Introduction
China has since 1992 sustained a dizzying growth rate, hovering above or near 8%, a performance all the more impressive, when viewed against the troubled world economy in the second half of the 90s. Cities and towns are bustling with commercial and construction activities. Indeed, in cities in today’s China, especially in Shanghai and Beijing and any number of tourist and commercial centers, you cannot but be impressed by the newly built high risers . Despite its spectacular growth rate, - or perhaps because of it - toward the end …

China scholars in the West are fascinated with ‘The Great Leap Forward famine’ but mostly not because of the famine itself. Like many other poor countries in the world, there is nothing special about famines in China. Reading the chronology of any Chinese county gazettes, one is abhorred to see the frequency and severity of cyclical famines. A look at any county record would produce a few famines in modern history. An incomplete record showed more than a dozen famines in Jimo County gazettes. Also in Shandong, Zichun District Gazettes had recorded 34 famines, and several of which resulted in cannibalism in the early days.

This eyewitness report published by International Rivers Network documents resettlement and human rights problems at the Three Gorges Dam, published in January 2003.
HERE

Before getting to the specific topic of this panel, “The Impact of the Cultural Revolution Outside of China,” I’d like to start with some thoughts that are a little more historical and global in perspective-because I think that’s necessary to understand the more specific elements of the effect that the Cultural Revolution had in the United States and elsewhere. I’d like to do this by reading a quote from Engels, which I ran across recently, written in 1895, the year of his death, where he speaks about the general history of revolutionary struggles.

I guess I’m sorry to be the speaker because we were really counting on Wang Jinhong to hold up the Chinese peasants’ end of things. He is a member of the People’s Congress of Shanxi Province. He represents his community in the Capital Taiyuan. And the meeting was impending; in fact it started on the 20th of March. And he hadn’t intended to stay into April at all when he came and we were prevailing on him and we billed him as a speaker. But as the date approached he …

Here I would suggest that the key factor has been the successful construction by the Party of a consumerist society. Post-socialist capitalism has, unevenly to be sure, raised general living standards by emphasizing production of consumer goods and by promoting a consumer ideology. To date, the government has been able, by and large, “to deliver the goods” and to instill a new set of “needs” among certain, better-off social strata - “needs” that occupy the concerns of the many. China today revolves around a money nexus. How much is one’s income? How much does something cost? Can one afford such-and-such? These are the questions at the center of discussion. Until this situation is shaken by some transcendent economic or political event, the government can enjoy the atomizing and deadening effect that consumerism has on political interest and participation.