The Foreign Ministry and Foreign Affairs during the Cultural Revolution*

As other analysts have suggested in different ways, the Cultural Revolution involves differences of emphasis among Chinese leaders over basic directional choices for the society at large: whether Maoist-style politics (or ideology) can continue to “take command” or must yield at least equal place to the practical problems and limitations involved in fixing priorities and setting goals; whether radical Maoism befits a China in transition or must be modified if China is to realize its historically based claim to great power status; or whether China must inevitably “change colour” or can remain ideologically “pure red” even in the throes of modernization.