NYT: China's Bitter Youths Embrace Mao.

[DBoon]

They read him in libraries and on subways. They organized online book clubs devoted to his works. They uploaded hours of audio and video, spreading the gospel of his revolutionary thinking.

Chairman Mao is making a comeback among China’s Generation Z. The Communist Party’s supreme leader, whose decades of nonstop political campaigns cost millions of lives, is inspiring and comforting disaffected people born long after his death in 1976. To them, Mao Zedong is a hero who speaks to their despair as struggling nobodies.

In a modern China grappling with widening social inequality, Mao’s words provide justification for the anger many young people feel toward a business class they see as exploitative. They want to follow in his footsteps and change Chinese society — and some have even talked about violence against the capitalist class if necessary.

The Mao fad lays bare the paradoxical reality facing the party, which celebrated the centenary of its founding last week. Under President Xi Jinping, the party has made itself central to nearly every aspect of Chinese life. It claims credit for the economic progress the country has made and tells the Chinese people to be grateful.

At the same time, economic growth is weakening and opportunities for young people are dwindling. The party has nobody else to blame for a growing wealth gap, unaffordable housing and a lack of labor protections. It must find a way to placate or tame this new generation of Maoists that it helped create, or it could face challenges in governing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/business/china-mao.html

[soryang]

1. Yeah, right

China's going to collapse any day now. These few anecdotes prove it.

[DBoon]

2. Where in the post or the article does it say "China's going to collapse any day now"?

[Politicub]

3. I need to read Mao before I start jumping to criticism, which is my first inclination.

Honestly, I know very little about him and his writings, and have only been fed a steady diet of, "ehw... communist icky," for my life.

To me, China's current political system looks like a GOP wet dream with its enforced ideological codes, homophobia and protected capitalist class.