China woke up on May 16 seeing no official utterance on the 50th anniversary of the launch of the “cultural revolution”.
In sharp contrast with the many remembrances and reflections on that devastating episode of contemporary Chinese history in both overseas media and Chinese social media, the “mainstream” media were silent on the issue
Few who have followed recent happenings on China’s mainland would make a fuss over the silence, considering that Zhongnanhai has plenty of thorny jobs to attend to these days, from the lackluster economy to the needs to cut over-capacity, avoid sizable lay-offs, and accelerate reforms in various fields.
Avoiding a sensitive topic and the potentially divisive debate that will ensue may not be a bad idea at a moment like this, when multiple burning issues on the government’s to-do list call for greater consensus.
What was strange and unexpected to many, though, was that the People’s Daily and its usually vocal affiliate, Global Times, finally broke the silence, though conspicuously late to the game.
Titled respectively “Holding History as A Mirror Is for Advancing Better”, and “ ‘Cultural Revolution’ Has Been Completely Negated”, both articles were posted online 20 minutes or so after midnight, published a whole day later than anticipated.
The time lag has inspired more guesswork than did the silence of the previous day. An anniversary like this was no unpredictable occurrence. If there had been plans to commemorate it, articles like these would have been published a day before.
That both articles were published as signed statements, particularly that the People’s Daily introduced a pen name considered of lesser significance than the famous “Ren Zhongping”, which is reserved for the paper’s most important signed commentaries, left the impression that they finally decided something had to be printed, but it had to be low-profile.
It was a pity that the Communist Party of China didn’t avail itself of the precious opportunity the anniversary presented to make a louder statement about its commitment to a new kind of politics, and assure its audience, at home and abroad, that leftist inclinations, robust as they appear lately, are no reason for fears of a return to the “cultural revolution”.
Although few would believe a mad “revolution” like that would repeat itself in present-day China, the unprecedented energy ultra-leftist ideologies have demonstrated recently is brewing some worries and suspicions about the authorities’ political inclinations.
Fearing that the “cultural revolution” as a historic blunder on the CPC’s record would undermine its authority, some decision-makers share the notion that since the party had already come up with a conclusive assessment of that unseemly episode in 1981, it’s best to let bygones be bygones.
According to that monumental resolution, the “cultural revolution”, which lasted from May 1966 to October 1976, “wasn’t and was impossible to be a revolution or social progress in any sense”. On the contrary, it was “a domestic commotion that had been mistakenly launched by a leader, exploited by a counter-revolutionary clique, and brought severe disasters to the party, the country and people of all nationalities”.
Each generation of CPC leadership has resorted to the “Resolution” when commenting on it. So did the People’s Daily and Global Times on May 17.
That has never prevented some from being nostalgic, though. Only that nostalgia for the “cultural revolution” grew louder lately as some ultra-leftists have taken advantage of popular frustration with various signs of inequality, unfairness, and injustice today. Things were better during the “cultural revolution” in their rhetoric: The government and officials were clean, as were the air, soil and water; foods were safe; and there was no such a thing as the “income gap” we see today. Some blame the reform and opening up as a betrayal of socialism, and even believe we need something like that “revolution to cure the illness of our society”. On the other extreme of the ideological spectrum has been the “rightist” complaint that, although the “resolution” deemed the theories and approaches of the “cultural revolution” “completely wrong”, the CPC has yet to draw a demarcation line. To them, the reflections on and lessons drawn from the “cultural revolution” are far from enough.
Both the People’s Daily and Global Times pieces seem to show concern that some may use the anniversary to denigrate CPC history. But, as the media put it, those are an extreme minority. The truth is, worrying as it is, this round of public discourse about the “cultural revolution” is more about what the “cultural revolution” meant and means — question the party had answered quite decently decades back.
The CPC has a good sense of history, and has always advocated to “hold history as a mirror”. The “cultural revolution”, then, is a ready mirror, one that appears especially important as the CPC strives to improve itself and deliver “good governance”. Particularly because, while many of today’s youngsters in China are inadequately informed about that dark period of the country’s immediate past, the pernicious influences of leftist tendencies of those days should be firmly guarded against. Former Premier Wen Jiabao issued a stern warning in 2012 that without the success of political reforms, historical tragedies like the “cultural revolution” are likely to stage a comeback. The ultra-leftist camp’s recent attempts to denigrate the reform and opening up have shown a dangerous tendency to backpedal.
Belated as it was, the People’s Daily article qualifies as a timely reply to one essential question: Has the current leadership taken a different position on the “cultural revolution”?
That a reassuring answer was finally given was in itself something to celebrate.
But it would be wrong to think since a definitive answer had been given, and the unseemly page had been turned over, there is no need to revisit it.
The tendency to politicize, intolerance of different ideas, as well as the incessant shows of nostalgia for those years should be constant reminders that the “cultural revolution” is not that far removed from us, yet.
It helps to revisit that particular CPC resolution, which identified the party’s own inexperience in nation-building and the lack of democracy in decision-making, besides Mao’s wrong judgments, as the foremost causes of the 10-year havoc.
The failure to institutionalize intra-party democracy and democracy in national politics created conditions “for the party’s powers to concentrate excessively in an individual’s hands, the phenomena of arbitrary decisions by the individual and personality cult grew increasingly, making it difficult for the party and the government to prevent or stop the launch and development of the ‘cultural revolution’”, it said.