Posted on 12/25/2003 7:54:33 PM PST by the invisib1e hand
SHANGHAI, China - He dismissed capitalists as "running dogs," banned private property and sent millions to prison camps — or worse — for showing an interest in making money. But now an incongruous new identity beckons for Mao Zedong: management guru.
With the 110th anniversary of his birth on Friday, books, articles and seminars are mining Mao's struggles and writings for tips on how to get ahead in business, melding a national interest in his life with China's modern craze for making money.
The Communist Party is pitching in, publishing four volumes on Mao as a guerrilla problem-solver.
"Mao offers you enterprise management tips you can't get from other business studies, especially western ones," media consultant Zhang Changlei wrote in the weekly magazine China Business. "It's something drawn from politics, philosophy and military strategy."
It's the latest proof of the durability of Mao's status as the commanding figure of modern China — an identity that not only survived its embrace of the market, but is helping others to profit from it.
The management guides are part of an avalanche of books marking this year's anniversary.
They range from tomes on Mao's military strategy to a photo-filled book by his 67-year-old daughter, Li Min, entitled "My Childhood and My Father the Leader."
Concerts, postage stamps and the publication of gilt-edged collections of Mao's poetry will also commemorate the event.
Mao died in 1976 at age 82, having led China through war, man-made famines that killed tens of millions and the political violence of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, which scarred a generation.
But time has mellowed Mao's image, and today he is an object of widespread nationalistic admiration as a wily guerrilla commander and the creator of modern China.
His philosophy, a hodgepodge of cryptic aphorisms and can-do exhortations known simply as "Mao Zedong Thought," is inscribed in the constitution and a required course for college students.
The management books and articles, however, are a variation on the usual fulsome official praise for Mao.
They attempt to square his iconoclastic communism with the hardheaded pragmatism of a China that began turning away from his radical communist vision a quarter century ago.
The books issued by the party's Central History Publishing Office focus on managing projects, picking and motivating subordinates, dealing with crises and winning deals.
"Mao Zedong's unique approach to people helps us rethink how we deploy and nurture manpower and helps us perfect our personnel mechanisms," says the introduction to "Mao Zedong Teaches us About Personnel Matters."
Much of the book stresses morality and trust in dealings with others, qualities often cited as sorely lacking in the modern Chinese business world.
Other points are more utilitarian: One chapter points out the advantages of Mao's casual style of holding meetings, saying that invited participants to speak frankly. Another discusses how Mao engineered successes in fighting in 1950 floods by motivating subordinates through praise.
"Acclaim from the leader is a great source of affirmation and identification for the lower levels," the book says.
Much of the recent interest focuses on Mao's years as a guerrilla leader in a deadly struggle against both Chiang Kai-shek's ruling Nationalists and Japanese invaders in World War II.
Then, the goal was to solve the party's problems and win power. Mao formed alliances with Chiang and China's merchant class — later discarding them once the communists could stand on their own.
In "Mao Zedong Teaches us About Association," Mao is praised for taking the bold decision to meet with Chiang in 1945 for talks on a postwar government, despite the Nationalist leaders long campaign to have him killed.
"Mao shows the power of trust and bravery in negotiations. Stick to your principles, don't fear the personal consequences, and you will succeed," the books says.
"Mao remains a very charismatic figure among Chinese," said Chan Kin-man, a professor of sociology at Hong Kong's Chinese University. "The suppressing of emotions to link with competitors and even enemies at times is a highly valued quality now among Chinese in the marketplace."
As China gets more capitalist, self-help books and management guides have become common in bookstores and airport newsstands.
Books by Dale Carnegie, the American pioneer in the field, are ubiquitous. Popular titles around the world also proliferate, such as Spencer Johnson's "Who Moved My Cheese?" — along with Chinese imitators such as "Move Someone Else's Cheese."
The Mao series follows the same formula: simple examples punctuated by easy-to-remember catch phrases.
"The books can help enable someone seeking self-improvement to learn from a person who has already notched up such great success, for example in ways of dealing with people or managing a team," said Li Bo, of the Central Party History Publishing House.
About 10,000 sets of the party's books have been sold in bookstores, railway stations and airport bookshops, Li said. She said buyers are both older Chinese who lived under Mao and younger people looking to get ahead.
"The thinking of any Chinese person born before the 1960s was deeply affected by Mao Zedong," editor Chen Rong wrote in China Business. "And when they think of management strategy, it's natural that they think along the same lines that Mao thought."
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