China bans Cultural Revolution videos

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

BEIJING, June 30 (Reuters) China has made a fresh effort to censor the history of the Cultural Revolution by banning dozens of video products that address the 10-year period of violent turmoil spearheaded by Mao Zedong four decades ago.

Mao sent China into anarchy in 1966 when he mobilised radical students for political campaigns marked by purges, jailings and killings, whose repercussions analysts say still haunt the country.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, but Chinese academics and reporters say the ruling Communist Party has ordered media not to discuss it.

The silence has spawned an industry of unofficial documentaries that authorities have now targeted, naming 58 items they ordered pulled from shelves immediately.

''Recently, there have been a large number of illegal audiovisual products with political content on the market,'' said the State Administration of Industry and Commerce.

''They are about some of our country's important historical figures and events,'' said the statement posted yesterday on the Administration's Web site (www.saic.gov.cn).

It listed more than 20 documentary films addressing topics related to the Cultural Revolution and said the items should be seized and those involved punished, as they ''have seriously affected the orientation of publishing''.

The bulk had been made by underground businesses but two official publishers were also involved.

Some of the other items listed dealt with other Maoist political campaigns, including the Great Leap Forward, a period of radical collectivisation of farming in the late 1950s which led to a famine that killed tens of millions of people.

An independent Chinese documentary film maker said there was a market for such books and films -- usually a sensational mix of official record and anecdote -- in a country with so many taboo topics.

''Young people might not be interested at all, but those from that era certainly are,'' he told Reuters by telephone.

The film maker, who asked not to be named, said the works did not challenge official versions of the events and were mostly of amateur quality.

''But their very presence plays a positive role in reminding people of the history,'' he said. ''There are so few documentaries that tell the story of Cultural Revolution and explore its complexity and fallout.'' REUTERS SHB BD1511

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