Introduction: Global Maoism and Cultural Revolutions in the Global Context

When we talk about the revolution in general, we usually refer to two things. First is the revolution in its narrow sense, that is, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (wuchanjieji wenhua da geming), which is actually a social-political movement that took place in China between 1966 and 1976. The other refers to all the revolutions in the world in its broad sense, which start from the sphere, including the French May Storm and Iran's Islamic Cultural Revolution. The present special issue will cover the first two, but will not deal with the Islamic Cultural Revolution. It will center around the Chinese Cultural Revolution and its influence worldwide, especially in the Western countries and Japan. As we know, in the current international academia, discussing the especially China's Cultural Revolution and the French May Storm, has been more and more attractive to scholars both in the East and West. 1 It is indeed an innovative theoretical topic which has not yet been adequately discussed. It is true that such a Marxist r evolution appeared and soon swept the whole world almost at the same time. In China, launched by Mao Zedong, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution started in 1966 and ended in 1976 after Mao's death, which is obviously the longest and most influential cultural revolution, as well as social and political revo- lution, in the twentieth century. It is now designated as a ten-y ear turmoil (shinian dongluan) with numerous people killed during those years. And it caused deadly damage to the Chinese economy and people's lives. But from today's point of view, we have no difficulty finding that the legacy of this sort of whether positive or negative, is still very valuable for us to research. Frankly speaking, the legacy of the Cultural Revolution