| Summary/Abstract |
Comrade Lei Feng, a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army, is renowned in China as a national role model, famed for his routine altruism rather than for any acts of exceptional braveness or daring. Over the years, a number of national campaigns have been launched to emulate the behaviour of Lei Feng, with the objective of improving public morality. But the campaigns have also been an important source of political legitimacy, particularly for Mao Zedong. This is because Lei was widely propagated as an ardent Maoist who studied the ideas of Mao by night and implemented them by day, presenting a shining example of benevolent Maoism which assisted Mao’s return to the helm of Chinese politics during the Cultural Revolution. Less well-documented, and the focus of this article, is the utilisation of Lei Feng by Mao’s elite colleagues in their own personal quests for political ascent. In the internecine intra-party power struggle to succeed Mao as paramount leader, separate rival factions led by each of the Gang of Four, Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng heaped praise on Lei Feng to demonstrate their own devotion to Mao. As the power struggles intensified, each of the candidates also used Lei to besmirch the political credentials of their opponents by suggesting that they were anti-Lei, by implication anti-Mao.
|