The Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry of China (review)

Forty years have passed since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in China, but it is still difficult to conduct research on that disastrous ten-year-long movement, which inflicted tremendous damage on the Chinese and their nation. Major problems include the Chinese government's exclusive control of archival materials and its censorship of research and publications on the subject. As a result, strong motivation and perseverance are needed to conduct research on the Cultural Revolution in China, and sometimes even a willingness to risk one's career. Thus, we should greatly appreciate books like Ma Jisen's The Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry of China, a valuable addition to our understanding of the Cultural Revolution in terms of its relation to a particular government ministry. This is the first comprehensive study of the major events and figures within that ministry from 1965 to 1976, systematically following the sequence of events from the first mobilization of the mass movement in 1966 to the final rehabilitation in the late 1970s of those who had been mistreated. Both Ma and her husband worked in the Foreign Ministry starting in the early 1950s until the mid-1970s. They experienced the major events of the Cultural Revolution and developed personal or working relationships with many key figures in the ministry at that time. The book is an eyewitness account of that decade and reveals contemporary events in incredible detail, such as the Ninety-one-person Poster (pp. 228-229), the rebel organizations known as "Lianluozhan," "Dalianzhou," "Zongbu," and "Panxianfeng" (chapters 2 and 6), and the complex struggles between Minister Chen Yi and the mass organizations as well as among those organizations. It also contains data on the suffering and death of many senior staff members, such as Chen Jiakang, Wang Bingnan, Luo Guibo, Liu Xiao, Xu Yixin, Pan Zili, Yao Dengshan, Qiao Guanhua, and Ji Pengfei, almost all of whom had held the position of vice minister or Chinese ambassador to a foreign country prior to the Cultural Revolution.

The book is more than a chronology of events of the revolution, however. It also presents careful analyses based on ministry documents, big-character posters—which were a popular way to express one's opinion at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution-and the speeches of Zhou Enlai and other leading figures. Some of the materials are from published sources, but others are revealed here for the first time, probably from their private collection. In addition, Ma bases her study on interviews with some key individuals. All this makes the book a valuable resource for those interested in the Cultural Revolution in general and in the Foreign Ministry in particular during that period.

Following careful study of the data that she has collected, Ma refutes certain generalizations in both China and the West about what happened in the Foreign Ministry. She points out in the Epilogue that, for political reasons, in China "the truth about the Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry was blocked out by numerous fictitious rumors" for over thirty years (p. 404). For example, Ma's accounts of Yao Dengshan and Wang Li, two key players at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, are quite different from other accounts of these two figures from that period. She provides a more sympathetic view of both and presents them as only "scapegoats," rejecting the view that they were solely responsible for the chaos in the ministry and blunders in Chinese foreign policy in 1966 and 1967 Her discussion of the inner struggle against Minister Chen Yi during the revolution is especially illuminating, furnishing the reader with scrupulous details about Marshal Yi's ordeal. What is most interesting, however, is her revelation of how Zhou Enlai handled the Cultural Revolution as it related to the Foreign Ministry. Although the book maintains a generally positive view of Zhou, it does provide details of Zhou's mishandling of issues. For example, Ma...