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New Essence of Chinese Culture Rule Book Dumps Mao, Others

posted by janrinok on Saturday April 01, @07:04PM   

quietus writes:

If you still want your Mao memorabilia, you better hurry down to Tiananmen Square, Beijing, while you still have the chance.

In China, the State Council is somewhat comparable to the Cabinet. Headed by the Prime Minister and consisting of the heads of the various Ministries (Defense, Commerce, Education, Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Justice, Civil Affairs, State Security, Public Security and so on), it handles the day-to-day running of the country while formulating economic policy.

Its operational procedures are described in a document, conveniently titled "Working Procedures for the State Council". On March 18, an updated version of that document was published, and it has a couple of changes.

First off, the State Council now has to "report any major decisions, major events and important situations" to the Central Committee "in a timely manner." Previous edition sentences like "administration according to law, seeking truth from facts, democracy, openness, pragmatism and integrity" have been scrapped, as has the requirement for the State Council "to correct illegal or inappropriate administrative actions", or to "guide and supervise" the bureaucracy. In other words, its wings have been seriously clipped.

Secondly, any and all references to Marxism/Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, the thought of Deng Xiaoping and the ideologies of former presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao are now verboten. Only references to Xi Jinping Thought are allowed, as that is "the essence of Chinese culture and the spirit of the times".

To drive the point home, the Central Committee of the CCP launched another nationwide disciplinary campaign among its 96 million members.

This round will check them for loyalty to supreme leader Xi Jinping, weeding out "black sheep" and "two-faced" officials.

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Original Submission

• Re:Pragmatic Era Re:Pragmatic Era (Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday April 03, @09:25AM (1 child)

  by RamiK (1813) on Monday April 03, @09:25AM (#1299512)

  Should we consider each of those a revolution? Similarly, imperial Rome routinely had wars fought over succession? Are those revolutions?

  Yes. All those instances are revolutions because the change of power itself was sudden and forceful. Similarly, the French Revolution lasted for decades to cement (the ol' Rule of Terror) and it also took Adams a decade to put down the first constitution from when Washington took office and the articles of confederation started getting through.

  Mao took over in 1935

  As mentioned in another post, Mao was ousted from office after he failed in the Great Leap forward so he rallied up his public support to forcefully purge his opponents and get him back into office and pass the laws necessary to keep him there for life.
  In fact, the Great Leap Forward itself was a revolution as well as the various rival revolutions in China following 69'. Different historians like to break it apart under different waves [wikipedia.org] but no one questions whether the cultural revolution itself was a revolution in and by itself since it involved a forced change in power structures.

  reinstated in 1969 with normal operation

  No they weren't as clearly spelled out in the wiki article:

  Mao did not hold absolute power over the Central Committee, as evidenced by the debates surrounding the policies of the Great Leap Forward, as well as the economic policies of the early 1960s. However, Mao used Central Committee meetings as a platform to project authority or legitimize decisions which have been made in advance, such as at the Lushan Conference of 1959, when the Central Committee ratified the decision to denounce Peng Dehuai, who had spoken out in opposition of the Great Leap Forward.

  During the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, the Central Committee essentially ceased to function; it was convened in August 1966 (11th Plenum of the 8th CC) to cement decisions already made by Mao on launching the Cultural Revolution. Mao faced some opposition at the 11th Plenum but ultimately most delegates were goaded into ratifying Mao's decisions. Many members were politically disgraced or purged thereafter. The committee was then convened again in October 1968 (12th Plenum) to ratify the decision to expel then head of state Liu Shaoqi from the Party. At the 12th plenum, less than half the members actually attended, as many had fallen victim to the Cultural Revolution. In a letter to Mao "evaluating" the members of the Central Committee at the time, Kang Sheng wrote that some 70% of CC members were considered "traitors, spies, or otherwise politically unreliable".[6] The Central Committee membership at the 9th Party Congress in April 1969 was largely handpicked by Mao and a small group of radical allies. The decisions at the Congress were later deemed to be "wholly and absolutely wrong" by official party historians.

  ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Committee_of_the_Chinese_Communist_Party [wikipedia.org] )

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• Re:Pragmatic Era (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 03, @11:08AM

  by khallow (3766) on Monday April 03, @11:08AM (#1299518) Journal

  All those instances are revolutions because the change of power itself was sudden and forceful.

  No they're not. Changing of power is not a revolution in itself. The system has to change as well. The Cultural Revolution didn't change the system. It's just a label for a purge.

  Similarly, the French Revolution lasted for decades to cement (the ol' Rule of Terror) and it also took Adams a decade to put down the first constitution from when Washington took office and the articles of confederation started getting through.

  The actual Rule of Terror lasted a year from 1793-1794 with a significant portion of the executions during a two month period in late summer of 1794. And I find it bizarre that you claim something is a revolution because it is "sudden and forceful" and then follow up with two examples that weren't sudden. I grant they were forceful, but "decades" and such is not sudden.

  As mentioned in another post, Mao was ousted from office after he failed in the Great Leap forward so he rallied up his public support to forcefully purge his opponents and get him back into office and pass the laws necessary to keep him there for life.

  Mao was never ousted from office - he retained supreme power and used it in the Cultural Revolution to maintain his power. Using the term "office" is very tenuous in the first place since such concepts were ill-defined and as I note in the previous sentence, the alleged revolution just preserved the status quo of Mao on top.

  In fact, the Great Leap Forward itself was a revolution as well as the various rival revolutions in China following 69'. Different historians like to break it apart under different waves [wikipedia.org] but no one questions whether the cultural revolution itself was a revolution in and by itself since it involved a forced change in power structures.

  None of your examples in that paragraph changed power structures and hence were not revolutions. As I noted in my post, the end result was that the 1978 system looked very much like the 1959 system with no real change.

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