Hypocrisy In China's Consolidation of Power

While looking at the various stages of the Chinese Revolution, I noticed multiple instances in which the government contradicted its self in an attempt to either gain or hold on to power. First, I noticed how Mao Tse-tung encouraged revolution and rebellion as a way to gain power, but at the same time poured much of his effort as ruler into suppressing rebellion in order to secure power. A Red Guard manifesto states that, "Revolution is rebellion, and rebellion is the soul of Mao Tse-tung's thought." (McKay, 984) Tse-tung encourages rebellion in a Red Guard manifesto; however, the Red Guard was set up to suppress the very thing that it "supported". Mao Tse-tung encouraged people to speak out and rebell against all who opposed the current regime, yet, during Great Cultural Revolution and the establishment of the Red Guard, put a great amount of effort into restricting all opposition to and rebellion against his absolutist government. Today, China still puts a huge amount of effort into censoring its media and suppressing all attempts of rebellion, examples of which include the Tiananmen Square massacre and the attempts to hide it from the public, and the current-day censorship of the internet.

Another example of hypocrisy within the Chinese government is the self-claimed "Communist" government's transition to an essentially capitalist society. When Deng Xioaping ended collectivization of agriculture and encouraged "dare to be rich", the Chinese government completely contradicted the fundamental communist principles that initially brought it to power, and compromised its core beliefs in not only a realization of how to achieve economic success in the new-age economy, but more importantly an attempt to consolidate power over China via economic success. From these examples of hypocrisy, I can conclude that in order to maintain a strong hold over a country, governments need to constantly change their policies to fit the needs of the current world in which they rule. Although the changes in China can be viewed as simple reform, to me, the fact that they so blatantly contradict previous policies was an unofficial recognition of the failure of communism. By drastically contradicting its earlier standpoints, the Chinese government unofficially admitted the failure of its initial policies, and, in its failure to acknowledge its mistakes, used hypocrisy as a way by which to consolidate power over China.

image- http://theclick.us/2009/06/behind-the-scenes-tank-man-of-tiananmen/