China's Cultural Revolution was a result of Mao Zedong's (
Mao convinced Chinese people that his "Great Proletarian Cultural Movement," launched 40 years ago on Tuesday, was necessary to destroy the evil influences of Western bourgeois and Confucian feudal culture and free them from the exploitation of the bureaucratic class.
But the next decade was one of bloodshed and hardship now known as "10 years of catastrophe," as the country descended into chaos that claimed millions of lives and pushed China to the brink of economic and social collapse.
Analysts now say Mao's purported reason for the revolution was merely an excuse to eliminate those he perceived as a political threat -- such as president Liu Shaoqi (
"I don't think he really believed this but he was just using it to mobilize the masses to attack the bureaucrats in the party," Wu Guoguang, a former government adviser and now political scientist at Canada's University of Victoria.
Forty years on, the militant movement's legacy continues to haunt many Chinese. And still more question how such senseless brutality could take place on such a mass scale for a decade.
Mao, a suspicious man by nature, saw Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 denunciation of Stalin after his death as a warning for himself.
Mao was also criticized by the Communist Party for his Great Leap Forward movement (1958-1961), an ambitious experiment to put China on a fast track to industrial development. It failed miserably and caused an estimated 30 million famine-related deaths.
Analysts said it left a proud Mao deeply humiliated and he voluntarily withdrew from the party apparatus while watching with discomfort the rise of Liu.
"He deceived people by saying that [inequality] was due to his enemies, like Liu Shaoqi and [late paramount leader] Deng Xiaoping (
Dubbed "China's Khrushchev" by Mao, Liu was ruthlessly attacked during the Cultural Revolution, and died after being tortured in prison in 1969.
"He felt resentful. The Great Leap Forward had a tremendous impact on Mao ... he was forced to reflect on his faults," says Li Datong (
But military leader Lin Biao's (
"Lin Biao turned our belief of Marxism into purely a belief of Mao," says Xu.
Mao's "cult of personality," coming on the heels of two decades of orthodox communist education in a highly isolated country, became a recipe for disaster when combined with Mao's personal ambition for power.
"Our brains were full of political legend ... even if Mao were to have asked me to become a human bomb then, I would have regarded it as a great honor," Xu recalls.
Part of the blind trust in Mao was rooted in a traditional wish of Chinese people for a wise and just emperor, others say.
"Chinese people always want to find a master key which can open all doors, a person who can solve all their problems," says political scientist Wu. "But people didn't realize Mao didn't really want freedom and equality. He didn't grant them freedom, he just wanted people to follow him and to topple those he didn't like."
The ferocity of the movement and the reign of terror also ensured that no one dared to speak out, afraid they would be punished harshly for being "counter-revolutionary."
"Hundreds of millions of people, no one dared say anything ... some were beaten to death immediately [after doing so]," Xu says, recounting how his classmate's mother was beaten to death in front of her family after she scolded a group of Red Guards -- militant leftist youths loyal to Mao -- for raiding her home.
"It was communist totalitarianism without any voices of opposition. It was unprecedented," Li adds.
Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention. If it makes headlines, it is because China wants to invade. Yet, those who find their way here by some twist of fate often fall in love. If you ask them why, some cite numbers showing it is one of the freest and safest countries in the world. Others talk about something harder to name: The quiet order of queues, the shared umbrellas for anyone caught in the rain, the way people stand so elderly riders can sit, the
Taiwan’s fall would be “a disaster for American interests,” US President Donald Trump’s nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy Elbridge Colby said at his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday last week, as he warned of the “dramatic deterioration of military balance” in the western Pacific. The Republic of China (Taiwan) is indeed facing a unique and acute threat from the Chinese Communist Party’s rising military adventurism, which is why Taiwan has been bolstering its defenses. As US Senator Tom Cotton rightly pointed out in the same hearing, “[although] Taiwan’s defense spending is still inadequate ... [it] has been trending upwards
After the coup in Burma in 2021, the country’s decades-long armed conflict escalated into a full-scale war. On one side was the Burmese army; large, well-equipped, and funded by China, supported with weapons, including airplanes and helicopters from China and Russia. On the other side were the pro-democracy forces, composed of countless small ethnic resistance armies. The military junta cut off electricity, phone and cell service, and the Internet in most of the country, leaving resistance forces isolated from the outside world and making it difficult for the various armies to coordinate with one another. Despite being severely outnumbered and
After the confrontation between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday last week, John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, discussed this shocking event in an interview. Describing it as a disaster “not only for Ukraine, but also for the US,” Bolton added: “If I were in Taiwan, I would be very worried right now.” Indeed, Taiwanese have been observing — and discussing — this jarring clash as a foreboding signal. Pro-China commentators largely view it as further evidence that the US is an unreliable ally and that Taiwan would be better off integrating more deeply into
RSS