"Indeed, in China's historical context, modernization and the rejection of rationalization have proceeded together, and this has produced profound historical contradictions. For example, on the one hand, Mao Zedong centralized power to establish a modern state system; on the other hand, he launched the Cultural Revolution to destroy that system. On the one hand, he used People's Communes and collectives to promote China's economic development; on the other hand, he designed the social distribution system to avoid the severe social inequalities of capitalist modernization. On the one hand, he used the nationalization of the economy to subsume society under the state goal of modernization, in the process stripping individuals of all political autonomy; on the other hand, he was horrified and pained at the use of state mechanisms to suppress the autonomy of "the masses." In sum, inherent in China's socialist modernization experience is a historical antimodernity. This paradox has cultural roots, yet it is infinitely more important to search for an explanation in the dualsided historical discourse from which Chinese modernization emerged (namely, the search for modernization and reflections on the devastating consequences of Western modernization)."
Mao Zedong

January 1, 1970