{"id":7017,"date":"2016-05-16T17:10:50","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T21:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=7017"},"modified":"2016-05-19T17:20:19","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T21:20:19","slug":"china-silent-on-50th-anniversary-of-cultural-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/china-silent-on-50th-anniversary-of-cultural-revolution","title":{"rendered":"Joshua Fatzick: China Silent on 50th Anniversary of Cultural Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mausoleum

A cleaner sweeps ground in front of the Mausoleum of late Chinese chairman Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Square on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution in Beijing, China, May 16, 2016.<\/p><\/div>\n

Fifty years ago today, the Chinese Communist Party started the country down a path to the Cultural Revolution, which it said would bring about a more just society, but in practice led to complete social and economic disaster.This seemingly momentous anniversary was all but ignored and met with virtual silence from China\u2019s state-run media.<\/p>\n

On May 16, 1966, Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong began the campaign by purging several top party officials and announcing his agenda that ostensibly sought to return power to the working class that had been usurped by the bourgeois.<\/p>\n

What followed wasn\u2019t the communist utopia Mao had planned, but a brutal period of violence, food shortage and economic hardship that led to the persecution and death of millions of people.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\"Culture

In this file photo taken Sept. 14, 1966, youths are seen at a rally during the height of the Red Guard upheaval waving copies of the collected writings of Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, often referred to as Mao’s Little Red Book and carrying a poster of Karl Marx.<\/p><\/div>\n

Now it seems as if the Chinese government would rather forget the Cultural Revolution entirely. There were no official events being held Monday and no newspapers on mainland China made mention of the anniversary.<\/p>\n

Instead, the front pages of China\u2019s largest papers featured stories regarding Donald Trump and Boris Johnson comparing the EU to Hitler\u2019s Third Reich, the Chinese government\u2019s anger over a recent Pentagon report, and a story about attempts by police to locate missing children.<\/p>\n

‘Uncomfortable facts’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Roderick MacFarquhar, a Cultural Revolution expert at Harvard University, told The Guardian<\/em>, China\u2019s current president, Xi Jinping, is looking to avoid any \u201cuncomfortable facts\u201d about the revolution.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe really uncomfortable fact which Xi Jinping in particular cannot really stomach is Mao\u2019s role [in the Cultural Revolution]. Mao actually gloried in the chaos. He loved the idea of civil war. \u2026 The last thing Xi Jinping wants to do is raise anything to do with the Cultural Revolution because it inevitably affects Mao\u2019s reputation,\u201d MacFarquhar told the British newspaper.<\/p>\n

Mao recruited Chinese youths to join his Red Guard paramilitary group and encouraged them to attack the Four Olds of Chinese society: Customs, culture, habits and ideas.<\/p>\n

These gangs of students publicly humiliated and tortured teachers and other school officials and even turned in their own parents for expressing counterrevolutionary ideas. Thousands of people were beaten to death, and even more driven to suicide.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until 10 years later, when Mao died, that the violence and hardship began to turn around, but it took another five years, until 1981, that China\u2019s government officially acknowledged that Mao\u2019s policies \u201cled to domestic turmoil and brought catastrophe to the Party, the state and the whole people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mao\u2019s legacy is still a polarizing subject in China.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\"Culture

In this file photo taken Aug. 27, 1966, a Buddha statue is covered with signs reading “Destroy the old world,” and “Establish a new world,” by ultra-patriotic Red Guard who reject ancient Chinese traditions at Lin Yin temple in Hangzhou, China.<\/p><\/div>\n

Despite the disastrous economic and social effects of his policies, Mao\u2019s ideas have seen a resurgence in recent years, particularly among the old and poor members of society who hold a certain nostalgia for the time when the state provided for them and society was more equal \u2013 glossing over the death and destruction.<\/p>\n

“Either it’s because people have forgotten the Cultural Revolution or are increasingly dissatisfied with social conditions, but since the mid-1990s these kinds of ideas have been gaining currency,” Xu Youyu, a former Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher, told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

Risk of repeating<\/strong><\/p>\n

The only media reports about the Cultural Revolution in China came out of Hong Kong, which is a semiautonomous region in China with greater economic and speech freedoms than the mainland.<\/p>\n

The South China Morning Post <\/em>published an opinion piece<\/span><\/a> by senior writer Cary Huang last week calling on the nation to remember its past, or risk repeating it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile many Western universities run courses and research programmes on the Cultural Revolution, Beijing has banned public discussion and academic study of the topic, fearing that revisiting the dark period and reflecting on the past would lead to a reassessment of the party\u2019s role in modern China,\u201d Cary wrote.<\/p>\n

Cary said the political fallout from the Cultural Revolution continues to affect Chinese politics, and questioned whether the party can have a proper vision moving with the system built by Mao still blocking efforts to \u201cembrace modernity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the party fears disclosing the truth about its own past and refuses to learn from it, how can it have a clear vision of the right direction for the future?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Source: http:\/\/www.voanews.com\/content\/china-marks-50th-anniversary-of-cultural-revolution-with-silence\/3331926.html<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago today, the Chinese Commu … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[232,394,167],"tags":[37,371,1661,323],"views":5456,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7017"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7021,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7017\/revisions\/7021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}