Wednesday November 17, the People’s Daily, body of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), devoted only the bottom of its “one” to the virtual meeting organized the day before between President Xi Jinping and his American counterpart, Joe Biden. There was much more important news that day: the full publication of the resolution adopted on November 11 by the plenum of the CPC Central Committee. “On the major achievements and the historical record of the hundred years of the party’s struggle”.
A text of more than 36,500 Chinese characters (more than 7 pages of the China Daily in English), which enshrines the omnipotence of Xi Jinping, but also details his vision of history. A text deemed sufficiently important to be translated into English, Russian, French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Arabic. At the same time, the party published Xi Jinping’s speech presenting the genesis of this “political declaration” to the plenum.
Mark your differences
As the party has already discussed its history on two occasions, in 1945 and in 1981, and these resolutions remain “Mostly still relevant”, this resolution is essentially devoted to the ” new era “ launched by Xi Jinping when he came to power in 2012. Nevertheless, reading the past allows the Chinese president to mark his differences.
The “rectification movement” launched in 1942 by Mao Zedong – who ruled China from 1949 to 1976 – to establish its power is sent with a sentence: this “Movement of Marxist ideological education gave remarkable results”. Yet in their monumental History of China, John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman (Tallandier, 2013) explain that“Between 1942 and 1944, the rectification movement put in place the style of mobilization which would henceforth prevail, including individual isolation, terror of confessions, humiliation and submission”. He claimed about 10,000 victims within the party. Likewise, no assessment is made of the “Great leap forward”, which however caused the death of at least 30 million people between 1958 and 1960.
On the other hand, the text criticizes the Cultural Revolution of which Xi Jinping and his father, Xi Zhongxun, a close friend of Mao, were victims. “While the theoretical and practical errors of comrade Mao Zedong in matters of class struggle in socialist society were staining, the central committee did not react in time to set the course. Thereupon, Comrade Mao Zedong started and led the Cultural Revolution he felt – wrongly – necessary. ” It was ” a desaster “, says the text.
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