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

destruction of the collective system performed miracles. With this mind
set, they either ignored or pretended not to see the reality that could be
seen even by a discerning outsider. For instance, Unger (2002) points out
that more than 60 per cent of the increase in rural income between 1978
and 1982 was achieved before the commune system was dismantled and
that per capita rural income in 1990 (338 RMB) was barely higher than
in 1984 (336 RMB), and, quoting Scott Rozelle, another China specialist,
‘the 1990s witnessed much the same story’ (Unger 2002: 172).
China rural heartland
A sense of rural prosperity during the mid-1980s soon dissipated and
the rural Chinese had to become migrant workers to earn a living. Gao
Changxian, my brother in Gao Village, is an example of an ordinary
farmer in the grain belt area. He used to have a little shop in Gao
Village and, with his wife Gao Mingxia and three children of primary
school age, they managed well enough and were considered to be well
off in the village in the early 1990s. Gradually, as the children grew
bigger and more money was needed for education, the situation
became progressively worse. Most of the young villagers left and there
were not enough customers to keep the shop going. First Gao
Changxian’s wife left for Xiamen as a migrant worker and then his
second teenage daughter. Finally Gao Changxian himself also had to
head off for Xiamen. Being in their forties and having no qualifications,
it was very difficult for Gao Changxian and Gao Mingxia to leave two
children behind and to live as migrant workers in an urban structure
that treated rural people as non-citizens of their own country (Gao
2005). For the urban elite, Gao Changxian and his family, and all the
other rural migrants, are either quietly ignored or are seen as deserving
of their situation because they are lower-quality human beings and are
born to be beasts of burden for the benefit of high-quality people.
Migrant workers
THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
The dire circumstances of rural migrant workers have been ignored
until recently by the media. A major TV event in China since the
1980s has been the performance for the Spring Festival New Year’s
Eve titled Chunjie lianhuan wanhui (Spring Festival Nationwide Joint
Evening Performance). It is watched not only by the whole urban
nation but also by millions of ethnic Chinese overseas. It is so popular
and so much part of the contemporary Chinese cultural establishment
that the annual event is simply referred to as Chun wan (Spring
Evening). Usually the programme includes dancing, singing and
xiangsheng (a kind of stand-up cross-talk comedy routine), mostly by
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