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11 - How the CCP Has Failed to Obtain Control over China’s Collective Memory on the 1950s

from Part III - Legitimacy and Local Agencies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2023

Anja Blanke
Affiliation:
Freie Universität Berlin
Julia C. Strauss
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Klaus Mühlhahn
Affiliation:
Freie Universität Berlin
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Summary

Using the example of 1950s historiography, this chapter aims to analyze why the CCP has not succeeded in dominating China’s collective memory. In doing so, it will identify four main reasons for the party’s failure: first, the weaknesses of the resolution from 1981; second, the phase(s) of intellectual and academic freedoms in the 1980s; third, the CCP’s inability to overcome inner-party disagreements on the question of how the Party should assess its own “historical mistakes”; fourth, the fact that memories cannot be suppressed permanently. The chapter shows that the historiography is an ongoing process that is not yet completed, and that China’s current president Xi Jinping’s politics of history has led the CCP into a dead end since this political approach attempts both to suppress alternative views of post-1949 history and to finally establish official narratives on a long-term basis.

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Revolutionary Transformations
The People's Republic of China in the 1950s
, pp. 256 - 274
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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