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

such a scale take place simply as a result of a few power-struggle
conspiracies and personal plots and schemes? What were the guiding
ideas and social and economic practices involved? What were the policies?
What did millions and millions of Chinese do and think? What
were the values and beliefs during these years? What institutional
changes were carried out and why? The known story is full of answers
and explanations, as well as unanswered ones. Any attempt to remove
the known story from history should involve engagement with the
existing literature, so as to dispute or confirm what is already known
or can be known. But the co-authors of The Unknown Story do not do
this. As shown in Chapter 4 they do not even engage with their own
writings that have been published.
Evidence of the known story
In order to tell their unknown story Chang and Halliday have to ignore
the known story. For instance, Mao is accused of callousness and of not
caring about starving peasants during the hard years after the Great
Leap Forward. But the known story supported by documentary
evidence is that Mao did care. Apart from his personal decision not to
eat pork – a favourite food item for the Chinese and for Mao himself
(Quan Yanchi 1989) – Mao tried very hard to make policy changes to
rectify the situation. What I present below is the kind of evidence in the
known story that The Unknown Story ignores.
A letter
THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
On 31 October 1960 Zhou Enlai sent a policy letter addressing the issue
of the collective system for Mao to approve. The policy letter titled Dui
zhongyang guanyu renmin gongshe dangqian zhengce wenti de jinji zhishi
xin (An urgent letter of instruction by the CCP Central Committee
concerning the current policy problems of rural people’s communes)
was aimed at correcting some policies and practices that had been
proved to be detrimental to production and livelihoods during the
Great Leap Forward. Mao not only approved the letter but also made
extensive comments and corrections to make the letter more effective
and more ‘right wing’. I will give a brief analysis of these comments in
comparison with the original wording.
The original letter had twelve points to which Mao made six
comments. The first comment is that the letter should be sent to the
villages by telegram instead of ordinary post so that it would reach the
grassroots quicker. In the first point the original letter stated that the
system of using the production team as the basic accounting unit was
fundamental and therefore should be maintained. This was to counter
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