THE CULTURAL
REVOLUTION
G'day folks,
Welcome to some background on a very important time in history.
Following the
failure of Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward—a
disastrous attempt to accelerate the Chinese economy that left as many as 45
million dead from famine between 1958 and 1962—the founder of the People’s
Republic of China sought to reassert his authority, eliminate his political
enemies and revive the country’s revolutionary fervor. On May 16, 1966, Mao
launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to purge the country of
“representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the
government, the army and various spheres of culture” and destroy the “Four
Olds”—old ideas, old customs, old culture and old habits.
Thousands of
party leaders, including Chinese President Liu Shaoqi, were jailed for “crimes
against the state.” Millions of young radicals who formed the paramilitary Red
Guards shut down schools, destroyed religious and cultural relics and killed
intellectuals and party elites believed to be anti-revolutionaries.
Mao’s wife,
Jiang Qing, led the effort to purify the arts by banning music, literature,
film and theater, such as Shakespeare, too closely tied to the West. A cult of
personality grew around Mao as millions of copies of the “Little Red Book”
filled with his thoughts were forced to be read by those in need of
“re-education.” When cities descended into anarchy as competing Red Guards
factions began to battle each other, the People’s Liberation Army disarmed the
student groups and banished them to work on communes in the countryside.
The Cultural
Revolution waned in the years before Mao’s death on September 9, 1976, and came
to a close weeks later with the arrest of Jiang and three of her collaborators,
known as the Gang of Four, who were subsequently convicted of
“counter-revolutionary crimes.” The Cultural Revolution crippled the Chinese
economy and resulted in the deaths of approximately 1.5 million people and the
banishment of approximately 20 million others, including China’s current
president, Xi Jinping.
The Chinese Communist Party condemned the Cultural
Revolution in 1981, but laid most of the blame on the Gang of Four. Public
discussion of the Cultural Revolution remains prohibited in China today, in
part to protect Mao’s legacy.
Clancy's comment: Interesting when we look back in history. Most, if not all those who took drastic actions to further their ideology were males ... Hitler, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot etc. Such sad outcomes.
I'm ....
No comments:
Post a Comment