Image of Mao in China - Essay Example

It made political moves that raised concerns with other international communist movements (Eastmarsh, 1980). This is because there were frequent power struggles between different parties such as Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping, who presented different ideologies on how China should progress. The reason for the differences in opinion and power struggles lies in the political and economic state of the country, where Mao’s policies included controlling the economy of the nation, while reformists worked towards changing and bringing everything back to the people hence the different factions (Eastmarsh, 1980). With the above, reforms began trickling in as power was returned to the people and the leaders were denied certain powers, where absolute decision-making no longer lay with them. Instead, democracy started taking root as Deng, and communism ceased to be a fully recognizable system and became a concept that was used to show how different the Chinese system of politics is different from that of the western world (Eastmarsh, 1980).

Free speech has always been a social concern in China, where freedom of expression is not widely practiced to date following the declaration of Mao’s “hundred flowers speech” which was then used against scholars who came up with schools of thought differing from those of his government (Allen, 2011). This is because the scholars were met with violent and extensive suppression, including re-education. After Mao’s death, free speech continued to be a problem because it only indicated the possibility of social unrest, in which case different ideas critiqued the government and political leaders negatively. As a result, freedom of speech has been widely denied to the Chinese people to date.

Another way in which free speech remains elusive is following Mao’s declaration of “hundred flowers speech”, which was used as an offensive strategy to lure out scholars who were against government policies. This made the Chinese people even warier than any government plans to encourage its people to express themselves freely as it could be another offensive strategy. However, free speech is yet to expand as a result of government and leadership efforts because it works to curb the use of media even to date in the free expression of political ideas. This is to the extent of blocking social media in recent times to keep down instances of social unrest as these could trigger uprisings. It is for this reason that the government goes even further to regulate and restrict the publication of politically sensitive material that even include issues of human rights and democracy (Allen, 2011). Read More