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Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 |
Someone vandalized the article by placing a Japanese flag as the whole thing. I suggest we ban the user whoever did this. Aeryck89 17:27, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I reverted the article to the way it was before vandalism. It would appear that The zero fighter is the one responsible for this. -- Aeryck89 17:37, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think we have enough information on the impact of the CR on the citizens of China, i.e. the ones who were purged. I mean what the purges actually included, etc. As I know very little about the CR, I thought I would bring this to the attention of more competent readers.
No.
No, please get over yourself.
An excellent book on this topic is Legacies by Bette Bao Lord, who was the wife of Winston Lord, U.S. Ambassador to China, 1985-89. The book presents about a dozen individual stories. Mrs. Lord was born in China in 1938, came to the U.S. at the age of 8, and returned to visit twice before her residency as wife of the Ambassador. The book is readily and cheaply available "used" [NY: Fawcett Columbine, 1990]
Dacq
14:20, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
What exactly did Mao and other revolutionaries mean when they use the term "liberal" in Liberal Bourgeoisie (in the second paragraph of the first section)? What philosophy of liberalism are they referring to? Are they referring to Classical liberalism or European liberalism? Zachorious 07:37, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
It was a sad era...
Image:Jiang qing poster.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
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BetacommandBot ( talk) 19:29, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
This user has been indefinitely blocked as a sockpuppet of User:Dariusdaman - I am undoing his link spammage. John Smith's ( talk) 07:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
This is a dispute about whether this link and this link should be included on the external links section of this page. 10:00, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
*Include BothThe standards that you are imposing for these links are the standards for sources to rely on and include in the body of the article itself--NOT for the external links section. Hence, even if you are right that this professor is not an acceptable source to rely on for the article-- as his expertise is in a discipline is other than the subject matte--it is perfectly fine for the external links section. Therefore, your points are NOT relevant. The same goes for the other point about this not being neutral, has a POV, bias, etc,--all false standards, and does not pertain for the external links section. You might not like the judgement/POV's that are expressed, however that does not give you a basis to remove the link. It expresses a POV and offers links to other articles that go into more depth on the quetions/POV's it raises. There is no problem that the point of this article is to offer a summation of this academic conference on the Cultural Revolution from the socialist pov, as this is an article published by
Monthly Review. There is nothing wrong with this; it need not be balance, it need not be without bias/pov, and it need not be by an author whose qualifications make him an expert in the field. So the arguments to suppress these links simply do not stand. Removing them because you don't like the POV seems to be the basis of the objection, so the best I can suggest to rememdy this is to offer another link that presents a contrary POV. Or, if this one does not do the best job at giving sources and advancing the POV it does advance, then suggest a better link that does the same job and makes the same valid points. But do not censor. About the posters, saying one can google it, defeats the point of WP.
Giovanni33
19:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
(blind RfC response) These links seem to violate Wikipedia's External Links policy on several points, in particular: (avoid) links to social networking sites (such as MySpace), discussion forums or USENET; links to blogs and personal web pages, except those written by a recognized authority; and links to sites that primarily exist to sell products or services. Demong 20:59, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
The Cultual Revolution was pretty interesting... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Shihtzuluvrian ( talk • contribs).
The Monthly Review link is certainly worth keeping. DOR (HK) ( talk) 02:31, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Regarding footnote 24, Mao: The Unknown Story, the reference lists page 569 as the source for the figure of 3 million dying. Looking at page 569 in the book, I do not see this figure given (it doesn't even seem like the right context). Would it be possible to give more information so that I can locate the figure (for example, the chapter). I am looking at the paperback "First Anchor Books" edition. Thanks mlhwitz —Preceding comment was added at 18:44, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Page 569: In the ten years from when Mao started the purge until his death in 1976, at least 3 million people died violent deaths, and post-Mao leaders acknowledged that 100 million people, one-ninth of the entire population, suffered in one way or another. What this doesn't say is that all three million violent deaths were directly as a result of the GPCR.
DOR (HK) (
talk)
02:34, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Is there some objection to using this term to describe the events of October 1976? DOR (HK) ( talk) 09:51, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I think that the title Cultural Revolution is a vague term for such a specific event. I suggest that the article be renamed to something like Cultural Revolution (China) or perhaps something even more specific.
If this article is actually renamed, the current Cultural Revolution page should, of course, be redirected directly to the new location.
Thank-you for the consideration. -- GarrettHeath4 - ¿Crees? ( talk) 19:50, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
"Cultural Revolution" may be a vague term for such a specific event, but it's the term generally used in scholarship - hence, it is used. DDSaeger ( talk) 18:47, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
The section starts:
Prior to the Cultural Revolution, most of the intimidation tactics were already established from the earlier Yan'an Rectification Movement (延安整风运动).
There is not enough context here. What intimidation tactics, by whom, against whom and why? Toddst1 ( talk) 21:52, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I added a section of so-called "Red Guard Memoirs" to the "Further Readings," though in the long run it may be better to include in the Red Guard article.
Thoughts, anyone?
I should also divide the Further Readings by category and add important items, e.g documentary collections, sort out the treatment in films with those in the Red Guard article, but not until I have a little time. ch ( talk) 05:27, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
The third and last paragraph of this section reads oddly to me (a complete outsider). In particular:
:To the common people, Mao's death symbolized the loss of the socialist foundation of China ... the entire nation descended into a massive state of spontaneous grief and mourning
As I say, I am not particularly knowledgeable about this subject, so am simply bringing this up for those who know better to respond to, but the language above (especially "entire nation") implies that everybody in China was grief-stricken by Mao's death. Can that really be true? 86.132.141.139 ( talk) 03:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
The image Image:Liu shaoqi poster.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check
This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. -- 03:46, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Upon review of this article, my impression is that it could be edited to convey its most important information in a more direct way.
Three observations:
(a) I note that several large sections of the current article reference standalone articles (e.g. Gang of Four . . . Lin Biao) and yet those sections are still quite lengthy. Could the main points be summarized more succinctly, thus making use of linking to other articles?
(b) I note a recommendation that the Norwegian and Swedish versions be reviewed, since they have been recognized as very good articles. Perhaps one useful step would be to identify major gaps in approach and content between those two and this current English article.
(c) In terms of chronology - it is easy to just get bogged down in way too many day by day details . . . .
I am interested in trying to accomplish these things. Does anyone have any comments. Shi Gelei ( talk) 20:05, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
Though I am gone is a low budget, independent documentary made by a Chinese film maker 胡杰(Hu Jia), the film center around the beating and resulting death of a then Chinese girls school headmaster 卞仲耘. The person that started the first strike on her was called 宋彬彬(Song Bin Bin), who was later on received by Mao personally, is a very well know CR true story. I hope user Cybercobra would not delete the links again before discussion on this talk page. Arilang talk 14:29, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (simplified Chinese: 无产阶级文化大革命; traditional Chinese: 無產階級文化大革命; pinyin: Wúchǎn Jiējí Wénhuà Dà Gémìng; literally "Proletarian Cultural Great Revolution"; often abbreviated to 文化大革命 wénhuà dà gémìng, literally “Great Cultural Revolution,” or even simpler, to 文革 wéngé, “Cultural Revolution”) in the People’s Republic of China was a struggle for power within the Communist Party of China that manifested into wide-scale social, political, and economic violence and chaos, which grew to include large sections of Chinese society and eventually brought the entire country to the brink of civil war.
Those in italics obviously needs citations.
What I want to talk about is the sentence in bold letters. It's true that some of the intentions of Mao initiating the CR is to resettle his power as the ultimate idol for all Chinese; however, the idea of the CR is definitely more than this. Even the name has revolution on it, so it necessarily implies that some of the original ideas/concepts/thoughts were lacking behind, and thus a revolution is required to correct it. -- 98.234.64.205 ( talk) 09:34, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
Agree with many of the points about the Introduction. As it is now, it provides a misleading and very biased view. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.140.226.174 ( talk) 18:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
I personally find "unmitigated disaster" as an understatement. Face it, the Cultural Revolution set China backwards by decades and irreversibly damaged much of its cultural heritage. It was perhaps the most harmful series of social reforms ever conducted in human history. Even the policies of Maximilien Robespierre, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin, horrific as they were, at least produced positive economic effects. It wasn't until they reversed their policies in the future, admitting that emulating the West is the only way to prosperity, that they recovered. To this day, China is perhaps still encumbered by the residual thought of this era. I recommend that instead of worrying about being unfairly biased against China, we should worry about people making it unfairly favorable towards China. The truth takes precedent over hurt feelings. Taishaku 01:29, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
Any ideas on changing the intro? Colipon+( T) 02:06, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
I've just done an adjustment to the intro. This is by no means final but it sounds slightly more reasonable than the previous intro. The second and third paragraphs, the more controversial ones, remain largely unmodified. I can't say they'll be easy to "neutralize" and perfect. So any suggestions is more than welcome. If anyone has any good ideas about how to word it properly, please feel free to offer suggestions here or "be bold" and edit the intro. While we're at it, it may be best to modify some parts of the article as well... some parts are fairly well written, while others are not so much.
Colipon+(
T)
02:15, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Could someone please explain to me why we need:
http://www.geocities.com/crmaozedong/index.html
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/magdoff010706.html
in the links section?
The first is a very amateurish site with no reliable content - we already have an excellent site for posters. The second is a description of a conference - if it was a link to the conference site and/or its seminars, etc I would understand. But I don't see any real useful information there. John Smith's 10:19, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Lol, once again you default to you go and do my work for me mode. Giovanni it is up to you to find and supply information, not to dump something barely relevant and insist someone find something better. John Smith's 09:04, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
I've had a look at the two websites. They are not ideal from a couple of perspectives. (1) They are both sites that clearly are designed to praise the ideological forces that were at work in the Great Cultural Revolution. (2) They are not very successful advocates for their own position. So putting these sites up is almost like setting up a straw man. The discerning reader is likely to say, "If this tripe is the most that can be said for the Great Cultural Revolution, then it must really have been an indefensible movement."
If someone wanted accurate and balanced information about any recent American President, anything written by the Democratic National Committee or the Republican National Committee would have to be treated with great skepticism. We know that each party's propaganda branch will glorify its own and vilify its opposition. If those were the only available sources, then one would have to pit the one against the other and try to sort things out. For the general reader, it would be more practical to try to find that work already done by a neutral observer with access to all available information.
One approach would be to balance these websites with websites from their ideological opponents, e.g., perhaps something by the government of the Republic of China (with capital in Taipei, Taiwan) and something by anti-Mao factions within mainland China. But it would be easy to overbalance these two sites because they are both filled with assertions and attitude but not much information. It would be a strange balancing act to try to find site equally flaky on the KMT side or the side of the Tiananmen proponents of increased freedom in China that pertained to the GCR.
It would be more useful to readers to find websites on both sides that have good information that is clearly cited, and perhaps most useful to find websites that use good research and reflect a neutral ideological stance. P0M 02:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Can someone clarify which parts of the article are NPOV and give some suggestions to fixing it? Colipon+( T) 18:29, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
I recently made some changes to the page, including beefing up a bit of the explanation on the Mao/Peng conflict, and some minor other changes. Please advise if there is an issue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheSoundAndTheFury ( talk • contribs) 15:29, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
The references are quite messy; is there a preferred method for how they are to look? I could possibly do a tidy up of them if I knew what the ideal should look like. It seems that the "further reading" section includes some of what is referenced in the article. In the references section, some long titles appear in full several times. Other references are ill-formatted. Does Wikipedia usually care about this?-- TheSoundAndTheFury ( talk) 15:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
In this article maybe the editor of the references could do it in APA style Greatauston ( talk) 13:56, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
It's amazing to me that so much from this article is based on one revisionist book, Gao's Battle for China's Past. As the title suggests, it's not a history book but a revisionist polemic, in the words of one reviewer, "against the fashionable view on China" and "aims a knockout blow at Jung Chang's recent book on Mao." As such, its information is unreliable. For example, the final assertion in this web page's opener that "Despite this denouncement from the post-Mao Chinese government, the Revolution has still been viewed positively by a large percentage of working class Chinese" can be found in no other serious documentation of the GPCR save this single, Maoist, source. Even more strange, if you actually check the sources quoted from the book here, more than half of them are based on comments the author lifts off the government-monitored Chinese blogosphere! I really have to call into question the reliance on such a flawed book for so much analysis, and believe that this Wikipedia web page is unreliable now as a NPOV source. Thanks. 124.100.50.9 ( talk) 11:07, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Mobo Gao is a Chinese New Left, he would be very welcome at Chinese ultra leftist website http://www.wyzxsx.com/ 乌有之乡, where you would find lots of pro-Mao articles. By the way, Midnightblueowl, are you pushing Chinese New Left POV here in wikipedia? Arilang talk 07:02, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
User:Arilang1234/Draft/POV pushing by Midnightblueowl, POV pushing or not, you have violated WP:Neutral point of view#Due and undue weight and WP:PARITY. Arilang talk 00:39, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for your response MBO, I would very much like to cooperate with you here in Wikipedia. I agree with you that we all have our bias, because we all believe in different ideologies. But one thing we have to keep in mind is: WP:Neutral point of view#Due and undue weight
“ | Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all. | ” |
As you know, and Mobo Gao himself had admitted, his view and interpretation of Cultural Revolution is "strange and not mainstream". I hope we can reach a consensus on this important point. We shouldn't care too much about who is pro-Mao or who is not, and editors shouldn't waste time here to debate about ideologies and philosophy, or who is a "bad historian" and who is a "good historian", instead, we should discuss whether Wikipedia basic rules had been applied or not. In this particular article, Cultural Revolution, I believe that basic Wikipedia rule WP:Neutral point of view#Due and undue weight had been neglected. Arilang talk 23:06, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
“ | Racial, sexual, homophobic, ageist, religious, political, ethnic, or other epithets (such as against people with disabilities) directed against another contributor. WP:No personal attacks#What is considered to be a personal attack? | ” |
After reading through WP:No personal attacks one more time, now I know that "political epithet" is regarded as Personal Attack. Please accept my apology one more time, and I promise you that I would not do it again. Arilang talk 00:53, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment MBO. Allow me to quote Michael Rank one more time:
"But Gao's attacks on Chang are sometimes uncomfortably personal, while his defence of the cultural revolution failed to convince me." The revolution, revised by Michael Rank at guardian.co.uk
Gregor Benton:
""A powerful mixture of political passion and original research, a brave polemic against the fashionable view on China. ... Aims a knockout blow at Jung Chang's recent book on Mao, which Bush and the conservatives rave-reviewed." Gregor Benton, Professor of Chinese History, University of Cardiff.
The above two reviewers would about sum up the Western mainstream academic view point on Gao. I have spend hours doing Google search on Gao's book, hoping to discover some "positive" reviews, unfortunately, I failed. Looks like The Battle for China's Past: Mao & the Cultural Revolution has been more or less ignored by the general academic world.
That said, first of all, Gao's references should be removed from the lede, according to WP:Neutral point of view#Due and undue weight, and then we shall proceed to other sections. User John Smith's input would be very much welcomed here. Arilang talk 04:54, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
I heard many times that the curtailing of Cultural Revolution was due to the generals of Peoples Liberation Army presenting Mao with an ultimatum: either you stop this nonsense, or we will throw you out of power (and maybe even kill you).
Any views about that? Any documents confirming or denying it? Any witnesses? Any sources? 75.82.33.24 ( talk) 02:44, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 |
Someone vandalized the article by placing a Japanese flag as the whole thing. I suggest we ban the user whoever did this. Aeryck89 17:27, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I reverted the article to the way it was before vandalism. It would appear that The zero fighter is the one responsible for this. -- Aeryck89 17:37, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think we have enough information on the impact of the CR on the citizens of China, i.e. the ones who were purged. I mean what the purges actually included, etc. As I know very little about the CR, I thought I would bring this to the attention of more competent readers.
No.
No, please get over yourself.
An excellent book on this topic is Legacies by Bette Bao Lord, who was the wife of Winston Lord, U.S. Ambassador to China, 1985-89. The book presents about a dozen individual stories. Mrs. Lord was born in China in 1938, came to the U.S. at the age of 8, and returned to visit twice before her residency as wife of the Ambassador. The book is readily and cheaply available "used" [NY: Fawcett Columbine, 1990]
Dacq
14:20, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
What exactly did Mao and other revolutionaries mean when they use the term "liberal" in Liberal Bourgeoisie (in the second paragraph of the first section)? What philosophy of liberalism are they referring to? Are they referring to Classical liberalism or European liberalism? Zachorious 07:37, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
It was a sad era...
Image:Jiang qing poster.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.
BetacommandBot ( talk) 19:29, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
This user has been indefinitely blocked as a sockpuppet of User:Dariusdaman - I am undoing his link spammage. John Smith's ( talk) 07:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
This is a dispute about whether this link and this link should be included on the external links section of this page. 10:00, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
*Include BothThe standards that you are imposing for these links are the standards for sources to rely on and include in the body of the article itself--NOT for the external links section. Hence, even if you are right that this professor is not an acceptable source to rely on for the article-- as his expertise is in a discipline is other than the subject matte--it is perfectly fine for the external links section. Therefore, your points are NOT relevant. The same goes for the other point about this not being neutral, has a POV, bias, etc,--all false standards, and does not pertain for the external links section. You might not like the judgement/POV's that are expressed, however that does not give you a basis to remove the link. It expresses a POV and offers links to other articles that go into more depth on the quetions/POV's it raises. There is no problem that the point of this article is to offer a summation of this academic conference on the Cultural Revolution from the socialist pov, as this is an article published by
Monthly Review. There is nothing wrong with this; it need not be balance, it need not be without bias/pov, and it need not be by an author whose qualifications make him an expert in the field. So the arguments to suppress these links simply do not stand. Removing them because you don't like the POV seems to be the basis of the objection, so the best I can suggest to rememdy this is to offer another link that presents a contrary POV. Or, if this one does not do the best job at giving sources and advancing the POV it does advance, then suggest a better link that does the same job and makes the same valid points. But do not censor. About the posters, saying one can google it, defeats the point of WP.
Giovanni33
19:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
(blind RfC response) These links seem to violate Wikipedia's External Links policy on several points, in particular: (avoid) links to social networking sites (such as MySpace), discussion forums or USENET; links to blogs and personal web pages, except those written by a recognized authority; and links to sites that primarily exist to sell products or services. Demong 20:59, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
The Cultual Revolution was pretty interesting... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Shihtzuluvrian ( talk • contribs).
The Monthly Review link is certainly worth keeping. DOR (HK) ( talk) 02:31, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Regarding footnote 24, Mao: The Unknown Story, the reference lists page 569 as the source for the figure of 3 million dying. Looking at page 569 in the book, I do not see this figure given (it doesn't even seem like the right context). Would it be possible to give more information so that I can locate the figure (for example, the chapter). I am looking at the paperback "First Anchor Books" edition. Thanks mlhwitz —Preceding comment was added at 18:44, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Page 569: In the ten years from when Mao started the purge until his death in 1976, at least 3 million people died violent deaths, and post-Mao leaders acknowledged that 100 million people, one-ninth of the entire population, suffered in one way or another. What this doesn't say is that all three million violent deaths were directly as a result of the GPCR.
DOR (HK) (
talk)
02:34, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Is there some objection to using this term to describe the events of October 1976? DOR (HK) ( talk) 09:51, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I think that the title Cultural Revolution is a vague term for such a specific event. I suggest that the article be renamed to something like Cultural Revolution (China) or perhaps something even more specific.
If this article is actually renamed, the current Cultural Revolution page should, of course, be redirected directly to the new location.
Thank-you for the consideration. -- GarrettHeath4 - ¿Crees? ( talk) 19:50, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
"Cultural Revolution" may be a vague term for such a specific event, but it's the term generally used in scholarship - hence, it is used. DDSaeger ( talk) 18:47, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
The section starts:
Prior to the Cultural Revolution, most of the intimidation tactics were already established from the earlier Yan'an Rectification Movement (延安整风运动).
There is not enough context here. What intimidation tactics, by whom, against whom and why? Toddst1 ( talk) 21:52, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I added a section of so-called "Red Guard Memoirs" to the "Further Readings," though in the long run it may be better to include in the Red Guard article.
Thoughts, anyone?
I should also divide the Further Readings by category and add important items, e.g documentary collections, sort out the treatment in films with those in the Red Guard article, but not until I have a little time. ch ( talk) 05:27, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
The third and last paragraph of this section reads oddly to me (a complete outsider). In particular:
:To the common people, Mao's death symbolized the loss of the socialist foundation of China ... the entire nation descended into a massive state of spontaneous grief and mourning
As I say, I am not particularly knowledgeable about this subject, so am simply bringing this up for those who know better to respond to, but the language above (especially "entire nation") implies that everybody in China was grief-stricken by Mao's death. Can that really be true? 86.132.141.139 ( talk) 03:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
The image Image:Liu shaoqi poster.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check
This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. -- 03:46, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Upon review of this article, my impression is that it could be edited to convey its most important information in a more direct way.
Three observations:
(a) I note that several large sections of the current article reference standalone articles (e.g. Gang of Four . . . Lin Biao) and yet those sections are still quite lengthy. Could the main points be summarized more succinctly, thus making use of linking to other articles?
(b) I note a recommendation that the Norwegian and Swedish versions be reviewed, since they have been recognized as very good articles. Perhaps one useful step would be to identify major gaps in approach and content between those two and this current English article.
(c) In terms of chronology - it is easy to just get bogged down in way too many day by day details . . . .
I am interested in trying to accomplish these things. Does anyone have any comments. Shi Gelei ( talk) 20:05, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
Though I am gone is a low budget, independent documentary made by a Chinese film maker 胡杰(Hu Jia), the film center around the beating and resulting death of a then Chinese girls school headmaster 卞仲耘. The person that started the first strike on her was called 宋彬彬(Song Bin Bin), who was later on received by Mao personally, is a very well know CR true story. I hope user Cybercobra would not delete the links again before discussion on this talk page. Arilang talk 14:29, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (simplified Chinese: 无产阶级文化大革命; traditional Chinese: 無產階級文化大革命; pinyin: Wúchǎn Jiējí Wénhuà Dà Gémìng; literally "Proletarian Cultural Great Revolution"; often abbreviated to 文化大革命 wénhuà dà gémìng, literally “Great Cultural Revolution,” or even simpler, to 文革 wéngé, “Cultural Revolution”) in the People’s Republic of China was a struggle for power within the Communist Party of China that manifested into wide-scale social, political, and economic violence and chaos, which grew to include large sections of Chinese society and eventually brought the entire country to the brink of civil war.
Those in italics obviously needs citations.
What I want to talk about is the sentence in bold letters. It's true that some of the intentions of Mao initiating the CR is to resettle his power as the ultimate idol for all Chinese; however, the idea of the CR is definitely more than this. Even the name has revolution on it, so it necessarily implies that some of the original ideas/concepts/thoughts were lacking behind, and thus a revolution is required to correct it. -- 98.234.64.205 ( talk) 09:34, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
Agree with many of the points about the Introduction. As it is now, it provides a misleading and very biased view. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.140.226.174 ( talk) 18:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
I personally find "unmitigated disaster" as an understatement. Face it, the Cultural Revolution set China backwards by decades and irreversibly damaged much of its cultural heritage. It was perhaps the most harmful series of social reforms ever conducted in human history. Even the policies of Maximilien Robespierre, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin, horrific as they were, at least produced positive economic effects. It wasn't until they reversed their policies in the future, admitting that emulating the West is the only way to prosperity, that they recovered. To this day, China is perhaps still encumbered by the residual thought of this era. I recommend that instead of worrying about being unfairly biased against China, we should worry about people making it unfairly favorable towards China. The truth takes precedent over hurt feelings. Taishaku 01:29, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
Any ideas on changing the intro? Colipon+( T) 02:06, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
I've just done an adjustment to the intro. This is by no means final but it sounds slightly more reasonable than the previous intro. The second and third paragraphs, the more controversial ones, remain largely unmodified. I can't say they'll be easy to "neutralize" and perfect. So any suggestions is more than welcome. If anyone has any good ideas about how to word it properly, please feel free to offer suggestions here or "be bold" and edit the intro. While we're at it, it may be best to modify some parts of the article as well... some parts are fairly well written, while others are not so much.
Colipon+(
T)
02:15, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Could someone please explain to me why we need:
http://www.geocities.com/crmaozedong/index.html
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/magdoff010706.html
in the links section?
The first is a very amateurish site with no reliable content - we already have an excellent site for posters. The second is a description of a conference - if it was a link to the conference site and/or its seminars, etc I would understand. But I don't see any real useful information there. John Smith's 10:19, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Lol, once again you default to you go and do my work for me mode. Giovanni it is up to you to find and supply information, not to dump something barely relevant and insist someone find something better. John Smith's 09:04, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
I've had a look at the two websites. They are not ideal from a couple of perspectives. (1) They are both sites that clearly are designed to praise the ideological forces that were at work in the Great Cultural Revolution. (2) They are not very successful advocates for their own position. So putting these sites up is almost like setting up a straw man. The discerning reader is likely to say, "If this tripe is the most that can be said for the Great Cultural Revolution, then it must really have been an indefensible movement."
If someone wanted accurate and balanced information about any recent American President, anything written by the Democratic National Committee or the Republican National Committee would have to be treated with great skepticism. We know that each party's propaganda branch will glorify its own and vilify its opposition. If those were the only available sources, then one would have to pit the one against the other and try to sort things out. For the general reader, it would be more practical to try to find that work already done by a neutral observer with access to all available information.
One approach would be to balance these websites with websites from their ideological opponents, e.g., perhaps something by the government of the Republic of China (with capital in Taipei, Taiwan) and something by anti-Mao factions within mainland China. But it would be easy to overbalance these two sites because they are both filled with assertions and attitude but not much information. It would be a strange balancing act to try to find site equally flaky on the KMT side or the side of the Tiananmen proponents of increased freedom in China that pertained to the GCR.
It would be more useful to readers to find websites on both sides that have good information that is clearly cited, and perhaps most useful to find websites that use good research and reflect a neutral ideological stance. P0M 02:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Can someone clarify which parts of the article are NPOV and give some suggestions to fixing it? Colipon+( T) 18:29, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
I recently made some changes to the page, including beefing up a bit of the explanation on the Mao/Peng conflict, and some minor other changes. Please advise if there is an issue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheSoundAndTheFury ( talk • contribs) 15:29, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
The references are quite messy; is there a preferred method for how they are to look? I could possibly do a tidy up of them if I knew what the ideal should look like. It seems that the "further reading" section includes some of what is referenced in the article. In the references section, some long titles appear in full several times. Other references are ill-formatted. Does Wikipedia usually care about this?-- TheSoundAndTheFury ( talk) 15:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
In this article maybe the editor of the references could do it in APA style Greatauston ( talk) 13:56, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
It's amazing to me that so much from this article is based on one revisionist book, Gao's Battle for China's Past. As the title suggests, it's not a history book but a revisionist polemic, in the words of one reviewer, "against the fashionable view on China" and "aims a knockout blow at Jung Chang's recent book on Mao." As such, its information is unreliable. For example, the final assertion in this web page's opener that "Despite this denouncement from the post-Mao Chinese government, the Revolution has still been viewed positively by a large percentage of working class Chinese" can be found in no other serious documentation of the GPCR save this single, Maoist, source. Even more strange, if you actually check the sources quoted from the book here, more than half of them are based on comments the author lifts off the government-monitored Chinese blogosphere! I really have to call into question the reliance on such a flawed book for so much analysis, and believe that this Wikipedia web page is unreliable now as a NPOV source. Thanks. 124.100.50.9 ( talk) 11:07, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Mobo Gao is a Chinese New Left, he would be very welcome at Chinese ultra leftist website http://www.wyzxsx.com/ 乌有之乡, where you would find lots of pro-Mao articles. By the way, Midnightblueowl, are you pushing Chinese New Left POV here in wikipedia? Arilang talk 07:02, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
User:Arilang1234/Draft/POV pushing by Midnightblueowl, POV pushing or not, you have violated WP:Neutral point of view#Due and undue weight and WP:PARITY. Arilang talk 00:39, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for your response MBO, I would very much like to cooperate with you here in Wikipedia. I agree with you that we all have our bias, because we all believe in different ideologies. But one thing we have to keep in mind is: WP:Neutral point of view#Due and undue weight
“ | Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all. | ” |
As you know, and Mobo Gao himself had admitted, his view and interpretation of Cultural Revolution is "strange and not mainstream". I hope we can reach a consensus on this important point. We shouldn't care too much about who is pro-Mao or who is not, and editors shouldn't waste time here to debate about ideologies and philosophy, or who is a "bad historian" and who is a "good historian", instead, we should discuss whether Wikipedia basic rules had been applied or not. In this particular article, Cultural Revolution, I believe that basic Wikipedia rule WP:Neutral point of view#Due and undue weight had been neglected. Arilang talk 23:06, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
“ | Racial, sexual, homophobic, ageist, religious, political, ethnic, or other epithets (such as against people with disabilities) directed against another contributor. WP:No personal attacks#What is considered to be a personal attack? | ” |
After reading through WP:No personal attacks one more time, now I know that "political epithet" is regarded as Personal Attack. Please accept my apology one more time, and I promise you that I would not do it again. Arilang talk 00:53, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment MBO. Allow me to quote Michael Rank one more time:
"But Gao's attacks on Chang are sometimes uncomfortably personal, while his defence of the cultural revolution failed to convince me." The revolution, revised by Michael Rank at guardian.co.uk
Gregor Benton:
""A powerful mixture of political passion and original research, a brave polemic against the fashionable view on China. ... Aims a knockout blow at Jung Chang's recent book on Mao, which Bush and the conservatives rave-reviewed." Gregor Benton, Professor of Chinese History, University of Cardiff.
The above two reviewers would about sum up the Western mainstream academic view point on Gao. I have spend hours doing Google search on Gao's book, hoping to discover some "positive" reviews, unfortunately, I failed. Looks like The Battle for China's Past: Mao & the Cultural Revolution has been more or less ignored by the general academic world.
That said, first of all, Gao's references should be removed from the lede, according to WP:Neutral point of view#Due and undue weight, and then we shall proceed to other sections. User John Smith's input would be very much welcomed here. Arilang talk 04:54, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
I heard many times that the curtailing of Cultural Revolution was due to the generals of Peoples Liberation Army presenting Mao with an ultimatum: either you stop this nonsense, or we will throw you out of power (and maybe even kill you).
Any views about that? Any documents confirming or denying it? Any witnesses? Any sources? 75.82.33.24 ( talk) 02:44, 18 March 2011 (UTC)