Another CIA/NSC Archive Film: “China: The Roots of Madness” (1967)

Another classic attempt to “explain and understand” China from the CIA/NSC archives, this one is like some sort of unholy mash-up of John King Fairbank, Max Weber, Henry Luce, Edward Said, and the KMT propaganda department…but there is some useful archival footage as well as interviews with seminal American “China watchers” such as Theodore White and Pearl Buck.  Huge h/t to my fellow historian G.T.

June 28th, 2010

On Memories of Violence, Part 2: Chinese textbooks and questions about the Korean War 60 years later

A 1950 Chinese propaganda poster showing a caricature of Douglas MacArthur committing wartime atrocities as a US plane bombs a Chinese factory in the background. Used with permission from the Stefan Landsberger/Chinese Posters collection.

Today is the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, a war which six decades later is still surrounded in controversy. For decades, the Party line in the PRC was the same one that is alive and well and living in Pyongyang today: The American Imperialists, with the help of their lackeys in the right-wing militarist government in Seoul, invaded the North.  As Tania Branigan reports from Dandong for The Guardian, it’s a belief that dies hard, especially because many Chinese living along the PRC/DPRK border personally witnessed bombing raids by American planes during the war.

But times are changing.  For example, yesterday the Global Times English-language edition published an op-ed calling for PRC archives to be opened up for further study of the Korean War and Chinese involvement in the conflict.  Chinese academia is not (quite) as bound and gagged by the Party as it once was, and many scholars accept the idea that it was the North who commenced aggressions against the

June 25th, 2010

Confessions of a Fen(way)qing

I want to come clean: I am a Red Sox fenqing.  Mao may have had his Red Guards but I’m a card-carrying armband-wearing brainless slogan-chanting member of the 红袜兵.*  Hey, we’ve got our catchy songs and marching anthem too.

You have a problem with that? Didn’t think so, because there’s a bleacher full of guys behind me who will find your ass, pull you out of your seat and get all Dropkick Murphys on you…

You can hold me down, prop open my eyelids with rusty nails and make me watch video of David Ortiz plunging needles into his body like he’s filming the last 15 seconds of  Kurt Cobain: The Movie and I still won’t believe that Papi was juiced on steroids even though he went from hitting 20 home runs a year with Twins to bashing 50 home runs only after joining the Red Sox and making the acquaintance of one Manuel Ramirez.

The cover of Sports Illustrated with Nomar Garciaparra that caused every red blooded New England male to question their sexuality for .000001 seconds? Yeah, nothing going on there.  Oh sure…right AFTER steroids became a big deal Nomar started breaking  down like a decade-old Xiali, but

April 24th, 2010

The Historical Record for June 8, 2009: The Anti-Rightist Movement

This date in 1957 marked the beginning of the Anti-Rightist Movement, a crusade  launched by the party leadership in the wake of Mao’s rather impetuous call to “Let 100 flowers bloom.”

Like a lot of 20th century Chinese history, it’s a tragicomic tale and the subject of one of my favorite earlier posts, “Mao and the Marriage Counselor.”  Check it out.

June 8th, 2009

From the Granite Studio Archives: Mao and Chiang are walking down the street…

Today a user followed this query to the Granite Studio: “How do Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong continue to influence Taiwan and China today?” It’s obviously a complicated question, but it does recall a comment a Beijing acquaintance of mine made the first time we went to the old South Bar Street to take in the spectacle of a Sanlitun Saturday night: “This is what all of China would like if Chiang Kai-shek had won the war.” Ouch. Then I thought about it: Well, didn’t he?

May 2nd, 2009
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