I’ve read quite a few aspects of the Culture revolution are seen as a shameful piece of history by modern Chinese. Would you say this is generally true? I’ve never seen a western country confront their past in a similar way.
I’ve seen nuance in person with this, for example, a friends parents moved out of China to the US, yet they’ll still defend the party and feel insulted about the constant anti-Chinese sentiment in the US. It sounds familiar to how you described people being the victim but also not giving up on the party.
I did some subjects on Chinese history and politics (taught in English) in China at a Chinese university. Yes, they were frank in their criticism about the excesses of the great people’s cultural revolution and the failures of the GLF. Shame, regret, is a good way of describing it, and is a strong motivator to prevent it happening again. What’s more important, as others in this thread have highlighted, is that we discussed and analysed these failures.
When talking to everyday Chinese people about those times, they expressed similar sentiments to what Blinky_katt said. Though probably at a more surface level i.e. “We have deep respect for Chairman Mao, however xx yy zz”. This is what they’re willing to discuss with a Westerner, so it’s not as if they’re coy in raising these topics when in known company.
I live in Australia and our execrable domestic policies around the same time, such as those of the Stolen Generation, are addressed very briefly but never analysed. If anything they’re whitewashed as ‘we meant well but we’re smarter now, let’s move on’. There’s nothing approaching a national level of introspection.
Thank you for typing this out.
I’ve read quite a few aspects of the Culture revolution are seen as a shameful piece of history by modern Chinese. Would you say this is generally true? I’ve never seen a western country confront their past in a similar way.
I’ve seen nuance in person with this, for example, a friends parents moved out of China to the US, yet they’ll still defend the party and feel insulted about the constant anti-Chinese sentiment in the US. It sounds familiar to how you described people being the victim but also not giving up on the party.
I did some subjects on Chinese history and politics (taught in English) in China at a Chinese university. Yes, they were frank in their criticism about the excesses of the great people’s cultural revolution and the failures of the GLF. Shame, regret, is a good way of describing it, and is a strong motivator to prevent it happening again. What’s more important, as others in this thread have highlighted, is that we discussed and analysed these failures.
When talking to everyday Chinese people about those times, they expressed similar sentiments to what Blinky_katt said. Though probably at a more surface level i.e. “We have deep respect for Chairman Mao, however xx yy zz”. This is what they’re willing to discuss with a Westerner, so it’s not as if they’re coy in raising these topics when in known company.
I live in Australia and our execrable domestic policies around the same time, such as those of the Stolen Generation, are addressed very briefly but never analysed. If anything they’re whitewashed as ‘we meant well but we’re smarter now, let’s move on’. There’s nothing approaching a national level of introspection.