This is a rather interesting question that I’m not entirely confident I can tackle in merely one post.
On one hand, Mao heavily impacted Chinese culture in both literal and ideological ways. On the other, I'm recalcitrant to really label "Chinese culture" or "Chinese people" as a monolithic entity that across the geographical region of China. That said the impact of Mao Zedong extends far beyond his tenure as the leader of China well into even today.
We'll start with the historical elements. The rise of the Communist Party in China presented some rather puzzling difficulties with regards to the post-WWII account of Chinese history. Considering that the Nationalists had done the brunt of the work and Chiang Kai Shek was the leader during the 1940s, the CCP account needed to reconcile its own success as the leading force of China while attempting to discredit the Nationalists. A task that even today has presented rather awkward difficulties. For one, most of the historical record of Chinese successes (and failures) in WWII gets claimed by Taiwan even today rightfully so. Considering that much of the legitimacy of the CCP stems from a partial acknowledgement of defeating the Japanese, conceding that the Nationalists did most of the job severely undermines the CCP’s authority. Though this isn’t necessarily about Mao himself, how the CCP treats its history and how it rectifies it throughout its existence will be a crucial component in attempting to analyze Mao’s impact on China.
With regard to Mao himself, the attempts at collectivization in hindsight saw little success. Most of his policies, notably the Great Leap Forward saw disastrous failures that permanently cast a shadow on his reputation that his successors had difficulty dealing with and his detractors capitalized on. To make matters worse, Mao's own party politics did little to lend credence to a reliable much less coherent narrative about the intentions and results of Mao's rule. That isn't to say that Mao himself was entirely arbitrary as much as the aftereffects of the CCP policies and politics of the 1950s-1970s formed both a movement of staunch pro-Collectivist and skepticism that eventually formed the base for the conservative reactionaries post Cultural Revolution. For the purposes of brevity I’ll offer two examples of the contradictory nature of Mao’s tenure. The first is the genesis and conclusion of the Great Leap Forward, the second being the handling of the Cultural Revolution and Mao’s politics in the CCP. The Great Leap Forward was never a sudden instance that happened. The preceding 3 years saw among the numerous purges, the Hundred Flowers Campaign: a false effort on the behalf of Mao to root out dissenters of the CCP by offering a false promise of an open forum to discuss disagreements. Amidst those purges, many party members who were purged before 1958-1959 were vital to the success of the Great Leap Forward. From statisticians to demographers, educated members of the party were cast out of the party (ironically to later work the fields that would underproduce) due to whatever dissent they may have had with Mao or the party. By the time the Great Leap Forward is implemented as part of the 5 year plan, disaster struck almost immediately as those important demographers and statisticians who were required in order to predict and create an effective distribution of food among urban and rural areas were noticeably gone from the CCP.
In the wake of the Great Leap Forward, massive famine, a huge drop in the Chinese GDP and millions of deaths came due to the stubborn insistence of Mao and his refusal to acknowledge the problems associated with the daunting task of collectivization. Within the context of Chinese culture, the Great Leap Forward cast an enormous shadow on both the ability and competency of the CCP. Though a staunch ardent base of supporters still existed, the devastation of the Chinese rural areas combined with the famines that essentially marked rural communes for death did little to engender a positive response. In today’s official record, China still has issues retaining legitimacy due to the misstep of Mao. I believe that “60/40” became the commentary on Mao as a leader, 60% right, 40% wrong. Interestingly despite the Great Leap Forwards being an abject failure, Mao still remained well liked amongst the Chinese people. Until the time of his death and the fracturing of the CCP during the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s reputation (at the time) remained relatively solid.
However by the mid-60s, the failures of rapid collectivization along with the dismissals of Peng Dehuai and the rather suspicious death of Lin Biao, both prominent and decorated military leaders who were popular amongst the Chinese people began to raise questions on the consistency of the CCP and by extension Mao. By 1966 and the sudden upsurge of the Cultural Revolution, the revival of ardent supporters of Mao cause a few problems within the Chinese Communist Party. Though it secured the position of Mao within party politics, the Cultural Revolution also saw a slew of violence for “party disobedience” as well as an overt and open repudiation of traditional rural Chinese beliefs. By the end of the Cultural Revolution and the rise of the Gang of Four after Mao’s death China witnessed a mass destruction of both religious and cultural sites across the country as a response to members of the youth who saw the traditional order as something to be reviled. In terms of damage done to the existing landscape of Chinese history, the Cultural Revolution massively diminished the remaining historical pieces that remained within China. In the long term view the removal of Peng Dehuai and Lin Biao cast serious doubts on Mao. Prior to the removal of the very popular Lin Biao, most of the historical narrative of the CCP remained unrectified. Regardless of the WWII narratives disagreeing, the post-1949 narrative remained fairly constant. However afterwards, the narrative became increasingly complicated. Not only did the CCP need to contend with rationales behind the failure of collectivization, but also the removal of popular party members and the slated successor of Mao (Lin Biao) drew the attention of the common Chinese citizen. For the common person the commune system post Great Leap Forwards, became a matter of life and death, the system of categorization between rural and urban communes dictated supplies and more importantly food allocations which were never sufficient for rural populations due to the optimistic predictions of pre-1959 grain production. Though the rural areas recover, by the 1970s and 1980s much of the desires for collectivization saw an increasing resistance from more conservative members of the party as well as more conservative citizens who saw the previous generation suffer at the behest of the CCP and saw their traditional cultural identity attacked by leftist intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution.
From a more basic observation, Mao essentially created the conditions necessary for the repudiation of collectivism within China. Though he attempted for 20 years to establish communes across China, much of the commune’s success and survival depended on concessions introduced by many party members, like Zhou Enlai who argued for a limited capitalistic barter system for a transition into communism. On a larger scale the radical revolutionary left that Mao encouraged ended up failing to achieve its goals. Instead the conservative and moderate parties prevailed ultimately succeeding the Gang of Four in 1976 spearheaded by Deng Xiaoping. The ultimate irony of Mao’s impact is that despite creating a socialistic system that guaranteed both a job and care from the government (termed fondly as “iron rice bowls”), the subsequent conservative backlash ended the systems by the 1980s with the slow but “controlled” introduction of market capitalism under Deng. I’ll offer that Today’s China sees more of an impact from the “decollectivization” instituted by Deng and carried on by his successors than the legacy of Mao. By 1989 most of the more liberal left in China faded away, facing a large and severe backlash from decades of being in power. Despite this, Mao’s legacy still plays an important part in the role of succession and the legitimacy of Chinese Communist Party. Considering the Communist by name and Capitalist by practice nature of the CCP, Mao’s most obvious impact aside from the destruction of history from the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forwards can be seen in the historical accounts of the CCP by the CCP. Even now China has difficulty reconciling a leader who urged and failed to implement massive collectivization amidst a current government that seeks the opposite. Though economically the common Chinese citizen saw improvements with de-collectivization, the removal of the order instituted through the “iron rice bowls” saw a generation of Chinese who faced difficulty adjusting from almost 30 years of collectivization to subsequent liberalizations of the Chinese economy.
I’ll be happy to address more questions as this question is enormous and I’m certain I missed some stuff.
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