As we welcome back half of our blogging team from travels across China this evening, we noted a report that many in China are having nostalgia for that country's brutal "Cultural Revolution" from 1966 to 1976, which resulted in repression and the virtual collapse of the economy. Economic dislocations resulting from China's rapid expansion in the past 20 years has fueled the resentment of those left out of China's quasi-free market economy, mainly those in rural areas. According to the report, China's leader, Xi Jinping, is seen as largely sympathetic with the neo-Maoists, who have supported his ideological orthodoxy. However, Xi also needs the economy to continue to expand and maintain its trade and currency position with the rest of the world. The report describes a scene in the city of Luoyang, where citizens look back on the days of Mao with affection:
"Downtown, an enormous statue of Mao looms over the red-brick No. 1 Tractor Factory, one of many local icons of state-owned industry that was either privatized or shuttered by decree in the 1990s as China prepared to join the World Trade Organization. In the outskirts, struggling steel plants and glassmaking firms line roads winding along hardscrabble hills.The disillusionment and anger in the disadvantaged areas of China that have grown out of a fast-growing and opportunistic economy have spawned demonstrations and protests, which are suppressed by local officials. While the positive sentiments expressed in China for the days of the Cultural Revolution are not widespread, it's gradually becoming an issue for Beijing especially as the Chinese economy experiences downturns and the gap between the new wealthy and the rest of China grows.
Nearly every day in Luoyang's Zhouwangcheng Plaza, retired or unemployed workers sing odes to Mao under a billowing Communist Party flag. Zhao Shunli, a retired veteran who collects discarded food outside restaurants to survive, performs red song-and-dance routines in a uniform decked with Mao pins."
