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A Scorecard for China
Mao was 70% right. Is that any good?
By ADI IGNATIUS
September 27, 1999
Web posted at 1 p.m. Hong Kong time, 1 a.m. EDT
As the People's Republic prepares to celebrate its Golden Anniversary Oct. 1, this is a great time to hand out report cards for China's top leaders of the past half-century.
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Mao's score we already know. After the Chairman's death, Chinese officialdom famously declared that he had been 70% correct. It's never been clear exactly what that means, however. Seven out of 10 is sublime for a baseball slugger but lousy for a free-throw shooter. As a grade, it's pretty much a straight "C." Average. Underachiever. Class clown.
The Soviets gave Stalin the same grade, but that always seemed unfair. The two men were basically taking the same test, and Mao blatantly copied. Mao's China cloned nearly every Soviet institution and operating system. Mao hung out in Moscow for two months just AFTER the founding of the People's Republic.
Deng Xiaoping, as far as anyone knows, never received an official grade. As the ultimate pragmatist, he'd no doubt go for the pass-fail option. And he'd surely pass. But with higher marks than Mao? It probably depends how much you take off for Tiananmen.
Consider: Mao was responsible for the Great Leap Forward (up to 30 million dead) and the Cultural Revolution (all of culture dead) and still got a 70. Deng gets docked plenty for Tiananmen. But while that event is still fresh in everyone's minds, it wasn't nearly as lethal as Mao's two big boo-boos.
So let's subtract 20 and give Deng an 80. Again, that's a fine completion percentage for a football quarterback. But gradewise it's no big deal. A straight B. Or maybe a B minus. Bad penmanship. Tutored in chemistry.
It's hard to imagine giving Jiang Zemin anything but an N/A (not applicable). Mao and Deng each possessed a certain spark of genius, evident in the published accounts of their verbal sparring with U.S. leaders.
Jiang is something else. TIME's leaders interviewed him in October 1997. Like many of his stature, he asked that we submit questions beforehand. Unlike most, he then tried to stick to his stiffly written, prepared answers. As the interview progressed, we sometimes changed the questions. Jiang kept reading, only now his stiffly written, prepared answers were non-sequitur to boot. And when we raised a few brand-new questions, he looked as if he might start to cry.
If this were a proper academic environment, you might consider moving Jiang to another, "more suitable" class. And yet there he still is, occupying the throne that Deng and Mao filled before him. And he's handling it pretty well. Whenever the U.S. gets around to giving Ronald Reagan his grade, give the same to Jiang: the revenge of the average.
The list probably has to include Hua Guofeng, Mao's short-lived successor. He lasted long enough to have a few propaganda posters made and hung alongside Mao's. But he scarcely had time to achieve anything, let alone make mistakes.
In the U.S., standardized tests are often drawn up such that 800 is the highest possible score. Test-takers, it's said, get 200 points just for entering their names properly. Hua gets that much, surely. Throw in half of the remaining points up for grabs and he gets a 500, or 62.5% of the maximum. Let's be generous and call that a "D."
So here, together for the first time anywhere, are the official scores of the modern Chinese pantheon:
Deng - B
Mao - C
Hua - D
Jiang - N/A
Happy Birthday, China!
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