Yellow River, Thy Name Is Pain and Suffering

So many pieces of news come to us from the mainland of China. Some shake us to the bottom of our souls; others reduce us to tears. A report in Zhongguo shibao (China Times) tells us that a certain television program, of intellectual content, River Elegy, has been suppressed and banned by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Also, Mr. Hu Qili has ordered that there must not be any discussion of the matter in any of the newspapers throughout the country. Mr. Wang Zhen, a Vice Chairman of the People's Republic, has openly criticized and attacked the two scholars responsible for writing the script of the program, Mr. Su Xiaokang and Mr. Wang Luxiang, calling them "even more Bo Yang than Bo Yang himself." Since the time, early on near the founding of the republic, when the Chinese Communists had attacked Mr. Hu Shi, for forty years they have never attacked any cultural figure who is beyond the reach of their power; why then, at this moment, when it appears that the Chinese Communists' strategy of United Front with Taiwan is just reaching its boiling point, would they again point the knife directly at my throat? I do not believe this is a matter of negligence or oversight on the part of the high-ranking officials in the Chinese Communist regime; rather, I believe it is a natural response of some cultural factor, and these officials are merely acting in an involuntary way

China · Communism · Mainland China · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Law