During the Cultural Revolution, people were unable to express their true thoughts about Mao Zedong. The freedom of speech was strictly limited under the Cultural Revolution environment. Many were sentenced to jail time if found criticizing Mao publicly or being suspected to go against Mao Zedong. He was very successful in executing anyone who opposed him, and he even called the army to enforce his demands. 36 million people died or suffered from political persecution ordered by Mao Zedong for many kinds of reasons. To keep the citizens uninformed, many persecutions were covered up as accidents or suicides.
"The criticism was carried out through media such as wall newspapers or broadcasting in factories. Against those who had a power to influence on all the China, articles of criticism was informed through mainly newspapers and radio. "
--Zuen Chen. From a published interview
Liu Shaoqi, the former chairman and acquaintance of Mao, was against Mao’s revolution, and later became a target of the whole nation because of Mao’s encouragement of attacking Liu Shaoqi and the poster (on the left). After a long period of criticisms and jury, he was later stripped of power and died in prison on November 12, 1969.
|
Above is a zoomed in headline of “批判徒战报”, meaning "The war of criticizing political parties"; newspaper is published on March 8th, 1968.
On the right is the full page of "The war of criticizing political parties" Headline titles on the newspaper are: "Crush the Anti-Revolutionist's plan to take over" and "Take down the traitor Zhou Zihua [a similar politician with fate similar to Liu Shaoqi]".
|
|
|
An ordinary citizen, Dan Chung, was suspicious of the death of many of her family members, so she said to the public, “Why don't they just make a decision on me?”, and called for the crowd to attack Mao Zedong. She was soon denounced by her own son and shot in public. (Hear the Zhang Hongbing's opinion on about the Cultural Revolution on the right) |
AN INTERVIEW WITH A PERSON WHO EXPERIENCED THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION (PART 2/3):
What do you think about communism?
It did give me some help like having public hospitals and other public services, but the problem was that the service itself wasn't good. Doctors and waitresses had really bad attitude because no matter what they do, they will all get the same salary, so no one wanted to be nice to a particular person. Also, no one bothered to comment about the weakness of communism since that will cause the whole family to be punished.
It did give me some help like having public hospitals and other public services, but the problem was that the service itself wasn't good. Doctors and waitresses had really bad attitude because no matter what they do, they will all get the same salary, so no one wanted to be nice to a particular person. Also, no one bothered to comment about the weakness of communism since that will cause the whole family to be punished.
And now, the present China...
|