Perhaps no one has drawn Luoyang authorities’ ire more than Wang Xianfeng, a 57-year-old retiree who in recent years has pulled together Maoist rallies with thousands of people, prompting multiple crackdowns.
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Probably, the silence on the 50th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution was in deference to Mao.
“Where there is a market, there are fakes”, he added, citing reproductions of Red Guard armbands as an example. During that period, 16 million children, like Xi, were sent to the countryside, while top leaders who were perceived as being against the Communist Party were either jailed or killed.
But the throngs of people in the square, where once a million Red Guards waved their little red books, are waving iPhones manufactured in China and taking selfies.
“We should be criticizing the Cultural Revolution, but owing to all manner of connivance, we are launching it all over again”, Tan said. The pogroms even included cannibalization of victims in the southern region of Guangxi.
The anniversary of the movement, which began May 16, 1966 and consumed the country in 10 years of chaos and bloodshed, has otherwise been largely ignored by official voices in the country.
Both state media editorials fail to shine any new light on the chaotic period, simply reaffirming the “unshakeably scientific and authoritative” correctness of a 1981 Communist party resolution on the Cultural Revolution, issued just five years after its end, by leaders who felt its worst affects, calling the period from 1966 to 1976 a “decade-long catastrophe” that resulted in “the heaviest losses” since the Communist revolution.
“In the past when we talked about beliefs, it was very abstract”.
It did not take long for Mao to turn on the Red Guards, deciding that its members were the “underlings” of the capitalist roaders. It was a mood.
“We have bid farewell to the Cultural Revolution”, the editorial concludes.
The anniversary leaves the Chinese government in a predicament.
“The decade of calamity caused severe damage, leaving permanent pain for many Chinese”, a commentary in the Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper said Tuesday. Phoenix TV, one of the few privately owned stations allowed to operate in mainland China, interviewed young people to ask their thoughts on the Cultural Revolution, getting responses like “idealism” and “confusion”.
Earlier this month, an anniversary concert at the Great Hall of the People stirred controversy for an uncritical presentation of the anthems and propaganda imagery from the period. ” It”s so painful to look back at the Cultural Revolution.”. He has also gone after civil society, giving security forces control over foreign non-governmental organizations that deal with human rights, public health, and education.
Another censored commentator had written: “Without thoroughly revisiting the Cultural Revolution, there will be people who want to bring it back”. There are even pop songs that celebrate him. Some see shades of Mao in Xi’s moves to consolidate power. In April, donning a camouflaged uniform, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party also became the commander in chief of the joint battle command.
By Mao’s own measure, the mass campaign was his greatest achievement after leading the Communists to victory over the Japanese and the Kuomintang government which was exiled to Taiwan.
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Jeremy Brown, a professor of history at Simon Fraser University who studies the Cultural Revolution from the perspective of ordinary people rather than the power struggles of the political elite, sees the breakdown of social trust, which is a perpetual subject of discussion in China today, as one of those scars.
