Editors' Introduction

Abstract

The death of Mao Tse-tung last year has brought to the surface, both in China and abroad, questions regarding the future of the Chinese Revolution. Mao himself pondered these questions at length. In this issue of Chinese Law and Government, we have selected eleven speeches and conversations in which Mao expressed his views on Party unity and discipline and on training revolutionary successors. That four of the first five selections, spanning the years 1953 to 1957, are taken from the recently published fifth volume of Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung† is an indication that the issues of Party unity and discipline and of training revolutionary successors remain matters of concern to the Chinese leadership today. For Mao, the problem of succession went beyond the designation of a political heir. In his view, the key to the future of the revolution lay in tapping the contradiction between a strong political leadership and the energy of the politicized masses; a Communist Party, tempered by democratic centralism, would be juxtaposed to millions of young people imbued with both technological expertise and acute political consciousness. The selections included in this issue span the years 1953 to 1968, from the beginning of socialist transformation to the last tremors of the Cultural Revolution. These speeches and conversations fall roughly into three chronological clusters; the mid- 1950s when China set out on an independent path to socialism, the mid- 1960s when China split decisively with the Soviet Union, and the late 1960s during the Cultural Revolution. Together these documents demonstrate Mao's continuous and developing concern about the future of China's Revolution.