Deng's son blasts Cultural Revolution as disastrous

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

BEIJING, Dec 1 (Reuters) The wheelchair-bound son of the late paramount Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping today denounced the country's chaotic 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution as disastrous in rare official comments on the era.

But Deng Pufang did not give any clues on how he was paralysed from the waist down after mysteriously falling from a building in 1968 at the height of the violent turmoil unleashed by Mao Zedong.

Mao plunged China into anarchy in 1966 when he mobilised radical students in political campaigns marked by purges, jailings, killings and suicides whose repercussions analysts say can still be felt today.

''As I've said many times before, the Cultural Revolution has brought great disaster not only to me but to the entire Chinese nation,'' Deng, 62 and now chairman of the China Disabled Persons' Federation, told a news conference on disabled persons broadcast live on state television.

''Lots of inhumane acts were committed. So I have always believed that a nation can achieve modernisation only after endorsing humanitarianism and human rights,'' he said.

His father, Deng Xiaoping, was also persecuted during the Cultural Revolution before taking power in late 1970s and launching market-oriented reforms which have since turned China into an economic powerhouse.

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.

REUTERS SY SSC1038

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