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Even the characters in these recurrent historical dramas seem to bear an uncanny resemblance to one another. There are strong parallels between Mao and China's first emperor, Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, who took power in the 3rd century B.C. Contemptuous of the scholarly bureaucrats who were trying to persuade China's feudal despots to rule according to Confucius' ethical principles, the first emperor ordered 460 scholars buried alive, and burned all books that did not deal with practical subjects like agriculture and divination. Some 2,200 years later, Mao placed a ban on Confucius and subjected the entire Chinese intelligentsia to his own strict controls and often fearful punishments while condemning many of their books to the incinerator.
Other analogies abound. Ch'in Shih Huang Ti was the first leader to unify all China. As a barrier to invasion from the north, the Emperor built the 2,400-mile-long Great Wall of China—a project that cost the lives of up to 1 million slave laborers. Mao's own efforts to forcibly mobilize China's masses to "move mountains" are comparable. The Chairman's rampaging Red Guards resembled nothing so much as the rabid young "Boxers" of 1900, unleashed by the Empress Dowager, Tz'u-hsi, in order to rid China of evil foreign influences.
There are also striking similarities between Teng's Four Modernizations program and the aspirations of a group of officials who pioneered the so-called self-strengthening movement 100 years ago. Seeking to remedy China's backwardness, the self-strengtheners sent students abroad, absorbed Western technical literature, built modern arsenals and railroads. One celebrated self-strengthener, Feng Kuei-fen, asked the rhetorical question: "Why are the Western powers small yet strong, while China is large yet weak?" His answer: "China had spiritual greatness but the foreigners had the practical know-how." "Use the instruments of the foreign barbarians without adopting their ways," he exhorted. In the past few months China has revived a similar slogan: MAKE FOREIGN THINGS SERVE CHINA. -