Xi, Mao, and China’s Search for a Usable Past

Since its founding, the United States has had understandable pride in its great achievements, but also has had to reckon with its complex moral history—beginning but hardly ending with the fact that our original Constitution accepted the evil of slavery and the terrible suffering of millions of American slaves until a horrific civil war ended the practice of slavery in the 1860s. China today is experiencing its own process of reckoning with its history, revealed in fascinating ways late last month during the official celebration of the 120th birthday of Mao Zedong.