Can Xi Jinping succeed where Mao failed?
Kerry Brown says that while Xi Jinping's tough language on tackling corruption has certain parallels to Mao, the party he runs and society today are far more complex, making his task that much harder
Once upon a time there was a leader of a major country who grew so tired with vested interests and self-serving elites who had their hands on the main levers of power that he decided to launch a campaign to bring them down to size.
He talked of their corruption, of their being remote from the people, of their failing in their historic mandate to be the moral, just rulers of a nation being reborn and rejuvenated. He came out with powerful statements at public meetings to mobilise officials to live more simply and return to their core values, as servants of the people, not those being served.
He found, ranged against him, an array of powerful opponents who were ready to aggressively look after their own particular areas of interest. Some years after he had started this attempt, he admitted that, despite his very best efforts, he had failed.
Placing Mao Zedong next to Xi Jinping would no doubt be an unwelcome thing to do publicly in Beijing these days. While Mao's grandson is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, handling the chairman's legacy is a tough task.
Still popular as a nationalist and supporter of Chinese dignity among certain sections of the population, more information is coming out inside and outside China about the less palatable aspects of his period of rule. The most impressive of these to date is Tombstone, the epic, moving account by Yang Jisheng of the famines of the early 1960s.
Placing the good and bad Mao against each other is still a step too far for politicians in Beijing. For them, it is simply best to look back to the 1981 resolution on party history and the assessment of Mao there (majority good, small part bad) and let the issue sleep.