The Cultural Revolution - Tania Branigan

The Cultural Revolution is everywhere and nowhere in modern China. It is impossible to make sense of China without understanding what happened in this decade of political fanaticism, brutal violence and chaos, which saw perhaps two million die and tens of millions hounded. But it also seems impossible to truly understand this era, with its constant changes and contradictions. Discussion has been suppressed by both political diktat and personal trauma. Even so, its memory persists.
While many remain deeply scarred by the horrors, there is now a surprising nostalgia for the era. It speaks in large part to concerns about the present day but also reflects the appeal of powerful possibilities for transformation which existed in the era, however briefly and marginally.
What exactly are people remembering when they remember the Cultural Revolution? And how has an era which turned the nation upside down come to be an essential part of the party-state’s maintenance of the political status quo?
Tania Branigan is foreign leader writer at the Guardian and spent seven years as its China correspondent. Her book Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution won the Cundill History Prize 2023 and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize, the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding and the Kirkus non-fiction prize. It was named as one of the Wall Street Journal’s ten best books of 2023 and TIME ’s 100 must-read books of 2023.

[@DaboooogA]

Great talk thanks

[@ggc7318]

Thank you for writing this book.❤

[@estellekingshott429]

Brilliant thank you for indepth insights of china ❤❤❤

[@kellyanquoe]

Amazing

[@alfrcas]

the guardian correspondent in Spain said similar analysis to Spain’s civil war; nobody talks about it and i do not see why it has to be talked out; they lived it

[@xushenxin]

Is it about Darwin evolution or China? I am confused.

[@lotharlamurtra7924]

No. It’s about Mao.

[@user-bo9ku2ch3p]

1

[@0lost0myself0]

1dime made a video about culture revolution far more solid than your lecture

[@mimiginkgo]

you don't know any damn thing

[@Scott020357]

The New Cultural Revolution in China means very much important beyond the Chinese of today's understanding and also the world political community...
The fundamentals of Chinese mentality that last s for 5000 years, has a very deep roots in Chinese of old days and today...never really changed!
The 30 years open-door maneuver enabled Chinese to perceive what the westerner's mentality and it is a very important experience of the Chinese today.
The old cultural revolution imprisoned my father, a hard-core communist for three years and our family in a concentration camp for three years...
But we never changed our beliefs and our hope...
Your guys are condemning old time's and today's...but the world will not go your way...
The Chinese living in Western world...remain Chinese as well.
But making money for a better life is your main agendas...not the political standpoint... I feel sorry for you and you will surely regret what you said today in the coming 10 years...

[@shawnxuandeli9]

What a nonsense. How could you speak for all the Chinese? Are all the Chinese thinking like you?

[@shawnxuandeli9]

Your comment is nonsense because it is totally factually wrong. The 23 million people with Chinese cultural background in Taiwan have adopted the rule of law democracy and tens of millions of overseas Chinese enjoy modern day democracy. Even Xi Jinping sent his daughter to Harvard not to mention tens of thousands of people escaped to the West in last two years. You only speak for yourself but have no legitimacy to speak for other Chinese at all.