The CR's political changes actually produced enormous economic development why aren't Western capitalists jumping at this?
The simple answer to that is: While any form of democracy is based on a well-educated citizenry so the best decisions can be chosen in order to ensure the collective good capitalism most certainly is not.
But Han gives us a global answer specific to the CR: "The official assessment is largely the work of officials and scholars who, because of their social positions, were subject to attack during the Cultural Revolution. Almost all published accounts are written from the perspective of urban elites. This book presents a rural perspective, one rarely found in the current literature on the Cultural revolution."
So we return to the start of this article: the urban-based elite are the ones who write the journalism, who get interviewed by journalists, who write the textbooks, who draft the education policies without local input, who draft economic policies without rural input, who own the commodities exchanges which exploit rural toil" and Han's book challenges them by using the rural viewpoint as both the start point and the end point when analyzing the CR. Why not? We are talking about 82% of the country, after all.
Given the depth of his investigations, resources, local knowledge and analysis, it's impossible to argue with Han's conclusion:
"This investigation of the history of Jimo County has challenged this official account. The take-off of the rural economy in Jimo began not with market reforms, I have shown, but rather during the Cultural Revolution decade. Agricultural production more than doubled and a network of rural factories were established which fundamentally transformed the county's rural economy in less than 10 years. Jimo's story is not unique. " Once it has been established that the economic take-off began during the collective era, the claims of market reformers have to be put in perspective."
The few figures I gave you fully back up Han's claims about Jimo County; it is up to the reader to provide a theory as to why Jimo's history would be unique or an aberration in China.
Bottom line: increased horsepower is great, but the best capital is human capital. The CR created immense human capital, where there was previously very little, and this best explains the foundation of China's dominance in 2019.
Cultural Revolutions are scary to the minority holding power, but not for the average citizen
As I wrote, a new perspective is needed in order to properly explain modern Red China's success, and therefore we must investigate a new perspective on the Cultural Revolution. Han's book and this series aim to provide that.
For the West there is only one path: stop trying to appropriate credit for China's success, and start listening to Chinese people. This is what Han provides.
For the Chinese, who officially disavow the CR even if it is not disavowed in rural areas, the solution is more complicated than that but amounts to the same thing: disregard the official party line the thinking of the establishment on the CR and start looking at it honestly. Indeed, openly criticizing the Party line was perhaps the single-most important message of the Mao-backed CR!
LOL, the closed-minded will not believe me, but that's why I have penned this series.
What's certain is that the CR era being such a vibrant episode of human political activity has much to teach everybody, even the Chinese themselves.
I do not and will not disavow the CR, nor will I condemn the Chinese Communist Party for officially doing so today because I know that much to the happiness of anti-revolutionaries everywhere revolutionary spirit waxes and wanes. All revolutions show this the Revolution of Islam in the 7th century, the Soviet Revolution, etc. because Revolutions are human phenomena, and therefore it could not be otherwise.
If the CR is not thought well of in China today, it will come back into fashion eventually for this simple fact: it was such a huge success that it doesn't take only an ardent leftist to appreciate. It only appears that way, especially in the West, because of the massive propaganda which has been designed to prevent the appearance of a CR in the capitalist-imperialist West.
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