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Under such conditions, the “fundamental contradiction” was not, as Mao
had maintained, between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but between the
underdeveloped forces of production and the material needs of the laboring
classes. Rectifying Mao’s error allowed the CCP to focus on the development
of the productive forces.
The scrapping of class struggle, combined with a hope that Chinese in
Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and perhaps someday Taiwan could be per-
suaded by ethnic pride to contribute to the Four Modernizations, led to
emphasis on a new variant of nationalism. There had, of course, been a
strong nationalist component to the revolutionary class struggle approach
of the Mao years: socialism and revolution were to make China strong and
esteemed among the peoples of the earth. But that approach drew sharp lines
among Chinese, with all those deemed reactionary cast into perdition. After
1978, the embrace of the Four Modernizations sought to mobilize the ener-
gies of groups previously condemned as reactionary: intellectuals, the more
capable farmers, and, beyond PRC borders, the prosperous Chinese dias-
pora. Mobilizing these sectors required a new variant of nationalism, one
that stressed not conflict between Chinese but the great unity of all Chinese
people to make the “motherland” prosperous and powerful. A new narra-
tive emerged, one stressing the glory and grandeur of imperial China—the
Han, Tang, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. A new narrative of China’s
“five thousand years” of imperial glory—and the toppling of China from that
esteemed position during the Century of National Humiliation—gradually
began to be constructed.
There was a close linkage between China’s foreign relations and domes-
tic politics after 1978: China needed to find ways of acquiring inputs from
the advanced countries in order to successfully and quickly accomplish the
arduous task of economic modernization. But there was another powerful
international-domestic linkage: CCP rule over the Chinese people was to be
relegitimized via rapid improvements in the standards of living.
Scrapping Mao’s Totalitarian Project
By the end of the Mao era, China’s people were very poor. There had been
considerable industrialization during the three decades of comprehen-
sive economic planning, but relatively little of China’s new wealth had
gone into improving the lives of the Chinese people. After the state took
its share, collectivized agriculture simply could not produce enough food
to provide most Chinese with much above a subsistence diet. The Stalinist
economy adopted by China in the early 1950s worked by sucking wealth
out of every sector of the economy and channeling it via comprehensive
planning to targeted industries. These industries grew rapidly, albeit with