The Fate of the "New Born Things" of China's Cultural Revolution

Abstract

HE SO-CALLED Socialist New Born Things (she-hui chu-i hsin1Lsheng shih-wu) were supposed to be the lasting fruit of the Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, whose ideas dominated the period I966-76. They were not the only result of that great but finally abortive movement-for instance, the erosion of the judiciary system and the virtual freeze on industrial wages were never, to the author's knowledge, officially described as hsin-sheng shih-wu, but were just aspects of the Cultural Revolution. Nor was the concept of selfreliance (tzu-1i keng-sheng), with its xenophobic implications which, as is now officially acknowledged in China, held back the country's technological and economic progress in a drastic manner, although the Maoist slogan itself has not been thrown out. This article does not present a general review of the effects and fate of the entire Cultural Revolution, but discusses specifically what is nowadays being done to modify or dismantle the new born things which were identified as such. Many people in the outside world with an interest in China have found it hard to believe that Mao's favourite concepts can be largely discarded so soon after his death. The politically committed admirers of the Cultural Revolution need not be taken seriously into account from a scholarly point of view: the ranks of foreign Maoists have been split already into those who believe that the philosophy they admire is being perpetuated in China today by Hua Kuo-feng and Teng Hsiao-p'ing, and those who believe (as this writer does) that it is to a large extent being abandoned. There are, however, serious specialists who do not follow the current pronouncements of the Chinese media closely enough to realise the full extent of the dismantling, and for them this article may be useful. Much of it consists of specific quotations and references, with explanatory notes where necessary.