Chinese Whispers: healing the 'cancer' of the Cultural Revolution

Best of the Spectator

The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2021

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's not easy to talk about the Cultural Revolution inside China - let alone teach it. In recent years, one of the last professors to have taught the period has been hounded out of her role at a top university. Sun Peidong has now taken a post at Cornell, after Chinese journals stopped publishing her work, the university party secretary banned her lectures, and even her students turned on her - denouncing Sun as if she were an 'anti-revolutionary' of the very period she taught.

In this frank discussion, Cindy Yu interviews Sun about academic freedom and diversity of thought on Chinese campuses; about what it was like to shed light on a taboo subject to younger generations; and why she left China. It's an indictment on modern Chinese discourse that an internationally-renowned scholar such as Sun is now lost to Chinese academia.

‘Look at China, now we have a huge impact. If we cannot handle our own social problems, what kind of impact will we leave to the whole [of] humankind?’ She asked me. And on whether China has got over the Cultural Revolution:

‘If you forbid people, professors, or students, or young generation, to have [the] opportunity to fully discover the history – and the dark side of the history – how can you imagine that our nation can move on?’

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority.
0:07.6	Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription, in print and online, plus a £20 £20,000 emphasise £1,000 £1,000 £1,000 £1 realised realised recognised. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.
0:31.4	Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu. Every episode, I'll be talking to journalists, experts and long-time China
0:38.2	watches about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more. There'll be a smattering of history
0:43.9	to catch you up on the background knowledge and some context as well. How do the Chinese
0:48.1	see these issues? As you can imagine, the cultural revolution is not an easy topic to talk about inside China,
0:56.6	and even less so to teach about it. Professor Sun Pei Dong was one of the few academics in
1:01.9	the country who were able to teach the subject through her work at Fulang University in
1:06.6	Shanghai, a very high-ranking academic institution. But on this episode, I speak to Professor
1:12.6	Swin about her exile from China, not that she would necessarily call it as such, but it is
1:17.6	essentially what's happened to her. Since 2016, she has been the victim of increasing scrutiny
1:23.0	on her curriculum, having her journal articles being rejected from Chinese language journals,
1:28.0	increasingly she had to publish in foreign languages, and eventually her students turned on
1:32.8	her, reporting her to the university in pretty ironically cultural revolution ways.
1:38.9	This is my conversation with Professor Sun that we recorded early in the year.
1:43.9	At her request, I held off on the interview
1:45.8	until today, because she has now safely landed in America, where she will take up a new post
1:51.4	at Cornell University, continuing to teach Chinese history. In this frank discussion, I talked to
1:57.0	Professor Swin about academic freedom and diversity of thought on Chinese campuses.
2:02.1	I talk about what it was like to shed light on the realities of the culture revolution
2:06.5	to students who had never heard that side before.
2:09.3	And I talked to her about her last few years in China and ask her whether or not she's ever going to go back.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Spectator, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Spectator and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.