In the history of global Communism, the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) remains one of the most fascinating and controversial episodes even today. In no other Communist country did the leader of the ruling party call the masses to rebel against the bureaucracy the way Mao Zedong did in the autumn of 1966. An important strand of Western scholarship on the Cultural Revolution has focused on elite conflicts in the central party leadership between Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi. Scholars who have carried out research at the local level have seen the Cultural Revolution mainly through the lenses of the Red Guard Movement in Beijing in 1966, depicting it as a generational conflict between radical students and veteran cadres. According to these studies, the major split inside the movement was between “conservatives” and “rebels,” who protected or attacked the status quo of power relations.
Andrew Walder is among the scholars who...