Battle for China's Past : Mao and the Cultural Revolution

THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
output of iron and steel in 1958 should be double the 5.35 million tons
produced in 1957 (Chen Xiaonong 2006: 181–4, Bo Yibo 1997: 706–7). Li
Rui, the self-proclaimed secretary of Mao (more of him in another chapter)
on the other hand, choses not to reveal these suggestions of Bo Yibo’s
in his influential A Record of the Lushan Conference (Li Rui 1994) because
that would weaken the anti-Mao thesis of his book.
Mao must be held principally responsible for the Great Leap
Forward disaster since he not only was at the centre of the policymaking
process (MacFarquhar 1974–1997) but also encouraged the
Leap from co-ops to the commune system and even bullied Zhou Enlai
and Deng Zihui (Teiwes and Sun 1999) for their initial cautious attitudes.
However, documentary evidence (see discussion in other
chapters) and recently available testimonials do suggest that the
picture is much more complex than what is usually presented as in Li
Rui (1994) and Alfred Chan (2001). It is certainly not as simple as
Nathan wants us to believe.
Of course, there was a power struggle within the CCP, as there is a
power struggle in any political institution, past or present, oriental or
occidental. Like any politician, Mao wanted power and control.
However, to reduce everything to personal power and control not only
lacks insight but is actually naïve and fanciful. To reduce every event
or policy change to a personal power struggle is exactly what Li does.
For instance, the fact that Mao was critical of Khrushchev’s secret
report denouncing Stalin is interpreted as Mao’s attempt to maintain
the need for a personality cult and to avoid the potential danger of his
being demoted. This kind of interpretation is infantile. As a leader of
the largest communist party in the world, Mao’s criticism of
Khrushchev was not only not personal but also logical and consistent.
Personally, Mao should have felt vindicated by Khrushchev’s denunciation
of Stalin, who had never really trusted him. From Mao’s point of
view, Stalin could and should be criticized, but the criticism must be
constructive. Mao actually thought that a correct evaluation of Stalin
should be 70 per cent positive and 30 per cent negative. For many this
judgement did not do enough to condemn Stalin’s brutality and
reflected Mao’s identification with Stalin’s murderous ways of dealing
with his political rivals. But the matter was far more complex than that.
Pragmatically Mao’s defence of Stalin was a tactical defence for the
sake of the strategic cause of communism. In Mao’s view, Khrushchev’s
denunciation of Stalin would seriously damage the cause of Communism
all over the world. Subsequent events proved that Mao was right.
Theoretically, he had serious ideological disagreement with Khrushchev.
To start with, he did not agree with Khrushchev’s argument that peaceful
transition from capitalism to communism was possible. Furthermore,
Khrushchev had not the intellectual capacity to entertain the Maoist idea
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