From The Washington Post:
When the world looks back at the troubles of Maoism in China, attention usually focuses on the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976, in which millions were persecuted and society all but collapsed, or on the famine induced by the Great Leap Forward of 1959-62, when somewhere between 20 million and 50 million people starved after farmers were forced to apply Mao-thought to agriculture.
In comparison with such huge catastrophes, the “Anti-Rightist Campaign” of 1957-58 may pale. But measured by its long-term ill effects on China — effects still very much in evidence today — the Anti-Rightist Campaign might be put front and center. This was the theme of two conferences that victims of the campaign attended last month to mark its 50th anniversary. Some of these veterans, now in their 70s and 80s, were speaking out for the first time. Because the meetings were prohibited in China, they were held in the United States, at Princeton University and the University of California at Irvine. [Full Text]
Perry Link is a professor of East Asian studies at Princeton University. Read also Who Will Compensate Victims of the Anti-Rightist Campaign? by Shao Yanxiang (邵燕祥) and Petitioning for Redress over the Anti-Rightist Campaign from China Rights Forum (2007, No. 2).
