ABSTRACT
By the mid-1960s a struggle for power within the Chinese Communist Party had escalated.1 The ‘Socialist Education Movement’ (shehui zhuyi jiaoyu yundong)2 now shifted its emphasis from correcting the ‘incorrect’ behaviour of grass-roots cadres to discrediting the Party leaders who were accused of ‘taking the bourgeois road’ (zhou ziben zhuyi daolu). Political criticism of an ideological nature touched the fields of history, philosophy, economy and literature,3 culminating in the debate over the historical play Hai Rui’s Dismissal from Office (Hai Rui ba guan).4 All this served as the prelude to the now notorious and at the time horrific phenomenon of the decade-long Cultural Revolution. As a product of the misguided ideas of a misguided leader, this movement tore the Chinese Communist Party and society apart, propelled China into international isolation, drastically undermined its economy5 and wasted a generation of its youth. Although the Cultural Revolution came to an end a quarter of a century ago, it has left its mark on virtually every aspect of Chinese society-political, economical, cultural and, in this setting, elite women’s sport.
