Free PDF The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Educational Reforms and Their

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent study of socialist democracy
By Walt Byars
When most people think of the Cultural Revolution (GPCR)they think of destruction and violence, hysterical ruffians running up and down attacking people,buildings, and artwork. To a limited extent, this impression is correct. Although some important problems still remain, it is a decent characterization of what happened in urban areas and many rural areas. However, Han's book (based on his doctoral dissertation) shows the other side of the GPCR. In Jimo, a rural county of about 1 million people in Shandong province, the GPCR caused the overthrow of the local heirarchy, the establishment of participatory democracy and economic planning, and a large expansion of public services (implemented by the newly empowered people of this county). This socialist self government based on mass participation worked quite effectively. Han documents the economic development caused by this arrangementas well as the consequences of expanding education.

While this book is intended to provide an alternative view of a specific historical period (this experience was likely replicated in many, many rural areas), it is also important for debates on the left about socialism as well as showing the possibilities of socialism to skeptics. Han's book shows the virtue of a socialism which is neither planned from above or based on market exchange. Rather, the book describes a system in which economic decisions were made by mass,democratic participation.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
odd perspective on a period notorious for vicious purges
By Harvy Lind
Even if Jimo County's economy grew as quickly during the Cultural Revolution as the author claims it did, the average growth of GDP for the entire nation during the decade of 1966-1976 as calculated by reputable economists such as Yasheng Huang was merely between 1% and 2%, and most of the population lived at or below the poverty level. Moreover, as a single-party Leninist regime, the CCP Party-state has never been a democracy for a single day--there has never been a nationwide election of the country's leaders, who are instead chosen behind closed doors in Party meetings. Han's claim of "participatory democracy" is an inaccurate and selective description of a strongly authoritarian regime. Some readers will find this book interesting, nonetheless, as a reflection of a genuine nostalgia for the Mao Zedong Era found within various strata of PRC society; Han himself expresses a very negative view of Deng Xiaoping and other CCP leaders who rejected the overall direction of Mao's Cultural Revolution. Similarly, in Russia one can still find pockets of nostalgia for the iron-handed rule of Stalin, so we should not be surprised to find this in China as well. Yet most of the PRC intelligentsia is not nostalgic for the Cultural Revolution, for they are well aware of the chaos and violence it unleashed.
Readers interested in a more dispassionate and better researched account of the Cultural Revolution should read Macfarquhar and Schoenhals' Mao's Last Revolution (Harvard UP, 2006).

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