ABSTRACT
In contrast to the sparse secondary literature on ideological reform in China since the Third Plenum, this chapter argues that the positive assessment of the line of the Eighth Party Congress was qualified right from the time of its rehabilitation. It aims to trace briefly the history of the formulation after the Eighth Congress. The chapter notes that changes were to occur in how both the 'basic contradiction' and the 'principal contradiction' were seen. It shows how the rehabilitated line of the Eighth Party Congress was modified through an analysis of the decisions of the Fifth and Sixth Plenums of the Eleventh Central Committee in February 1980. The chapter describes the unambiguous wording of the version of Mao's speech of October 1957 which appeared in the official text of Mao's Selected Works published in 1977. It also notes that the official assessment of class struggle was the most strongly resisted of all the new ideological formulations.
