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

THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
was so specific and strict that the wording was: ‘不但一吨不能少,
少一斤也不行’ (not a ton less of production is allowed, not even a half
kilogram less). When Deng toured the northeast in September 1958, he
made several passionate and rousing speeches to encourage Great
Leap Forward policies and to praise the newly established commune
system. Finally, though Deng did not participate in the Lushan
Conference to attack Peng he did publish an opinion piece in the CCP
mouthpiece Red Flag criticizing Peng and singing the praise of the
Great Leap Forward policies (Zhong Yanlin 2006).
Debates on issues related to the Cultural Revolution
In previous chapters, I have argued that Chinese memoirs, autobiographies
and biographies either assume or argue that Mao’s motivation
for the Cultural Revolution was a personal power struggle. All developments
subsequent to the downfall of Liu Shaoqi were more or less
explained by this power struggle thesis. Along these lines, the
campaign to criticize Lin Biao and Confucius in the early 1970s, for
instance, is said to be Mao’s scheme to overthrow Zhou Enlai.
However, e-media participants have begun to question the power
struggle thesis. In an article published in the e-media, Xiao Yu (2000)
quotes Fan Daren, one of the important polemics writers during the
above-mentioned campaign, to dispute the claim that the criticism of
Lin Biao and Confucius had anything to do with Mao’s intention to
target Zhou Enlai. Fan, the main writer in the team writing under the
pen-name of liangxiao (two universities), which consisted of academics
from the two top universities of Beijing and Qinghua, testifies that the
writers in the team did not intend to criticize Zhou Enlai when they
were writing articles to criticize Confucianism, that they were not told
to do so, nor was it even hinted that they should.
Disagreement between Mao and Liu Shaoqi: the two-line
struggle thesis
Because of the proclaimed ‘end of history’ and beginning of an new era
of clashes of civilizations, the intellectual consensus all over the world
seems to be that not only should the Russian and Chinese Revolutions
be jettisoned but that even the idea of revolution should be buried.
This global intellectual climate change has been so convincingly
persuasive that the two-line struggle thesis that was offered as the
rationale for the origin of the Cultural Revolution has been considered
largely discredited. The dispute between Liu and Mao is seen as
largely a personal power struggle. However, e-media participants in
China want to bring the issue of the two-line struggle back.
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