The Communist Party, since 1949, has masterminded a variety of movements to build support within society and to eliminate opposition. Mao shrewdly manipulated the masses to consolidate his own power and was effective at uniting China under an facade of consensus for his defined Communist ideology. Since his death, the Communist Party has not gone through such lengths to insist on absolute consensus within the Party, and it has become more tolerant of internal and external criticism. When we look at the campaigns that were launched as power-building crusades, it is important to reflect on whether those strategies could still work today.

Mao, as the charismatic leader of the Communist Party until his death in 1976, was for the most part the force behind many party policies. One of MaoÍs driving incentives in creating party policies was to stay in power; he also strove to consolidate as much power as he could, especially in his later years. His personal physician, Dr. Lee, maintained that Mao had a suspicious (and somewhat paranoid) personality, and that he was always afraid that he would lose power. This explains why over time, his policies were less and less in-line with the good of the nation, and more and more self-serving and overall unreasonable.

His policies were designed for a variety of ideological reasons, but not least to build support for the Communist Party (i.e. himself) and to eliminate opposition. When the Communists first came to power, they assigned class labels to everyone. This united the country under a common allegiance to the party, rewarded those who had supported the party, and punished those who had not previously supported the party. In 1950, Mao launched another mass campaign to try and eliminate all the counter-revolutionaries. Anticommunist groups and secret societies were hunted out and destroyed. Mao was confident that the workers and peasants were grateful to the Communists for bringing them full stomachs and stable lives. Throughout his leadership, he would call to the masses to support him. But he distrusted intellectuals because they could intelligently challenge his rule.

Thus, in the Hundred Flowers campaign, Mao is said to have designed the policy in order to ñentice the snakes out of their lairs.î He encouraged people to criticize the government, although some speculate that he wanted to separate those who blindly followed him from those who questioned and criticized him ¿ and he could not tolerate the latter. During the same time, a Hungarian uprising had attempted to overthrow an established Communist government, and possibly Mao was afraid that the same would happen in China. In Hungary, intellectuals had played a significant role, and this might have made Mao even more aware that intellectuals were more likely than others to think for themselves. Subsequently, Mao launched the Anti-Rightist Campaign to weed out those who had spoken against the party during the Hundred Flowers policy. Three-hundred thousand people were labeled anti-rightists, sent to jail, reform through labor, and banishment. This campaign effectively silenced China.

It started to become clear to the Chinese people that Mao was a cult-personality of unrivaled power. In the mid-1960s, when Mao called for the Red Guards to denounce the four olds and launch the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, nobody in China had the power to stop him or to speak against him. He mobilized the Red Guards with his charisma and the people were silenced with fear. Even though many people were persecuted and purged, no one dared to speak out. He or she who spoke out would be banished or possibly beaten to death. In Wild Swans Jung Chang writes of the time, ñThe whole nation slid into doublespeak. Words became divorced from reality, responsibility, and peopleÍs real thoughts. Lies were told with ease because words had lost their meanings„and had ceased to be taken seriously by others.î  People shouted Red Guard slogans and quoted Mao so they would not be suspected as a bourgeois capitalist. The most important thoughts were those of survival. Fear, it seems, was MaoÍs most effective way of getting consensus within China, and support for him and the Party.

After MaoÍs death, and the rise of Deng Xiaoping, the government issued a decree that banned all personality cults, dead or alive. Deng implemented more liberal economic policies, such as decentralization and the incorporation of western technology. These policies have pushed economic growth in China -- in 1993, China had the 10th largest GNP in the world.  Also, industries are being privatized ¿ as of 1990, the private sector employed 25 million Chinese. As the Chinese people are becoming more affluent and more financially independent, they can see themselves more as individuals than they could under MaoÍs reign. Generally they have more independence, and they can begin to influence the government. It seem unlikely that someone like Mao could ever ascend to power in the way that he did. These factors, along with Western ideology, have influenced students in China to think more about democratizing the government, and possibly undermining the Communist Party.

The biggest threat to the Communist Party in recent years was the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989. The students protested for more democratic measures in government, and they were met with tanks and guns. This incident illustrated the governmentÍs somewhat feeble control over its people. It is significant that the Party Leadership had to call for the military to subdue peaceful protesters ¿ it illustrates a weakness on their part. Any government can use the military to regain control, and usually a government that resorts to violence has a tenuous reign over their people. The incident was an indicator that a base of people did not support the government.

The Communist Party will most likely face increasing challenges in the future whether or not they will be in the form of protests, increased decentralization, or another rival party. However, they must become able to listen to and effectively deal with these challenges, because the international community does not support such human rights violations. And as China becomes more and more dependent on foreign imports, they need to listen more to foreign opinion, especially that of the US, Japan, and Hong Kong. But even if they donÍt listen to foreign opinions (because the US has barely even slapped China on the wrist for all of its human rights violations), domestic pressures for reform will increase as people become more and more wealthy and financially independent. Increased democratization and social liberalization seem inevitable.