Two Years of the Cultural Revolution

Abstract

For two years now, China has been in the grip of an unprecedented political fever. Millions of young people, workers and peasants have been involved in passionate demonstrations and bitter clashes, even in the most distant regions. Nevertheless, the rival groups which, we are told, are at each other's throats still proclaim their fidelity to the same man, Mao Tse-tung, and to the same Party, the Chinese CP. The popular Press has given us little help in solving the puzzle this battle represents. Its taste for sensationalism, and-particularly in the United States-its hostility towards Chinese Communism, have led it to put the limelight on "shattering" items of news, even when they seemed hardly possible or even obviously false, and to draw the conclusion that civil war was imminent in China. The Chinese leaders' motives were clear: jealousy, spite and ambition; as for the masses of demonstrators, they were merely passive instruments in the hands of the new "war-lords" who were re-emerging inside the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party itself.