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Since the 1980s, Chinese historiography has undergone an important process of development which has enabled foreign researchers to renew the traditional approaches to the Chinese Communist revolution. A serial study of this new historiography shows that a new official memory of the revolution was built up under the patronage of Deng Xiaoping. This new memory has rehabilitated non-peasant social groups of historical actors, particularly intellectuals as well as former leaders of the Communist bases, whose role had been largely glossed over under Maoist rule, and violently attacked during the Cultural Revolution. The paper reveals the contents of several documents generated by this official memory and points out the limits the latter sets on the new historiography by bringing to light hitherto unknown aspects of the Communist revolution.