Toe the Communist Party’s red line on Cultural Revolution, state paper warns
Reflections on the transformative decade must not seek to alter the official verdict, newspaper warns after former culture chief calls for soul-searching
Reflections on the Cultural Revolution must not go beyond the Communist Party’s official verdict, a state media editorial cautioned on Wednesday ahead of the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the political movement.
“Reflections are normal ... but they should not add or change [the official] political verdict,” a Global Times editorial said. The newspaper is affiliated with the party’s top mouthpiece People’s Daily.
Yesterday’s editorial was the official tabloid’s second commentary on the sensitive issue this year and came just weeks after a former culture minister called for further soul-searching by intellectuals on the country’s 10 years of chaos.
May 16 will mark the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long political campaign dominated by the personality cult of the people’s republic’s founding leader Mao Zedong and destructive anarchic political movements.
In an article earlier this month, former culture minister Wang Meng, 81, argued that the party and Chinese intellectuals had a responsibility to “further explain” the campaign.
Lessons from 1966: why we should never forget the disastrous consequences of the Cultural Revolution
But the editorial yesterday insisted that “the profoundness of the official verdict on the history could not be paralleled by sporadic ideas by individuals.”