Cynthia Watson
You do not either have to be a China scholar or an academic of any type to enjoy this easily accessible subject as Suettinger presents it. If you simply want to know one view on how we got to the tensions we currently have with the CCP and the people of China, this is a strong starting place.
Many China skeptics will deny that the Communist Party ever had a conscience. Suettinger indeed discusses in almost 400 page detail (replete with another sixty pages of citations) the cruelties, the lies, the self-justifications, and assorted other repugnant behaviors. It’s seductive to forget that the Party won the Civil War against the Kuomindang, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, because they too engaged in pretty abominable behavior while the dominant rulers for twenty years. Suettinger (nor I) justify the horrors unleashed by leadership against the opposition during this struggle nor, more importantly, against the public caught scraping through horrible conditions.
Suettinger, hardly “soft” on China, delved into archives (before Xi Jinping closed them à la the behavior I discussed yesterday regarding closing virtually any form of transparency under CCP rule), to provide considerable clarity for why Chinese youth were so angry at the leadership’s treatment of this founding figure in the PRC as upon his passing from leadership. Indeed, too often forgotten in the west is that it was Hu’s April 1989 death and resulting Party elder fears of how his memory galvanized students that ultimately led to the 4 June massacre in Tian’anmen; the “goddess of democracy” and student protests followed demands that Hu receive appropriate respect for his role as a reformer and a CCP political denizen.
No comments:
Post a Comment