Don’t mention the Cultural Revolution

However, those who were there will never forget. But getting these survivors to talk about their experiences is another matter. During my eight years as an expatriate in China, very few Chinese friends or acquaintances voluntarily referred to the Cultural Revolution. 

I learned not to enquire about this traumatic historical memory. It is politically incorrect to mention, there is national shame (even from the victims), and the walls have ears.

If I raised this matter with younger generations, I soon earned that I knew more about this phenomenon than they did. Their education system had made sure of that. And just as there have been persons in China who have been politically airbrushed from history (such as ex-President Liu Shaoqi & Nobel literature prize-winner Gao Xingjian), this historical event in has also been scrubbed from the record.

But the Cultural Revolution is China's skeleton in the closet. The CCP can never hope for legitimacy while it continues to hide its brutal past. And it can never lead China towards a more civil society if it cannot draw lessons from the past and learn from them.

My guess however, is that this will never happen under the present leadership. Too many of China’s leaders are too close to the sins of the past to want to open up this giant can of worms. The truth has consequences, and in one-way or another, they are all implicated.

Sooner or later however, someone from the leadership group of the CCP will have to confront the truth, and apologise to the nation for the sins perpetrated under the name Communism: beginning with an honest appraisal of the Cultural Revolution; the shooting of China’s youth in Tiananmen Square; the persecution of harmless members of Falun Gong; the abuse of human rights; and the cancer of corruption which goes all the way to the top. 

This would open the way for governmental reform and the restoration of traditional Chinese values to their rightful place in modern Chinese society.

In the meantime, Bo Xilai’s leadership style in Chongqing has forced one member of the Standing Committee to mention the unmentionable, that the Cultural Revolution was in fact a major disaster for China, and that any return to a populist style of leadership today would be equally disastrous.

Although nobody believes that China would ever return to those bad old days, the fact that the left wing faction is flirting with populism as a means of capturing power today (just like Mao did in 1967), let alone plot to achieve it (the Zhang Zemin-Zhou Yong Kang-Bo Xilai faction's alleged plans for a coup) is a worry. These things can get out of control.No wonder Bo Xilai is being targeted. Zhou Yong Kang is next. 

Premier Wen has opened the debate. Let’s see if he is all talk or not. This is serious.