Political reform and Mao today

China began its economic reform and opening up three years after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976). China's economic prosperity has indeed brought about a lot of changes: it has increased people's income and improved their living standards, for one. But it has also created social problems of inequality and widening income gap, prompting more and more people to yearn for the "good old days" of Chairman Mao.

Some observers say people's yearning for Mao is a sign of their unhappiness with the current social conditions. But Xiao Yanzhong, a professor in Contemporary China Research Center of Renmin University of China, says the development should not be seen in such extreme, especially because Mao is supposed to have committed some "serious mistakes" in his later years. As one of China's leading scholars on Mao, Xiao says that social scientists and political thinkers are in consensus on Mao's historical importance and status but differ when it comes to his total assessment.

The intensifying social contradictions are unavoidable problems of a developing market economy and thus should not be seen as a factor triggering "Mao fever". Mao, in fact, started re-entering people's thoughts in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the "fever" reaching its peak in 1993, when his birth centenary was observed. The "Mao fever", he says, is actually the result of the slow pace of political reform in China.