Re: china

> Tens of
> thousands of people were imprisoned or murdered -- in Wuxuan, in Guangxi 
>in
> 1968, Zheng Yi has documented the ritual cannibalization of some five
> hundred people. (He has been corroborated by John Gittings, who wrote 
>_From
> Cannibalism to Karaoke_ after a 1995 visit to Wuxuan.)
> 
> The Cultural Revolution can best be thought of as a radical attempt by Mao
> Zedong to eliminate all opposition, and to create a personality cult 
>around
> himself. He may have succeeded (for the time being), but at an 
>immeasurable
> human cost. 


Well some evidence is better than none, but what is presented is far from
establishing that there was an "immeasurable human cost" to the Cultural
Revolution.  (The one about "ritual cannibalization" is a good one -- of 
course everyone knows the Bolsheviks ate babies too.  Cannibalism really
gets a bad rap, though -- after all it's central to Christian ritual.)  
It could more rationally be said, given the direction that China has since
taken, that there is a mounting, if not immeasurable, human cost because
the Cultural Revolution failed to stop the reintroduction of capitalism to
China.

If "tens of thousands of people were imprisoned or murdered" (which one is
it?  how many murdered?, and that is from one questionable source), that
is still not in the same ballpark as the Great Leap Forward, which was a
natural famine exacerbated by stupid but not malicious economic policies.

There is plenty of documentation of the progressive goals of the Cultural
Revolution, to check the "capitalist roaders" who wanted to overturn the
revolution.  There is also documentation of the factional fighting
within the CCP between Mao, supporters, and various rivals.  Both can
logically be true, they are not contradictory claims.

I remain convinced that denouncing the Cultural Revolution is a popular
product of CIA propaganda, diffused throughout the West via the personal
horror stories of individuals from better-off families who suffered
various indignities during that time.  That those on the Left, who are in
favor of reducing inequality, would uncritically join this chorus of
denunciation, reveals a curious form of hypocrisy.  Maybe the Right is
right about the Left, and we are just hypocrites who want tenure.  Maybe
the Left has more sympathy for the urban intellectuals and others who were
"sent down" in the 1960s than for the ordinary Chinese peasants who
benefited from the Revolution, and who are suffering from its dismantling
now as inequality skyrockets in China, and the huge and
growing dispossessed peasantry is transformed into an urban proletarian
powderkeg...

Maybe inequality is really good after all, as long as you get to be on
top...

RH