"Obviously, the Cultural Revolution was a failure in achieving its goals. In fact, it had negative consequences. As I said earlier, it undermined the prestige of Marxism within China itself. It turned people off. Marxism is not about kids beating up teachers. Who would want Marxism? In many ways, the Cultural Revolution has discredited socialism as a political project. Now I look back upon it, I think it was the last gasp of socialism, the last effort of socialism. Its failure also condemned socialism. In 1978, when Deng Xiaoping changed the line, that was the beginning of the end of socialism globally. So I think it was a failure in that sense. Was it a success? Success would be idealism, as Kwong said, but that was itself short lived and the Cultural Revolution also gave idealism a bad name, especially among Chinese intellectuals who had been very scared of utopianism. They don’t want utopianism anymore. Where was a success then? If you want to call it a success: (A) it brought into the surface certain problems of development; and (B) it introduced a new paradigm of development that had relevance not just for socialism. That paradigm of development I personally think had long lasting relevance, not as a model to imitate but as a paradigm. I conceive of it as sort of an ideal form that you may strive from, an ideal form that is not something real but that is what you create to serve the understanding of the world. In that sense, the Cultural Revolution as a paradigm is still relevant. This is what I exactly said in Beijing at the talk I just told you. Given the situation in China today, what the Cultural Revolution tried to achieve is still very important. This is not to say that anybody should imitate the Cultural Revolution or recreate it, rather look at what the Cultural Revolution wanted to achieve. What the Cultural Revolution criticized and strived to achieve is still important. The Chinese society today shows what all the problems the Cultural Revolution tried to overcome. There were many people in the audience at my talk, high level officials and theoreticians, the People’s Liberation Army people, etc. and they all agree because they all know that Chinese society is in real trouble now and they know that they lost something. It is not just nostalgia for a past."