Volume 27, Number 9 · May 29, 1980
The Monkey King
By Frederic Wakeman
The Journey to the West Volumes 1 and 2
translated and edited by Anthony C. Yu
The University of Chicago Press, 438 pp., $25.00 each
In February, 1966, a secret struggle within the Chinese Communist Party erupted into public conflict. Frustrated by his rivals' efforts to transform fundamental political issues into mere academic debates, Chairman Mao Zedong decided to mobilize public opinion behind him in order to inspire a popular insurrection against party and state leaders like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Mao's own lieutenants (including his wife) were put in charge of the country's central propaganda organs, and they began issuing pronouncements by the Chairman designed to incite public opposition to local bureaucratic authorities. One of these provocative announcements by Mao simply stated that: 'The local areas must produce several more Sun Wukong to vigorously create a disturbance at the Palace of Heaven.'[1] Very few Chinese reading that statement missed the allusion to The Journey to the West; nor did they fail to understand that, by citing such a symbol, Chairman Mao was sanctioning rebellion against the highest party officials.
Review, 3576 words
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