40 Years Ago: Mao's Disastrous Cultural Revolution
I forgot to post this on May 16, the actual date, since I was running around campus in a screaming panic about exams.
But I post this now, because the Cultural Revolution is too horrible and important to forget. And especially because the Beijing government is still avoiding talk of those dark days:
The Communist Party's unwillingness to confront the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, which was launched on May 16th 1966 and officially ended ten years later with the death of Mao Zedong and the fall of the Gang of Four, means that for Chinese historians as well as for millions of victims that entire period is, in effect, off-limits for debate. The passage of time does not appear to be helping. Chinese scholars say the government has been even more intent on stopping public commemoration of this week's anniversary than it was a decade ago. No mention of it has appeared in the state-controlled media. A group of scholars who held a private symposium in Beijing in March to discuss the Cultural Revolution avoided using e-mail to arrange it for fear their communications would be intercepted by officials. . . . Officials fear that closer scrutiny of the Cultural Revolution could destabilise the country by inflaming long suppressed antagonisms. Many scholars now believe that well over 1m were killed or driven to suicide in political struggles between 1966 and 1976. The lives of almost all urban residents were profoundly disrupted. Schools and universities were closed. Educated people were forced to leave cities and work on farms. Family members turned on one another. Many of those now in their 50s belong to a “lost generation” whose education and careers were permanently blighted by the Cultural Revolution. |
Add this to Mao's long list of wretched "achievements" like the "Great Leap Forward" that created famine instead. Tyrants always end up hurting their own people the worst. The BBC has 3 accounts by eyewitnesses of the Cultural Revolution.
Maybe Beijing won't fully come to grips with the murderous, miserable hysteria that was the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," but the entire unhappy history must not be forgotten. Officially the CCP has renounced the whole business, but that doesn't mean it'll talk about it honestly or allow others to do so. (History is always dangerous in China, where -- need I remind you? -- talk of the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 is also suppressed. Hm, this sort of non-freedom will probably NOT encourage Taiwan to join the mainland.)
Still, last year the Washington Post had this interesting article about a Chinese museum's attempt to talk about the Cultural Revolution. That is courage. Here is what Peng Qian, the man behind the museum, had to say:
Peng experienced the period in a personal way. During bloody clashes that pitted one revolutionary faction against another in the Shantou region, his name was placed on a list of officials to be killed. At the last minute, he was removed from the list, he recalled, but the episode left him with a lifelong interest in the Cultural Revolution and the devastation it caused. "I deeply hope that people can face this period of history squarely and let people in China and the rest of the world see how China lived through this period of its history, and that they never will do anything so stupid again," he said. |
While I'm at it, try this book that I had to read for one of my Chinese history classes: Life and Death in Shanghai, the story of Nien Cheng, a woman who was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. (I even had the chance to hear her speak some years ago -- she is tiny but tough!)
UPDATE: Take a look at this editorial by a professor of history at Chengchi University. Here is a piece of it (happily translated into English), as the professor talks about the origins of the Cultural Revolution:
In retrospect, a cold, hard look at the origins will reveal that they are not concentrated merely in Mao's insanity; they are not completely rooted in the power struggles of Zhongnanhai, the government compound and the seat of power in Beijing; nor is the Cultural Revolution totally the product of the Gang of Four. No, the true source of the Cultural Revolution, if we go back far enough, is the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, and the many mass movements that immediately followed the founding of the PRC in the 1950s. Which of those movements were in essence dissimilar to the Cultural Revolution? A thorough reflection of the Cultural Revolution reveals fatal flaws in the very design and structure of the party-state system. However, this truth -- three decades later -- is still hidden. Has the Cultural Revolution been forgotten? If it has, perhaps one day it will be properly remembered. Even more frightening than forgetting the Cultural Revolution, however, is the way it has been "consumed" and cheapened as no more than an opportunity to make a buck. The fact that China is awash today with tourist mementos sporting a Cultural Revolution theme bespeaks the CCP's embrace of capitalism. Such commercialization of the Cultural Revolution is a shrewd ploy, covering up the movement's horror with a nicer, more palatable, and more profitable spin. |
Indeed.