Ma Jisen 
Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry of China 

The Cultural Revolution, which occurred between 1966 and 1976, was a major unforgettable event in modern Chinese history. For more than thirty years, the prevalent view of the Cultural Revolution in the Chinese Foreign Ministry has been that the rebels controlled the Foreign Ministry in August 1967 and caused the many excesses in foreign affairs such as the burning of the British mission in Beijing which isolated China from the rest of the world. The author of this book challenges this point of view. The book gives a factual account of the course of the ten-year Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry, based on documents issued during the Cultural Revolution, talks by Zhou Enlai and Chen Yi, and the manuscripts of the people concerned, as well as interviews with Foreign Ministry staff members who personally took part in the events. Ms. Ma Jisen graduated from the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute in 1952; she served first at the Chinese embassy in Denmark and then in the West European Department at the Foreign Ministry between 1952 and 1969. She worked at the Foreign Ministry during the Cultural Revolution and was an eyewitness to many of the daily events there. Since 1981, she was the Editor in charge of the "Opinion Page" of China Daily and later at the academic quarterly called Social Sciences in China until her retirement in 1994.