The legacy of the Maoist period in President Xi Jinping’s appraisal: an assessment between politics and historiography

In January 2013, the newly appointed General Secretary Xi Jinping advanced a new perspective on the history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), summarized in the concept of the “two undeniables”. According to this, the contemporary history of the PRC should not be divided into a Mao Era and a post-Mao Era, and the legacies of the two periods should not be seen in opposition to one another, but must be regarded as unambiguously complementary. Although very careful not to alter the delicate balance of the “Resolution” issued by the Party in 1981, Xi’s statement implies a more positive appraisal of the Maoist period, compared to previous official assessments.Drawing on his position, this essay aims to investigate the historiographical and political implications related to it, and to analyze the political stances which are at the basis of the attempts to use the legacy of one of the two periods in order to deny the heritage of the other. While the Chinese leadership has officially and strenuously celebrated the reform period in the past decades, more recently some leftist formations have tried to exploit the Maoist era in order to negate the period of reform. This study also examines the numerous works and dissertations produced by Chinese scholars and researchers on the thesis put forward by Xi Jinping. Among them, some authors have made new contributions and even tried to reconstruct the theoretical bases to which the idea of the “two undeniables” can be traced, advancing its supposed antecedents in the previous pronouncements of some well-known and less known personalities.