I think you should be working with the Ministry of Education to ‘tell it like it really was’ and put the bits back in that have been conveniently swept under the carpet.

This post, together with the one over at ‘The China Beat’ offer some insight into the origins of China’s sensitive (and often punitive) reaction to the critical or dissenting voice.

Essentially I see this reaction as a product of authoritarian rule, but there does seem to be something deeper within the Chinese psyche that demands praise and denounces criticism.

Excellent post, and I really like the “this day in history” posts, but understand that it takes a lot of time to do it well.

Thanks for the kind words.

The journalist Liu Binyan, one of the victims of the Anti-Rightist campaign, argues something similar to what you suggested: that it was all a ploy to get Mao’s enemies to reveal themselves. It’s hard to guess intentions and we don’t really have the evidence to say for certain what Mao’s motivations might have been, but if that was the plan, it couldn’t have worked any better.

The long titles are translations of the slogans on the posters.

Given your interests, I might suggest checking out Stefan Landsberger’s site, I think you would find it fascinating.

Maybe it wasn’t the plan but one has to wonder whether if Mao’s seeming weakness or openness to criticism (or praise) was not in fact a ploy to reveal his critics. I mean he let them have their head for a while and then he knew who they were. He offered them the chance to say too much. Problem solved and no need to go searching for them.

Great posters and even better (long) titles. I could learn a thing or two from those.

My understanding is that the ‘body count’ wasn’t that high and that most were “only” imprisoned or exiled to work in camps or in the countryside (which given conditions a few years later, could have been tantamount to a death sentence.) The tragedy was that the list of the purged was like a who’s who of the best and brightest in academia and the arts: Fei Xiatong, the celebrated Chinese sociologist, Fang Lizhi (who would have his encore in the 1980s), the author Ding Ling, who was exiled to Heilongjiang. It wasn’t the Cultural Revolution, but it was certainly a harbinger of tougher times ahead.

Intermittently. This was a “This Day in History” that spun out of control. It’s tough for me to do it every day, but if there’s an important event for a particular day, I’ll try to do at least a quick post.

Thanks for suggesting and for stopping by.

I’m guessing that the authors of those remarks didn’t survive that long – but what about the survival rates for the purged 300,000? Surely they didn’t all die, or spend the rest of their life in labour camps?

Great summary of the situation. Really enjoyable.

Any chance you’ll be continuing your this day in Chinese history posts?

J.

Have you slain ‘the beast’ now?