The New Emperors [antikvár]

About Emperors[ajmBlHUNDREDS OF MEN have borne the title of emperor, hum^-ti, in China's long history. Few have exercised more power, personal and political, than Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, true huang-ti.The first huang-ti was the Yellow Emperor, the legendary ruler who founded China on the rich loess floodplains of the Yellow River. Mao led his Red armies, with Deng at his side, out of these plains to found his New China at Tiananmen in 1949.The concept of emperor in China is intimately associated with that of the dragon. China's dragons, guardians of the throne, are unlike those of the West. They are benign and protective but can turn like terrible emperors on the people. If they do so, it is the fault of the people, not the dragons. They breathe fire and thrash their tail only if betrayed, a convenient concept for an emperor.In Chinese custom, dynasties and bloodlines are not so important as power. The great Chinese dynastic scholar Zhang Zhi says of Mao, "He founded the first peasant dynasty in six hundred years." In Chinese history a capable minister or victorious general has often won the Mandate of Heaven. Deng Xiaoping fit the concept perfecdy. Both men earned the title of huang-ti despite the fact that both considered themselves Marxists. Both were Sons of Heaven, rulers by a kind of divine right.In the words of the preeminent scholar Derk Bodde: "In China more perhaps than in any other country a knowledge of the past is essential for an understanding of the present."