The challenge of academic writing for Chinese students within ...

Maoism
One of the most influential philosophies in Modern China is ‗Mao Zedong Thought‘ 4 or
Mao‘s philosophy. Drawn from Marxism ideology, ‗Mao Zedong Thought‘ was formed out
of the complex situations of communist revolution and social reformations in Modern China
(Dirlik, 1997, p.593). Mao‘s philosophy is manifested in his two major philosophical essays:
On Practice (1937), and On Contradiction (1937). Two main ideas that emerged from these
two essays are the integration of knowledge and practice, and ‗unity of opposites‘. There is a
degree of resemblance between Mao‘s epistemology and Neo-Confucianism. Like Neo-
Confucianist teaching, Mao‘s ideas value the importance of action and practice to the
acquisition of true knowledge. But Mao‘s provides a dialectical materialist grounding to the
idea of the unity of knowledge and practice - ‗Man‘s knowledge‘, according to Mao (1937),
‗depends mainly on his activity in material production.‘ In On Practice (1937), Mao
articulates
Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice verify and develop
the truth. Start from perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into rational
knowledge; then start from rational knowledge and actively guide revolutionary
practice to change both the subjective and the objective world. Practice,
knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. This form repeats itself in
endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to
a higher level. Such is the whole of the dialectical materialist theory of
knowledge, and such is the dialectical theory of the unity of knowing and doing.
(On Practice, 1937)
It is a ‗scientific theory‘ of integration (Zhang & Li, 1997, p.643) that Mao has contributed to
the understanding of relations between knowledge and practice.
The ideology of contradiction - ‗the unity of opposites‘ enunciated in Mao‘s On
Contradiction (1937) further enhanced Mao‘s recognition of practice being a major driving
force towards knowledge (Hawkins, 1974). Contradiction is universal and particular; human
knowledge is attained through the process of cognition – ‗from the particular [essence of
many different things] to the general (common essence of things) and then from the general
to the particular‘ (On Contradiction, 1937).
4 It is worth noting that ‗Mao Zedong Thought‘ should be distinguished from ‗Mao‘s philosophy/thought‘; ‗Mao
Zedong Thought‘ is the official designation for Maoism or Chinese Marxism, which is a set of collective
thoughts of Mao Zedong, teachings of Mao Zedong, and Mao‘s writings. ‗Mao‘s philosophy‘ refers to the
philosophical thought of Mao, which is a produce of Mao the individual.
28