Battle for China's Past : Mao and the Cultural Revolution

‘Compared with the present, welfare was great in the pre-reform years’,
‘My experience of healthcare when I was a child’, ‘The great reversal:
healthcare in the People’s Republic of China’, ‘Who is paying the cost of
reforms?’ and ‘The unfairness of healthcare in China: 80 per cent goes to
the privileged in the party, the government and army’.
Recently, Zhongguo gongren wang (Chinese workers net 2007)
published recorded interviews with workers in Zhengzhou by a group
of university students from Beijing. It was eye opening for the students
to learn that the privatization of state-owned enterprises led to no
evidence of greater efficiency, but to misery for the workers and enrichment
of the managers. The students admitted that they were shocked to
find that the workers not only have fond memories of Mao but also
praised the Cultural Revolution. One worker said that education, health
and housing are three big problems whereas in the Mao era the workers
did not have worry about them at all. The worker also said that in the
Mao era the Four Big Freedoms – speaking out freely, airing views fully,
holding big debates and putting up big-character posters, plus the freedom
to strike – were written into the Constitution, but now workers dare
not go out and demonstrate in the street. ‘We want to commemorate
Mao every year but the government would not even allow us to do that.’
Another worker said that the unfairness in today’s society had tilted life
in favour of the rich so much that China is like a boat that is about to
sink. Another worker complains that when people like him get sick they
dare not go to the hospital. Instead, ‘we wait to die. In fact many commit
suicide to release the family from the financial burden.’
The voice of the farmers
CHALLENGING THE HEGEMONY II
The website Sannong Zhongguo (agriculture in China, rural China and
farmers in China) regularly publishes contributions on the current rural
situation and on how the people in rural China think and feel about the
Mao era and the post-Mao reform policies. Many of these contributions
are made by those who were born and grew up in the countryside but
moved to urban areas later in their life. Consistent with my fieldwork
findings in Jiangxi and Shanxi, the overwhelming voice of the rural
people is that they recall the Mao era with fondness and complain a lot
about the post-Mao reform policies. According to this voice, Mao is their
number one admired and respected leader whereas Deng Xiaoping and
Jiang Zemin either do not register or are mentioned only in their criticism
(Xiao Er 2007). Visiting his home town in Henan, Xiao Er, a university
student from Henan University also asked his fellow villagers about
the Great Leap Forward famine. The villagers pointed out that there
were natural disasters (tian zai) and they would add that Mao, Zhou
Enlai and other leaders took the lead in bearing the hardship. They
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