The Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry of China

Ma Jisen

• Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong
• eBook ISBN:
  9789629962029
• Year: 2004

The Cultural Revolution, which occurred between 1966 and 1976, was a major unforgettable event in modern Chinese history. For more than thirty years, the prevalent view of the Cultural Revolution in the Chinese Foreign Ministry has been that the rebels controlled the Foreign Ministry in August 1967 and caused the many excesses in foreign affairs such as the burning of the British mission in Beijing which isolated China from the rest of the world. The author of this book challenges this point of view. The book gives a factual account of the course of the ten-year Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry, based on documents issued during the Cultural Revolution, talks by Zhou Enlai and Chen Yi, and the manuscripts of the people concerned, as well as interviews with Foreign Ministry staff members who personally took part in the events.

Table of contents

• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Prologue I The Foreign Ministry Move
• Prologue II The Postponed Spring Outing
• 1. How the Cultural Revolution Was Launched inthe Foreign Ministry?
• 2. Around the January Seizure of Power
• 3. The “September 9 Instruction”
• 4. Chen Yi and the “FebruaryAdverse Current”
• 5. From “Bombard Chen Yi” to“Get the Premier Moving”
• 6. The Setting Up of the “Zongbu” and “Panxianfeng”
• 7. Foreign Relations in the First Years of theCultural Revolution
• 8. Turbulence in August
• 9. From the Dalianchou to the 91-person Poster
• 10. Military Representatives and the May 7th CadreSchools
• 11. The Terror of Purifying the Class Ranks
• 12. The Campaign Against the May 16 Clique
• 13. Foreign Minister Chen Yi’s Last Years
• 14. The Repairing of Foreign Relations (I)
• 15. The Repairing of Foreign Relations (II)
• 16. Zhou Enlai’s Distress
• 17. Difficult Times for Qiao Guanhua
• 18. Righting the Wrong
• Epilogue
• Chinese Names and Terms
• Bibliography