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

THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
In the context of evaluating the Cultural Revolution, this chapter,
like the previous one, further appraises the post-Mao reforms. In such
an appraisal the issue of whether life is better for the Chinese in
general at the beginning of the twenty-first century will be dealt with
briefly. The chapter then asks how far and in what way China has
‘gone capitalist’. It will also examine whether and how Maoist socialist
legacies still matter in China. Finally, the chapter finishes with a brief
discussion of how ordinary workers and farmers see the Mao era in
comparison to what has been happening since the post-Mao reforms
Three questions about the post-Mao reforms
When talking about the achievements of the post-Mao reforms, it is
often taken for granted by the media that life for people in present-day
China is better than it has ever been. But there are people such as the
unemployed, the sick, the weak and millions and millions of rural
people who would argue that by the beginning of the twenty-first
century life has deteriorated to its worst point in the history of the
PRC. This discrepancy of opinion reflects not only the growing socioeconomic
stratification of contemporary Chinese society but also
differences in beliefs and values.
Most prominent Chinese CCP leaders, from Zhou Enlai to Deng
Xiaoping and from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao, are nationalists rather
than communists, and their overwhelming aspiration has been to
make China strong and wealthy. Like many revolutionaries in developing
countries, political radicalism for many Chinese revolutionaries
was a means to an end of national unity and a wealthy China. If market
capitalism is the way to achieve this end, then by all means go for it.
Mao too was a Chinese nationalist. However, it can be argued that
for Mao national unity and national wealth were not just ends in themselves.
Mao was a post-Lenin Marxist who wanted to open up a path
for new politics (Badiou 2005, Bosteels 2005). Some ideas experimented
with during the Cultural Revolution were Maoist attempts to create
new subjectivity (Wang Hui 2006). Maoism, including many of the
ideas of the Cultural Revolution, contributed to the imagination of
modernity without capitalism (Amin 2006). It can be argued that the
rationale of the Cultural Revolution is that cultural transformation is
crucial to the consolidation of social and political change (Dirlik 2006).
Deng, on the other hand, would embrace any way, black cat or white
cat, in order to make China strong and wealthy. Thus, there is a crucial
difference between Mao’s vision and what Deng Xiaoping wanted to
see in China. Even in terms of material civilization it is not unequivocally
clear that China is stronger and wealthier at the beginning of the
twenty-first century. Yes China is wealthier, but not necessarily
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