The Great Leap Backward: Forgetting and Representing the Mao Year ...

parameters and has issued its official “verdict” on that era. In the 1981 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China, the government gave its official judgment of Mao and his regime and made clear that this resolution is not subject to public debate. Take the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, for example. The resolution points out that although Mao and many top Party leaders made socioeconomic policy errors during the Great Leap Forward, the program failed because central bureaucrats and local cadres had erred in their implementation of central government policies. The Great Famine—the result of the Great Leap Forward, during which tens of millions perished—is mentioned only as one of several “natural calamities.” While the resolution does cast some blame on Mao for the mistakes of the Cultural Revolution, it puts the full brunt of responsibility on Lin Biao and the Gang of Four. In addition, in 1981 the Communist Party openly prosecuted the Gang of Four and broadcasted the entire process on television. The trials of the gang were just for show, designed to put an end to all trials for crimes committed during the ten years of horror and chaos. To reestablish and maintain social equilibrium after Mao’s death, the Communist Party sought carefully to manipulate and control public mnemonic discourse. Today, decades after the long string of devastating political campaigns, public memory of the Mao era is characterized largely by superficial nostalgic fads: “Red tourism,”⁷ theme restaurants, fashion iconography, kitsch art, and so on. The national collective memory lite that emerged roughly around the 1990s continues into the twenty-first century. In my conception, memory-lite writings recount only the positive aspects of the experiences and discuss any bitter suffering only so long as the narrative adheres to the personal without any attempt to discuss its causes and ramifications; such writings are easy to market and consume.

In spite of this, some encouraging developments have come out of China’s restrictive environment: social and civil activism. Although it is forbidden to publicly discuss certain sensitive aspects of the Maoist past, some Chinese citizens have found ways to create new venues and