Man Of The Year: Visionary of a New China

(12 of 12)
one answer. "Any large system of thought and practice," he says, "lends itself to so many divergent interpretations that it is possible to be both a continuator and a dismantler of a certain ideological system at the same time. Trotsky and Stalin charged each other with being betrayers of Leninism, and each claimed to be the true inheritor of Leninism. In some respects, both were right in both instances." Perhaps inadvertently, Mao once gave his blessing to this kind of interpretation with his famous quote before the misbegotten Great Leap Forward: "Let a hundred flowers blossom, let a hundred schools of thought contend."

In an essay called The Hedgehog and the Fox, British Social Theorist Isaiah Berlin divided the world's thinkers into two categories, using as his guide an enigmatic fragment from the Greek poet Archilochus: "The fox knows many things; the hedgehog knows one big thing." Mao was quintessential hedgehog, a visionary with one organizing determinist principle to which he insisted the great diverse Chinese reality must conform. Hedgehogs like totalitarian worlds. Foxes can tolerate diversity, variety, change, disorder, the sheer plurality of life. It may be fateful for China's future that Teng Hsiao-p'ing, who languished for years in the shadow of China's hedgehog, is most certainly a fox. -