The outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they are "poor and blank." This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing ... On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written, the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted. — Mao Tse-tung, 1958
No one can seriously argue that the Chinese, with almost three milleniums of history behind them, were ever truly "blank." Yet in the 25 years since Mao and his 2 million-member Communist Party swept to power after a 22-year civil war, he has come a long way toward creating a new China. Despite the convulsions of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China has transformed itself more radically and more quickly than any other country in history. From what many Westerners saw as a devastated, underdeveloped satellite of the Soviet Union, China has remade itself into a largely self-sufficient, growing and fiercely independent world power. As the Chinese were getting ready for National Day (Oct. 1), celebrating the 25th anniversary of Mao's victory, a New China News Agency dispatch summed up the first quarter-century's achievement by reminding Peking's citizens that "this city, where even thumbtacks had to be imported before, is now producing ten times as much steel as the whole country did in 1949."
Signs of the coming celebrations were blossoming around the capital. Old slogans were being repainted; a new 17-story wing of the Peking Hotel was being completed; a spectacular fireworks display was being readied. There were even rumors that Mao himself would make one of his rare public appearances to take his place on the reviewing stand in Peking's immense Tienanmen Square and preside over the festivities.
The 800 million Chinese were justified in taking a day off to celebrate their impressive achievements. Under Mao's direction, China since 1949 has eliminated—often brutally—all traces of the old society, in which there were UPI privileges and wealth for a very few, but dehumanizing poverty, disease and famine for the vast majority of peasants and workers. The China viewed today by foreign visitors appears to be by contrast a land of smiles, health and purpose—if not of freedom. True, life is regimented, spare and hard by any standard, and the country's ancient cultural heritage has been all but obliterated; but no longer do beggars, prostitutes and addicts throng the cities or bandit gangs roam the countryside. Most fundamentally, perhaps, the deeply rooted Confucian attitudes of docility and resignation have virtually disappeared in favor of Mao's Promethean notion that the human will can solve all problems.