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

THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
and beliefs. In other words, the way we conceptualize ourselves in the
present frames our perception of the past. This book analyses the present
values and beliefs of those remembering and retelling the past, and
examines the way that these values and beliefs frame our understanding
of the past.
Of course there are always a variety of values and beliefs at any
given time in any society. But there is always one set that is actually
dominant. Regarding the Mao era there is currently a two-faceted
dominant conceptualization, with one facet that is external to China
and one that is internal to it, each interacting with the other. The
external facet is the rise to predominance of neoliberalism immediately
before and after the collapse of the alternative existing ‘communist’
model of human development. The triumph of the capitalist market
economy is the broad conceptualization that frames our understanding
and interpretation of our world and ourselves. The internal facet is the
farewell to revolution, and therefore the necessity of denouncing the
Cultural Revolution totally and thoroughly. The dominant discursive
hegemony of neoliberalism (Wang Hui 2004) and the worldwide
conversion to capitalism led to the total denigration of the Cultural
Revolution, Mao the man and the times he so directly influenced, and
finally, of the whole idea of populist revolution.
This book presents a different conceptualization from that of the
neoliberal hegemony, and from its total denigration of the Maoist
legacy. Obviously, the book does not attempt to argue that there was
nothing wrong with the era of Mao. Nor does it attempt to argue that
Mao was not responsible for any of the problems and disasters in
China under his leadership. It does not attempt to deny that there was
violence and brutality inflicted upon millions of people in the name of
revolution. Instead, this work attempts to demonstrate that there are
other possible interpretations, other evidence and other arguments
than the dominant ones.
Take the case of the Great Leap Forward as an example. There has
been a continuous debate about the death toll of the resulting famine,
with scholarly estimates ranging from 18 million to about 30 million
deaths, but with recent estimates by an e-media participant as low as
200,000. So the claim by Chang and Halliday (2005) that Mao murdered
38 million people, and other claims that he was only partially responsible
and that the death tolls were much smaller, need to be reconsidered.
There are now so many different interpretations of the Great Leap
Forward and Mao’s part in it that they need to be re-evaluated.
Clearly, one’s values and beliefs orientate one’s direction of understanding
and even one’s selection of evidence for an argument or
premise. The Cultural Revolution discourse is a prime example. For
many Chinese government officials and members of the intelligentsia
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