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

THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
antithesis of Western values of democracy and freedom, they would
argue), also denounce the Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping, for
instance, confessed that it is difficult to say anything good about the
Cultural Revolution because he suffered too much (Zhai 2006). I would
argue that these Chinese officials endorse the attack on the Cultural
Revolution not just because they were personally attacked during the
period, but because they actually identify with a set of values that were
different from those of the Cultural Revolution.
It is true that the CCP power holders of Deng’s generation were also
proponents and practitioners of the theory of class struggle. They came
to denounce the Cultural Revolution only after they became the
victims of that theory. However, that does not mean they are anti-
Western. They are certainly not against market capitalism. Deng
Xiaoping and many like him were not really Marxists but basically
revolutionary nationalists who wanted to see China standing on equal
terms with the great global powers. They were primarily nationalists
and they participated in the Communist revolution because that was
the only viable route they could find to Chinese nationalism. The two
themes of nationalism and class struggle worked together well before
1949 (Dong 2006). But after 1949, the two themes could not fit together
so well. For Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping class struggle was more a
means to an end of achieving national unity and dignity. Once that
goal had been accomplished the class struggle theme of the Marxist
paradigm became irrelevant and the class struggle of the Maoist paradigm
was seen as disastrously erroneous. The theme of national unity
meant that political control had to remain tight, or democratic reform
would lead to national disintegration. The theme of national dignity
meant that China’s economy needed to catch up with that of the West.
Therefore, to embrace market capitalism was a natural course of action
for them. What happened after the death of Mao proved this beyond
dispute.
To conclude this chapter let us reiterate that, as Ricoeur majestically
argues, there are not only repressed memories (more discussion on this
in a later chapter), but also manipulated memories and forced memories.
Both memory and forgetfulness are subject to an intense
manipulation by power. The power that manipulates memories can be
that which suppresses certain kind of memories while promoting
certain others. It is certainly in the interest of those in power within the
CCP to promote the telling of bitterness and to ban memories that
show the positive side of the Cultural Revolution.
What happened in 1985 in Xianyang of Shaanxi province is a telling
example of this interest. A poster was put up on a wall on Northwest
Cotton Factory No 1 in a very busy district. The title of the poster is
Wenhua da geming hao (The Cultural Revolution was Good). In the
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