The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Yang Jisheng
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Under agricultural collectivization, everything produced by the peasants was purchased and marketed by the state, which managed industry and commerce and controlled all material goods. People relied on state allocation of everything they needed to sustain their lives.”
“Recognizing their vulnerability to the roiling populace beneath them, officials suppressed any hint of resistance, intensifying the alienation and opposition.”
“One Politburo meeting had an important topic to discuss, but before the meeting began, Jiang Qing raised a fuss, saying, 'Premier, you need to solve a serious problem for me, otherwise there will be real trouble!' Zhou Enlai asked, 'Comrade Jiang Qing, what is this serious problem?' Jiang Qing said, 'The toilet im my quarters is so cold that I can't use it in chilly weather - I'll catch the flu the moment I sit on it, and once I catch the flu, I can't go to see Chairman Mao for fear he'll catch it. Isn't this a serious matter?' Zhou Enlai said, 'How shall we deal with this? Shall I send someone to have a look at it after the meeting?' Jiang Qing found this unacceptable, saying, 'Premier, you lack class sentiment toward me; the class enemies are just waiting for me to die as soon as possible!' Zhou Enlai had no choice but to cancel the meeting and take us all over to Jiang Qing's quarters. Zhou Enlai looked at Jiang Qing's toilet and rubbed his chin thoughtfully without coming up with a solution. Finally he said, 'Comrade Jiang Qing, how about this: We don't have the technology to heat this toilet, but we could wrap the seat with insulating material, and also pad it with soft cloth, and that should solve the problem temporarily.' Jiang Qing agreed to this, and Zhou Enlai immediately told the Central Committee Secretariat to send someone over to deal with it.”
“On February 28, 1972, the Sino-U.S. Shanghai Communiqué was issued. It said, 'The United States believes that the effort to reduce tensions is served by improving communication between countries that have different ideologies so as to lessen the risks of confrontation through accident, miscalculation or misunderstanding ... Countries should treat each other with mutual respect and be willing to compete peacefully, letting performance be the ultimate judge. No country should claim infallibility and each country should be prepared to re-examine its own attitudes for the common good.”
“Most fundamental to social harmony is harmony between the social classes, and the key to harmony between the classes is social justice. That's why a society with a power market economy will never be harmonious. Fairness requires a new system that provides checks and balances on power and controls capital. Power must be caged by a constitution and operate within the confines of law. Capital needs to be controlled though a system that gives free rein to its positive aspects while controlling the danger its rapaciousness poses to society. The experience of humanity over the past two centuries has shown us that constitutional democracy is an effective system for applying checks and balances on power and controlling capital. That requires breaking through the modern version of 'Soviet learning as the base, Western learning for application' that serves as the guiding ideology of reform, carrying out political systemic reform, and enacting fundamental change to the bureaucratic system. Of course, this will take time and cannot happen overnight. Sudden change is dangerous, and peaceful evolution is more appropriate.”
“Minister of Public Security Xie Fuzhi approved an infantile demand by the Red Guards that traffic police replace their batons with Quotations of Chairman Mao, claiming that only Mao Zedong Thought could point people in the correct direction. Zhou Enlai managed to talk the Red Guards out of their demand to change traffic lights because red was the symbol of the revolution and should not be the color for obstructing progress. He and the commander of the Beijing Military Region, Zheng Weisan, were also able to convince the Red Guards to abandon their demand to march from west to east (i.e. away from capitalism) when being reviewed by Mao at Tiananmen Square, pointing out that reversing the direction would require Red Guards to salute Mao with their left hands and force Mao to look right rather than left from the gate tower.”
“It was the fundamental appraisal that the world had transitioned from the 'age of war and revolution' to the 'age of peace and development' that allowed China to make a fresh start on its domestic and foreign policies: Domestically, it replaced 'class struggle as the key link' with 'economic construction as the focus,' and externally, it abandoned the 'three fights and one increase' in favor of openness to the outside world, joining the Word Trade Organization and merging itself into the international mainstream.”
“It was Zhang Zhidong who suggested this guiding ideology during the reforms of the late Qing. 'Chinese learning at the base' meant preserving the political system of the late Qing, and 'Western learning for application' meant introducing and utilizing Western experience to strengthen the political system, consolidate rule, and prolong the life of the declining Qing dynasty. In Den Xiaoping's era, 'Chinese learning as the base' preserved the road, theory, and political system left behind by Mao, and 'Western learning for application' was aimed at developing the economy and thereby bolstering and prolonging the political system that Mao left behind. However, since the political system of the Mao era was mainly imported from the Soviet Union, it would be more accurate to say 'Soviet learning as the base.' Economic reforms drew China into a new era, but the reforms were led by the bureaucratic clique that was the ultimate victor in the Cultural Revolution. They controlled all the country's resources and the direction of reform, and in objective terms decided who would pay the cost of reforms and how the benefits of reform would be distributed.”
“In China under the power market economic system, the ability to succeed in anything depends on relationships with key power-holders. The process of selling official positions and titles has formed a shadow network of personal bondage and gangs as power wielders at various levels serve one another's needs and utilize one another in a hotbed of corruption and protection removed from social justice. The ordinary people covered by this huge shadow network are powerless to defend justice or appeal against unjust treatment.”
“Controlled economy was the economic base of totalitarianism and fertile soil for bureaucratic privilege. Under a highly centralized political and economic system, survival depended on bureaucrats who could arbitrarily allocate state assets and ration the necessities of daily life. A strict household-registration system ensured that the vast majority of China’s peasants never ventured far from where they were born. Employees of government organs and state-run enterprises had their housing and all their daily necessities allocated by their work units. Secret dossiers decided the fate of every cadre and worker.”
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Book Keywords:
zhou-enlai, economy, strategy, deng, toilet, politburi, comedy, red-guards, cultural-revolution, farce, revolution, sino-u-s-shanghai-communiqué, evolution, jiang-qing, china, harmony, economic-reforms
