Gents-
By now you have read "Ignoring China's Past." Give your immediate reaction and include an example of the text that supports what you think.
Next: How is this reading different then the reading we read in class about the man who went to prison? What are the similarities and differences?
Why do the leaders want to keep the Cultural Revolution quiet? What are the pros and cons to this?
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I feel like it is just another reiterations of what we have been reading in prior days. The line that I felt describes this time period the best is the beginning of the third paragraph when it states, "Partly, it is embarassment about the scale and brutality of the violence carreid out in Mao's name."
ReplyDeleteI don't know where I have read that line before but I feel like it has come up multiple times before.
Istead of a man being interrogated and put on trial, a man was blackmaled into helping out in a murder. Similarities: Chinese cultural revolution, one specfific account.
Difference: the man in "Ignoring the Past" was forced into murdering someone else.
I feel that the quote that I put above answers this question pretty nicely. There is a long ladder of covering up leading all the way to the Chinese leader of the time. No one wants the blame for the whole cultural revolution if it was badly looked upon. As far as the pros (eventhough I think that it isn't right) they can keep the public from realizing what really happened. The Cons would be that the Chinese people are missing a large part of their history. This could cause people to uprise even now and be angry with the governemnt and even force the information out of them.
The government keeps the population of what really happened (violence, brutality massacre) and with it the population is not against the the government, because if they discover the truth is they were very angry with the government and would take a lot of problems for the government.
ReplyDeleteI think it is not right that they hide the truth from the public and not speak out what really happened
Lutz? Ricky? Maverick? You gonna let them beat you up like this? Do Work? Where are you?
ReplyDeletewell Sal I can promise you that there will be no uprising towards the goverment to "force" information outa them. Look what happend last time. Its called Tienemen Square.
ReplyDeleteOn to the reading I find it disturbing regardless of the time period that full families had to be executed and elderly men who had been honorable their whole lives killed. I think they said 13 full families were executed in that one neighborhood. However through all these readings ive come to discover that this is kind of how the chinese people work. They set a goal, (in this case a culutral revolution) and reach their goal by any means necessary. Are their methods ethical.. you be the judge but they certainly seem to continually be succesful.
As for covering up their History, i said it in my last post that i believe its time they stop covering up what happend. I do believe they would many poeple happy. Their is alot of untold history from these 10 years of "madness" but something i think is being overlooked is that if they did admit it and own up to it that the horror would only be worse. Imagine if they release the actual death count or the hundreds of thousands of people were allowed to talk about the horrible things the goverment did in order to change. Maybe there is a method to this chinese madness.
Get at me sal
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ReplyDeleteChina is, in my opinion too busy growing into a world power to spend time critique the mistakes of its past. A social uprising against the government would only be detrimental to china's success. Mr.Fan said that perhaps by displaying information associated with the atrocities of the cultural revolution "it wouldn't be good for the peace of society."
ReplyDeleteCompared to the other reading the two texts seem vary similar. Both seem too be examples of mass hysteria that griped the country during the cultural revolution. All though an entirely inhumane, the use of fear to purge out undesirables from a society in china's case paved the way for economic growth by unifying the people against some internal cancerous element. Like the Nazi's hatred of the Jews unified Germany to thrust the country out of hardship and into a period of huge economic wealth and power.
"Many scholars now believe that well over 1m were killed or driven to suicide in political struggles between 1966 and 1977." this is why China wants to keep everything a secret if I am correct the "m" stands for one million people. The people in China are trying to keep their mistakes a secret because they are not far from having the worst dictators in the world. Also i believe that if the Chinese looked more at the past instead of just forgetting it they might not make this mistakes over and over.
ReplyDeletelike the video of the 3 students that only the guy knew about the tank man and the other girls were oblivious to the subject it makes you think that they are never going to learn
ReplyDeleteJAP?
ReplyDeleteHAHA JAP?
ReplyDelete