China Loves Chairman Mao Again

Recent statistical studies suggest that these trends go well beyond the sheltered confines of China’s top universities and halls of power. An oft-quoted 2015 paper by Harvard and MIT researchers, for example, found that Chinese Internet users have largely coalesced around two poles: a “Leftist-Confucian” pole that advocates an expansive socialist state, limited civil rights, aggressive foreign policy, and some rehabilitation of traditional culture; and a “Western liberal” — or “rightist,” if one prefers that term — pole that supports free market principles, constitutional democracy, civil rights, international cooperation, and some hostility towards traditional culture. The high levels of homogeneity within these camps suggest, moreover, that ideological awareness and commitment is already quite deep, and deepening, across the board.