At the turn of every dynasty in Chinese history, the new dynasty marks its authority by dismantiling old symbols of power and constructing its own identity. Even though the imperial system had been toppled in 1911, the deeper culture of power was very much alive. Mao understood that power needed to be accumulated through mass support, and in order to obtain mass support you must understand the traditional Chinese psyche to know what they truly want. What the people wanted was an EMPEROR. Not necessarily in name, but someone strong enough to deserve the mandate. The Chinese people hadn’t had an emperor they could be proud of since Qianlong in the 18th century, and the disgrace of foreign domination and civil war gave the early revolutions of the 20th century little credence. Mao solved all that. He truly liberated and reunited China, not only in terms of territory, but also in spirit. The desire for a united China has been at the heart of Chinese culture since the Warring States period that gave birth to Chinese thought two thousand five hundred years ago. Mao was a figure like the First Emperor of China, reuniting China after a long period of weakness and chaos. Like all emperors, Mao had to act the part. He wasn’t going to build a new capital to the west of Beijing for the sake of cultural conservation.Old China needed to be repudiated, not preserved for posterity. Like any emperor before him, Mao had to build the new China from the ashes of the discredited old one. However, there was simply not enough money to afford the transformation he wished for.

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The relationship bewteen culture and politics found it defining moment during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, when the very fabric of society was sewn together by Mao’s paranoia, Univeristies and schools were closed, interllecturals and artists were sent to the countryside or driven to suicide, and anything representing traditional Chinese culture had to be destroyed (although luckily most of it wasn’t). The entire value systems of Chinese culture, held sacred for thousands of years, was turned utterly inside-out.

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Deng had to take people’s minds away from politics, and the only way to do that was by enabling people to make more money, to engage their minds with something really practical. As it became easier to make money, the lure to make more money became irresistible for more and more people. Wealth and pleasure became the keystones to the economy and the catering and leisure industries grew exponentially. It was a slow process, but people were replacing idealism with pragmatism. Ten years after 1989, Bejing was a completely changed place. It had become a pleasure-dome of restaurants, karaoke bars and massage parlours. The body had replaced the mind as the main focus of attention. For many people physical pleasure had replaced thought, and idealism has largely become the object of contempt and ridicule.