The underrated influence of modern neo-Maoists on China’s Communist Party
- In ‘The New Red Guards’, Jude Blanchette argues that in market-focused China, the party sees neo-Maoists as both a headache and a help
- While they challenge the party on occasion, their extreme ideological positions can also make it appear more reasonable
On the heels of a relentless anti-corruption campaign, a growing number of job titles and an end of term limits that allows him to be leader for life, President Xi Jinping is increasingly seen inside and outside China as its most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.
Harsh crackdowns, stepped-up study sessions of “Xi Jinping Thought” and a growing tilt toward one-man rule have further strengthened Xi’s association with modern China’s founding father.
For many people, the scope of Xi’s ambition only became apparent with time. But one group, the neo-Maoists, recognised and embraced Xi early, drawn to his belief in a strong, centralised Communist Party, tighter state control over the economy and unabashed nationalism.
C hina’s New Red Guards: The Return of Radicalism and the Rebirth of Mao Zedong by Jude Blanchette, a 200-page book published this month by Oxford University Press, is an absorbing look at an underappreciated political force and its role in the one-party state.
“Neo-Maoism is essentially a later incarnation of that very old debate that’s been happening, of those who feel like China’s reform trajectory is creating too many losers,” Blanchette said at the Wilson Centre's Kissinger Institute on China and the United States earlier this month.
“They also understood that Mao Zedong, the imagery, the person, the symbolism, was a powerful tactical tool in pushing back against the Communist Party.”
Watch: Xi Jinping talks “socialism with Chinese characteristics” in 2017