Excerpt of a chapter from: The Life Cycle of
Revolutions
By Jim Cook
Mao's
Entrepreneuring (from 1927 to
1947)
"A revolution is not a dinner
party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture,
or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so
leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous,
restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an
insurrection, an act of violence by which one class
overthrows another." Mao ZeDong
(1927)
Mao's Passages
Mao's life began on December 26, 1893 in the south of China
near Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. A rebel from
the start as he tried to live out his evolving core values.
He tested authority by not standing when called upon in
school and by defying his father in public. At the same
time, he didn't stray way beyond the limits, even kowtowing
(i.e., kneeling and then bowing with his forehead touching
the ground three times) to his father to show respect and
remorse after running away from home for three days.
During Mao's twenties, he was exceptional for a fanatical
dedication to learning. As a vigorous undergraduate, he chose
to do what few others would. He would go to the library at
eight in the morning and not leave, not even for lunch,
until closing time. He read voraciously and broadly.
News, classics, poems, stories, but not, as far as we
can tell, mathematics nor the sciences. His education
included a summer spent wandering on foot about villages
throughout neighboring Hubei province, enduring, first
hand, the ravages of poverty, hunger, and the elements.
In exchange for meals and lodging, he wrote letters for
illiterate peasants. These experiences cultivated in him
a deep appreciation for the plight of peasants and their
true hopes, desires, and character.
At the teachers college Mao attended, he had disdain
for much of his coursework and cared not a whit for
neither courses nor grades in subjects he deemed
useless. Nonetheless, despite a mixed record, it was
Mao and two other classmates who were invited to follow
the most respected scholar in Hunan province when he
was appointed to Peking University. Later that
professor's daughter married Mao. For refusing to
divulge Mao's whereabouts, she was executed. Mao
instilled that loyalty by the virtue of his causes.
Mao changed with the stages of his life. It was in Mao's
diverse, studious, experimental youth where he sorted
out effective means and beliefs in support of his emerging
values. On his solid foundation of values, beliefs,
knowledge, and experimentation, he went on to have an
extraordinarily prescient prime followed by a misguided
old-age.
Mao's prime was his time of being entrepreneurial, his time
of creative destruction, his time for establishing a
modern China. The modern China Mao eventually established
was, at least in the early 1950s, an egalitarian China with
unprecedented opportunity and relief for the masses. Mao's
prime period I mark arbitrarily as 1927 (when Mao was 33
and began leading armed engagements against enemies) until
the end of 1947 when it became clear that his army was on
the verge of dominating its competitor, Chiang Kai-shek's
Guomindang.
During most of this 1927 to 1947 period, Mao's army was the
underdog challenger. Not until 1947, did his army begin to
emerge as the dominant force. This transition in dominance
carried with it a concomitant requirement [according to the
central thesis of this book] to transition the army's
organizational paradigm from the Entrepreneurial-like
guerrilla warfare to the Institutional-like regular warfare.
Mao encouraged this transition, even declaring it explicitly,
but only for the military, not for the nation's governance.
Consequently, for the military the transition from loosely
coordinated guerrilla units to a regimented hierarchical
regular army was successful. Within two years, on October 1,
1949, the army declared military victory and The People's
Republic of China was born.
By 1956, the Communist Party was the established political
force in China and the time to transition the Party's
organizational paradigm, from revolutionary to administrative,
had arrived. Perpetuating the Entrepreneuring paradigm beyond
its time rather than segueing to the Institutionalizing
paradigm, resulted in tragic horror and human devastation,
particularly during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural
Revolution. Mao's post-prime ineptitude and inhumanity is
from a time that is beyond the duration of our scope.
Throughout most of Mao's prime, we will see him embodying
the style of the classical entrepreneur by introducing his
innovative product (localized Communism) into a wide market
(China), promoting it as serving vital consumer needs
(opportunity and equality), fighting against the establishment
(Chiang Kai-shek and local warlords), and employing a complex
of strategies that should boggle the mind for their astuteness
and effectiveness.
Innovative product, promotion, competing, and strategy are the
core ingredients of any successful (disruptive) entrepreneurial
endeavor. Mao, we will see, is brilliant in whipping together
these ingredients with all the talent of a master entrepreneur
– innovator, authentic, opportunist, inspirational,
strategist, designer, showman – and blessed with competent
colleagues and minions with extraordinary loyalty and commitment.
His establishment competitor, the Nationalists headed by Chiang
Kai-shek, in the end, didn't stand a chance even though they
had, for the most part, more than ten times the resources and
were already entrenched.
Mao's Innovations
As with most entrepreneurs, let's begin with Mao's
innovative product. Mao was up against an entrenched
establishment product: Standard (European) Communism
that was proven in the Soviet Union and was based on
Karl Marx's socialist, anti-capitalist, economic and
political ideology known as Marxism with the
proletariat (i.e., industrial worker) squarely at the
center of concern.
Mao's innovation was to put the rural farming peasant,
not the urban industrial worker, as the driver of his
product, that is, the ideology he was designing was
for "sale to" the Chinese people. Rather
than getting urban workers to rebel in class warfare,
rural peasants' (outnumbering China's urban workers by
over thirty to one) need for relief from oppressive
rents enabled by a tangle of interlocking alliances
of imperialists, warlords, and local landowners.
Mao added woman's and minority's features to his
ideological offering which undoubtedly enticed even
more followers (read "sales"). He
opposed child marriage, foot binding, and forced
marriage and wanted women to have full equality
before the government. These features constituted
Confucian heresy since, for two thousand years, the
choice of spouse was considered a family, not a
personal, choice. And, for minorities, he also
guaranteed equality under the law and promoted
their equality of opportunity, as well as setting
aside autonomous provincial and local governments
wherever the minorities were in the majority.
You might also say, Mao innovated in the methods
and structure he used for "distributing"
his product, Mao's Chinese Communism ideology. Rather
than grandstanding, barnstorming, and/or coercing,
Mao used his army, his literal army, as a political
force. Every soldier was indoctrinated and expected
by his actions and his words to convey the features
and benefits of the product, Chinese Communism.
Realizing that the army only fought sporadically, he
used the troops' "down time" to proselytize.
Mao's army had, in every unit, a political officer
who trained them. Further, all Mao's troops had
orders not to pillage or plunder or worse and to
pay for all provisions they consumed or took from
peasants.
Mao's Market
In defining his market, Mao was not exclusionary,
rather he was as inclusive as possible. He embraced
peasants of all stripes: miners and workers, even
outlaws (such as the Elder Brothers Society and
various minorities that defied governing), as well as
landlords, but was adamant in opposition to and
exclusion of large landlords, warlords, reactionaries,
and imperialists. However, Mao was never a purist,
if a warlord could be helpful, he gave, more often
exchanged, immunity, until the revolution was over.
Despite hostility from some minorities, Lolo and Fan
in Yunan and the Man in Gansu, encountered in the
course of The Long March, Mao was aggressive
in casting a net that would extend benefits to all
minorities. In the spirit of accommodation, Mao
proposed and the Communist Party granted minorities
regional autonomy at the prefecture and provincial
level. Five provinces got such autonomous status:
Inner Mongolia for Mongols, Tibet for Tibetans,
Xinjiang for Uyghurs, Ningxia for Huis, and Guangxi
for Zhuangs.
Mao's Positioning
Mao recognized rent relief, resource and opportunity
distribution, and woman's equality as pressing needs
among his core constituency, the peasants. However,
these proposed changes could be highly charged and
divisive. Rent relief would be resisted by
landowners small and large alike. Resource and
opportunity distribution, was not crucial to
peasants trying to fill their stomachs, but was dear
to the owners, quite understandably. And, woman's
equality didn't appeal to all that many men. On the
other hand, China's "face" was being spat
upon by imperialists, the most immediate of which
were the Japanese. So rather than educating (read,
"spending effort on advertising") on these
fractious issues of opportunity and equality, Mao's
product positioning would be a call for ridding all
Chinese people of all imperialistic humiliation.
Easy to understand, emotional in appeal, and worth
dying for!
In April of 1932, Mao along with his partner, General
Zhu De, were the first to declare war on behalf of
China against Japan (even though Mao and Zhu
represented less than one percent of all Chinese).
To form a common bond among all his followers and all
Chinese, for that matter, Mao claimed Japan as their
common number one enemy. Mao even came forward and
declared that until the Japanese were defeated, Mao
would let his army fight under the command of Chiang
Kai-shek, his bitter enemy and the killer of his
beloved wife and younger brother. Mao's maneuvers
demonstrated authenticity and the pertinent value
of his cause (again, read "product") to
virtually all Chinese!
Mao's Competition
While Mao's Communist venture was just forming,
Chiang Kai-shek, representing the establishment,
undertook six concerted campaigns, called
encirclements, to eradicate Mao. At first Chiang
employed three times as many troops, all heavily
armed including planes, then four times, then six
times the number of troops against Mao and Zhu's
rag tag bands of guerrilla fighters. All six
times Chiang failed, but the cost to Mao-Zhu was
so high, that by the last time, Chiang was
advertising Mao's extinction and poverty for his
followers, just to make their defeat all the more
painful. To escape Chiang's troops, after the
fifth encirclement, Mao initiated The Long
March; for those who marched, the marching
was a struggle for life itself!
The Great Struggle (October 10, 1934 - October 19, 1935)
Every disruptive venture endures some struggle. For
most, it is long hours, weekends, deprivation from
social or family life often with a stint of poverty.
But for Mao's troops, The Long March was a
struggle as heroic as any in all history and
sufficient reason to be in awe of Mao's magnetism
and the Chinese peasant's heroism. Of the nearly
80,000 marchers who started the journey only 6,000
(i.e., 7 ½%) made it to the endpoint, Yanan (just
north of Shaanxi Province's capital, Xian).
The Long March is said to have lasted 368
days and covered 9,650 kilometers (about 6,000
miles). It began in Jiangxi Province (halfway
between Shanghai and Hong Kong) on October 16, 1934
and crossed 24 rivers, 18 mountain ranges (five
covered with snow) and 11 provinces before it ended
at the caves of Yanan on the edge of the Gobi
desert in northern China. Statistics alone portray
only a faint hint of the suffering of those who
endured and died in The Long March. To get
a sense of the severity of the struggle, you must
empathize with episodic, yet representative,
portrayals of the heroism endured by those who
sacrificed for China's progress.
While members of a small medical team, unexpectedly
hit by a nighttime snowstorm, took shelter beneath
the canvas intended for their tents, one of them,
insisting on keeping watch, was found frozen to
death by morning. In one battle, survivors recalled
crossing an ice-cold river while seeing bodies of
comrades floating by the result of Chiang's planes
dropping bombs on them; many later froze to death
in their wet uniforms. On the occasion of crossing
a mountain pass, one battalion had more than 300 of
its soldiers become snow blind. In the Gansu
province's (north central China) grasslands
thousands of troops were lost to sinking mud, hunger,
and hostile tribesmen; just imagine the horror of
soldiers drowning in mud! Zhou Enlai wrote:
"For us, the darkest time in history was during
The Long March, especially when we crossed the
Great Grasslands near Tibet. Our condition was
desperate. We not only had nothing to eat, we had
nothing to drink." In fact, diaries record that
some marchers had to resort to drinking their own
urine. This and thousands of like episodes made
The Long March an historic struggle of
historic proportions for progress of epochal
consequence.
Struggle For Disruption
So moved by the scale and suffering of The Long
March's struggle, I postulate that the extent of the
struggle tends to be proportional to the disruption that
the entrepreneur is threatening to bring to the status
quo. Ponder the disruption that Mao was threatening:
the end of over two millenniums of dynastic rule, the
eradication of the tyranny of war lords, the end to
enslaving rents to large (and later, small) land owners,
the overthrow of the complete subjugation of woman by
Confucian practices, and the defeat of the well-heeled,
well-connected (with USA, in particular), established
heir to Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek.
Machievelli's famous quote, "It ought to be remembered
that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more
perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than
to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of
things" is validated by the peril endured by the Red
Army (Mao's "developers" of his "product")
to introduce a new order of life for the Chinese people.
Mao's Strategies
Any one strategic axiom
taken in isolation may seem trite, but taken as a
"complex," it can inspire awe and deliver
accordingly. In Mao's case, he committed to over a dozen
binary strategic axioms:
- Make peasants the core constituency (not workers)
- Adapt Europe's experience to China's unique
characteristics
- Abandon wishful thinking of spontaneous uprising
- Fight for hearts and minds, not territory or cities
- Use military as a means of politics, not as an end to
rule
- Run an egalitarian army without plundering or
privilege
- Hit unexpectedly, run if overwhelmed, draw enemy
deep
- Join the Communists, not Nationalists nor be
independent
- Plan for a protracted war of attrition, contrary to
Sun Tzu
1
Opt for all of China, not Hunan and Jiangxi or any
region
Choose Japan as unifying enemy, not Nationalists
et al
Include all constituencies: minorities and renegades
alike
Appeal to women by offering emancipation and
equality.
Mao spent a decade (1917-1927) experimenting with variations on
this final set of strategies. Even after all were chosen, he
was not rigorous about adherence. He wrote about the flaws of
idealism, being an empiricist, himself. However, no alternative
force offered anything as appealing to so many. For this, Mao
got a loyal army; he even got turncoats from the enemy in the
midst of battle! Mao also got local support, especially
intelligence and short-term participation. Finally, as the
reputation of Mao's offerings and his forces' conduct (including
administration of conquered areas) spread, it precipitated an
implosion of the establishment, the Nationalists under Chiang
Kai-shek, during the last stage of the civil war (1945-49).
__________________
1 |
Sun Tzu ( 孫子;
Sūn1 Zǐ3, c. 500 BC) is believed
to be the author of The Art of War,
孙子兵法 ( 兵法;
Bīng1 Fǎ3), one of the Seven
Military Classics and revered in China. |
The Launching of China
Mao's Organization
Mao really had only one organization, the Chinese Communist Party.
The military was but an instrument of the Party as Mao himself
stated. During the Entrepreneurial struggle, understandably, it
was the military that dominated the action, and, it was indeed a
struggle! So, for the moment, we'll focus mainly on the style of
Mao's military organization, at first called the Red Army and
after 1946, The People's Liberation Army. Mao's military's
"struggle" was at its peak during The Long March.
The military's "struggle" ended around 1947 with the
realization that the Chinese Communist Party was well on its way
to dominating China.
The Culture
The culture Mao set up for his guerrilla forces and his Red Army
was unlike conventional established military. From the outset
in 1928, the ground rules were set, among which "officers
do not beat the men; officers and men receive equal treatment;
soldiers are free to hold meetings and to speak out; trivial
formalities like uniforms, displays of rank, polished shoes, and
pomp and ceremony were dispensed with; and the accounts are open
for all to inspect." Thus, an egalitarian and open culture
became the vehicle of progress. Mao even attributed a main
"reason why the Red Army carried on in spite of such poor
material conditions and such frequent engagements [against
better equipped and better paid troops] is its practice of
democracy."
In Mao's military everyone had a voice and access to leaders.
Before engaging the enemy, battle plans and objectives were
shared with the rank and file, even encouraging and
incorporating disagreement. Plundering and raping were not
tolerated. His army was enlightened. In practice, the army's
conduct was expected to be an exemplar to the people of the
model of the Communist order to come. When troops needed
food, they worked for farmers or the farmers were paid. And,
fighting was only one part of a soldiers' duties, attending
political seminars and behaving politically correctly was the
other part. This behavior was in sharp contrast to Mao's
competition, Chiang Kai-shek's army. Consequently, Mao's
army got free intelligence regarding enemy troop movements
and an excellent reputation among the people.
Mao's Personality
Rebellious from childhood, Mao was a revolutionary to the core.
He hated the Confucian classics, rejecting their moral philosophy
of order and propriety. The classics hobbled Chinese people, but
not Mao. He disobeyed his father, ran away from home, defied
and challenged his teachers, and that was even before he was all
of ten. For example, Mao couldn't fathom any reason to stand to
answer questions in class, so sat while answering incurring the
wrath of his teachers. Young Mao acted on his strong intuition
about right and wrong. A delinquent, no; a rebel, yes!
An obsessive learner! Early on, Mao appreciated literature
which, in turn, deeply determined his behavior. Outlaws
of the Marshes, a sophisticated Robin Hood story, even
became a blueprint for his subsequent commando fighting.
In his late teens, he immersed himself for six months in
the local library from sunup to sundown without a break.
There he studied philosophers, among them many Europeans,
including, Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill,
Charles Darwin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Baron de
Montesquieu, in Chinese, of course. By his mid-twenties,
Mao had acquired the lifetime habit of a voracious reader,
but not a passive one! When Mao was done reading, the
margins often overflowed with his own commentary and
criticism, and it didn't matter who owned the book or
document.
And then, a compulsive teacher. At 28 years of age, Mao
founded an open school, The Self-Cultivation University.
Later, he became the headmaster of a Peasant Training
Institute where he lectured on political topics such as
"The Peasant Question in China" and "Methods
of Teaching in the Countryside." While holed up in
the mountains Mao took up schooling for his followers,
cadres, soldiers, - even teaching peasants to read and
write. Throughout his ascension from local, to military,
and finally to Party leader, he always spent time
educating his initially illiterate personal attendants.
Late in his life, when Edgar Snow asked Mao how he wanted
to be remembered, he replied, "only as a teacher."
On this foundation of rebellion, preparing, and educating,
Mao fashioned out, through trials that were as much
experiments, a creative and robust style by which to lead.
That path worked miraculously during the revolutionary phase,
1927-1949.
As a compulsive teacher, Mao's personality was indeed
extroverted (E) 1. His bias towards action over
contemplation is further indication of his "E"
personality trait.
Mao's persistent observing to establish trends and
relating them to history, ancient and contemporary, is his
iNtuative (N) mind at work. His extraordinarily
prescient and creative strategies validates this cognitive
preference.
Although the consensus is that Mao was more of a Thinker
(T) than Feeler (F) in his cognitive decision making,
his position must be placed very much near the balance
between them. Perhaps his ability to drive his thinking to
accommodate his feeling is the key to his greatness.
Finally, we come to his lifestyle. Time and again, Mao
anticipated or experienced setbacks. His response was
invariably withdrawal; withdrawal marked by severe,
sometimes life-threatening, malaria attacks (1929, 1933,
1934, 1935). Just prior to these episodes, Mao "lost
face" in the Party (1929), lost military control due
to his strategies (1933), attacked militarily by the
Nationalists (1934), and anticipated a challenge to his
leadership (1935). Each episode concluded successfully,
Mao was restored to the Politburo (1930) and elected
chairman (1931), sat out the disastrous military campaigns
by those that had repudiated his strategies (1933), was
given charge of the retreat that became The Long
March and later anointed military leader (1934-5), and
deftly dealt with a challenge to his military leadership by
one of his generals who commanded vastly more and fresher
troops (1935). This is Perceiver (P) driven success:
action incorporates substantial contemplation of
alternatives, not driven by the need for immediate
decisions.
We conclude, as do most others, that Mao had the typical
entrepreneurial personality type, ENTP:
Extroverted, iNtuitive, Thinking,
Perceiving.
The Organizational Structure
Originally troops were not even organized, rather were a bit like
rag tag, countryside bandits. They had ad hoc strategies
of hit and run. Later these developed into an entire army of
commandos. There was a small local hierarchy, but there was not
a tightly knit, centrally driven, disciplined, and coordinated
army.
When the attacks on the Japanese began and the number of troops
grew, Mao's troops were organized into three basic levels:
village, district, and central. The village level consisted of
local residents organized as self-defense teams which served only
during local attacks (sort of a national guard / civil defense).
This level consisted mostly of ad hoc units with little
training and few weapons. Next, were district Red Army units,
full time regulars under a district commander who operated and
received their non-military supplies locally. The top level,
where most of the troops were, was under the control of the
Central Military Commission. Initially, this top level Red
Army had three fronts of armies, each consisting of three armies,
organized into a hierarchy of divisions, regiments, and so forth
down to companies.
At every level down to the company unit, Mao's army had two
leaders, one military and one political. The political leader,
originally called the political commissar and later the political
instructor, had to ensure the political mission of the unit. The
political leader was also the party secretary of the unit and had
pre-emptive authority to countermand the military leader who
initiated any orders that violated the Party's policy or
instructions. This dual leadership structure exists today, even
in State Owned Enterprises (take note, the Party Secretary has
the power to overrule the CEO!).
The paramount authority of the military unit's party secretary
was only exercised due to exceptional circumstances; his ongoing
responsibility was more the process of indoctrination,
proselytizing, and leading the Party's agenda. The Party Central
Committee Report (1930) in defining the role of the political
instructor says he "has to see that the soldiers' committee
carries out political training, to guide the work of the mass
movement, and to serve concurrently as the secretary of the
Party branch. Facts have shown that the better the company Party
representative, the sounder the company, and that the company
commander [i.e., military leader] can hardly play this important
political role."
Mao's army's structure had two tracks: military and political, with
political taking precedence. And, he had a three level army: local
part-time, district divided between governing and fighting, and
national which conducted military campaigns. Mao's organization and
strategy enabled logistical flexibility by eschewing territory,
especially cities, and embracing people, their minds and their locally
available resources and supplies.
The Success Measure
Mao's product was Communism for China, and those who were "buying
it" can be measured by membership in the Communist Party. How
well it advanced was measured by the extent of conversion. In the
beginning, the numbers looked like the membership in a country club,
420 (1923) and 994 (1925). Thereafter, through the end of World War
II, roughly the entrepreneurial period, it grew from 40,000 in 1928 to
1.2 million in 1945 at roughly 22% compounded annually.2
The Initiatives
Initiatives! Mao's whole enterprise is marked not only by initiatives,
but often bold and prescient ones at that! The Long March being the
boldest and the first to declare war on Japan (April 5, 1932) being
positively prescient. The whole of Mao's strategy can be considered a
driving force of initiatives: woman's liberation (contrary to
Confucius), protracted war (contrary to Sun Zi's The Art of
War'), hit-and-run fighting, conserving people not territory,
soliciting and educating peasants, banning of looting and raping,
and ... Mao's list of initiatives goes on and on. The constant in
Mao's initiatives is a pragmatism built on a deep foundation of
history, ancient and contemporary, and on his own direct experience.
For initiative he greatly exceeded his competition and, as is
invariably the case, the establishment.
Dealing with Risks
The risks were substantial. The avowed enemy of the Communists, the
Nationalists, had far superior weapons, even planes, and over five times
the number of troops. Furthermore, the last ideological movement was within
living memory and an unmitigated disaster for those who fought. The Taiping
Rebellion (1850-1864) resulted in the death of 20 million Chinese and no
improvement to those who survived. Mao was setting out on a Communist
rebellion fought by roughly the same kind of troops, against the same kind
of enemy, trained and well-armed. Furthermore, Mao's troops were fighting
for a cause that they barely understood. But, in their gut, they sensed
good camaraderie and fair treatment, the likes of which existed now in no
other Chinese force, not the Nationalists nor the warlords.
Mao and the Red Army escaped no fewer than six overwhelming attempts by
the Nationalists to exterminate their cause. Although the toll was
horrific, the Red Army's morale was not extinguished. After five attempts,
the Nationalist forces did pre-maturely assume the death of the Communist
cause. By the end of The Long March, with over 90% of the marchers
perishing, those that survived were bound together by the blood of the
fallen. This created more than camaraderie; rather it created a deep
trust and commitment from which to resist the Nationalists and to fight
the Japanese, in the name of the Chinese people.
In the midst of the competition, Mao deftly neutralized his arch enemy, Chiang
Kai-shek's Nationalists, by challenging them to engage in a truce in order to
jointly fight the Japanese. On the horns of this dilemma (choose to join his
avowed enemy and fight the Chinese people's enemy or continue his annihilation
of his enemy at the expense of the Chinese people?), Chiang Kai-shek
reluctantly agreed (due, in part, to prodding from his American supporters)
undoubtedly realizing that this accorded the Communists an opportunity to
become stronger in preparation for the inevitable civil war following the
defeat of the Japanese. The Communists did get stronger and by the end of
the World War II had morale, armaments, and a growing following which led to
their victory.
The Consolidation
In mid-1949, months before the founding of modern China, Mao proclaimed,
"We shall soon put aside some of the things we know well and be compelled
to do things we don't know well." The struggle that he knew and executed
so well will be over!
The consolidation definitely entailed tidying up loose ends. Taiwan, Hainan
(a tiny island in the south), and Tibet were yet to be under Communist control.
The land reforms had yet to be implemented and the next stage, the creation of
a workable government built on sturdy institutions was the next stage of
progress's work.
Tragically, this next stage was haltingly executed with the wrong paradigm, the
entrepreneurial (i.e., revolutionary) paradigm. Not until 1979, after Mao's
death and the transition of power to Deng Xiaoping, did the appropriate
paradigm, institutional, come to lay in a strong and effective established
government.
In Summary
Perhaps the word, "Entrepreneur" or "Entrepreneurial" is
wrong as it is seldom associated beyond business, yet the thesis of this book
extends beyond business. "Shattering Change" captures both the
destructive aspect of creativity with the notion of putting that change to the
test of implementation.
An Apology
To do this chapter accurately would require far more research that I have put
forth. Each year, new evidence of the revolutionary period comes forth. Some
of it was suppressed during Mao's lifetime, some of it was considered secret,
and much of it was and is withheld or released in support of some agenda. For
example, the heroic tale of the crossing of Dadu River made great theater and
bolstered spirits, but sadly, for the romanticists especially, its heroism is
greatly overstated. The logical development of Mao's army and its culture were
cultivated and exaggerated for Mao's personal aggrandizement. The role of
supplementary leaders is only now trickling out, so much of what is attributed
to Mao was actually the doing of others.
My purpose is not to accurately portray this man nor history. My purpose was
to extract, selectively, attributes that can help readers attach the notions
of the thesis of this book to the characteristics of leaders. As Ralph Bunche
so powerfully put it, "If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a
person." And, that's what I am attempting here.
Lastly, I have appended a glossary to facilitate any Chinese who happened to be
reading or discussing this chapter since, in China, names like "Music
Mountain" (Mao's birthplace) are not recognized as such, rather they are
pronounced as Sháo2 Shān1 and written
" 韶 山 ".
_____________________
1"E" refers to the Extraversion/Intraversion
code used by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator for classifying personalities
(tinyurl.com/MBTI-01). The
three other codes are for Sensing/iNtuition,
Thinking/Feeling, and Judging/Perceiving.
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