Red Azalea

From his portraits to his writings, Mao, who never personally appears in the novel, exists nonetheless as a powerful controlling figure looming over the decisions of each character like an invisible surveillance system. The true reach of his propaganda becomes clear in his physical absence. Having transformed local people into spies, Mao’s propaganda incentivizes citizens to level accusations and condemnations against each other, and thus, Mao’s government essentially succeeds in outsourcing the work of oppression, for friends and neighbors become willing to destroy each other. While Mao’s propaganda maintains his cult of personality and his power, it also dehumanizes those affected by it and those who use it. Ironically, this pattern ultimately leaves even the architects of the Cultural Revolution—including Jiang Ching herself—powerless to fight this propaganda when it turns on them treacherously.

Anchee sees and experiences Mao’s reach quite early in life, as she and her family face harassment in the name of fairness and equality. Forced to give up their home, Anchee’s parents experience the costs of adhering to Mao’s propaganda. Anchee becomes actively complicit soon after, as the school’s Party secretary Chain enlists her in a scheme to denounce her devoted teacher, Autumn Leaves. As Chain’s eagerness to denounce Autumn Leaves makes clear, Mao’s propaganda remains powerful in every aspect of society because it creates an imagined problem and an illusory enemy that officials, neighbors, and fellow workers become obligated to find and eliminate; having done so, they eagerly seek rewards from the regime for their diligence. Thus, citizens are lauded for turning on each other in the name of upholding Party ideals. Although Anchee saves her own mother from such accusations, she actively denounces a very supportive teacher whom she herself once respected. The unlikely chain of events occurs only because Chain repeats slogans, sayings, and proverbs that constitute Mao’s propaganda, and this repetition indoctrinates the young Anchee and turns her against those she loves and respects. Even when directly facing the consequences of her actions, Anchee does not retract her false statements because she sees Mao’s ever-present portrait and remembers a proverb from one of Mao’s books that stiffens her resolve. Having been “raised on the teachings of Mao and on the operas of Madam Mao, Comrade Jiang Ching,” (3) the young Anchee responds as her revolutionary script requires.

In Part 2, at Red Fire Farm, Anchee sees the corruptive influence of Mao’s propaganda at work in the hostile Lu’s thoughts and actions. Seeing the danger in Lu’s embrace of Mao’s ideals, Anchee notices how her “rigidness exposed her single-minded ambition for power” (92). Consuming Mao’s propaganda without question and executing it without deviation, Lu ultimately becomes a victim of her own actions. Believing that she has outmaneuvered Yan and Anchee, Lu “stop[s] her Mao-work-study routine, saying she had mastered the essence of Mao thoughts” (148). As she becomes too confident of her power, the machine created by Mao’s propaganda hums along, and Yan manages to use similar tactics to implicate Lu in a scandal, thus saving Anchee.

The pervasive reach of Mao’s propaganda knows no limits, as Anchee describes it. Soviet Wong becomes frustrated in her attempts to stop Anchee, and the Supervisor and Jiang Ching both lose power in the aftermath of Mao’s death. The reach of Mao’s thoughts and writings and his ever-present portrait remain unmatched, and, even in death, his ideas continue to create new accusations and new enemies. Min demonstrates that this ideological experiment becomes dangerous for all and implies that unquestioning acceptance of ideals will inevitably become lethal.