Talk: Cultural Revolution
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Just added a line about different possible causes for the CR, to just put it down as an attempt by Mao to eliminate his rivals is overly simplistic. Just in the middle of writing an essay on this at Uni, will add more once I've finished. - James
How many tens of millions of people were executed by the Chinese government during this period? Was the term cultural revolution coined specifically to be a euphemism to hide these murders? Have regimes after Mao's acknowledged any of this genocide? User:Ed Poor, anti-communist.
Not all the murders during that period was done by the government actually. Nevertheless, it was done by the people in power locally. i.e. if the leader of your village didn't like you, he could use any excuse to kill you and got away with murder. Because during that period, the communist government enpowered the mass to do anything they wanted. I was a kid in HongKong during that period, and I still remember watching news about corpses floated into HongKong's water almost everyday. These dead bodies were bundled up like a parcel. Someone just tied up their arms and legs and threw them into the sea. If you said someone did not follow Mao's doctrine, the crowd would carry out the execution.
If you look back in history, this type of mob crime is not unique to communists. For example, witch hunt was done in the name of God. Religious leader said that was what God wanted, and the crowd simply followed.
During the cultural revolution, capitalists, landlords, wealthy people were prosecuted, why? Those who carried out the prosecution had their hidden agenda. Where did you think the wealthy victims' possessions end up? I bet many ex-Red-guards now dig up from their back yard the loots that they collected decades ago. I believe personal grudge and greeds played a bigger role in those murders than political reasons. However, it is undeniable that Mao provided the means.
Cultural revolution was the name they used at the time. One common misconception in the West is that the Cultural Revolution was Communist government versus people when in fact it was much more complex.
Basically Mao thought that the government was being too bureaucratic so he declared war against the Communist Party bureaucracy. He basically encouraged people to out "red" each other, which led to a general breakdown in order with mobs trying to be more revolutionary than each other and lots of people killing each other in the process.
What's significant about the Chinese leaders after Mao is that pretty much all of them were victims of the CR. Pretty much everyone who benefited from the CR was purged between 1976 and 1980.
Ironically the main lessons that the Chinese leadership learned from this period is that really bad things happen if the party loses control.
It's a mistake to say that there are two sides to every story. Usually (as in this case) there are at least six or seven.
Most people were aware of the genocide during the period. But many were not aware of the impact of CR to the school age people. I have cousins in China who have 10 years of their life missing because they joined the Red Guards. They are in their late 40s and 50s now, they realized how much damage to their career when they were not educated properly. The 10 years created a void and a generation of uneducated people.
8 million or 30 million killed during this period? Article needs to be reconciled with Mao Zedong article. Ed Poor, Tuesday, July 9, 2002
Okay. Why not include something in the article about the "no music", "no mahjong", etc., rules, that I read about somewhere? If you ask me, this is ample evidence of why people should be interested in the traditions of each other's cultures. So if yours gets wiped out, some foreigner can keep it alive for you. P.S. I have several albums of Chinese music, mainly dance. User:Juuitchan
I think there is room for improvements. Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, but this article only mentioned roughtly about what happened before 1969. Many things had happened after that, for example, the escape of Lin Biao. One thing not mentioned here is that millions of Chinese youth(many were from Red Ruards) were sent to rural areas in 1969, because the city was in such a chaos that it can no longer afford so many people. I am now working on the Chinese edition first(which is much easier, since I don't really know many terms in English), then perhaps I shall try to translate it into English.--Formulax 07:50 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I am in the progress of translating much of the Chinese Article to give a fuller understanding of the Cultural Revolution. If there is any advice please leave it here or My talk page. Colipon 00:03, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Just a note that all those IP adresses were edited by me, for some reason each time I edit it automatically logs me out.Colipon 00:34, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- When you login, select the checkbox that says "remember my password across sessions" dave 09:25, 9 Sep 2003 (EDT)
Why is there a whole bunch of ?????? in the first sentence. Let's get rid of that if we can. 134.22.139.42 09:28, 9 Sep 2003 (EDT)
What you're seeing is the Chinese unicode format which may not show on your computer. For example, do you see these as ?'s as well? 一二三四五六七八九十. If you do, then it is because your computer does not display Chinese. Colipon 04:31, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Removed NPOV about Mao's actions as only possible from China's feudal past. Roadrunner 22:16, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Death toll
I changed the section estimating the number of people killed, since it seemed very unhelpful for an article on the CR to estimate the number killed by everything Mao ever did. It'd be nice to find a more official source (e.g. to track down the Chinese government source [1] refers to, but it's a start.
Remember the true chaos of the Cultural Revolution only lasted 3 years, from 1967-1969. After 1969 Mao dismantled the Red Guards and the CCP took control of China once again. My third uncle, a former Red Guard, described the chaotic 3 years as mass street gang warfare. One month his R.G. faction would wage war with a rival R.G. faction and then later they'd switch to another so-called "treacherous" gang and fight to the death. He said it was not uncommon to see dead young Red Guards in the alleyways in the suburbs of Beijing during those 3 years.
This new politburo consisted mostly of those who rose because of the Cultural Revolution, with Zhou barely keeping his status, as he ranked fourth.
Fourth out of five doesn't seem that tenuous. Is there any better evidence of Zhou's problems? Markalexander100 07:04, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
What exactly does "purge" mean in this article? Is it a euphemism for murder, or does it only concern expulsion from the Communist party? This could be clearer.
Some problems with this article
This is a selection of serious deficiencies with this article that I posted to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. Shorne 22:40, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- The title should be Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. That is the full title.
- The punctuation and grammar also need to be cleaned up.
- There is also significant bias in the bald assertion that the Great Leap Forward was "an utter disaster" and that Mao refused to admit to any mistakes (it's hard to think of a more self-critical politician).
- Also "vandalize ancient buildings": this misrepresents what was going on (the Red Guards weren't just a bunch of graffiti-painting kids) and does not adequately explain the reason (getting rid of old culture, viewed as oppressive and backward, to make room for new).
- Liu Shaoqi "died … due to a lack of food and other necessities of life"—what exactly does this mean? Too vague.
- Not enough explanation of the "Down to the Countryside Movement", which was about a lot more than "remov[ing] emerging forces who could be of threat to the CCP".
- The pi1 Lin2 pi1 Kong3 movement as "a campaign that appears to sound absurd in convention"—this sort of POV statement contributes nothing positive to the article.
- "During the Cultural Revolution most economic activity was halted"—this is patently absurd. Nothing was produced for ten years? Please.
- Also "brought the education system to a halt": distorted. Far better would be to discuss the transformation of education. See Hinton's book on Tsinghua University for starters.
- The one-sentence reference to a "death toll", quoting a single (high) estimate, is inadequate. On other pages, such as the talk page for communist state, I have discussed the Western passion—widely embraced by the privileged in China, I'm afraid—for quoting wildly exaggerated death tolls in socialist societies as some sort of universal truth.
- The view that the Cultural Revolution was "an unmitigated disaster" is not adequately balanced by contrary views; citing one person in a single sentence doesn't do the trick.
- Virtually nothing is said about the movement in the countryside; the article focuses on urban youth.
- No mention of Mao's urging of the public to "Bombard the [Communist Party's] headquarters!".
- No mention of the Sino-Soviet split.
- No mention of why people were called counterrevolutionary: this was not a mere buzzword for anyone out of favour; it was applied to those in power who were accused of being on the capitalist road.
- No mention of Mao's statement that "the bourgeoisie [in a socialist country] is right inside the Communist Party itself".
- No data on the economy or, for that matter, on almost anything else.
- No references.
Shorne, Wikipedia convention is that we use common names as titles for things. The GPCR full name isn't very well-known, compared to just "Cultural Revolution". The cause of Liu Shaoqi's death is thought to have been starvation/dehydration after he was locked in a bank vault. Otherwise, you just need to work on the article, but try not to make edits you know are going to get you into POV edit wars if you can help it. Everyking 23:07, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- A dispute over the name arose in the discussion of featured articles. I wouldn't have said anything if a number of other people hadn't objected to Cultural Revolution as the title.
- If a POV edit war results, it will not because of any POV from me. I certainly shall not refrain from making changes just to keep POV-pushers from flaring up. The article is inadequate; there are many problems that should be addressed. Shorne 23:52, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I just reread the Essays on China written by Simon Leys and there are some inaccuracies in this article, I'm afraid. One sample : By contrast, the official view of the Communist Party of China sees the Cultural Revolution as what can happen when one person establishes a cult of personality and manipulates the public in a way to destroy party and state institutions. seems to be also the point of view of many other people that are not linked at all to CPC. gbog 06:16, 2004 Oct 11 (UTC)
Cultural Revolution Death Toll Sources [2]
In my opinion the site above is the most reliable source for 20th Century Death Tolls. The site creator has taken time to gather dozens of sources from the West AND the East and he trys to show as less bias as possible. So there's no Western and Eastern "propaganda" here. For example the site shows that the death toll for the Chinese Cultural Revolution is about 500,000 from 10 sources. Please promote this site so we can reduce the margin of error on Wikipedia.
The relationship of the Tiananmen Square protests and Cultural Revolution was oversimplified. It was illegal to openly support the Cultural Revolution, but among other things, 1989 demonstrators shouted some Cultural Revolutions slogans about Deng Xiaoping.
Mao's self-criticism on Great Leap
An earlier version of this article said that Mao refused to admit error in the Great Leap. That is not literally true. Here is one of many quotes available: "In 1958 and 1959 the main respnsibility was mine, and you should take me to task. In the past the responsibility was other people's--En-laii, XX--but now you should blame me because there are heaps of things I didn't attend to. . . .
Who was responsible for the idea of the mass smelting of steel? K'o Ch'ing-shih or me?
I say it was me. . . With this, we rushed into a great catastrophe."
Mao Zedong "Speech at the Lushan Conference," 23 July 1959 available in common documents including Chairman Mao Talks to the People, ed. Stuart Schram 205.179.217.195 23:49, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
