1. Debating the Cultural Revolution
Introduction: who is writing history and who are the Chinese?
The haojie discourse and the Cultural Revolution
Violence, brutality and causes
Destruction of Chinese culture and tradition
Cultural Revolution and cultural creativity
What is the Enlightenment?
2. Constructing history: memories, values and identity
Introduction: speech act of identification
From the wounded to the mentalite: the re-rehearsal of May Fourth
Be American citizens in thinking
The politics of joining the civilized world
Media agenda and identification with the West
Memoirs, values and identification
The intellectual-business-political complex in contemporary China
Conclusion: memories, identity, knowledge and truth
3. Constructing history: memoirs, autobiographies and biographies in Chinese
Introduction: scope and rationale
Memoirs, autobiographies and biographies in Chinese: a literature survey
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
Some common themes on Mao and the Cultural Revolution
Conclusion: discourse, narratives and memories
4. Mao, The Unknown Story: an intellectual scandal
Introduction hyper-promotion of a book
Scholarship, what scholarship?
Misleading claims and absurd explanations
Further evidence of 'scholarship'
Further evidence of flaws and misleading claims
Logical inconsistency within the text
Mao, China's Hitler and Stalin
Fairy tale and how scholarship changes
It does not matter so long as the politics is right
5. Mao: the known story and the logic of denial
Introduction: Mao the known story, a general outline
Evidence of the known story
The economy in the Mao era
The yardstick of Hitler: a favourite European comparison
Mao's personality: the known story
The logic of denial of the known story
Revolution: from farewell to burial
Furet and the French Revolution
Is revolution inevitable?
An alternative model of development
6. How a medical doctor doctors history: a case study of Li Zhisui
Introduction; expatriate Chinese memories - a literary phenomenon
Memories and the politics of knowledge production
Knowledge production and the market
The logic of the differences in two versions
Who is to be fooled and why?
Protests from the insiders
Was Li Mao's personal physician?
How much did the doctor know?
What did the medical doctor know about politics?
History as doctored by the doctor and his US mentors: a critical analysis
Conclusion: history what history?
7. Challenging the hegemony: contrary narratives in the e-media (I) - Mao and the Cultural Revolution
Introduction: emerging contrary narratives
Media effect, public space and e-media
Ma Yinchu, population control and elite attitudes
The credibility of Li Rui
Challenging the late-Mao thesis
Challenging Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and the Great Leap Forward
Debates on issues related to the Cultural Revolution
Disagreement between Mao and Liu Shaoqi: the two-line struggle thesis
Other unofficial views of the Cultural Revolution
Kong Qingdong and the cowshed
Memoirs of different narratives
Conclusion: the question of truth
8. Challenging the hegemony: contrary narratives in the e-media (II) - the Mao era
Introduction: history in socioeconomic context
The state of the economy in the Mao era and during the Cultural Revolution
Signs of a re-evaluation of Jiang Qing
The issues of health care and education
A re-evaluation of Kang Sheng?
The Chinese themselves say so
Manufacturing truth and e-media counter-action
The legacy of Mao and the e-media
Conclusion: voices from the bottom for a battle that has just begun
9. The problem of the rural-urban divide in pursuit of modernity: values and attitudes
Introduction: the year 2003
The rise of China, but the risk of collapse
Three stories of rural pain
Rural Chinese: beasts of burden on whom modernity is built
The rural-urban divide: values and attitudes
Post-Mao reforms: myths versus reality
Conclusion: the state and the countryside
10. The battle of China's history: seeing the past from the present
Introduction: a little incident
Three questions about the post-Mao reforms
Is China a capitalist country? And does it matter?
Capitalism with Chinese characteristics?
White cat, black cat: the argument of efficiency versus fairness
Seeing the past from the present: a hole in the discursive hegemony
Conclusion: truth and belief values of socialism and China's future direction
Truth and belief values of a political discourse
Truth and belief value of exploiting the peasantry
Do the values of socialism matter?
Learning from past failures
The socialist truth and belief value of land ownership
The socialist truth and belief value of labour law
The socialist truth and belief values of healthcare and education
The battie of China's history
Glossary of Chinese terms and names
