(5 of 5)
Compromise Solution. The question—and the answer—are crucial. China can ill afford to have its attention diverted from its unfinished tasks by an exhausting power struggle or even a new period of social experimentation. The country's past experience has shown that too much ideological purity makes the economy and technology suffer, as they did in the frenetically leftist Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution periods. Conversely, a swing toward moderation has encouraged the creation of a privileged technocratic elite. China under Mao has veered from one to the other in an often harmful search for the way best suited to its needs. Now, faced with new circumstances and advancing age, Mao seems to be trying a compromise solution, balancing moderation in economic and foreign policies with a continued hard line in ideology and culture.
The tension between these goals is great. And it remains to be seen whether the next generations of Chinese, who have been brought up and nurtured in Mao's all-embracing philosophy, can live up to his expectations.
*Once considered Mao's heir apparent, Lin Piao died in an airplane crash after allegedly trying to assassinate the Chairman in 1971.