China’s Cultural Revolution- A Bloodbath in China and a Humiliation Not Spoken About
Posted by w_thames_the_d on September 10, 2010
| China has not been a warring nation, except within her own borders. It is said that under Mao as many as 70 million or more died. Those numbers are so large it is hard to imagine, so lets focus on a specific time period for it to become more real. If we just look at the period of the Cultural Revolution from 1966-76, we see that around 7- 10 000 000 people died. Remember that at this time China was not in a war with anyone and all of those deaths are from Chinese killing Chinese, and I must say again. there was no war nor revolution at that time. It was merely Chinese killing Chinese to prove their loyalty. To understand the amount of humans killed during this time, it is like killing two Toronto’s, or one Moscow or one Sao Paolo, or one and one-half London’s. If that does not get your attention, then it is like killing off the city of Tucson every year for ten years in a row! The funny thing is that the regime who was in power during that bloody period, is still in power and those in power actually cut their political teeth during that time. |
Understanding China, One Blog at a Time 
Kevin said
“China has not been a warring nation, except within her own boarders” – haha, they’d like you to believe that. Even if you ignore the fact that China’s definition of those borders often conflicts with the opinion of the people actually living there (Tibet is China! Taiwan is China! Arunachal Pradesh is China! Kashmir is China! Senkaku Islands are China!), and even if you don’t count their intervention in the Korean War (with hundreds of thousands of Chinese casualties) as ‘warring’, there’s still the case of the failed 1979 invasion of Vietnam. Sending over 200,000 troops to attack a neighboring country sounds like a sign of a ‘warring nation’ to me.
wtdevflnt said
Sorry for being so late to respond, the comment went to spam.
Thanks for reading and you make some good points. Yeah to hear them tell it, they have been here for 5000 years so basically anything around them must have been theirs at one time and to prove this, they will pull out some ancient hieroglyphics that no one understands and claim it is a title or a deed or map to some land, and of course that land belonged to China.
Do you have a blog?
Lloyd Lofthouse said
I read your brief post about Mao’s Cultural Revolution and what you wrote was correct but incomplete.
However, Kevin’s comment and assumptions show much ignorance about China and its history.
Since Qin Shi Huangdi, China’s First Emperor in 221 B.C., a strong case may be made that China has not gone to war with other nations to conquer them and that most of China’s bloodshed and loss of life was due to internal strife in the form of rebellions and changing dynasties.
In fact, China was invaded more than once by foreign powers. The Yuan Dynasty was the Mongols and the Qing Dynasty was the Manchu, both minorities in China today. Before and during the Tang Dyansty, the Tibetans were a warlike nation which raided into China often. A Tang Emperor married his daugher to the Tibetan King to make peace. Buddhism didn’t come to Tibet for several hundred years after that. The Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties all ruled over Tibet and Tibet was considered a vassal state although Tibet was allowed to rule itself somewhat with the understanding that the Emperor of China was the master. This went on for about eight hundred years.
In 1913, the British Empire convinced Tibet to break from China and declare independence. All of this history may be found from Western primary sources. In 1911, the Qing Dynasty collapsed and China was in chaos, anarchy, rebellion and war until after World War II(1911 to 1945)and the Communists won China after defeating the Nationalists who are in Taiwan now.
Kevin mentions China’s intervention in the Korean War.
True but that was not a war of conquest. When the Korean War ended, China left and allowed North Korea to rule itself.
The reason China got involved in Korea was that Mao believed that China might be next.
Mao said that Vietnam (and Korea) was the lips to China’s teeth.
What happens when the lips are gone?
As for the brief war China fought with Vietnam, that invasion was not to conquer Vietnam but to punish them.
That’s why more than three hundred thousand Chinese volunteers went to Vietnam to fight with the Vietnamese Communists against America. Instead of a war of conquest, these conflicts could be called defensive wars to protect the motherland.
Isn’t that what America is doing today in Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore, why can’t China do the same?
If Kevin took the time to study the history of China during the 18th century, he would learn that China was invaded by Great Britain and France, which resulted in the Opium Wars forcing China to accept Western opium grown in India to be sold to Chinese citizens.
During the 18th century, China also had two rebellions. A Christian convert led the Taiping Rebellion and more than twenty million died before the Qing Dynasty defeated the Taipings. Another rebellion led by Muslims in China’s northwest also cost about eleven million dead before the Muslim rebels were defeated.
Most of the deaths during Mao’s time took place during the Great Leap Forward because of famine and starvation. The goal of the Cultural Revolution, although flawed, was to stamp out the corruption that Western powers had introduced to China during the 19th century.
I have spent more than a decade researching and writing extensively about china. My Blog is iLook China.net
wtdevflnt said
Damn what a comprehensive response, I should link to it, it makes my brief summary of Chinese history look pretty anemic. But thanks for the comment it was cool. Also, is your blog blocked in China, I tried to hit iLookChina.net but its not coming up…did you piss off the chicoms? I see tons of posts in my Google search but cant access them. thanks
Lloyd Lofthouse said
I cought a few errors in the first comment I made. The Opium Wars were in the 19th century — not the 18th and China’s brief war with Vietnam was political since Vietnam was allied with Soviet Russia and China had just broken all ties with the Soviets and were moving toward the U.S. to form an allience, which explains why Nixon went to China.
In fact, China got its “a–” kicked by the Vietnamese and soon pulled its military out of Vietnam.
Two Republics – Part 4/4 « iLook China said
[…] China from 1949 to 1976 when he died. For a brief period between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, Mao was forced to retire. However, when he launched the Cultural Revolution, the people of China […]