Modern China Issues - Essay Example

People attribute the rampant corruption in present-day china to mismanagement & red-tapism under corrupt & greedy leaders. There is also a general opinion among many Chinese that though there was more fairness & justice, openness & freedom of expression were entirely subdued. Experts such as Zhou Ongling of the citizen education Centre in Beijing think that corruption was minimal during Mao’s regime solely because the administration during those times was centralized, which ensured a gradual flow of power along the ranks. This setup disintegrated in the years following Mao’s death, which lead to a decline in proper administration.

A pro-democratic activist San Feng has written that Mao has committed Crimes against the Chinese Nation. He maintained that Mao had destroyed the true spirit of humanity by putting curbs on literary expression. San holds him responsible for the widespread famine & destruction of the cultural legacy. The effect of all this has been that people living in the rural areas have been neglected in all respects including standard of living, education, healthcare, etc., while those living in the urban areas have flourished in the recent past. These mistakes of the past and the economic reforms & foreign investments since the recent past have widened this disparity. George Jochnowitz simply says that: ‘Mao Zedong was not upset by the fact that the Cultural Revolution was causing nothing but hardship and reaction. He had no vision of a better life for the Chinese people. His Little Red Book deals with only two issues: how to win and how to punish one's enemies after winning’.

These measures have had their effect even after his death as can be seen from the Tiananmen massacre of 1990 when countless students were mercilessly gunned down. Ever since then, every single voice in favor of democracy (such as that of Hao Wu) has been silenced either through killing without trial or extended periods of prison terms. George further goes on to say that since becoming a communist nation, China has not progressed ahead in any respect, be it in music, literature, or technology. The government has failed to provide enough food to its ever-increasing population. The technological advances that one gets to see in China can be attributed to the fact that these have started taking place ever since china embraced capitalism in the mid-1990s. But, even then the disparity between the rural & urban areas continues to increase. Therefore, in short, it can be concluded that Mao has been both a boon as well as a curse for Chinese society.