Forging unity would be easier said than done.

The rope of organization

The unity of Mao Zedong consisted of binding together a few hundred million people with the rope of organization by work unit or people's communes, under the organization of the [ruling Chinese Communist] Party. The meaning of democratic centralism was organization.

It didn't matter whether you were a party member or not; you'd be organized in one fell swoop into village, county, region, province, and nation; each ranking higher than the other, in a centralized bureaucracy that was the legacy of the Qin Emperor [260-210 B.C.].

Everything was subject to this system; even the ration tickets that were the key to life and death were issued by the higher leadership and collected by the lower echelons. Who would be left in need?

Everyone was left in need. The whole thing fell apart and the country lay in ruins. There wouldn't be much opposition from those 100 million, at any rate.

So, when the next generation of leadership under Deng Xiaoping took control of the China dream, there had to be some changes. No smashing stuff to a powder for him; everything was about the hard facts, about the GDP figures.

There were some systemic differences between the GDP-based system and the hammer-and-rope-based one. The hammer-and-rope system needed a lot of effort by Mao's cronies to maintain, whereas the GDP system ran on the voluntary blood, sweat, and tears of ordinary Chinese.

The hammer-and-rope approach was gloomy, and people were afraid of it. The GDP approach was the opposite; it looked good, and tasted good, and people loved it from the start.

A brand-new pose

Let's leave aside for the time being the fact that the soaring of our GDP was the result of ordinary people's hard work, or that it squandered our natural resources, making them inaccessible to future generations who would depend on them for a living.

The GDP system covered a multitude of sins, and meant that the ancient land of China had a brand-new pose to strike on the world stage.

And the wonderful thing about GDP was that no one owned it. The corrupt officials needn't lift a finger to help it rise, and yet, magically, behind closed doors, 30 percent of the nation's wealth became concentrated in one percent of its families.

Meanwhile, the quarter of the families forced into poverty held only a one-percent share of the wealth.

That was the problem. Was GDP really the glue that could bind the highest and lowest levels of society together? Can such a pyramid of wealth withstand trouble? Can such a society live in harmony? Can such a system last?

Oppression, entertainment, costumes

And that is how we came to have this spectacle with Chinese characteristics, in which the people, held together by this middle ground that is GDP, lack three crucial things.

Firstly, they haven't been able to get rid of the hammer-and-rope system at all. It is everywhere, preventing people from speaking freely and debating. It's not enough to have one or two crackdowns a year; there must be total and suffocating oppression.

Meanwhile, there must be a sufficient and ever-increasing stream of piped entertainment, with all the bells and whistles, the spectacle of lights and the rousing music of oblivion, to bewilder the eye and the mind.

Last, but not least, the emperor, according to international accounts, must have several sets of new clothes, including at least one for the myths of yesterday, a black cloak for today, and one for all tomorrow's dreams.

The three costumes must be interchangeable, for a truly flawless performance.

This is the way the stage has looked since Deng: GDP as glue, new plays, new costumes, a hammer and rope for traditional functions as well as for application in cyberspace, and 1.3 billion people molded into a single titanic being, invincible and indestructible.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

Bao Tong, political aide to the late ousted premier Zhao Ziyang, is currently under house arrest at his home in Beijing.