The long-term effects of the Cultural Revolution

Q: What aspects of modern Chinese culture would you associate with the long-term effects of the Cultural Revolution?

A:

The Great Cultural Revolution was an extreme of democracy that our Human Civilization has ever experienced. It began with Voice your opinion loudly, Express all your opinions, Post your opinion in the public area, Debate your opinions fiercely (Four Bigs). The democracy was so extreme that it evolved into anarchy and mob rule. Because of the violence of the mob rule, the Chinese now precious a stability and the rule of law more than elsewhere in the world. The short-term effect is that China is immune to the color revolution. The ten years of the Great Cultural Revolution are more intensive than all the color revolutions put together, including the collapse of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Arab Spring, and others.

The mid-term effect is that the Great Cultural Revolution transferred the huge population of the countryside into the modern population. In the last thirty years, China has relied on migrant workers from the countryside to work in the coastal cities. The Great Cultural Revolution changed the mindset of the agricultural population into modern industrial thinking. That’s why China is the most successful economy among all transferred economies. The Great Cultural Revolution prepared a huge labor force for China's industrialization in the last thirty years.

The long-term effect is that the Great Cultural Revolution shook the foundation of the ideology of the last five thousand years. The Great Cultural Revolution abandons the mindset of considering the governing class noble and the governed classes humble. This is the turning point of human civilization, a turning point that shifts the trajectory of the evolution of human civilization. Mao is, therefore, the biggest key figure in Human history. Man is born equal not just in legality but also is equal socially, economically, and politically. That’s Mao’s ideal, an ideal much advanced than that of the French Revolution and that of the American Revolution. Mao’s Great Cultural Revolution made more progress for Human beings than the French Revolution and American Revolution did, but cost much less.