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

CONSTRUCTING HISTORY
ownership. Yu Guangyuan, an eminent political economist, argues that
China needs market economy and that if there is a dispute on this it is
not a dispute between socialism and capitalism but a dispute between
the advanced and the backward (Zhang Hengzhi 2006). Li Yining,
another influential economist, argues not only that to aim an equal end
result for everyone in human society is wrong, but also that to create
an equal starting point for every one is not possible. Instead, China
should make use of the value of division of labour in a family: the elder
brother goes to college while the second brother works to support him.
Once you have this rationality then there is no sense of unfairness
(Zhang Deqin 2006). Mao Yushi and Xu Liangying argue that
modernization is Americanization, and globalization has to be on the
basis of Western civilization (Yiming 2003).
The intellectual–business–political complex in contemporary
China
Clearly, identification with liberal democracy and market capitalist
values is not just about an intellectual debate. Some of these intellectual
elite such as Li Yining have vast business and commercial
interests. Others such as Yu Guangyuan are think tank heavyweights
who give lectures to high-ranking party officials and draft policy
papers. Moreover, descendants of most of the top CCP officials from
Deng Xiaoping to Zhao Ziyang, and from Zhu Rongji to Jiang Zemin,
have US connections (more on these connections in later chapters).
It is therefore not surprising that publication outlets that are critical
of the Chinese government from the point of view of the left such as
中流 (Mainstay) and 真理的追求 (Pursuit of Truth) were banned. A
website 中国工人网 (Chinese workers net) set up in 2005 that
published the views and opinions of workers was banned in early
2006; the excuse for shutting down this workers’ net set up by some
poor workers was that they failed to pay the registration fee of 10
million RMB! 7
Conclusion: memories, identity, knowledge and truth
By arguing that memoirs and suku (telling of bitterness) of the Cultural
Revolution are constructing history I do not intend to argue that there
was no bitterness to tell. I only want to show how the telling is
constructed. My thesis that the narrative of the Cultural Revolution has
been closely connected with a speech act of political identity with
liberal democracy and market capitalist values may be criticized on the
basis that it is disproved by the fact that the majority of the Chinese
bureaucrats of the CCP, which is anti-Western and dictatorial (the very
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