Memoirs by David Rockefeller

Author:David Rockefeller [Rockefeller, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-78938-9
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-04-27T04:00:00+00:00

WITNESS TO THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

Mao instigated the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s in a brutal bid to solidify his own grip on power. While he succeeded in eliminating or neutralizing his opponents within the Communist Party, Mao lost control of his chosen instrument, the zealous and bloody-minded Red Guards, cadres of young, fanatical Communist Party members who ran rampant until the Red Army finally brought them to heel a few years later. During this time, extremist political factions, egged on by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, inflicted profound misery on millions of people and ripped apart the fabric of Chinese society. Indeed, we saw constant evidence of the Cultural Revolution’s effects and soon came to realize that it had not yet run its course. Three vignettes may serve as illustrations of what we observed.

At Beijing University a distinguished scientist, who still bore the title of vice president, accompanied us to the campus but sat in silence while three members of the Revolutionary Committee in their early twenties presided at the meeting. In response to a question about university entrance requirements, they made it clear that academic preparation was secondary to unquestioning loyalty to Mao’s teachings. The disastrous impact this had on the quality of scholarship and teaching for a full generation can well be imagined.

It was the same story at the recently renamed Capital Hospital, formerly the PUMC, where James (Scotty) Reston of The New York Times had undergone an emergency appendectomy, anesthetized with acupuncture, two years earlier. Although several doctors trained before the revolution were still on staff, they remained in the background while members of the Revolutionary Committee led us on a tour. These student leaders boasted of the medical care available to “the masses” because of Mao’s leadership, but it was apparent that the facilities were primitive and the hospital lacked the most basic surgical instruments and medicine, even though it was considered the best in China. As chilling proof of this, we looked through the open door of an operating theater just after a leg amputation had been completed; the temperature was above 90 degrees, and flies buzzed around the severed leg, which stood upright in a bucket beside the operating table.

We visited a ceramic factory outside Guangzhou established during the Tang dynasty and famed for the finely wrought pieces it had produced for more than a thousand years. The factory was now mass-producing poor-quality imitations of those earlier masterpieces. We asked if workers were permitted to create original pieces and were told that nothing could be produced for “elite individuals” that was not also available to the masses.

Throughout our visit no one said anything, even when we were alone in the car, that deviated in the slightest degree from strict Maoist doctrine. Had they done so, they would have doubtless been banished to the countryside for “reeducation.” In fact, nothing gave us much hope that the Chinese leadership was about to relax its iron grip on the country.

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