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AS Pakistan’s policies and paranoia have turned it into a pariah state, our alliance with China has stayed rocksteady.
And currently, the $46 billion investment in the economic corridor promised by China is a lifeline our ailing economy desperately needs. A few days ago, my old friend Zahid Hussain wrote about his impressions of the progress China has made in his weekly column.
Although he made a passing reference to the Cultural Revolution, he did not dwell on the fact that this is the 50th anniversary of that manmade catastrophe. I have just read two novels by Chinese writers, and both of them contain searing references to the enormous suffering caused by the upheaval.
Many of us who were young and supported the communist regime in China dismissed reports of the mayhem being caused by the Cultural Revolution as Western propaganda. However, since May 1966 when this movement was launched, a great deal of information has emerged from state archives, as well as in the form of personal anecdotes.
The Economist has recently cited a secret circular approved by Mao declaring war on “representatives of the bourgeoisie” who had “sneaked into the Communist Party, the government, the army and various spheres of life”. A year later, he wrote to his wife, Jiang Qing, saying that he wanted to “create great disorder under heaven” in order to “create great order under heaven”.
Whatever his aim, he certainly achieved the former: according to the most conservative estimate, some 1.5 million were killed and many more millions maimed. Bands of young Red Guards rampaged across the country with official support, persecuting ‘intellectuals’, a category that included high school graduates.
Universities did not reopen until 1972, while professors and scientists were exiled to the countryside. Many were denounced by their students, and forced to undergo ‘self-criticism’ sessions that often ended in severe beatings and suicides.
Harrowing descriptions of the Cultural Revolution continue.
The Red Guards were directed to destroy the ‘Four Olds’: old habits, old customs, old culture and old ideas. As a result, thousands of temples, churches, mosques and shrines were ransacked and desecrated; monks and priests were killed; ancient sites were destroyed; and even Confucius’s last resting place was damaged.
In this period, Mao was elevated to god-like status, with 350 million copies of his collected thoughts published in the ‘Little Red Book’. But as his cult became dominant, groups of Red Guards vied for his attention by resorting to ever-greater violence. Bands fought each other for control of cities to the point that even Mao saw the danger this growing anarchy posed to the Communist Party. Even though he officially called off his ‘class war’ in 1968, it rumbled on for years.
Fifty years after those events, harrowing descriptions of personal suffering continue to remind the younger generation of the price of ideological purity. As these accounts are banned from the mainstream media, they surface occasionally on blogs. In one, Zhang Hongbin recounts how he reported his mother to an army officer for criticising the Cultural Revolution. She was publicly beaten and executed. Through his blog, Zhang is trying to come to terms with what he did when he was 16.
This is only one of thousands of such stories. The one common thread is how easy it is to loosen the social constraints against violence. All it takes is a demagogue to release the genie from the bottle. But despite all the devastation caused by the Cultural Revolution, some good came of it: by forcibly sending educated people to work in the countryside, many peasants learned to read and write. The ‘barefoot doctors’ programme had its origins in that period.
But the setback to China’s progress caused by the Cultural Revolution is incalculable. Unsurprisingly, successive leaders have discouraged public discussion of those events, despite accepting that ‘mistakes’ were made. However, they have sought to deflect blame from Mao by accusing the Gang of Four of being behind most of the excesses.
Fifty years on, it is hard to imagine such turmoil wracking China. And yet the country remains a one-party dictatorship with very limited freedom for individuals. The media, including the internet, are very tightly controlled. Thousands are in jail for dissent.
These are all realities we should not lose sight of, even as we admire the enormous progress China has made since Mao’s death in 1976. But these advances have come at a high price: air pollution has caused havoc, and industrial accidents in unregulated industries have taken thousands of lives. Rivers are full of industrial effluents, and wildlife is under grave threat in many areas.
Now, of course, China is a communist country in name only. Capitalism and globalisation have lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. And as happens in such economies, income disparity has risen rapidly. And yet the government imposes its authority through a rigid party structure that serves to keep power in the hands of the elite.
Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2016
