¹ Deng Xiaoping and the Cultural Revolution by Deng Rong was published in English by Foreign Languages Press, (Beijing, 2002). The Chinese version is: Wode fuqin Deng Xiaoping “Wenge” suiyue, by Mao Mao [Deng Rong's nickname], Beijing, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe (Central Documents Publishing House), 2000.

² Another history of the campaign written by Chinese is Zhongguo “Wenge” shi nian shi (History of the Ten years of China's ‘Cultural Revolution’) by Yan Jiaqi and Gao Gao, published by Tianjin People's Publishing House and the Hong Kong Ta Kung Po press in 1986. In their history of the Cultural Revolution, Ten Years of Turbulence (published by Kegan Paul International in 1993), Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgen also cited Wang Nianyi's Da Dongluan de Niandai. The book cited by Teiwes and Sun may be one in a series of several books covering the longer period to 1989 (or a different version expanded to cover the longer period, in which case the 1988 publication date given would appear to be wrong). The introduction to The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History, edited by Joseph W. Eshrick, Paul G. Pickowicz and Andrew G. Walder (Stanford, 2006) describes the wealth of documentation now available on the Cultural Revolution and recent research.

³ Some of the contributors to The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History provide vivid descriptions of local manifestations of the campaign, including the activities of Red Guards and Rebels and the impact on individuals. By contrast with most accounts of the period, some other writers, e.g. Mobo Gao in his The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution (Ann Arbor, Michigan, and London, 2008), recall the benefits to the rural population (at least in some areas) of welfare and other policies practised in the Cultural Revolution.

⁴ Phrases from the Chinese Communist Party's “Ninth Comment” in 1964 (the 9^th in a series of comments outlining differences with the Soviet leadership): see MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, (pp. 12–13).

⁵ 横扫一切牛鬼蛇神 (hengsao yiqie niugui sheshen), literally “sweep away all bull monsters and snake spirits”.

⁶ It is unclear whether this was the same body as the Administrative Group of the Military Commission mentioned in Barnouin and Yu's Ten Years of Turbulence (pp. 210, 212), but references in Red Guard publications to the “Administrative Office” or “Administrative Group” suggest that it had wider responsibilities than purely military ones.

⁷ This may have referred not just to Zhou Enlai but also (or alternatively) to Zhou Peiyuan (周培源) and Zhou Rongxin (周荣鑫), two senior figures concerned with education, both of whom were close to Zhou Enlai: see Barnouin and Yu, op cit, (p. 253), and MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, (p. 392). There were other indications of differences over education, including the production of a film Juelie (决 裂 – Breaking with Old Ideas, completed in 1975) about a conflict between two teachers, with the leading roles of a progressive young teacher and his older colleague played by actors with a remarkable resemblance to Wang Hongwen and Zhou Enlai respectively. The film was shown in a London season of Chinese films in September 1976. After the fall of the “Gang of Four” (Jiang Qing and her associates) it was screened again in China to be criticised as an example of their machinations.

⁸ To make the analogy all the clearer – or possibly to indicate that they were produced with Mao's approval, the pseudonym Hong Shidi (洪 世 涤), a homophone for “Red First Emperor”, was used for the writer of the monographs on the First Qin Emperor and on the rebels Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, both published as slim paperbacks in May 1972. “Emperor” in Chinese is “Huangdi”, often abbreviated as “Huang”, but the allusion of “di” used in the pseudonym would be clear to a Chinese reader. On Mao's view of the First Qin Emperor see The First Emperor of China: the Politics of Historiography by Li Yu-ning (International Arts and Science Press, 1975) cited in The First Emperor of China by Frances Wood (London, 2007) and Barnouin and Yu, op cit, (p. 255).

⁹ MacFarquhar and Schoenhals note a later article by Yang Rongguo (published in the People's Daily on 7 July 1973) which was more intensively publicised in the Chinese media. In this later article Yang criticised Confucius for favouring the restoration of “slave-owning society” in opposition to the then emerging feudal society. Teiwes and Sun note a similar article by Yang, but not that of December 1972. In a People's Daily article of 13 August 1973 Yang linked Confucius with “swindlers like Liu Shaoqi” – code used to refer to Lin Biao before open press criticism of him was permitted. In further comments noted by MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Yang openly spoke of Lin Biao's admiration of Confucius. For information on earlier debates by historians on Confucius, see Wing-tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, 1949–63: an Annotated Bibliography (Honolulu, 1967).

¹⁰ On the background to the 1969 clashes on the border with the Soviet Union and indications of Mao's role see “The Sino-Soviet Border Conflicts of 1969: New Evidence Three Decades Later” by Thomas Robinson in Chinese Warfighting, edited by M. A. Ryan, D. M. Finkelstein and M. A. McDevitt, Armonk, (New York and London, 2007). MacFarquhar and Schoenhals refer to evidence cited in Wannian Zhou Enlai (Zhou Enlai's Later Years, published in 2003) by Gao Wenqian, a former researcher-writer in the Documentation Research Office of the Communist Party, that Mao learned of Lin's doubts about the opening to America only after Lin's death. However, the same author in his English-language Zhou Enlai – The last perfect Revolutionary (Public Affairs, New York, 2007), adapted from Wannian Zhou Enlai, says that by early 1971 Mao was spreading rumours that Lin opposed a rapprochement with the United States.

¹¹ As Mobo Gao (op cit) has noted, the abandonment of the communes has entailed the curtailment of welfare arrangements beneficial to the peasants (while changes in policies for industry have had adverse consequences for urban and migrant workers).