Psychological View Of Mao Zedong's Rule

Although he is fairly unknown in the Western World, according to some researchers this person is responsible for more deaths than for example Stalin or Hitler: China’s chairman Mao Zedong (Johnson, 2018). After a civil war Mao seized power in China, followed by a series of reforms and policy implementations. The combination of these policies with a command of censorship and repression caused millions of deaths, estimates ranging from 20 to 48 million, just during the period 1958-1960 (Angang, 2014). What is fascinating is that so many people complied with Mao’s vision and that there was very little resistance, even among officials who could have known things were going wrong. I would argue that this all can largely be explained using psychological terms and theories.

In order to do so, I will first shortly analyse the events during Mao’s rule. After that I will introduce and discuss four theories, explaining what they are and how they can be seen in the Chinese events. Those four together can be seen as building stones of the compliance of the Chinese people. The events Mao was born in 1893 from relatively wealthy farmers in a rural community. He became a key figure in the newly formed Chinese Communist Party, and a leader in the guerrilla war against the nationalist government in 1927, which he won. In 1949 he established the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In this position he imposed many reforms.

For examples, he turned much land from warlords into communes, improved education and promoted women’s rights. In doing so, he drastically increased China’s GDP and life expectancy (Angang, 2014). This success led Mao to instigate the Great Leap Forward in 1958. The aim of this plan was to transform China’s economy from an agricultural to an industrial one by increasing the output of both sectors (Duara, 1974; Johnson, 2018). In order to do so, millions were moved into communes, with all resources collectivised. Leaders of the communes were ordered to yield virtually impossible amounts. To save themselves from humiliation and prosecutions, they falsified their production numbers, which resulted in too high tax-rates. Rural peasants could not afford this, thus had to send any grain they had to the state and did not have anything left to eat. As people on the countryside were massively dying from starvation, there were less and fewer people to work the fields. Consequently, the famine also spread to cities (Szczepanski, 2019). To make it even worse, the country was scourged by natural disasters. Tens of millions of people died in the period of the Great Leap, which was stopped in 1960. The years 1958-1960 are in China known as the ‘Three Bitter Years’. Strikingly, there was very little opposition against Mao’s plans, also when it became clear that things were going wrong. After the Great Leap Forward turned out to be a tremendous disaster, Mao Zedong had to take a step back from power. He returned in the year 1966 when he again called for a revolution (history. com editors, 2018).

Mao, who disagreed with the direction of the communist government, encouraged mainly the youth to purge the ‘impurities’ from Chinese society, which were remnants of capitalism and traditional elements of society. Students formed paramilitary groups, named the “Red Guards”, that attacked mainly the intellectual population. Educated people were mostly sent to “re-education camps” or simply killed. This movement became known as the (Great Proletarian) Cultural Revolution. The consequence was that almost an entire generation of intellectuals was eradicated and much knowledge was lost. On 9 September 1976, Mao died because of the consequences of a heart attack. The psychology behind the compliance One psychological theory that we can clearly see in practice in Mao’s rule is obedience to authority. People comply with authority figures because of four main factors, three of which are relevant to this context (Hewstone et al. , 2012). Notably, the levels of support are rather varied. The first factor has to do with the sociocultural perspective. From very young, we are taught to obey to authorities. This starts with school teachers and ends with police officers. We could even say it is part of the social norms. I will get back to this later, however. Moreover, we expect authorities to be legitimate and trustworthy. This factor is very clear in Mao’s China. Since Mao conducted a strong policy of censorship, children were from a young age indoctrinated to follow his direction.

Furthermore, Mao had proven himself. He had been victorious against the Nationalist army, and with his policies improved the lives of millions of people. He took land from warlords and gave it to rural communities. All this made that people could follow him blindly, expecting him to continue taking the right decisions, not knowing he was to make horrible mistakes. The second important factor that we see is the responsibility. In a hierarchical system, people often do not accept (complete) responsibility, but allocate this to someone higher up in the system. This is known as agentic shift. Officials would carry out the policies, knowing they are likely to cause chaos. They would allocate the responsibility for this behaviour higher up the chain, and eventually to Mao. It makes it relatively easy to comply with authority if you feel you have no or hardly any responsibility. Notably, the evidence for this factor is fairly weak. The last relevant factor is situational. Some situations have such power that they reveal destructive obedience in people.

Milgram already showed this in 1986 with his research in which a scientist instructed participants to give electric shocks, up to a lethal level. In many cases, the participants complied. I would say that the situation in which the Chinese people were, with massive poverty problems and hunger, was much more extreme than the one in Milgram’s research. The power of the situation could have instigated extreme obedience to Mao, leaving him virtually unopposed. The fourth factor, binding factors, which is about increasing the barriers to disobedience, is not really seen in Mao’s rule. Another psychological term that is highly relevant in this Chinese context, upon which I have already touched, is that of norms. According to Hewstone et al. (2012), a norm is defined as ‘belief system about how (not) to behave, that guide behaviour but without the force of laws, and reflect other group members’ shared expectations about typical or desirable activities’. Norms are transmitted in three modes: (1) deliberate instruction, (2) nonverbal behaviours and (3) inferring the norm from the behaviour of others.

As said before, it was arguably a norm in Chinese society to conform to Mao’s wishes. This norm transmitted in all three modes, the most important of which is deliberate instruction. This was mainly done through propaganda (Shen & Xia, 2011), and probably had the most effect. Nonverbal behaviour is also powerful in transferring the norm; disobedience to Mao’s will would cause disapproving gestures from others of the in-group (group to which you feel you belong, in this case the Chinese society). Finally, you could see that everyone else does what Mao wants. This also makes it quite clear what the norm is. Norms are very powerful, and there are various reasons for people to conform to them. One is that group members (in this case of Chinese society) are cognitively and socially dependent on each other: unanimity helps validate their opinions (social reality) and helps the group move forward to its goal (group locomotion) (Hewstone et al. , 2012). Also, consensus in a group helps individuals believe he sees thing right now, gain approval of positively-viewed others and avoid a self-conception as different or deviant. It is easily imaginable that for the Chinese to comply with the norm is essential to remain part of the ingroup and to gain approval of peers. This is a powerful pressure. The third psychological theory is called causal attributions. It is the process where we try to explain our own as well as other’s behaviour (Hewstone et al. , 2012). This relates to what I mentioned before, about that Mao had proven himself as a leader. One of the behaviours of Mao that people would want to explain most is that of his success.

According to Wiener (1979,1985, as cited in Hewstone et al. , 2012), causes of success can be classified as (1) internal or external (locus), (2) stable or variable (stability) and (3) controllable or uncontrollable (controllability). When we look at the locus, Mao’s success would mostly be classified as internal; it was attributed to his tactical insight, his intelligence to make the economy grow, or his fairness to make Chinese society more equal. It would also be considered variable and controllable, because his achievements were due to a lot of hard work and effort to improve the situation, and not because of an innate ability to always make political and economic situations better. Conclusions about performances can make a difference to expectations and motivations according to Wiener. Because his accomplishments were attributed to his effort and dedication, he was expected to continue down that road. This helped strengthen the power of the authority invested in Mao, and contribute to the compliance of the people. A final theory is that of cognitive dissonance theory. We have reasons to pick our choice in a decision, which are usually stronger than reasons to pick the alternative. However, when the arguments for the alternative become stronger, we will feel more dissonance (an aversive state), and a stronger need to justify our choice (Hewstone et al. , 2012). As the choice is already made, the easiest way to reduce the dissonance now is to change our attitudes, beliefs or behaviour. In other words, it is possible that the cognitive dissonance that we experience can lead to a different evaluation of our own choice and the alternative.

In China, most people at some point made the decision to comply with Mao’s will. This decision had to be justified: people must have felt a dissonance, because there could be good arguments not to comply with Mao. The consequence of this is that for many the evaluation of, and attitude towards Mao’s rule became much more positive, as opposed to that of the alternative. This theory is yet another building stone of the authority of Mao. It remains fascinating that one person can exert so much power over so many people. There are many theories attempt to, at least in part, explain how this is possible. Most of those are psychological, though not solely so. In this article I have shown that psychological theories can provide a helpful framework to analyse events like the ones in China. Theories as obedience to authorities, norms, causal attributions and cognitive dissonance together help explain why Mao Zedong was followed, seemingly unchallenged. Understanding this helps us to hopefully avoid similar situations in the future.