Does the cultural revolution make sense? It does to one observer who sees it as Mao's device to preserve the revolutionary nature of the Chinese Revolution until basic goals are achieved.Ray Wylie is coordinator of the China Project for the United Church of Canada, and a member of the Consultative Commitee on China, Canadian Institute of International Affairs. He served as a lecturer in English from 1965–1967 at the Institute of Foreign Languages, Shanghai, China. His observations of events in China during those two years are related in the following article.