Nov 11, 2021 05:38 AM
(This post was last modified: Nov 11, 2021 05:49 AM by C C.)
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-com...his-future
EXCERPT: . . . the Party, for only the third time in its history, will issue a verdict on past events, a maneuver of power politics that George Orwell famously described when he wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
[...] it’s been clear for months that Xi Jinpin is determined to eradicate what he calls “historical nihilism,” the corrosive doubt that could threaten the dominance of his party. ... Under Chinese law, a person found to have spread a rumor [on social media, etc] faces up to fifteen years in prison.
But the effort runs deeper than removing unflattering discussions online; it is shaping up as the historiographical equivalent of bulldozing a cemetery. Earlier this year, an official volume known as “A Short History of the Chinese Communist Party” was revised to limit discussion of the Great Leap Forward, Mao’s calamitous social and political campaign, which resulted in the worst famine in recorded history. (The previous rendering of the Great Leap Forward carried the admonition “This bitter historical lesson shouldn’t be forgotten.”)
The revised history also removed a candid assessment of the Cultural Revolution, the decade of bloody chaos that Mao set in motion in 1966 [...] For Xi, pruning China’s history to remove patterns of infighting, dissent, suffering, and discrimination is a technique for engineering the future.
It is the next step in a march to remove obstacles from his path, beginning with the arrests of his political opponents, after he took power nine years ago; extending into a sweeping campaign of incarceration and human-rights abuses against dissidents, writers, and Muslims in the Xinjiang region; and eventually reaching into the ranks of China’s oligarchs, by kicking away the power of business leaders such as Jack Ma, who retired from the tech giant Alibaba in 2019, and by redoubling China’s claims to sovereignty over Taiwan, the South China Sea, and other disputed regions.
Xi’s use of history projects the message that the struggles of the first century of Communist Party rule have been buried by the need to cohere around Xi’s pursuit of strength, dignity, and obedience—what he calls “the great rejuvenation” of China.
[...] Geremie Barmé ... notes that ... the promise of inevitability is framed largely around the leader. “His works have been published in luxurious volumes; every speech he makes is celebrated as ‘important’—his every statement and quotation is hailed as ‘golden formulations,’ ” Barmé told me. “His activities, history, and personality are limned in terms that suggest an approaching apotheosis.” (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPT: . . . the Party, for only the third time in its history, will issue a verdict on past events, a maneuver of power politics that George Orwell famously described when he wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
[...] it’s been clear for months that Xi Jinpin is determined to eradicate what he calls “historical nihilism,” the corrosive doubt that could threaten the dominance of his party. ... Under Chinese law, a person found to have spread a rumor [on social media, etc] faces up to fifteen years in prison.
But the effort runs deeper than removing unflattering discussions online; it is shaping up as the historiographical equivalent of bulldozing a cemetery. Earlier this year, an official volume known as “A Short History of the Chinese Communist Party” was revised to limit discussion of the Great Leap Forward, Mao’s calamitous social and political campaign, which resulted in the worst famine in recorded history. (The previous rendering of the Great Leap Forward carried the admonition “This bitter historical lesson shouldn’t be forgotten.”)
The revised history also removed a candid assessment of the Cultural Revolution, the decade of bloody chaos that Mao set in motion in 1966 [...] For Xi, pruning China’s history to remove patterns of infighting, dissent, suffering, and discrimination is a technique for engineering the future.
It is the next step in a march to remove obstacles from his path, beginning with the arrests of his political opponents, after he took power nine years ago; extending into a sweeping campaign of incarceration and human-rights abuses against dissidents, writers, and Muslims in the Xinjiang region; and eventually reaching into the ranks of China’s oligarchs, by kicking away the power of business leaders such as Jack Ma, who retired from the tech giant Alibaba in 2019, and by redoubling China’s claims to sovereignty over Taiwan, the South China Sea, and other disputed regions.
Xi’s use of history projects the message that the struggles of the first century of Communist Party rule have been buried by the need to cohere around Xi’s pursuit of strength, dignity, and obedience—what he calls “the great rejuvenation” of China.
[...] Geremie Barmé ... notes that ... the promise of inevitability is framed largely around the leader. “His works have been published in luxurious volumes; every speech he makes is celebrated as ‘important’—his every statement and quotation is hailed as ‘golden formulations,’ ” Barmé told me. “His activities, history, and personality are limned in terms that suggest an approaching apotheosis.” (MORE - missing details)