The victors are the ones who write history
The Chinese Cultural Revolution and its accompanying atrocities are a lesson for the world
Beijing has turned into a modern city, open to the world, contrary to what the Cultural Revolution wanted.
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Ding Xiaoping led the process of China's opening up to the West, abandoning the Cultural Revolution.
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Mao Zedong: Did His Cultural Revolution Bring disaster to China?
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The victors are the ones who write history .. This is a simple, correct and completely clear observation, and the omission of this rule may obscure our understanding of the darkest chapters of the twentieth century, and our awareness of the greatest rising power in the new millennium.
In a report published by Bloomberg News, writer Matthew Brooker said that from 1966 to 1976, China tore itself apart in a wave of chaos, the absence of order, and an unimaginable cruelty known as the Cultural Revolution.
And this decade ended in madness only with the death of its chief engineer, Mao Zedong.
In an official ruling issued in 1981, describing the Cultural Revolution as a disaster, the Communist Party said that Mao had made grave mistakes, and the party blamed the counter-revolutionary groups for exploiting the situation.
Self interest
Brooker added that for Chinese writer Yang Ji-shing, this judgment serves self-interest.
The central issue in his book "The World Turns Upside Down" is that the official history of the Cultural Revolution was written by the victors, who took advantage of the opportunity to distribute full responsibility for the disaster to the losing faction, uplifting and highlighting their role.
This has implications for the nature of the Chinese state today, which has now turned into a great power, and what it might be in the future.
Yang has unique moral authority to undertake this re-evaluation.
A former Xinhua journalist spent nearly two decades compiling an earlier work, his account of an early disaster envisioned by Mao, which was the Great Leap Forward and the subsequent major famine, which, according to his estimate, claimed 36 million lives.
By taking advantage of his status as a member of the official media to gain access to state archives, Yang compiled his research meticulously and added comments to his 1,200-page research, "Tombstone" (and was published briefly in English in 2012). Basically an unchallenged act.
Mao launched a campaign to consolidate and consolidate his power (weakened by the failure of the Great Leap Forward), reform the bureaucracy, and test his theory of "continuous revolution" in his imaginative endeavor to establish a virtuous communist society.
What followed was a flood of evils and human brutality that impoverished the Chinese people and caused them great pain.
Historical records of the Cultural Revolution include that in Beijing alone before October 14, 1966, 1,772 people were beaten to death, and 33,695 homes were looted.
According to official estimates, the total number of people affected by the campaigns against political enemies reached 100 million, an eighth of the Chinese population at the time.
According to Yang, the Cultural Revolution was a tripartite game between Mao, a far-left rebel faction that strongly supported the president's call for an endless class struggle, and a bureaucratic clique that represented the current Communist Party system.
With Mao's departure, the precarious balance between two strongly opposing camps collapsed, and the bureaucratic clique had already dominated most of the organs of government.
The rebel faction was crushed, and their key representatives, then dubbed the infamous "Gang of Four", were arrested, including Jiang Qing, Mao's widow.
The question, Brooker said, is what does any of this have to do with China today, which has a modern and developed economy and dotted with glamorous skyscrapers, digital payment services, and gigantic technology companies, which makes China seem like a world far from the relatively poor and backward country of 1976?
At that point, Deng's era of reform and openness still lay in the future.
Ding's reforms astonishingly elevated China to the status of an economic superpower, whose reforms were the bureaucratic clique that was the ultimate victor of the Cultural Revolution.
This clique took control of the country's resources, and they had to decide how to use them, and this gave rise to an economic elite, where wealth was concentrated in the hands of bureaucratic families and their extended networks.
The legacy of an economic model that is directed and controlled by the administrative authority of the state is a lack of justice.
Yang argued that under this system, the ability to succeed in anything depends on relationships with key people in power, and that this would lead to widespread corruption due to the absence of checks and balances.
On the other hand, this entrenched bureaucratic elite prolongs its benefits by impeding political reform.
Despite systemic injustice, living standards have risen dramatically.
Many Chinese enjoy their country's emerging global position and appear relatively happy with their government (although it is difficult to assess public opinion in a country that can be very costly to talk about).
Brooker stated that China’s handling of the Coronavirus has strengthened its government’s standing, while the Covid-19 disaster in Europe and America, coupled with Donald Trump's attempts to cancel the result of the US presidential elections, has tarnished the reputation of Western democracy.
Fragile system
Although many Chinese are enjoying their country's emerging position on a global stage, China's system appears fragile, and freedom of expression remains restricted.
Like the Tombstone research, "The World Is Turned Upside Down" was published in Hong Kong in 2016 and cannot be legally sold or traded on the Chinese mainland.
According to writer Matthew Brooker, the margin of opposition has shrunk further under the rule of President Xi Jinping, whose approach to the centralization of power and the promotion of the cult of personality, similar to Mao's method, emphasizes how the Chinese regime still lacks checks and balances.
Brooker explained that these behaviors are not characteristic of a superpower that is confident in itself and feels comfortable, and is certain of its place in the world.
It is highly unlikely that any nation that cannot reconcile with its history and seeks to suppress discussion and freedom of opinion is a model for other countries to follow.
At present, the calls of supporters of democracy in China are not resonating and are being ignored, and perhaps one day, their voice may rise again.
On the other hand, the Cultural Revolution is a lesson from history to the world.
Mao launched a campaign to support and consolidate his power (weakened by the failure of the Great Leap Forward), and modified the bureaucracy in his imaginative endeavor to establish a virtuous communist society.
What followed was a flood of evils and human brutality that impoverished the Chinese people and caused them great pain.
Historical records of the Cultural Revolution include that in Beijing alone before October 14, 1966, 1,772 people were even beaten
Death, 33,695 homes looted.
According to official estimates, the total number of people affected by the campaigns against political enemies reached 100 million, an eighth of the Chinese population at the time.
China’s handling of the Coronavirus has strengthened its government’s standing, while the Covid-19 disaster in Europe and America tarnished the reputation of Western democracy.
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