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

CHALLENGING THE HEGEMONY II
previous monopoly of the media by the political and elite intelligentsia
has been broken. The third reason has much to do with the legacy of
Maoism. The ideas of Mao and the staging of the Cultural Revolution
actually trained and prepared many people, who were young and
idealistic at that time, to think and reflect critically about political and
social issues. Some of this ‘Cultural Revolution-generated thinking
generation’ have become dissidents and anti-communists. But there
are some who do not oppose communism for the sake of opposing and
do not embrace capitalism as an ideological crusade. These are the
people who have begun to raise their voices by questioning every
accepted aspect of the manufactured truth.
Conclusion: voices from the bottom for a battle that has just
begun
The e-media have provided a space for voices that cannot be heard
through the conventional media. As I have acknowledged, many of the
claims by the e-media debate participants may be erroneous and many
of their arguments are unsubstantiated. For instance, recently a person
using the pen-name Zuo Ke (2006) went as far as to argue that the Mao
era was the golden period for China’s development of the computer
industry. To fully engage in this issue alone would require a booklength
study. By presenting their voices I do not intend to argue that
only their voices represent the truth. Instead, I wish to show that the
hegemony of the official discourse on the Cultural Revolution and the
Mao era has been challenged by these voices. If we don’t want to listen
to these voices, many Chinese will.
Apart from uncoordinated contributions along these lines in
various blogs, bulletin board systems, websites and chatrooms, there
are a number websites that are specifically designed to counteract the
Chinese political and elite intelligentsia’s monopoly of the mainstream
conventional media and interpretation of history. In the resurrected
Chinese Workers Net, for instance, most of the published pieces were
positive about the Mao era and critical of the post-Mao reform. Here
are few headlines as illustrations:
• Whose is thorough democracy? Of course it was Mao’s big
democracy.
• Compared with now, the pre-reform welfare was great.
• Forever remembering.
• Regarding workers from rural China and care for work injuries:
the collective had the strength to protect us.
• Memory of an old coal miner: we had the best of times in production
and coal mining safety.
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