David Lan Pham
They are alike
Mao Zedong & Xi_Jinping
Mao Zedong died in 1976. From 1976 to 2013 the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had great leading figures such as Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao. Since March 13, 2013 Xi Jinping has been its new leader. He is General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of the People’s Republic of China, who has full power to deal with leaders of the non- Communist nations in the world specially with the President of the United States.
From 1959 to his death Mao Zedong was Chairman of the Communist Party only. He lost the Presidential title of the PRC to Liuu Shaoqi after the bitter failure of the Great Leap Forward. As the leader of the Party, he and his 4th wife, Jiangqing, shook mainland China with the stormy, bloody and tearful Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976.
37 years after Mao’s death, the PRC has a leader, who looks like Mao physically and politically. It is about Xi Jinping, who leads the world most populous country that becomes a rising economic and military power. The economic and military strength should lead the PRC to Yellow Imperialism in the coming days.
Similarities between Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping’s father was Xi Zhong Xun, Minister of Finance in Zhou Enlai’s State Council. He was Mao Zedong’s victim during the Cultural Revolution. What are the similarities between Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping?
1. Physiognomy
Physically speaking, Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping are tall and heavy with big ears, large faces i.e they are qualified to be V.I.P. according to the Vietnamese concept. Tall and heavy men are self confident and have their pride and complex of superiority. Unlike Lenin and Stalin, Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping have neither mustache nor beard. It is the earmark of the leaders of the the PRC. Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping are beardless. In the Soviet Union Lenin had beard; Stalin had mustache. In the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Ho Chi Minh had beard. Ton Duc Thang had mustache. Malenkov, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, Gorbachev were in beardlessness. So were Truong Chinh, Le Duan, Nguyen Van Linh, Do Muoi, Le Kha Phieu, Nong Duc Manh, Nguyen Phu Trong. Beard is the symbol of masculinity, power and age. Beardless men have more femininity. It is difficult to know their characters. The female beauty is visible. The true character of a man with female appearance is deeply hiddden. Its owner becomes unpredictably dangerous when he has power.
2. Birth Year
Mao Zedong was born in 1893 (year of the Snake - Qui Ty). Xi Jinping was born in 1953 (year of the Snake - Qui Ty) i.e he is 60 years younger than Mao. According to the Lunar Calendar, the year of the Snake belongs to Yin (-). The sign of time (Can) Qui (in Qui Ty) belonging to Yin (-) is advantageous to women. Mao Zedong seized power in 1949 after the fall of the Nanjing government headed by Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. There was a flux of Chinese refugees, who refused to live under Communist rule. Some of them fled to Hong Kong; some to South Korea, Northern Burma; some to Taiwan Island to rejoin the Guomintang government. Mao Zedong won the war in the year of the Water Buffalo (Yin -) which was good for his birth year.
When Xi Jinping was born, the PRC implemented its first quinquennial plan (1953- 1957). In 2003, China suffered from SARS when Hu Jintao assumed his presidential responsibility. In 2013 there were 16,000 dead pigs in the Huangpo River which supplies the Shanghai residents with its potable water. The cause of pigs’ death remained unknown while the local government said the water met the national standard. Some 20 Chinese were killed by avian flu.
3. Beautiful Wives
Mao Zedong had 04 wives. The first wife, Luo Yixiu (1889 - 1910), was arranged by his parents when he was 13 years old. Luo Yixiu was 04 years older than Mao, who neither loved her nor had sexual relations with her. Luo died in 1910.
Mao’s second wife was his teacher’s daughter. It was this teacher, who helped him get a job at the Library of the University of Beijing where he was assistant to Professor Li Dazhao. Mao’s second wife was executed by the Guomintang troops in the presence of her sons for not denouncing her husband, Mao Zedong.
He Zizhen (1910- 1984) was Mao’s third wife while his second wife Yang Kaihui (1901- 1930) was alive and had three sons with Mao. She was a member of the Communist Party and a markswoman. She became Mao’s wife in 1928 when she was 18 years old. Mao was in his mid- thirties! He Zizhen and Mao had 06 children. Some died young. Some were missing or killed by the Guomintang troops when the Soviet Republic of Jiangxi was violently attacked by Chang Kaishek’s army. The Guomintang troops forced Mao to leave Jiangxi for Shaanxi in the famous Long March (1934 - 1935). Their only daughter, Li Min, born in 1936 was alive. She bore Li as her family name because at that time Mao Zedong changed his name to Li Desheng to avoid the persecution of the Guomintang. In 1937 He Zizhen was sent to Moscow so that Mao could marry Jiangqing.
Mao Zedong’ s fourth wife was a Chinese movie star: Jiangqing. They celebrated their wedding ceremony in Yenam in 1938. Why were Mao’s comrades hostile to Jiangqing while Mao decided to marry her at any cost? She was attractive, beautiful, intelligent. She was more urban and bourgeois than Mao, a native of rural Hunan. Maybe Mao’s comrades disliked her urban and bourgeois way of life. Bourgeois life was tied to bourgeois thoughts and words hated by the working and farming classes. Needless to say, they did not care about polygamy, adultery, fatherly responsibility or lack of faithfulness to the spouse in Communist and Confucian society. Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin committed adultery or loved polygamy although they were Westerners influenced by Christianity when they were young.
Xi Jinping had two wives. He married Ke Lingling, daughter of Ke Hua, Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom, in early 1980. He divorced Ke Lingling because the latter wanted to continue her studies in England. In 1987 Xi Jinping married Pen Liyuan, an army singer. She is a two- star General having Master degree in Chinese Traditional Music.
The surprising similarities between Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping are that:
In 1985 Peng Liyuan spent 20 days at the Sino- Viet border to sing military songs to enhance the morale of the Chinese troops trading fire with the Vietnamese bo doi. In 1989 she sang at Tian Anmen Square after the Communist tanks plunged the students into blood and fire. In 2007 she sang military songs praising the 1959’s invasion of Tibet. In reality, she was more famous than her husband, Xi Jinping. Peng was from a humble family. Due to the background of her parents she was not allowed to afford higher education. Her mother was accused of espionage for having relatives in Taiwan. Her father was branded ‘feudal teacher’. Xi Jinping’s family was powerful in Communist society while Peng Liyuan’s family was poor due to their petit bourgeois intellectuel. What a surprise! Both families suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Peng’s beauty and talent helped her rise from a young singer to a two- star General without any military knowledge. In virtue of the First Lady of the the People’s Republic of China she is famous for her beauty and fashionable clothes.
4. Disrespect Toward Predecessors & Elimination of Competitors
Mao Zedong was not the founder of the Chinese Communist Party. He knew Marxism through Li Da Zhao, Librarian and Professor of History at the University of Beijing. In 1927 the Guomintang troops repressed the Chinese Communist in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Mao showed his disrespect toward the founders of the Chinese Communist Party such as Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, and toward the Chinese Communists trained by the Soviet Union like Zhang Guotao, Wang Ming etc. In the 1960s he eliminated many of his comrades in the time of the Soviet Republic of Jiangxi , the Long March (1934-1935), the second Sino- Japanese war, the Civil War after World War II.
Before Xi Jinping led the Chinese Communist Party, Bo Xilai, a Party Chief of Chongqing, was removed from his post. Bo Xilai’s father, Bo Yibo (1908- 2007) was former Minister of Finance. He was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution on account of his ‘rightist tendency’. In 1979 he was rehabilitated and reinstated to his former position as Vice Premier. He supported Jiang Zemin to replace Deng Xiaoping. So Bo Xilai was believed to sympathize with the Shanghai Group headed by Jiang Zemin. Bo Xilai’s second wife, Gu Kailai, is a young and beautiful lawyer and businesswoman. She was compared to Jacqueline Kennedy, the beautiful and charming First Lady of the US in the 1960s. Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao disliked Bo Xilai for the latter was hostile to them. Bo Xilai was portrayed as an anti- crime and anti- corruption ‘hero’. Patriotic songs sung by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution resounded in Chongqing. Bo’s Politburo dream became smoky in 2012. Charged with murdering a British businessman Gu Kailai was sentenced to death in suspension. Xi Jinping’s seized power smoothly thanks to Bo Xilai’s disappearance from the political stage. Gu Kailai lost her nickname ‘Jacqueline’ to rising Peng Liyuan.
Former President Jiang Zemin still keeps his title in the Central Military Commission. He stayed influential in the Party and State affairs. Jiang Zemin supported Liu Yun Shan by eliminating Li Yuan Chao from the Politburo (2012). When Xi Jinping became President he chose Li Yuan Chao as Vice President. The Vice President is required to be Commissioner of the Politburo.
5. Relations with Russia, An Unloved Allied Country
In 1949 Mao Zedong paid visit to Moscow in virtue of the President of the world most populous country adhering to the Communist block after the defeat of Chiang Kaishek. Mao did know that Stalin did not like him. As for him, he did not like Russia, a neighboring country getting immense by annexing more than 1,000,000 km2 of land in Northern Manchuria to Siberia. A fresh leader of a large and populous country ravaged by the anti- Japanese War and the Civil War, Mao Zedong must show his submission to Stalin to get Soviet aid. Mao stayed in Moscow more than a month without meeting the Soviet dictator, who received him only when Mao got angry and threatened to return to Beijing. Zhou Enlai was a diplomat. He was patient. A Sino- Soviet treaty of Friendship and Mutual Assistance was signed in 1950.
Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow this time was slightly different. The PRC is the second world economic power and the 1st military power in Far East Asia. Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow with his beautiful wife wearing fashionable and expensive clothes proving that the PRC is a prosperous Communist- Capitalist country and its leader is ennobled. China today does not need any aid from Russia. Putin is far from playing Stalin’s role in 1949 although he admires the dictator. His grand father served the Soviet dictator as a cook. Putin does not have enough prestige and capability Stalin had after World War II. At present the PRC needs Sino- Russian alliance or at least Russian neutralization in its dispute of sovereignty over Senkaku Islands with Japan, and possibly its confrontation with the US and Southeast Asian countries on its claimed sovereignty over 3/4 of the East Sea! This immense maritime area is called the ‘Ox Tongue’. The PRC wishes Russia to be its Allied for Russia had a dispute of sovereignty over the Kurils Islands with Japan. The Soviet troops occupied this chain of islands between Kamchatka and Hokkaido after the Japanese defeat in World War II. Russia felt uncomfortable to see NATO expand its influence on the former Soviet Republics surrounding the Black Sea such as Ukraine and Georgia. Putin is a cautious and suspicious man. He sold war planes and weapons to the PRC with caution for fear that Russian high technology would be stolen by China as it was. Russia and the PRC have the same political common denominator on Syrian and Iranian problems.
6. Belligerent Attitude Exposed
Mao Zedong hatched the dream of Great Han Expansion after the birth of the People’s Republic of China. The purpose of Chinese aid to Ho Chi Minh leading the anti- French resistance and the intervention of Chinese troops in the Korea War was to re-establish Chinese influence on its two former submissive and tributary countries. The first Vietnam War and the Korea War gave China an important role in the international affairs. The PRC had its representatives in the Panmunjom Conference (1953) and Geneva Conference (1954). Premier Zhou Enlai became an active diplomat at the Geneva Conference and Bandung Conference (1955). Under Mao Zedong’s leadership some 75 million Chinese died because of the land reform, gulags, Great Leap Forward, Korea war, Sino- Hindu war, war of invasion in Tibet, Cultural Revolution... in exchange for the national honor: nuclear bombs, artificial satellites, territorial expansion etc.
Xi Jinping enjoys the fruit of Deng Xiaoping’s Four Modernizations. The PRC is the world second economic power. The US loses its eminent position it held after World War II. As soon as Xi Jinping became President of the PRC, he showed the restoration of Great China by letting the Chinese first aircraft carrier and war ships appear in the East Sea (South China Sea) and in the waters surrounding Senkaku Islands. Chinese war ships determine Chinese sovereignty over 3 million km2 of the ‘Ox Tongue’ in the East Sea. They threaten many countries in the region such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei. Chinese soldiers fired real bullets in their military drills in the East Sea. They are ordered to search all the foreign boats or fishing boats violating the waters of the ‘Ox Tongue’ they drew. Using the strength of iron and steel Bijing asked the Philippine government to call the Philippinos to leave the islands inside the ‘Ox Tongue’. Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi, visited Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei to struggle their support to isolate the Philippines, Viet Nam and Malaysia that worry a lot about Chinese maritime and insular expansion in the East Sea. Chinese travelers began to visit Nansha, a newly administrative unit composed of the Xisha (Tay Sa- Hoang Sa) the Chinese troops took by force from the Republic of Vietnam in 1974, and some small islands of the Spratly Islands China occupied in 1988 after defeating the Vietnamese Communist seamen. India accused the Chinese troops of crossing the Sino- Hindu border and entering 19 km inside Hindu territory. Doing so, the PRC showed its provocative acts toward Japan in Northeast Asia, Vietnam and the Philippines , Malaysia, Brunei in South East Asia, and India in South Asia. Provocation? Sounding out reactions and military strength of the concerned countries? and of the US? In spite of any purposes, the deployment of troops and war ships is a provocative act from a new leader nurturing feudal classical imperialistic thoughts.
Small divergence against state traditions
The Communist used to attack or to criticize their rivals or enemies with the rudest and the most grotesque words. In the XVIII century the French sans- culotte (Tiers Etats) cursed Queen Marie Antoinette. Daughter of Austrian Emperor Francis, Marie Antoinette was a beautiful, charming, fashionable and luxurious Queen. People attributed all the financial crisis and crimes to King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. They were guillotined a few years after the Revolution.
In Russia Lenin and his Bolsheviks massacred Tsar Nicholas II, Queen Alexandra Feodorovna and their children although the Tsar abdicated 09 months before the eruption of the October Revolution led by Lenin! The royal family was massacred because of the Queen’s arrogant beauty, her luxury, her German blood, and finally of the royal way of life. Lenin hated tsarism . His brother was executed under the reign of Alexander III. On the other hand, worried about the return of the tsarist regime, Lenin did not hesitate to order the massacre of the royal family. Therefore, unlike the democratic countries’ leaders, no Soviet leader visited the foreign country with his wife. The Communist vocabulary, clothing, political institutions, diplomatic protocol...are quite different from those of the Western countries. On the way of building socialism a la Sovietique or Maoiste, the Communists struggled to kill the urban bourgeois, intellectuals, rural landlords before burying Capitalism. In 1990 Gorbachev was the first Soviet leader visiting the US with his wife Raisa (1932-1999). He broke the proletarian diplomatic tradition rigidly observed by his predecessors although his wife was a prestigious Professor and a very simple First Lady. He became the last leader of the Soviet Union (1991).
Xi Jinping was accompanied by his wife, Peng Liyuan, during his visit to Russia. Chinese media praised Peng’s beauty and her expensive dress, which is more expensive and fashionable than that of the US First Lady, Michele Obama. It was Chinese national pride.
Mao Zedong was a very powerful dictator. Marrying Jiangqing he had to promise not to allow Jiangqing to appear on the political stage in 30 years. He could not keep his words when the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966. Jiangqing played an important and decisive role in that bloody, tearful and horrible revolution. In society influenced by Confucian traditions the Kings were not encouraged to let their wives interfere in the national affairs. The Communist precursors had their own reasons to hide their wives’ beauty, luxury and squandermania. They did not want to contradict themselves: struggling against Capitalism to establish another Capitalist society.
Bao Dai was the first King of the Nguyen, who was influenced by Western culture. Coming to the throne he broke the Three Non- Creation Principle (1) given birth by King Gia Long (1802-1820), the founder of the Nguyen, by conferring the title Hoang Hau (Queen) on his wife, Marie Therese Nguyen Huu Thi Lan (Nam Phuong Hoang Hau - Queen Nam Phuong) in 1934, and by appointing Tran Trong Kim Prime Minister in 1945. Four months after the appointment of Te Tuong (Prime Minister) he abdicated and became the last King of the Nguyen (August 1945). In 1949 Bao Dai returned to power as Chief of State. He appointed Prime Ministers Nguyen Phan Long (1950), Tran Van Huu (1951), Nguyen Van Tam (1952), Buu Loc (1953), Ngo Dinh Diem (1954). The latter overthrew him in a referendum when he was in France (1955).
David Lan Pham, F.A.B.I.
___________
(1) No Te Tuong (Chancellor), No Trang Nguyen (1st- ranked laureate in the doctoral contest), No title Hoang Hau (Queen).