J. M.
The Economist
August 29, 2013
“My formal apology has come too late,” wrote Chen Xiaolu on August 20th on the alumni blog of the school where nearly 50 years ago he was among Red Guard activists who persecuted anyone they deemed disloyal to Mao Zedong. Mr Chen said he had been “directly responsible” for denouncing staff and fellow students and for getting them sent to labour camps. Even state-controlled newspapers have applauded his honesty. But growing calls inside China for a more open appraisal of the Mao era’s horrors are meeting resistance.
Mr Chen is the most prominent among several former Red Guards, as Mao’s young supporters called themselves, who have publicly apologised in recent weeks for their actions during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s. In the 1980s, after Deng Xiaoping’s ascent to power, Mr Chen worked as an advisor to the Communist Party on political reform. His father was Marshal Chen Yi, one of Mao’s comrades in arms. Global Times, an English-language newspaper in Beijing, published a story quoting another alumnus of his school as saying that Chen Xiaolu was the first among the offspring of the country’s founding figures to speak up about the Cultural Revolution.
In 1981 Deng tried to heal some of the wounds of that era by getting the party to adopt a resolution on “certain questions” about its past. The document described the Cultural Revolution as a “catastrophe” for which Mao bore “chief responsibility”. But Deng, anxious to avoid questions being raised about the system that allowed Mao to unleash such violence and mayhem, stifled further debate. The subject remains such a taboo that the National Museum next to Tiananmen Square, in an extensive exhibition on modern China’s history that opened in 2011, acknowledges the Cultural Revolution with just one photograph and a three-line caption.
Some Chinese newspapers have recently published calls for a re-think. On August 8thBeijing Youth News said it was necessary to reflect on the causes of the Cultural Revolution, as well as “vigorously” carry out economic and political reforms, in order to prevent the recurrence of such an “historical tragedy”. The newspaper’s words echoed those of Wen Jiabao, who stepped down as prime minister in March. Mr Wen told reporters a year earlier, in a rare reference to the period by a senior Chinese leader, that without political reform “such historical tragedies as the Cultural Revolution may happen again.”
It may well be no coincidence that the recent discussion of the Cultural Revolution in official newspapers began as the authorities were preparing to put Bo Xilai, a former Politburo member, on trial for corruption and covering up a murder. Mr Bo is much loved by die-hard Maoists in China because of his love of Mao-era slogans and songs, as well as what they regard as his pro-poor policies in the southwestern region of Chongqing where he served as party chief. Mr Wen may well have had Mr Bo in mind when he warned of the dangers of a Cultural Revolution revival. Within hours of Mr Wen’s remarks, Mr Bo was in custody.
During Mr Bo’s trial a prominent property developer, Huang Nubo (famous for wanting to buy a chunk of Iceland), said that China had yet to emerge from the Cultural Revolution. In remarks published on ifeng.com, a news portal, he said: “We must have a reckoning with the Cultural Revolution, because the Cultural Revolution destroyed all our values.”
But those calling for the party to lift the Cultural Revolution taboo will face tough opposition. Mr Bo’s Maoist supporters were delighted by his performance during his five-day trial which ended on August 26th (the verdict is awaited, but a stiff sentence is a near certainty). In addition to cheering their champion, they have published numerous articles online in recent days defending the Cultural Revolution and attacking those who have apologised for their roles. Red Song Society, a Maoist website in the southern city of Shenzhen, called the apologies “clumsy performances by buffoons”.
More importantly, perhaps, there is no one now in the leadership who is repeating Mr Wen’s warning. Xi Jinping, who took over as party chief in November, has shown an unexpected penchant for Maoist sloganeering. In May one of the party’s main mouthpieces, Guangming Daily, dismissed the “mistakes” of the Mao era, including the Cultural Revolution, as “fragments and nonessentials in the long flow of history”.
To help blacken Mr Bo’s name, internet censors have kept their hands off articles like this one repeating quite possibly inaccurate rumours that Mr Bo beat his own high-ranking father, Bo Yibo, during the Cultural Revolution after the elder Mr Bo was purged for disloyalty to Mao. But there is no sign that the leadership wants a wider discussion. Political reform, as called for by the ineffectual Mr Wen, is not expected to be on the agenda of a much-anticipated meeting of the party’s Central Committee which party leaders announced, just a day after Mr Bo’s trial, would be held in November.
