"This is the contradictory legacy of Mao: while Mao wrote the norms and rules of CCP leadership and represents its successes, he is also the voice of rebellion and the mirror that shows up the faults and failures of the Party. The social results of this contradiction, and this history of Mao’s three campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s, are profoundly important for China today. The most famous slogan of the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, ‘it’s right to rebel’ (zaofan youli), trained a generation of Chinese youth. When those former Red Guards returned to urban China from their rustication after two, three, and sometimes ten years, they had learned from Mao, though not perhaps what Mao and the Party wanted them to learn. They learned of the profound corruptibility of the Party and of leaders everywhere, they learned it was possible – and that Mao agreed – to rebel against corrupt leadership, and they learned that rural China was still very poor. Not only poor, but also superstitious. Rural China has been identified with the excesses of faith in Mao that these self-same ‘educated youth’ also displayed during the 1960s and during at least some of their time in the countryside."