260 { China’s Quest
“base.” When the Great Leap ended, Mao saw China’s peasants return rap-
idly to their traditional individualistic ways of farming. The consciousness
of the Chinese people clearly remained backward, according to Mao and his
supporters. During 1966 to 1969, and to some extent all the way to 1976, the
emphasis was on transformation of the minds of the Chinese people, the way
they thought and the cultural manifestations of their collective conscious-
ness.^1 The transformation of the ideational “superstructure,” in Marxist
terms, would finally open the way to achievement of a communist utopia.
It was to be achieved by intense “study,” “criticism and self-criticism,” and
“struggle” within “small groups” in work units. Sincerity in undertaking
thought reform was encouraged by a range of coercive measures that began
with criticism within a small group and escalated to consignment to labor
camp or summary execution as a bad element. A vast system of internal
spying was mobilized to identify people whose consciousness was inade-
quately revolutionary. People were expected to inform on one another’s ide-
ological shortcomings. Failure to do so cast doubts on one’s own ideological
condition. Criticism of family members or spouses was lauded as manifesta-
tion of high class consciousness. Fear of punishment, terror, provided crit-
ical inducement for people to embrace thought reform. As often in history,
terror and utopia went together.
China’s foreign policies during 1966–1969 corresponded to the extremist
upheaval under way domestically. During this period, the CCP positioned
itself and China as the center of the world revolution, attempting to displace
the USSR in that ideologically exalted role. The CCP continued the polemical
struggle against the “revisionist” CPSU initiated in the early 1960s but with
increased emphasis on nurturing Beijing-oriented Marxist-Leninist commu-
nist parties around the world. By the late 1960s, the world communist move-
ment was deeply split between pro-Moscow and pro-Chinese wings—the
deepest fissure since the Trotsky-Stalin split in the 1930s. China also became
more vociferous in support for foreign revolutions. By the end of 1967, China
had endorsed armed insurrections in twenty-nine countries.^2 Ch i na’s for-
eign propaganda was filled with strident rhetoric and exhortation, depicting
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought as salvation for the peoples of the
world oppressed by US imperialism and Soviet revisionism. Huge amounts
of inflammatory revolutionary propaganda were produced and distributed
around the world. The “little red book” Quotations of Chairman Mao spread
around the world, becoming for a while a talisman of radical youth in far-
flung corners of the earth. Large color posters of Chairman Mao—also pro-
duced in large quantities by Chinese publishing companies—began to grace
demonstrations from France to Mexico to the United States.
A deep strain of xenophobia in China’s political culture was released
during this period. Contact with foreigners, past or present, Western or
socialist-camp, became grounds for suspicion of ideological shortcomings,