Dongping Han, The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village (2008) Formats A

Dongping Han, The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village (2008) Formats Available .PDF Excellent Review Dongping Han: “The Great Leap Famine, the Cultural Revolution and Post-Mao Rural Reform: The Lessons of Rural Development in Contemporary China” (2003) – Outstanding essay painstakingly detailing the post-Mao Deng-led revisionism applied to the Great Leap Forward and 1959-61 Famine Further Reading: Joseph Ball: Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward? (2006) – Another superb anti-revisionist examination of the 1959-61 Famine The Unknown Cultural Revolution challenges the established narrative of China’s Cultural Revolution, which assumes that this period of great social upheaval led to economic disaster, the persecution of intellectuals, and senseless violence. Dongping Han offers a powerful account of the dramatic improvements in the living conditions, infrastructure, and agricultural practices of China’s rural population that emerged in this period. Drawing on extensive local interviews and records in rural Jimo County, in Shandong Province, Han shows that the Cultural Revolution helped overthrow local hierarchies, establish participatory democracy and economic planning in the communes, and expand education and public services, especially for the elderly. Han lucidly illustrates how these changes fostered dramatic economic development in rural China. The Unknown Revolution documents a neglected side of China’s Cultural Revolution, demonstrating the potential of mass education and empowerment for radical political and economic transformation. It is a bold and provocative work, which demands the attention not only of students of contemporary Chinese history but of all who are concerned with poverty and inequality in the world today. When looking at the 80,000 or so rural disturbances that now occur every year throughout rural China, argues Han, it is important to recognize the past as prologue. -- source link

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