Teaching Comparative

Teaching Opportunity

May 16, 1966, is considered the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. The CCP and the government don't want to talk about it, but some Western media are marking the occasion with articles that offer some background and some first hand accounts from the decade that followed.

This is one of those anniversaries when teachers can collect useful articles (and perhaps video reports). If you put the ones you find most appropriate in a folder, you'll have some resources to refer to next year. You can find more stories from around the world by searching news sources.


From the BBC World Service:

Cultural Revolution memories fade

"Tuesday marks the 40th anniversary of the start of China's Cultural Revolution.

"It began as an attempt by Chairman Mao to tighten his grip on power, but it soon turned to chaos.

"Students and workers formed squads of radical Red Guards and went on the rampage. Many died in the ensuing violence and China was left in a state of anarchy for a decade.

"So what do people in China think of the Cultural Revolution today?...many here in China live with the memory of those chaotic years every day of their lives... [like the] writer Dai Qing... 'I can never forget what happened then,' she said. 'No-one can ever forget'.

"She wants China's ruling Communist Party to have a public inquiry... But she will have to wait a long time. The Cultural Revolution was a disaster for the authorities - a time when they lost control of Chinese society. They have banned any public debate on the era..."


From The Guardian (UK):

Mao casts long shadow over China

"It is an anniversary that China wants to forget. Today marks 40 years since the start of the cultural revolution, one of the most insane episodes of the 20th century when children turned on parents, pupils tyrannised teachers and hundreds of thousands died in the name of class war.

"The government will hold no commemoration. But for one survivor, at least, the lessons of those '10 years of chaos' must be heeded if China is to develop a modern law-governed society to match its economic progress...

"The official history of that period records the May 16 circular in which Mao called for a life-or-death struggle against bourgeois ideology, saying: 'All erroneous ideas, all poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters, must be subjected to criticism.' Textbooks recognise this was a mistake that led to political chaos, economic instability and social unrest as Red Guards publicly humiliated, and sometimes killed, professors, doctors and other "counter-revolutionaries".

"But questions about responsibility and compensation remain largely unanswered. Although Mao drafted the circular, most of the blame for what followed is usually heaped upon the 'Gang of Four' led by Mao's wife, Jiang Qing..."


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About the only places in China that you'll find remnants of the Cultural Revolution are on the tables and in the market stalls of vendors who sell trinkets to curious foreigners who do not have first hand memories of that decade of turmoil.
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And from The Australian

Red Guards, dirty secrets

"NIE Yuanzi is a frail, slightly stooped 85-year-old who lives with her two persian cats in a tiny, borrowed Beijing bedsit. It is hard to imagine that this was the woman who sparked China's Cultural Revolution, which cost tens of thousands of lives and destroyed the livelihoods of millions.

"While China's leaders are suppressing any commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the revolution this month, Nie uses her first interview with a Western journalist to argue that China must learn the lessons of that disaster to ensure it never happens again.

"'The Cultural Revolution was a disaster so huge that we can only understand it if we study it,' she says..."

posted by Ken Wedding @ 10:17 AM