URL; http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/960314/china.shtml
This is an article about Dali Yang, today an Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Chicago, who was born 3 years after the Great Leap Forward had ended. His parents worked in the field and were peasants, and Dali Yang heard many horrific stories from his parents about what they were experiencing. Yang says that the Great Leap Forward was one of the most influential moments in Chinese history. According to Yang, the initial goal for China to become prosperous but when Mao and other Chinese leaders fell out of touch with reality, the utopian dream of a surplus of food for everyone free of charge became a nightmare which lead to the famine that resulted in the loss of millions of lives. Between 16.5 million and 40 million people are estimated to have died.
The importance of this is that the role of the famine, according to Yang, has greatly demonstrated the role of the peasants in Chinese society, since the peasants are the masses and the leaders are few, thus it is through the peasants that Yang believes the leaders act. This is important to what we are learning in class because it puts another spin on the information given - Mao did not do all of the things he did by himself - he forced the peasants into submission and carried out his goals through the masses. This does not take the blame off Mao, however, in any way. But this is definitely significant also because Yang, who was born in China to two peasant parents, has a perspective on the famine that is somewhat based off personal experience or at least that of his parents, thus I believe that what he has to say is valuable as well. His parents saw people perish as a result of the famine, thus his words on it give me information that I can trust.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment