The Battle For China's Past

Mobo Gao

Description

--Shows that the Mao era was benficial for most Chinese citizens--



"A powerful mixture of political passion and original research, a brave polemic against the fashionable view on China. ... Aims a knockout blow at Jung Chang’s recent book on Mao, which Bush and the conservatives rave-reviewed." Gregor Benton, Professor of Chinese History, University of Cardiff



"This important book opens a much needed window onto Chinese perceptions of the country's post-Mao direction. ... Highlights the renewal of popular support for socialism and the growing opposition to contemporary state policies."

Martin Hart-Landsberg, Professor of Economics, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon



Mao and his policies have long been demonised in the West, with the Cultural Revolution considered a fundamental violation of human rights.



As China embraces capitalism, the Mao era is being surgically denigrated by the Chinese political and intellectual elite. This book tackles the extremely negative depiction of China under Mao in recent publications and argues most people in China, including the rural poor and the urban working class, actually benefited from Mao's policy of a comprehensive welfare system for the urban and basic health and education provision for the rural, which is being reversed in the current rush towards capitalism.



By a critical analysis of the mainstream account of the Mao era and the Cultural Revolution and by revealing what is offered in the unofficial e-media debates this book sets the record straight, making a convincing argument for the positive effects of Mao's policies on the well-being of the Chinese people.
Introduction

1. Debating the Cultural Revolution

2. Constructing History: Memories, Values and Identity

3. Constructing History: Memoirs, Autobiographies and Biographies in Chinese

4. Mao, the Unknown Story: An Intellectual Scandal

5. Mao: the Known Story and the Logic of Denial

6. How a Medical Doctor Doctors History: A Case Study of Li Zhisui

7. Challenging the Hegemony: Contrary Narratives in the E-Media (I)-Mao and the Cultural Revolution

8. Challenging the Hegemony: Contrary Narratives in the E-Media (II)-the Mao Era

9. The Problem of Rural-Urban Divide in Pursuit of Modernity: Values and Attitudes

10. Battle of China's history: Seeing the Past from the Present

Conclusion Truth and Belief Values of Socialism and China's Future Direction

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Histoire
• History of Asia
• History
• Asia
• China

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 février 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783716012
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’S PAST
The Battle for China’s Past
Mao and the Cultural Revolution
Mobo Gao
First published 2008 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin‘s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Mobo Gao 2008
The right of Mobo Gao to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 2781 5 hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 2780 8 paperback ISBN 978 1 7837 1601 2 ePub ISBN 978 1 7837 1602 9 Mobi
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Curran Publishing Services, Norwich
Simultaneously Printed on Demand in the European Union by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
To my father Gao Renfa and mother Jiang Yuanrong, whose whole lives were devoted to the well-being of their children .
To those who sacrificed their lives for the improvement of living conditions of the poor and the disadvantaged .
Contents

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 mentalité: 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 battle of China’s history
 
China’s future direction
 
Notes
 
Glossary of Chinese terms and names
 
Bibliography
 
Index
Acknowledgements

This book has been in process for several years and has been the result of discussions with and feedback from many friends and colleagues. I take this opportunity to thank all of those who cannot be named here.
I would also like to thank Martin Hart-Landsberg, who made detailed comments and extensive suggestions after reading the whole draft, and Greg Benton, who has also read the whole draft and gave valuable suggestions and advice. Their help has had an essential impact on the final product, though of course they are not responsible for the errors and mistakes.
I would also like to thank Yan Hairong, who never fails to give her support, either scholarly, or personally, and Kaz Ross, who went through the draft at one go and made valuable comments and suggestions.
I would also like to express my appreciation of the anonymous reviewers for their support of this book and for their suggestions for improvement.
I of course must thank David Castle, the commissioning editor of Pluto Press. David is not only quick, decisive, and most professional, but also extremely supportive, always ready to accept any author’s suggestions that may be beneficial in bringing the publication to fruition. The team at Pluto Press has to be acknowledged to be thoroughly professional as well as highly sympathetic.
Introduction

In 2004 at a friend’s party I met a Mr Chen, an energetic recent migrant from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in his late fifties. Chen works for a profitable company in Australia and his main task is selling timber products to China; he mentioned to me that he was in the process of signing a large deal. Chen was confident that in 20 years time China would overtake Japan economically and he talked about how China has been developing fast and so on. In order to quell what I thought was an unbalanced enthusiasm, I mentioned that China was not a high-tech producer, but just a place for foreign companies to exploit cheap labour – the assembling factory of the world. I pointed out to him the fast-emerging social inequalities: that a rural migrant worker may have to work 16 or more hours a day for seven days a week to earn about US$80 a month, and that perhaps this is not something that can be called ‘development’. Chen replied: ‘$80 is good enough for a peasant.’
I could not help but ask: ‘Would you accept that kind of payment and life?’
‘That is not the same. Tamen suzhi di [they are low quality people],’ he said.
Then the topic turned to what I was going to do in China for my research. I said I would like to go back to Gao Village area to find out what the rural people think of the Cultural Revolu