ABSTRACT
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officially declared the Cultural Revolution a disaster in June 1981, but today's hardline leaders, many of whom were victims of that experience, have used rhetoric reminiscent of that period in their fight against "peaceful evolution." Considering the CCP's longterm obsession with secrecy, including the process of high-level decision making, the long-distance observations of US press coverage of the Cultural Revolution benefited from a dispassionate stance, but inaccessibilty to detail led to some inaccurate conclusions. In addition to the theme of power struggles, some journalists focused on the Cultural Revolution as a way for China to prepare for war with the United States, or as an attempt to recreate "the spirit of Yanan." During the Cultural Revolution, those who approached China with a dose of skepticism produced coverage superior to those who were misled by euphoria and sentimentality and lent an uncritical eye to China's sociopolitical circumstances.
