Many westerners were bewildered by Chairman Mao’s absence in the Olympic Opening Ceremony. This showed the West can not make sense of modern China. This also showed that there is still a long way to go for the Chinese and the west to fully understand each other. Liying Zhang writes.

The Little Red Notebook and the Mao Zedong's headshot on Australian newspapers were recurring images during the Beijing Olympic Games.

Not surprisingly, until arriving at the Beijing Olympic Village, many athletes and even journalists thought that their Chinese sporting rivals were still reciting The Little Red Notebook everyday before training.

The west is late in accurately decoding Chinese ideology. So the western world did not understand why the history-telling Olympic Opening Ceremony didn't mention Chairman Mao.

The omission is a natural choice in accord with Chinese thought but a leap of Communist faith according to the stereotypical western view.

When China refuses to eulogize democracy but rather insist on calling itself Communist, the west regards Chinese people as red in behavior and stubborn in mindset. Therefore, the cult of Mao, the Cultural Revolution, and the Great Leap Forward became China's images absorbed by the western world.

By this reasoning, the west has failed to explain China's agile performance in economic reforms. Unlike the western assumption, the Chinese are born sensitive to politics and economy, under whatever name, Communism or Capitalism.

The ability to be flexible is evident in the modern history of China, including Mao's rule from 1949 to 1976 and the successful economic reforms after 1978.

To the west, the cult of Mao was an inexplicable puzzle. How could the Chinese be that foolish?

China had a splendid economic and cultural history until 1840, the infamous First Opium War. However, from then to 1949 when Mao received his mandate, China was continuously invaded by foreigners. There was a ubiquitous feeling that the Chinese nation was subjugated, repeatedly, by everyone in an entire century.
Not because of Mao's position as a prominent Communist but his uncompromising stand in kicking out all the foreigners, Mao was respected as the symbol of dignity of the Chinese nation.

But there was a problem. The blind worship of Mao brought series and disastrous consequences during the 1950s up to 1970s. The door for communicating with the rest of the world was shut down.

Inside China, people were brainwashed in a twisted way, repeatedly hearing that people in the western countries were living in capitalists' naked exploitation. And Mao was constructed as the savior.

It is imaginable that if repeating a statement often enough, eventually people believe it especially in a lack of any other information source.

As soon as Mao died, Chinese people began questioning his legacy.

When Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978, he just put a quick end to any discussion by declaring that Mao's legacy was 70% positive and 30% negative. Shortly, the whole nation focused on the economy. Deng Xiaoping said: "To get rich is glorious." And "It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice."

But why do the Chinese refuse to accept western political democracy?

It is not an irony that China still calls itself Communist but a form of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Political revolutions generally bring more confrontation than peace. And peace brings prosperity. This understanding of peace is the essence of Chinese culture.
Moreover, with a series of successful reforms under the name of Socialism, the non-democratic Chinese regime works far better than the US-dominated so called "democratic system".

After three decades of isolation, the Chinese suddenly realized the wide economic gap between the East and the West. On one hand, it was once a shock to the Chinese and the only reaction is to adapt as soon as possible.

On the other hand, the west has been used to ignoring the existence of China for a long time, let alone the change of thought of the Chinese.

Reasonably, when China declared its return to the world stage as a going-to-be superpower by the stunning Olympic Opening, the west was not that surprised as the Chinese commodity has already been part of daily life.

To a certain extent, the west is scornful of digging the complex Chinese philosophy. Besides criticizing the garbage in Chinatowns around the world, what many westerners interest is the cheap stuff "MADE IN CHINA".

The west's mindset was set by the western media catering for the west's comfort, seeing China's booming as a threat.

By this preset tone, the western media are used to portraying the Chinese Communist Party as a shadowy organization that controls everything and oppresses opponents, and the Tibetans, for example, as pitiful victims.

The Chinese are eager to be understood. But there is still a long way to go for the Chinese and the west to fully understand each other.