王友琴： Humanity Talk abstraction

https://ywang.uchicago.edu/history/docs/20171021HumanitiesDayTalkAbstract.pdf

Humanities Day, 10/21/2017
1000 Victims of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: An Unreported History of Persecution, Imprisonment, and Murder (1966-1976)
By Youqin Wang

Over the last 30 years, I have collected documents and interviewed survivors of the Cultural Revolution in order to find the victims who have been systematically neglected in China’s historical literature. Violent attacks against teachers occurred in every school without exception, for example, in the 10 girls- only middle schools I investigated, three principals and three teachers were beaten to death by their Red Guard students in the so-called “Red August” of 1966. In addition, 63 people at Peking University died due to political persecution, and 15 Chinese scholars who studied at the University Chicago between 1913 and 1950 were tortured to death. Unlike Stalin’s “Show Trials,” the Chinese “Struggle Sessions” did not even attempt to feign legal proceedings. Unlike the Soviet Union’s organized and remote “Gulag Archipelago,” the Chinese system of so- called “Cowsheds” were informal jails established at every workplace that not only murdered millions of innocent victims but also poisoned the morality of the Chinese people. Aside from massive persecution, the leaders of the Cultural Revolution planned to build a “new world” without commodity production, distribution according to work, and a monetary exchange economy, all of which the Khmer Rouge completed in Cambodia during 1975-1979 with Chinese support. Though these narratives come from Chinese history, I believe the injustice, poverty, and death that the Cultural Revolution caused can serve as a lesson for the world beyond China