Cultural Revolution in China

While most people  condemn Adolf Hitler  for claiming 12,000,000 people’s lives, it is stunning to see the number of lives taken away by Mao Zedong, the leader of communist party in China.  In Harry Wu's " CLASSICIDE- GENOCTOE IN COMMUNIST CHINA", the author thoroughly explores Cultural Revolution during Mao's regime.

            Influenced by Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory, the communist revolution advocates the public ownership of property, the annihilation of the exploiting class, and the establishment of classless society in order to liberate all of humanity. The CCP (China communist party) carried out extermination programs to wipe out the exploiting class left over from the old regime. 

            The CCP employed a program of designating social status for each individual in the society, and this project was far more large-scale than the one carried out by the Germany to identify Jewish people. Civilians in the city were divided into  bourgeois class and  worker class. People in the bourgeois class were thrown into the “black file” The CCP confiscated their properties and lowered their working conditions to the lowest of the society. Also, the CCP forced the bourgeois class to “obey the teachings of the Party, thoroughly remold themselves” for the rest of their lives. Every individual in this group was severely humiliated.

            Landlords and rich peasants in the countryside were identified as “counter-revolutionary” and some were beaten to death. By the end of the Cultural Revolution, only 10 percent of the landlords and rich peasants survived. 

            People who annihilated the exploiting class were mostly ingenious residents. The government touted this ingenious campaign with great fanfare as a voluntary patriotic movement. As a result, many local organizations aimed at decimating the “counter-revolutionary” class arose and were urged by the government to make more revolution.

            Mao Zedong was responsible for 40,000,000 people’s lives, which were erased by the Cultural Revolution. The use of “class” rather than “race” during Cultural Revolution elicits the debate of whether Cultural Revolution should be called “genocide”. No matter what the method of classification is, the intent of either classicide or genocide is to exterminate every member of the group. Therefore, both are atrocities that cannot be condoned.

References:

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=22450692&site=ehost-live&scope=site

http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm

The slogan on the pics is saying that we should exterminate the old regime

The red book the girl is holding is the famous "Red Bible". The purpose of the book was to instill Mao's concept+ brainwash everyone . People at that time were obliged to memorize the content.  

 The man in the picture is labeled as " counter revolutionary"