CHINA-INTERNAL POLITICAL SITUATION

 As the 50th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution nears (on May 16), an editorial in the state-owned Global Times warned that reflections on the Cultural Revolution must not go beyond the Communist Party’s official verdict. It said: “Reflections are normal ... but they should not add or change [the official] political verdict,” a Global Times editorial said. The editorial observed “the profoundness of the official verdict on the history could not be paralleled by sporadic ideas by individuals.If China brings up a wave of reflections and discussions [on the Cultural Revolution] as wished by some, the established political consensus will be jeopardised and turbulence in ideas may occur. [These advocates] like to overuse the label of the Cultural Revolution, linking it to all problems today, and to make their case that the Cultural Revolution will return.”

Just weeks earlier former Culture Minister 81-year old Wang Meng had called for further soul-searching by intellectuals on the country’s 10 years of chaos.
(Comment: In an official admission in 1981, the Party said the Cultural Revolution was a period of internal turbulence “wrongfully started by the leadership and used by counter-revolutionary clans”. It inflicted a “serious catastrophe” on the country and the people and “is not and could not possibly be a revolution or social progress in any sense.”
 






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