2In a number of interconnected spheres a nuanced understanding of what have been called “red legacies” in China as well as more broadly can continue to enliven discussions of contemporary history, thought, culture, and politics. In the following I will focus on recent events before offering in turn some observations on history, the Maoist legacy, and academic engagement with the People’s Republic.

The red patrimony

6One of the most abiding legacies of the red era, and one particularly attractive for its advocates regardless of their present political persuasion, is the paradigm of the Cold War. In the eternal present of Cold War attitudes and rhetoric the panoply of devices carefully cultivated during the era of class struggle is easily translated into the tensions between the People’s Republic of China and its neighbours as well as other developed nations today. The rhetorical landscape so comfortably traversed by the party-state and those in its thrall (from state think tank apparatchiki and a swarm of leftleaning academics to semi-independent media writers) also feeds the mimetic grandstanding of the other side in any given stoush.

10We may well ask, however, has revolutionary politics, or even the potency of left-leaning ideas, been entirely evacuated from this story today? Has the neo-liberal turn of Chinese statist politics of recent decades created less a story of revolutionary potential (or even leftist resistance) and more one that offers an account of self-interest constructed around a concocted “Chinese race,” an account the main concern of which is a nationalistic rise on the world stage? Or, do the various red legacies that date from the Republican era (be they communist, socialist, or social-democratic) contribute something more than a turn of phrase, a glossy overlay of Party culture, and a coherent (and now often glib) account of national decline and revival to China’s political discourse and national mission? If so, then how does the leftist legacy distinguish itself from a failed Maoism? Or is Maoism and its panoply of language and practices the only viable source of resistance besides the discourses of universalism, as well as economic and human rights in China today?

11In discussing the past it is of vital importance to appreciate motivating ideas and ideals; by the same token we should be wary of those who would separate for their convenience theory from historical reality (even though the details of that reality themselves may be contested). Some writers on contemporary China and its tangle of traditions find it enticing to engage in what could be called a “strategic disaggregation” of the ideological/ theoretical from the historical/ lived. Without doubt, it is important for thoughtful academics to challenge the crude narratives related to modern Chinese history, be they authored by the Chinese party-state, by the international media, or indeed by a Cold War-inflected academic world. However, in the process equally ham-fisted attempts to “recuperate” elements of Maoism or Chinese-inflected Marxism-Leninism in the context of the one-party state can too easily allow people to champion abstract ideas clear of the bloody and tragic realities of the past. Similarly, to privilege Maoism while overlooking the other leftist traditions, the “paths not taken” due to the hegemony of the Chinese Communist Party, is to view the past with the same kind of ideological bias of which pro-Maoist writers accuse their liberal and neo-liberal opponents.

12Below, in the first instance, I touch briefly on recent events and their background before going on to consider historical narrative, cultural phenomena, and intellectual careerism.

A red star falls over China: Lessons from Chongqing

13The red patrimony – and indeed it is mostly the construction of male thinkers, activists, and power-holders – contains within it a whole range of intellectual artefacts from various points in China’s revolutionary theory and practice. The generation of “enemies” (pace Carl Schmitt and his contemporary acolytes) and the atmospherics of plots and conspiracies are still central to the way that the Chinese Communist Party channels and responds to the spectres of the past. Although this formerly underground political party has recast itself as a legitimate government (zhizhengdang 执政党) with all the paraphernalia of state power, to this day its internal protocols and behaviour recall all too frequently its long history as a covert, highly secretive, and faction-ridden organisation. Even under Mao, some commentators called China a “mafia-state.” This aspect of the party-state was thrown into sharp relief in February 2012 when the former deputy mayor of Chongqing, Wang Lijun 王立军, a man famed for a time for having led the attack on that city’s own “mafias,” was ordered to undergo a euphemistically termed “extended period of therapeutic rest” (xiujiashi zhiliao 休假式治疗) following his appearance at, and subsequent disappearance from, the US consulate in Chengdu, Sichuan Province (subsequently, “treatment” was revised to become detention and investigation).The next month, on 15 March, his erstwhile local Party leader, Bo Xilai 薄熙来, was dismissed from his various positions and put under investigation.

I want to say a few words at this point, since the founding of the People’s Republic China, under the leadership of the Party and the government, our country’s modernisation drive has made great achievements. Yet at the same time, we’ve also taken detours and have learnt hard lessons. Since the Third Plenum of the 11th CPC Central Committee [in December 1978], in particular since the central authorities took the decision on the correct handling of relevant historical issues, we have established the line of thinking and that we should free our minds and seek truth from facts and we have formulated the basic guidelines of our Party. In particular, we’ve taken the major decision of conducting reform and opening up in China, a decision that’s crucial for China’s future and destiny.

16Over a year before Bo Xilai was put under investigation for breaching Party discipline, there were overt signs that ideological contestation and a concomitant power struggle were well underway. Since the last major public power struggle within the Chinese Communist Party over two decades ago in 1989, it has become an accepted view of China’s particular brand of one-party consensual authoritarianism that prior to any leadership change jostling for position within the top echelon of the hierarchy takes a number of forms. While it is all but impossible to track effectively the backroom dealings, the power plays, and the political feints involved in what is a byzantine process, the media still provide some indication of the nature of intra-party tussles. Zhongnanhai-ology, however, remains at best an imaginative art. Nonetheless, given the volubility of various critics of the Party since 2009, by early 2011 observers were wondering what had happened to the usually outspoken organs of Party Central.

Metaphors of history: Rumours and factions

20Despite this, in the penumbra of politics, a popular market for revelations about the inner workings of power continues to this day, something evident most recently in the wave of microblog comments on the Chinese Internet surrounding Bo Xilai, as well as his immediate and extended family.

21Rumours have a venerable history in modern China. At the end of the Qing dynasty, for example, rumours about court politics abounded. They filled accounts known as “wild” or “untamed histories” (yeshi 野史); they provided an alternative to the formal records of the time. While the new Republican government would appoint a bureau to oversee a writing of a formal Qing history (a controversial and flawed enterprise that produced a Draft History of the Qing 清史稿), unofficial or “wild histories” proliferated. As the historian Harold Kahn has noted:

• 21 Harold L. Kahn, Monarchy in the Emperor’s Eyes: Image and Reality in the Ch’ien-lung Reign, Cambrid (...)

Official history adjusted the record to suit the needs of the court; unofficial history embroidered it to meet the tastes of a broader, less discriminating public. And it is this embroidered record which has formed the stable of much of China’s popular historical thought.21

22Shortly following the founding of the Republic of China in 1912, scabrous revelations about the inner workings of the defunct imperial court, as well as speculation regarding some of the most notorious incidents in the Qing dynasty, became the stuff of popular history writing and literature. There were, for example, stories about the rumoured marriage between the empress dowager Xiaozhuang 孝庄 ( d. 1688) and her brother-in-law Dorgon 多尔衮; details of the imperial princeYinzhen’s 胤祯 usurpation of the throne following the death of his father the Kangxi 康熙 emperor; hearsay to do with the Yongzheng 雍正 emperor’s sudden demise; discussions about the questionable relationship between the minister Hešen 和珅 and the Qianlong 乾隆 emperor; details related to the invasion of the Forbidden City during the Jiaqing 嘉 庆 reign; lascivious accounts of the addictions (and afflictions) of the youthful Tongzhi 同治 emperor in the 1870s; talk about what went on between the Empress Dowager and the eunuch Li Lianying 李莲英; dark mutterings surrounding the mysterious demise of the Guangxu 光绪 emperor (he predeceased the Empress Dowager by a day); and so on and so forth.What were illicit unofficial accounts in the past provided fodder for readers who had access to a booming publishing market, and with due consideration of the anti-Qing sentiment of the early Republic were anxious to see fun made of the defunct imperial masters while at the same time indulging in patriotic entertainment.

25The popular fictionalisation of history, however, has hardly been limited to the dynastic past, nor has it simply accorded with official dictates. Film and fiction accounts of both Republican and Communist Party history accord with guidelines set down by Party historians and propagandists. This policing of the past has been particularly prevalent since an incident in 2003 involving the multi-episode TV series, Towards a Republic 走向共和. Produced to mark the 1911 Xinhai Revolution and the founding of the Republic of China, the series was, at first glance, a relative standard costume drama, mixing as it did elements of theatricality with serious history. The writers of Towards a Republic, who included liberal Qing historians, offered a view of the 1911 Revolution that not only challenged the Party’s interpretation of the past but also served as an indictment of its present autocratic behaviour.

26The 60-part series had a finale in which the father of the nation, SunYat-sen, appears to be addressing the viewing audience directly.As he explains the symbolism of what we know as the Mao suit (Zhongshanzhuang or “Sun Yat-sen jacket” in Chinese), Sun describes each of the buttons and pockets of the garment as representing parts of his political program – economic progress, democratisation, and the separation of powers. He then addresses the viewer:

I have thought long and deep in recent times: how is it that so many feudalistic and autocratic things have appeared time and again in our new Republic? If this is not dealt with, it is inevitable that the autocracy will reign once more; the Republic will forever be but a mirage.

The idea of a Republic is based on equality, freedom, and the love of humanity. But over the past six years we have been witness to how government bureaucrats at every level have treated the law like dirt; how the people have been enslaved.

A Republic should be a place of freedom; freedom is the heaven-given right of the people.

But over these six years we have witnessed the power-holders enjoying freedom. The more power you have the more freedom you enjoy; the less power you have the more circumscribed your freedom. The people have no power, so they have no freedom…

• 25 For the scene, see: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTY3Njk2MDA=.html (consulted on 11 May 2012).

The Republic should be governed by the rule of law, but over the past six years we have seen administrative power used repeatedly to interfere with the operation of the law. If you are not obedient I’ll buy you off; if you fail to comply I will arrest you, or have you killed. Lawmakers have been prostituted by the power-holders, and they have their way at will…25

28As issues related to democracy and authoritarianism are debated today, we can also detect a nostalgia for a past in which a different kind of future was imagined, as opposed to a present in which the past is constantly being marshalled, trimmed, and massaged to legitimate the Party. As film and TV accounts of the past proliferated through the 1990s and into the new millennium, a new category of revived culture appeared, that of the “red classic” (hongse jingdian 红色经典). First promoted as part of the patriotic education campaign instituted following the events of 1989 to teach both students and wider audiences about the history of the revolution and the dangers that had, and that continued, to beset it, “red classics,” or old propaganda movies, were rebroadcast nationwide. In more recent years as media offerings have proliferated, a new genre of culture has developed under the old rubric of the “red classic.” These include not only films and TV shows, but also songs, novels, poems, and art works. Collectively they form a narrative of revolution that has been stripped of revolutionary politics but which retains a highly romantic depiction of the past and its achievements in which the glories of the Party are intertwined with accounts of heroism, love, sacrifice, and noble aspiration.

29Until the appearance of the “sing red” campaign championed by Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai and his supporters in 2009, the “red classic” genre was easily derided as being of marginal interest and importance in understanding contemporary China and its worldview. I would ask rather as series of questions:

30Is the corpus of “red classic” works merely fodder for the avaricious maw of a media market that must work with the material available, and as such has little greater significance?

31Or is it part of the very skein of modern mainland Chinese culture that through repetition and adaptation has normalised the historical narrative of the modern party-state? And, if that is the case (even partially).

33Or is there some greater, more “progressive,” potential in the repetition of familiar cultural “classics,” so much so that in fact these works re-familiarise audiences with the revolution, its values, and rhetoric, so that concepts of social justice, fairness, and freedom that were so important during the long years of struggle before 1949 find a new lease on life?

34Or should these concerns be swept aside as it is all just commercialised fun and a story about canny media players cynically taking advantage of party-state dictates to promote and produce uncontroversial material?

35Is this yet another chapter in the degradation of the sublime (chonggao 崇高) that the novelist and former Minister of Culture Wang Meng 王蒙 decried in the 1990s?

36Or, perhaps, can we detect in the re-makings, spoofs, and recountings of High Maoist policies, cultural styles, and forms ways in which the impotent, powerless, and dispossessed can express opposition to the eternalising presumption of a party-state, one that maintains its dominion over the mainstream historical narrative, national identity, and real political power?

37Is this “resistance within” also not part of the red legacy – the opposition to the Party’s theory-led monopoly on discourse, ideas, and everyday politics?

Waving the red flag to oppose the red flag: Red heirs and intellectuals

38History, distorted accounts of the past, and the power of metaphor have all played a role in the unfolding of recent Chinese political dramas, just as they have engaged with the Maoist legacy in complex ways.

40Children of Yan’an Classmates Fellowship (Beijing Yan’an Ernü Xiaoyou Lianyihui 北京延安儿女校友联谊会). Its members were the descendants of men and women who had lived and worked in theYan’an Communist base in Shaanxi Province from the 1930s to the 1940s, as well as the progeny of the Party who were born and educated in Yan’an. From 1998, the group held annual gatherings to coincide with the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), as well as a range of other events organised around choral and dancing groups, Taijiquan classes, and painting and calligraphy activities. In 2001, they shortened their name to the Beijing Children of Yan’an Fellowship.

41From 2002, the Children of Yan’an was led by Hu Muying 胡木英, daughter of Hu Qiaomu 胡乔木, a Party wordsmith par excellence and Mao Zedong’s one-time political secretary. In 2008, the fellowship expanded its membership to include people with no specific link to the old Communist base and its revolutionary éclat. With a core membership of some 100 people, the Children of Yan’an not only boasted the leadership of Hu Muying, but also the key participation of Li Min 李敏 (Mao Zedong’s oldest daughter), Zhou Bingde 周秉德 (Zhou Enlai’s niece), Ren Yuanfang 任远芳 (Party elder Ren Bishi’s 任弼时 daughter), Lu Jianjian 陆健健 (former Party propaganda chief Lu Dingyi’s 陆定一 son) and Chen Haosu 陈昊苏 (son of Chen Yi 陈毅, the pre-Cultural Revolution Mayor of Shanghai and later Minister of Foreign Affairs). On 13 February 2011, the group held their annual Chinese New Year gathering in the auditorium of the 1 August Film Studio, an organisation under the direct aegis of the People’s Liberation Army.

43Following a series of platitudinous remarks and a brief recounting of the long years of struggle that their revolutionary forebears had gone through to found New China (an account that, not surprisingly, glossed over the bloody horrors of the first three decades of Party rule from 1949 to 1978), Hu Muying said:

44The new explorations made possible by Reform and the Open Door policies have, over the past three decades, resulted in remarkable economic results. At the same time, ideological confusion has reigned and the country has been awash in intellectual currents that negate Mao Zedong Thought and socialism. Corruption and the disparity between the wealthy and the poor are of increasingly serious concern; latent social contradictions are becoming more extreme.

be satisfied merely with reminiscences nor can we wallow in nostalgia for the glories of the sufferings of our parents’ generation. We must carry on in their heroic spirit, contemplate and forge ahead by asking ever-new questions that respond to the new situations with which we are confronted. We must attempt to address these questions and contribute to the healthy growth of our Party and help prevent our People once more from eating the bitterness of the capitalist past.

48With their gaze fixed more on the past than the present, the drafters of “Our Suggestions for the Eighteenth Party Congress” reaffirmed the primacy of what is known as the “mass line” (qunzhong luxian 群众路线). First articulated by Mao as early as 1929, the mass line is regarded as being one of the foundations of Mao Zedong Thought. It calls for the Party to rely un‑waveringly on the masses (a vague and ill-defined group at the best of times), to put faith in them, arouse them, go among them, honestly learn from them, and serve them.

51Not only did the Children of Yan’an formulate a manifesto and agitate for a form of political reform before the looming change of Party leadership; it was further said that in their pursuit of a new Maoist-style “mass line” they had also tried to engender tentative contacts with grass-roots organisations and petitioner groups in and outside of Beijing. For left-leaning figures in contemporary China to engage in such practical, and non-hierarchical, politics was highly significant, especially when considered in contrast to the academic “New Left” (Xinzuopai 新左派) that had arisen in the 1990s and 2000s.

53Not only was the revivalism of Chongqing appealing to the Children of Yan’an, it also attracted a range of left-leaning or New Left intellectuals both in and outside of China. Bo Xilai and his circle actively cultivated this disparate group through targeted support for seminars, conferences, and other generously funded activities. As has been the case of intellectuals attracted moth-like to the flame of power in the past, many of these individuals with their myopic attachment to theory convinced themselves and others to overlook the evidence in front of them. However, the purblindness and reticence of members of the New Left is, perhaps, also understandable. Apart from the usual intellectual qualms about direct social engagement among those who are more comfortable dealing with academic jousting and refereed publications in prestigious journals, in China principled activism does exact a high price. After all, the engaged intellectual soon confronts a policed authoritarian environment that is infamously punitive. Moreover, the fate of such prominent nay-sayers as Liu Xiaobo 刘晓波 and Ai Weiwei 艾未未 would deter all but the most foolhardy. More disturbing yet is the cruel abuse of numerous (and often nameless) men and women of conscience who have been harried, detained, and persecuted by local power-holders and business interests for often the most spurious reasons. One of the issues that this paper returns to in various guises is the question of whether a pro-Maoist rhetoric is the only form of left-leaning critique available to Chinese thinkers and their international supporters. And, if that is the case, are critiques of Mao and his bloody legacy always to be deemed as orientalist, reactionary, or pro-neo-liberal?

Arbitrage: The global trade in red rhetoric

54In discussing red legacies it is necessary to be mindful of the long tradition whereby left-leaning causes, and discourse, in China (not to mention else-where) have been entwined with a nationalist or patriotic mission related to independence, economic growth, and identity politics. In the context of legacy-creation, the Chinese party-state has inherited and invested heavily in the Maoist heritage by transposing social class analysis and the Three-world Theory into the context of contemporary geopolitics. Thus, the People’s Republic, despite its regnant economic strength and international heft, portrays itself as a proletarian-agrarian developing nation that is primarily in solidarity with the dispossessed and under-developed nations against the bourgeois bullies of Euramerica. No matter what elements of truth this self-description may have, as a rhetorical device and canny transmogrification of High Maoist categories, it remains a powerful tool in global power politics, and one area in which the Maoist legacy is particularly vital, and successful.

55The trans-valuation of Maoist categories into international relations discourse is only one of the ways in which the heritage persists into the present. Another is the way that rejigged elements of the Maoist canon are employed to bolster careers, to align research projects, and to guide personal trajectories. (I would observe that the same holds true even for those who use Maoist-style patriotism to pursue neo-liberal goals, be they academic or mercantile.)

56In the late 1990s, a disparate group that I think of as the interrogators of the intelligentsia set themselves apart from the restive throng of their educated fellows by claiming a unique purchase on critical inquiry. In their writings they pursued a project of visualisation towards a “China imaginary” that would cast all liberal (and I don’t mean neo-liberal) intellectuals as being of one cloth. As we consider the varied roles of participant observers, theorising nonactivists, and academic middle men (among whose number I would, of course, include myself), a term current in the world of international finance suggests itself. It is called “arbitrage,” that is, “the purchase of securities in one market for resale in another.” As Andre Aciman comments on the practice in terms of nostalgia and time:

• 43 Andre Aciman, “Arbitrage,” The NewYorker, 10 July 2000, p. 36.This material on arbitrage first appe (...)

As soon as a profit is made, the cycle starts again, with subsequent purchases sometimes paid for with unrealized profit drawn from previous sales. In such transactions, one never really sells a commodity, much less takes delivery of anything. One merely speculates, and seldom does any of it have anything to do with the real world. Arbitrageurs may have seats on not one but two exchanges, the way the very wealthy have homes in not one but two time zones, or exiles two homes in the wrong places. One always longs for the other home, but home, as one learns soon enough, is a place where one imagines or remembers other homes.43

57In the context of our own academic pursuits, while one can appreciate divergent agendas for intellectuals who practice their armchair activism in the relatively oblique language of the academy, an accounting for the past requires an approach that is mindful not only of frustrated political agendas and the failure of ideas in practice, but also of the complex human dimension of ideas in social practice.

• 45 Ibid.

…offered an explanation of how the world works… It proposed a way in which the world ought to work… And it announced incontrovertible grounds for believing that things will work that way in the future, thanks to a set of assertions about historical necessity… This combination of economic description, moral prescription, and political prediction proved intensely seductive – and serviceable.45

60It is here then, perhaps, that the post-Maoist, Marxist turn in China contributes to our understanding of the categories of the Maoist or red legacy in the new millennium. Needless to say, much can be made of the glib (and cynical) commercialisation of red tourism, of the audio-video and digital wallpaper generated in various cultural forms that quote, revive, and cannibalise works of high-socialist culture. But has the continuation of one-party rule in China achieved something particular, not merely the Party as a particular Chinese phenomenon, and therefore regarded as only being on a national mission of “prosperity and strength,” but also something else? I would ask whether the language of the red legacy and its various manifestations are merely a sly way of packaging Chinese materialism and worldliness, or whether there might be more at stake and more inherent in it.

61While thinkers labour to salvage Marxism from the egregious failures, and crimes, of Communism (be they of the Soviet or the Maoist variety), the red legacy is no cutesy epiphenomena worthy simply of a cultural studies or po-mo reading, but rather constitutes a body of linguistic and intellectual practices that are profoundly ingrained in institutional behaviour and the bricks and mortar of scholastic and cultural legitimisation. The on-the-ground reality of the People’s Republic is that topics couched in Marxist-Maoist terminology remain privileged within Chinese educational institutions, among publishers, think tanks, and funding agencies. It is a living legacy the spectre of which continues to hover over Chinese intellectual life, be it for weal or for bane. And, as I have pointed out in the above, it is worth asking whether this particular red legacy does in fact leech out the power of other modes of left-leaning critique and independent thought, and only aid and abet the party-state’s pursuit of a neo-liberal economic agenda.

Fellowships and factions

62In 1044 CE, the Song-dynasty political figure and writer Ouyang Xiu 欧阳修submitted a memorial to the throne entitled “On Factions” (Pengdanglun 朋党论). In it he argued against the long-standing taboo on coalitions in government. He suggested to the throne that political groupings of like-minded men working for the benefit of the court and its dynastic subjects were in fact a constructive development. Regarded as the most famous argument in favour of political alliances in Chinese history, “On Factions” has resonated through the ages.

63In his memorial Ouyang said:

Thus, Your servant claims that petty men are without factions and that only superior men have them. Why is this so? Official salaries and gain are what petty men enjoy; wealth and goods are what petty men covet. When they seek mutual gain, they will temporarily form an affiliation (dang), but it is erroneous to consider them to be a faction (peng). When they glimpse gain and contend to be first [to take it], or when the gains have been exhausted, and they squabble over what remains, then they will cruelly injure each other. Even if they are brothers or kinsmen, they will not be able to protect each other.

然臣谓小人无朋，惟君子有之。其故何哉？小人所好者利禄也，所贪者财货也；当其同利时，暂相党引以为朋者，伪也。及其见利而争先，或利尽而交疏，则反相贼害，虽其兄弟亲戚，不能相保。故臣谓小人无朋，其暂为朋者，伪也。

…this is not so for superior men. The Way and righteousness are what they defend; loyalty and sincerity are what they practice; and reputation and integrity are what they value. Since they have cultivated themselves, their common Way (tongdao) is of mutual benefit. Since they serve the polity, their common hearts help each other, and they are always as one. Such are the affiliations of superior men.

• 47 From Ari Daniel Levine, Divided by a Common Language: Factional Conflict in Late Northern Song Chin (...)

君子则不然。所守者道义，所形者忠义，所惜者名节；以之修身， 则同道而相益，以之事国，则同心而共济，终始如一。此君子之朋也。47

64Mao Zedong was notorious for construing those with political differences as being members of dangerous factions and alliances. He frequently warned against the dangers of “cliques” (zongpai 宗派); he demonised his perceived rivals as pursuing a political line invidious to the Chinese revolution, and he was merciless first in toying with and then obliterating those whom he suspected of having formed alliances in opposition to him. Differences in policy, strategy, and even personality were depicted as “line struggles” (luxian douzheng 路线斗争), and for decades the history of modern China as accounted by the Communist Party was a record of such struggles.

65In the landscape of authoritarian Chinese politics there has occasionally been an attempt to recognise, if not formalise, the role of a “loyal opposition” in government. In the history of the Chinese Communist Party, which celebrated its ninetieth anniversary on 1 July 2011, inner party factions were outlawed, often in the most violent manner. Although the Chinese Communist Party may well maintain that China in the twenty-first century is led by one party in coalition with other “democratic parties” (minzhu dangpai 民主党派) that contribute to the political process, the reality is that no quarter is given to formal oppositionist politics.

66In the realm of media and Internet contention, discussion in China is more free-wheeling in many regards than during other periods of Party rule. Today, however, major differences in policy are papered over or suppressed under the guise of collective leadership. Line struggles are a Maoist relic; in their place there is talk of “Party discipline” (dangji 党纪) and “state law” (guofa 国法). Whatever his disciplinary infractions or criminal misdeeds, Bo Xilai is seen by some as being the victim of a Party “line struggle” aimed at purging not only Bo and his associates, but even gestures towards a Maoist-era form of egalitarianism. Ideological contestation has been occluded by a formalistic legal process. There is already talk of a “show trial.”

67The historian F.W. Mote offered the following observation on Ouyang Xiu’s Song-dynasty memorial and the problems that it highlighted for future generations. Mote’s comment is relevant to a discussion of political contestation under authoritarian rule in China even today:

• 48 F. W. Mote, Imperial China 900-1800, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 137. See al (...)

The failure of Neo-Confucian thinkers and political activists to break through this formal barrier against concerted political action by groups of like-minded men, by disallowing any distinction between good and bad factions, severely limited Chinese political behavior thereafter, up to the end of the imperial era in the early twentieth century… The attempt to redefine “factions” would arise again and again, up to the eighteenth century, but the state’s definition always prevailed. Legitimate political parties could not take form, and any who expressed political disagreements were, by definition, morally defective, hence insidious. “Loyal opposition” could not be acknowledged within a system of politics defined by ethical and personal rather than by operational and institutional norms. China still struggles with the heritage of this eleventh-century political failure.48

A crimson blindfold

68During the “history wars” in Australia that stretched out for a decade from the mid 1990s, historians who brought to light through their research unpalatable truths about the ugly colonisation of the country and the devastation of its indigenous population were condemned by government leaders, right-wing media commentators, and others claiming objectivity. The concerned historians were derided for promoting a “black armband” view of the past. Their historical perspective, one that by its very nature encouraged a heartfelt recognition of a complex history of settlement and a thoughtful reflection on its impact on the present, was seen as being a threat to national cohesion and more uplifting narratives of progress and modernity. The power-holders and their media supporters were in turn chided for championing a “white blindfold” view of the national story. In China, the blindfold is of a crimson hue.

69Cosy theorising regarding a supposedly retrievable red legacy enjoyed a regional boost during the short-lived “red renaissance” championed by Bo Xilai and his supporters (political, military, and academic) until early 2012. His ouster does not mean, however, that red culture is defunct. Some of the motivating ideas, sentiments, and emotions of the Chinese revolution remain part of the fabric of life, and they find different levels of articulation and resonance in society. To appreciate more cogently the valency of China’s red-suffused heritage, the overlay and interplay of historical tropes, language, practices, and evocations is, as I have argued in the above, important for an appreciation of the multifaceted commerce between past and present, traditions real and invented, and the evolution of contemporary ways of being, seeing, and speaking in that country today.

70Even in power Mao Zedong frequently spoke about the dangers of bourgeois restoration and revisionism. He declared on a number of occasions that he would have to go back into the mountains to lead a guerrilla war against the power-holders, that rebellion was justified. While many discuss the legacy of revolutionary politics in the cloistered security of academic fora, that spirit of rebellion, the active involvement with a politics of agitation, action, and danger, is one legacy that seems only safe to contemplate at a distance. Restive farmers and workers in China may cloak themselves in the language of defunct revolution, but evidence suggests that rather than the crude categories of class struggle and revolutionary vanguards, their metaphorical landscape is a complex mixture of traditional cultural tropes, revolutionary discourse, and an awareness of modern rights and ways to stretch social rules.

71As we consider the steely determinism of the Marxist lesson, we can detect how that historical determinism dovetails with articulations of a Chinese “national mission” today. The necessity of history remains at the heart of many attempts to find a more capacious meaning within the red legacy. Indeed, as we consider the long tail of Maoism both in and outside of the People’s Republic of China, we should be alert to the abiding allure and uses of the crimson blindfold. After all, it is because of its nature as a belief system – as a body of thought, practice, language, and cultural heritage – that it forms part of China’s red legacy, a system that has proved serviceable in the past and one that remains seductive, and useful, today.