China's Cultural Revolution

By Michael Schoenhals

Seven papers of which all are eventually to be published in some form were presented and discussed at the workshop. On the first day, keynote speaker Roderick MacFarquhar, Harvard University, summarized the findings discussed in greater detail in his long-awaited and now completed third volume of The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. He was followed by Niu Dayong, Peking University, who addressed the issue of the cold war origins of the Cultural Revolution. In a panel dealing with workers in the Cultural Revolution, Andrew Walder, Harvard University, and Elizabeth Perry, University of California, Berkeley, spoke about the Cultural Revolution in China's factories and in Shanghai in particular. The day ended with the showing of a selection of Chinese documentary films from the late 1960s held in the Center for Pacific Asia archive.
The second day began with a presentation by Yin Hongbiao, Peking University, who discussed the main tendencies in the Red Guard movement. He was followed by Sebastian Heilmann, Institut für Asienkunde. Hamburg, who analysed the popular turning away from the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1970s. The final paper of the workshop, by Michael Schoenhals was entitled "The CCP Case Examination Group (1966-1079)" and dealt with Mao Zedong's persecution of his perceived political enemies. The workshop ended with a round-table presentation and critical discussion of ongoing academic research on the Cultural Revolution. It was observed that while conditions for scholarly research on the Cultural Revolution remain somewhat adverse inside China, they have never been better outside the country. A number of documentation and research centres at universities in Europe and the United States now hold impressive collections of material that scholars twenty years ago could have only dreamed of accessing. An informal international network of Chinese and Western historians of the Cultural Revolution utilizing these collections is taking shape.