It’s an impressive overview that emphasizes the continuities in the history of China over the last century that persist despite the various ideological and political convulsions China has experienced.
China raised some official eyebrows on February 22 at the International Court of Justice (2):
That may sound like some kind of nostalgic throwback to the 1960s at first glance. But it is actually the latest step in a long history of China positioning itself as the leader of what has variously been called the Third World, the developing world, the Global South, and (lately) the Global Majority.
As Richard Wright wrote about the Bandung Conference of 1955 in Indonesia, a meeting of developing countries which was also attended by Chinese Premier and Foreign Minister Chou En-Lai:
Could these new statesmen look toward the West for the kind of help they wanted, help that would pull their debased populations quickly out of the mire of ignorance and poverty? A strange and new religion is in the hearts of these new Asian and African nationals. They feel that if they do not become quickly modern, if they do not measure up to the West almost overnight, they will be swallowed up again in what they feel to be slavery. And Chou En-lai stood there, bland, smiling, more liberal than any liberal ever seen on land or sea, preaching tolerance, assuring one and all that they need feel no shame, no sense of anxiety in the presence of his Communist-led six hundred million poor and backward [sic] Chinese. ... (3)
Maoism as history and ideology
Maoism, or Mao Zedong Thought, is one in a kaleidoscope of variations in the theory of Marxism (Marxism-Leninism in Mao’s case).
Lovell does not focus much on the theoretical aspects of Maoism but rather on its historical manifestations. And those practical aspects tended to be part of what was known as the Maoist concept of “the countryside surrounding the city.” This was the Maoist metaphor for the strategy the Chinese Communists pursued in the Chinese civil war of establishing political and military bases in rural areas and focusing on cities as the final phase of the revolutionary struggle.
“Classical” Marxist theory - if we can say there is such a thing - originally emerged in Europe and focused on the politics, economics, and sociology of developed industrial countries, in which the working class was or was becoming a majority of the population. But as events developed, the first successful revolution led by a Marxist party was the Russian Revolution of 1917 in a country in which the rural and largely peasant population was the majority, though Lenin’s Bolshevik party was based in the urban working class.
What the Chinese Communists achieved was a revolution based on a Marxist-Leninist outlook whose popular political base was the rural population. And that model resonated in many countries in the developing world, especially among countries emerging (or fighting to emerge) from colonialism.
As two scholars in 1965 put it in academic language:
[T]he success of Peking's [Beijing's] foreign policy in the struggle with both superpowers, though limited and perhaps only temporary, has considerably exceeded anticipations based on her military and economic strengths. lt is [our] contention … that an explanation of these two striking facts must be sought in the nature of Mao's revolutionary strategy in the Chinese internal political-military struggle and his belief in the applicability of this strategy to the international arena and to other countries, particularly those in the underdeveloped areas. ...
All violent political revolutions start with a group of men who are initially weak in numbers and strength. But in the modern world, no other group of successful revolutionaries was confronted with greater odds, waged a more protracted armed struggle, and survived greater defeats than Mao Tsetung and his comrades. In his tortuous road to ultimate victory, Mao followed a pattern of action and adopted a set of principles which, on many occasions, helped him to achieve political gain from a position of military weakness and which, over a period of time, enabled him to bridge the enormous gap between his highly ambitious goal and his early military political impotence. (4)
In Lovell’s conclusion, she stresses that China's economic and military power have far more effective in spreading its influence than its "soft power" of ideas and cultural productions.
But that's also a kind of truism that could be applied to any country. One of Mao's most famous sayings, dating back to 1927 was, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." But ideas, institutions, and subjective values also matter enormously. And Mao himself was remarkably successful in using political organization and communication in China to his armies into motion. Including against forces that had more wealth and guns.
Notes:
(1) The German edition was published in 2023 but includes
at least one reference to early 2020 but is not described as a revised edition.
Lovell, Julia (2023): Maoismus.
Eine Weltgeschichte, 565. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
(2) Bertrand, Arnaud (2024): X [Twitter] 02/22/2024. <https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1760677521815961747?s=20>
(Accessed: 2024-23-02)
(3) Wright, Richard (1956/1994): The Color Curtain:
A Report on the Bandung Conference, 173. Jackson Miss.: Banner Books,
University Press of Mississippi.
(4) Tsou, Tang & Halperin, Morton (1965): Mao
Tse-Tung's Revolutionary Strategy and Peking's International Behavior.
American Political Science Review 59:1, 80-99.
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/1976122> (Accessed: 2024-23-02).
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