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Viewed against the backdrop of China's past, the Communist regime shows an intricate pattern of change and sameness. Some observers see in Red China merely a more ruthless version of the Celestial Empire. Says Amaury de Riencourt: "Drab caps and standardized tunics have replaced the glittering apparel, peacock feathers, jewels and silk brocades of former times; but the contents are the same."
A new generation of scholar-officials interprets the doctrine, which has been put into little red plastic books and spread across the nation for all to memorize. The loyalty to a dynastic ruler has been replaced by adherence to a political party—and to the father figure of Mao himself. Whipping up the old xenophobia and banking on the old lack of individualism, Mao is trying to establish a central regime more stringent than any China has ever known—and, like all past rulers, facing regional opposition. His party cadres travel across country to spy and supervise, as did the imperial secretaries and "censors"; like the Manchus, Mao discourages the use of government officials in their native areas.
Above all, the notion remains that theory can be imposed on reality. Confucius believed that the power of the mind could "move heaven and earth." Mao seems to have a similar belief in that power: the Great Leap Forward can be accomplished, steel can be made in the backyard, revolution can be rendered permanent, if only the will is there. The old numbers game survives in such slogans as the "Three Antis" (anticorruption, anti-waste, antibureaucratic abuse). The cult of the right term coincides with the endless Communist name calling and with such moves as changing Peking's Legation Street to Anti-Imperialist Struggle Street.
The Communists used the force of face when they paraded opponents through the streets in dunce caps; reportedly, such humiliation has led many to kill themselves. In turn, Mao's critics "have to wait for Mao's fanatical crusade to wear itself out, and then use his ideology to pick up the pieces and get Chinese Communism back on the rails," writes Harvard's Fairbank in The New Republic. "In pre-Communist parlance this means they must save the old man's face."
Yet the breaks with the past are at least as significant as the parallels. Both Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek fought in some measure against the Confucian tradition, passivity and family loyalties. Mao is continuing the fight more ruthlessly. Where the old China put soldiers at the bottom of the social order, Red China glorifies them. A streak of neo-puritanism now replaces the older hedonism. The family is under heavy attack. One effective campaign involved a marriage-reform law, which was aimed at female equality. The People's Communes, with their central mess halls, were intended to subordinate family loyalties to the state. No longer is a son punished for informing against his father; on the contrary, he is ordered to do so. Ancestor worship is also being stamped out; thousands of ancestral cemeteries have been dug up. Children are not taught the five relationships of Confucius, but learn the five loves instead: "love of country, of the people, of work, of science, of the people's property."