The Global War On Terrorism as Meta-Narrative: An Alternative Reading of Recent Chinese History

When we speak of the “Cultural Revolution” in China, we actually refer not to the past but to a narrative interpretation of the past, a particular organization of knowledge which has gone unquestioned for a long time. This paper attempts to develop an alternative narrative scope from which to view the final ten-plus years of politics in the People’s Republic under Mao Zedong. It looks at that same period (and queries What happened? When and Where? Who made it happen? How? And why?) not from a “Cold War” frame but from the still unfolding 21st century present of the so-called “Global War On Terrorism”. Narrated as Mao Zedong’s Domestic War On Revisionism, this very difficult period teaches some painful lessons that, today perhaps more than ever, concern all of us – irrespective of what our ethnicity or our politics may be.