SWARAJ AND JIEFANG: FREEDOM DISCOURSE IN INDIA AND CHINA 33 representing the pro-imperialist feudal and comprador forces. Thus the liberation movement had continued and finally the CPC achieved liberation of China in 1949. Addressing the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing on 21 September 1949 Mao said : 'We have closed our ranks and defeated both domestic and foreign oppressors through the People's War of Liberation and the great people's revolution and now we are proclaiming the founding of the People's Republic of China. . . 'Ours will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation. We have stood up.' He gave a call 'to build a new China, independent, democratic, peaceful, unified, prosperous and strong'. It is possible to argue that Mao captured the theme of the reformers who preceded him in trying to build 'a strong country and rich nation1 and Marxism was in the Chinese conditions only an ideological framework to pursue that goal. But the relevant question for our purpose is whether or not there was a perspective of social liberation underlying this objective. The answer is a clear affirmative. Achievement of Jiefang or liberation in 1949 was not the end of the struggle for liberation. It only propelled a historical process of self-determination of nation, nationalities and deprived groups of individuals. DECLINE OF FREEDOM DISCOURSE This summary recapitulation of the freedom perspectives of the people's struggles in India and China is meant to provide a vantage point for characterising the present preoccupations in India and China. Put in this context, it is clear that the contemporary modernisation drive in the two countries has moved far away from the goals of Swaraj and Jiefang. In the 1960s both India and China experienced a crisis in their initial development model. Both had attempted 'modernisation' in the context of their respective perspectives derived from their freedom struggle. Consolidation of national sovereignty, economic development and structural reforms in agriculture and industry achieved a degree of success. But by the mid-sixties problems of food scarcity, unemployment and social upheavals began to accumulate. Late 1960s and the seventies saw debates on the development path in both the countries. China's Cultural Revolution asserted its linkage with Jiefang, gave a radical programme of speedy transformation of society. The JP Movement in India revived the Swaraj perspective through JPs concept of Total Revolution and asserted the relevance of Gandhi. The excesses of the Cultural Revolution paved the way for a sharp counter-perspective in China which crystallized at the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in December 1978 with the victory of Deng Xiaoping. Thereafter, in China the 1980s saw a steady implementation of the modernisation perspective under the slogan of 'reform and open