China comment: The prescribed Pride

40 years Ago began in China the Reform and opening – up policy. She has not only changed the country but the world. Even more significant is that the anniversary received little attention. Hardly anyone in Europe knows what happened in 1978 in Beijing. Many Chinese see it as a lack of recognition of their achievements. This may play a role. But the main reason for the low response is an other: The party has denied the confrontation with the past, and prescribed to the people instead of history-forgotten Pride.

Elsewhere there is an anniversary like this has given rise to debates about the Lessons of the past, about benefits, breaks, and undesirable developments. In China, it’s different. The Communist party has put the past to their service and freely rewritten in order to legitimize their rule. However, the triumphalism with which the Chinese leadership of these 40. Anniversary of commits, and the audacity with which the state and party chief Xi Jinping to the heroes of this story is stylized, blow up each dimension.

drunkenness and fatal hubris

a year Ago, a Chinese party has warned officials before a return to the mentality of the “Great leap forward”, the fatal hubris of Mao’s times, the million Chinese claimed the lives of. The Director of the center for foreign policy of the Central party school, Luo Jianbo, spoke of an “immature sense of national greatness” and drunkenness in the face of the rise of China in the midst of the simultaneous descent of other Nations. From the history of the “Great leap forward” were important Lessons to be learned. But, unfortunately, it is taboo. The book “tombstone” that describes the resulting famine, is prohibited in China. The portrait of the man who caused it, still hangs on the Tiananmen square.

In the coming year, other significant days of remembrance. As the First of the hundredth anniversary of the “4.-May movement“ that sought to define China’s role in the world after the First world war. He would be perfect for debates about China’s relationship with the West, but it is hardly to be expected that they will be approved. On 4. June 30. Anniversary of the crackdown of the student movement of 1989, an event that has wiped out the party successful from the collective memory of the country. The author Louisa Lim demonstrated three years ago. You showed hundreds of Beijing students, the world-famous photo of the man who stood in Tiananmen square with a tank. Only 15 of them recognized their city. The other typed on South Korea, or Kosovo.