ABSTRACT
On the first line of the first page of the first volume of The Selected Works of Mao Zedong the following statement appears: ‘Who are our enemies, who are our friends? That is the question germane to the revolution’ (Mao Tse-tung 1975). It was this question, posed with characteristic eloquence and simplicity by Mao Zedong back in 1926 that, arguably, gave birth to the revolution in China (Dutton 2005). It was also with these words on their lips, that the ‘Gang of Four’ – the radical exemplars of the Maoist state during China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a period which is now dated as lasting from 1966-76 and described as responsible for the worst set-backs in the history of the Chinese revolution and the Chinese Communist Party – would be denounced and escorted from the political stage, paving the way for China’s post-1978 shift from a centralized to a market-based economy.1
