Bad memories in China

The cultural what?

May 18th 2006
From The Economist print edition
China needs to come to terms with its past

TO OUTSIDERS, there is something faintly comical about China's Cultural Revolution, which started 40 years agothis week and only ended with the fall of the Gang of Four ten years later. The “struggle sessions”, the selfcriticisms,the absurdly elongated dunce's caps, the massed hands waving Chairman Mao's little red book, therampaging Red Guards; with hindsight, all seem to belong more to farce than tragedy.

To anyone forced to live through it, however, there was nothing remotely amusing about China's “lost decade”.Hundreds of thousands of people were murdered; hundreds of millions had their lives shattered. Neighboursinformed on one another, children betrayed their parents and the machinery of government was destroyed. Anentire generation learned to trust no one, with consequences that mark China today (see article).

The Cultural Revolution was one of the 20th century's greatest barbarisms. Yet that is little understood, for thesame reason that this editorial will probably not be read in China. Publications containing articles on such subjectsare routinely impounded, because China's Communist Party dare not allow examination—let alone criticism—of itsmistakes. What little is known about the Cultural Revolution has come mostly from individual memoirs publishedabroad that are dangerous to own in China. Not only has there never been a full accounting of the period insideChina, there have been very few books, seminars or newspaper articles about it. In 1981, the era was officiallycondemned and there have been some approved histories. But the extent of the tragedy has never been admitted.This week's anniversary passed in profound silence among those so badly scarred by Mao's insane vision.

The Communist Party's failure to confront its past is one of its greatest weaknesses. The Cultural Revolution is notthe only appalling policy to have been brushed under the carpet. Before it there was the Great Leap Forward, anideological experiment that created the greatest man-made famine in history. After it came the Tiananmen Squaremassacre. None of these disasters can yet be debated openly in China. Even discussion of events that happenedmore than a century ago can land people in trouble, as the editor of a magazine that expressed heretical viewsabout the Boxer Rebellion of 1899 found to his cost earlier this year. Yet an understanding of the enormities of thepast is essential to a saner future. And such understanding is impossible without knowing the facts.

Nastiness in the neighbourhood

The Communist Party's blindness to history has consequences beyond China, too. One of the greatest irritants inrelations between China and Japan is Chinese indignation over Japan's use of school textbooks which (in a tinynumber of cases) minimise Japan's past atrocities in China. But the lame propaganda that passes for history in allof China's schoolbooks is shameful too, and helps keep this dispute simmering on. More profoundly, China'sneighbours find it hard to trust a government that cannot be more honest about itself.

China has done an impressive job in restructuring its economy and opening it to the world. In the process the partyhas helped rescue millions from Mao's mistakes. Yet the human urge for accountability is not to be underestimated.One day there will be a reckoning. China's Communists may end up wishing they had had the courage to lead itthemselves.

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