Mao’s Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China ed. by Sebastian Heilmann, Elizabeth J. Perry (review)

After the massacre of protesters in Beijing on June 4, 1989, popular support of the Chinese government fell to a nadir, and China watchers in the West wondered if the regime’s days might be numbered. Now, after what the editors of this important conference volume call a “stunning . . . economic and social transformation,” they, like others, seek to analyze the regime’s resilience. They trace the origins of its adaptability to Mao Tse-tung. Mao’s “guerrilla policy style,” they write (although not every one of their contributors would agree), “is fundamentally dictatorial, opportunistic, and merciless. Unchecked by institutions of accountability, guerrilla leaders pursue their objectives with little concern for those who stand in their way.” In the years since 1989, Mao’s successors have stoked nationalism, have filled textbooks and the media with “political education,” have “guided opinion” on the Internet, and have spent more on “stability maintenance” (meaning police and prisons) than on health, education, and social welfare programs combined. And all of this has worked: those on top have stayed on top.

Heilmann and Perry are persuasive in arguing that Chinese Communist governing techniques are “non-Western.” (Mao was hardly Marxist, intellectually speaking.) To my eye, though, they do not do enough to place Mao himself within Chinese tradition. Popular rebellions in Chinese history—many, over many centuries—observe a pattern in which millenarian and egalitarian ideologies attract followers to regimes that are actually hierarchical, secretive, and brutal. Mao fits this tradition; he was not “unique” in the way that some Western admirers have liked to think of him.