The battle for China's past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Debating the Cultural Revolution

Introduction: who is writing history and who are the Chinese?

The haojie discourse and the Cultural Revolution

Violence, brutality and causes

Constructive policies

Destruction of Chinese culture and tradition

Cultural Revolution and cultural creativity

What is the Enlightenment?

2. Constructing history: memories, values and identity

Introduction: speech act of identification

From the wounded to the mentalite: the re-rehearsal of May Fourth

Be American citizens in thinking

Sinological orientalism

Two whateverism

The politics of joining the civilized world

Media agenda and identification with the West

Memoirs, values and identification

The intellectual-business-political complex in contemporary China

Conclusion: memories, identity, knowledge and truth

3. Constructing history: memoirs, autobiographies and biographies in Chinese

Introduction: scope and rationale

Memoirs, autobiographies and biographies in Chinese: a literature survey

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth

Some common themes on Mao and the Cultural Revolution

Memories as history

Conclusion: discourse, narratives and memories

4. Mao, The Unknown Story: an intellectual scandal

Introduction hyper-promotion of a book

Scholarship, what scholarship?

Misleading claims and absurd explanations

Further evidence of 'scholarship'

Further evidence of flaws and misleading claims

Logical inconsistency within the text

Mao, China's Hitler and Stalin

Fairy tale and how scholarship changes

Does it matter?

It does not matter so long as the politics is right

5. Mao: the known story and the logic of denial

Introduction: Mao the known story, a general outline

Evidence of the known story

So what was the problem?

The famine death toll

The economy in the Mao era

The yardstick of Hitler: a favourite European comparison

Mao's personality: the known story

The logic of denial of the known story

Academic reception

Revolution: from farewell to burial

Furet and the French Revolution

Is revolution inevitable?

An alternative model of development

6. How a medical doctor doctors history: a case study of Li Zhisui

Introduction; expatriate Chinese memories - a literary phenomenon

Memories and the politics of knowledge production

The book

Knowledge gap

Knowledge production and the market

The logic of the differences in two versions

Who is to be fooled and why?

Protests from the insiders

Was Li Mao's personal physician?

How much did the doctor know?

What did the medical doctor know about politics?

The politics of sex

History as doctored by the doctor and his US mentors: a critical analysis

Conclusion: history what history?

7. Challenging the hegemony: contrary narratives in the e-media (I) - Mao and the Cultural Revolution

Introduction: emerging contrary narratives

Media effect, public space and e-media

Ma Yinchu, population control and elite attitudes

The credibility of Li Rui

Challenging the late-Mao thesis

Challenging Jung Chang and Jon Halliday

Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and the Great Leap Forward

Debates on issues related to the Cultural Revolution

Disagreement between Mao and Liu Shaoqi: the two-line struggle thesis

Other unofficial views of the Cultural Revolution

Sea change of attitudes

Wang Xizhe the dissident

Kong Qingdong and the cowshed

Memoirs of different narratives

Challenging Wang Youqin

Conclusion: the question of truth

8. Challenging the hegemony: contrary narratives in the e-media (II) - the Mao era

Introduction: history in socioeconomic context

The state of the economy in the Mao era and during the Cultural Revolution

Manufacturing truth

Signs of a re-evaluation of Jiang Qing

The issues of health care and education

A re-evaluation of Kang Sheng?

The Chinese themselves say so

Manufacturing truth and e-media counter-action

The legacy of Mao and the e-media

Conclusion: voices from the bottom for a battle that has just begun

9. The problem of the rural-urban divide in pursuit of modernity: values and attitudes

Introduction: the year 2003

The rise of China, but the risk of collapse

The urban-rural divide

Three stories of rural pain

Rural Chinese: beasts of burden on whom modernity is built

The rural-urban divide: values and attitudes

Post-Mao reforms: myths versus reality

Conclusion: the state and the countryside

10. The battle of China's history: seeing the past from the present

Introduction: a little incident

Three questions about the post-Mao reforms

Is China a capitalist country? And does it matter?

Capitalism with Chinese characteristics?

White cat, black cat: the argument of efficiency versus fairness

Seeing the past from the present: a hole in the discursive hegemony

Conclusion: truth and belief values of socialism and China's future direction

Truth and belief values of a political discourse

Truth and belief value of exploiting the peasantry

Do the values of socialism matter?

Learning from past failures

The socialist truth and belief value of land ownership

The socialist truth and belief value of labour law

The socialist truth and belief values of healthcare and education

The battie of China's history

China's future direction

Notes

Glossary of Chinese terms and names

Bibliography

Index