I have three questions: Usually, a totalitarian government will exalt it's history. Why did the CCP decide on the opposite? If all written register of Chinese history was burned, how can historians study pre-revolutionary China? If the CCP wanted to erase history prior to the revolution, why does it allow the excavations of the Warriors of terracotta?
Edit- cultural revolution, not Great Leap Forward. Thanks for the correction /u/cordis_melum
a totalitarian government will exalt it's history. Why did the CCP decide on the opposite?
They didn't.
If all written register of Chinese history was burned, how can historians study pre-revolutionary China?
All written record was most certainly not burned. I'm not sure where you're getting this.
If the CCP wanted to erase history prior to the revolution, why does it allow the excavations of the Warriors of terracotta?
China in the mid to late 1970s was a very different place than China in the mid to late 1960s, just as that was quite different than in the mid to late 1950s. China is not a single homogenous monolith of a culture. And at every point in history, there were multiple people in power with different ideas of where the country should be going. The same is true of China today just as it is of North Korea today and just as it is of America today. Countries and governments aren't monoliths.
Apologies for late reply, but did you mean the Cultural Revolution in your question?