David Brooks in today’s New York Times:
“Do you understand?” one party official in Shanxi Province told James Fallows of The Atlantic, “If it had not been for Deng Xiaoping, I would be behind an ox in a field right now. … Do you understand how different this is? My mother has bound feet!”
1. It is estimated by at least two Western scholars that the Cultural Revolution killed between 750,000 and 1.5 million people in China. As many people again survived permanently scarred both physically and psychologically. Unlike David Brooks, I am not comfortable making sweeping generalisations about a billion-odd human beings in one go, but I believe that many Chinese people see the Cultural Revolution as an unmitigated disaster for their country. So much for “manic drive”. Nor would I go around alluding to the Revolution as “progress”.
2. Becoming “driven to build some secure footing” after witnessing “the worst life has to offer” (incidental note to editors: murderous ideological zealots are not natural occupational hazards of life) is not evidence for faith in the future. Surely the opposite – it is a pragmatic hedge against continued uncertainty, and the product of a frightening recent past. In any case, Chinese consumer spending has been rising at a rate of 8 or 9 per cent per annum in recent years, two and a half times the American rate. Surely this is true evidence for ‘futurity’, and indeed China’s continued strong economic growth. You don’t spend unless you have faith in a higher income in the future to make up for it.
3. Since Deng Xiaoping was purged not once but twice during the Cultural Revolution, and began the reforms of 1978 in order to repair the vast economic damage left by the Gang of Four, I very much doubt that he would have appreciated the New York Times’ apparent amalgamation of the two events.
4. I am not very impressed by David Brooks’ grasp of either economics or Chinese history. Particularly when this history is mangled into a mere accessory to another country’s self-regard.
