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Comment by idiotsecant | Hacker News Reader

There's no need to be defensive. We are largely westerners on a western website studying history from a western perspective. There's nothing wrong with that, it's natural. It just means we lose some understanding of events if that's the only side we know. OP is performing a service by documenting first-person history, and doesn't need to justify why it's important. It's important.

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I'm still curious what specific narratives you had in mind when you said "dominant Western narratives"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46410398

To be fair, my father in law who is Chinese and had to exile himself during the cultural revolution would pretty much say the same thing about the Cultural Revolution. Educated people in China who lived through it will certainly criticise the Cultural Revolution (or The Great Leap Forward for that matter) if they are in a situation when they can be honest about it.

So I'm not sure that specific comment would be considered to be a "dominant western narrative" unless you're going to tell me that older (and so who have lived through it) educated people in China who don't speak a word of English have a western mindset because they're educated.

Read Dongping Han

Oh the fact that there has been some positives from the cultural revolution (by having educated people sent to the farm and rural area) doesn't stop the fact that the cultural revolution was a net negative for the country. How many works of arts have been destroyed due to it? How many people suffered? Nothing is ever white or black but it doesn't mean that we can take a small positive outcome and use that to justify atrocities.

The fact that you immediately think you know what the author I referenced has written and continue to plow forward with your pre-established conclusions is evidence of the “dominant western narrative” effect.

Accounts from well-off diaspora of any country will always be negative. It’s a self-selecting group with specific interests.

I mean I skimmed it earlier but I do plan to read it. That said my pre-established conclusions are based on first hand negative accounts of people who currently still live in China some of which do not speak English so weren't influenced by any "western narrative" (where I also lived for a number of years before moving to HK). Those are not accounts from a well-off diaspora.

EDIT: By the way, it's not that hard either to find books written by Chinese writers not part of the diaspora that are critical of the cultural revolution (Serve the people by Yan Lianke, 3 body problem by Liu Cixin) or the great leap forward (4 books by Yan Lianke). Obviously, writers living in China that have to deal with censorship tend to be less directly critical of it compared to writers from the diaspora but that doesn't stop some criticism to shine through.a

Even the official CPC line is critical of Mao. The assertion is not that all Chinese people believe the same thing or all necessarily belief different things from dominant western narratives on every issue. The assertion is simply that: some narratives are dominant in the West and treated as closed issues without any room for critical discussion or nuance. Deviating from those narratives is punished in a variety of ways through social and institutional enforcement.

We're talking about 404, not the cultural revolution

My comment was asking for details about its parent comment, not about the main post.

I was curious about the 'narratives' it mentioned.

They might be wrongheaded; they might be valid.

Either way, it piques my interest.

It’s a valid question, despite the cynical delivery.

> There's no need to be defensive.

This is extremely manipulative. The only reasons to say something like this are to shame the person you're respond to and/or attack and discredit them and force them to respond defensively. Don't do this.

(it also immediately outs you as not having any valid points to make, because someone with a reasonable response doesn't need to stoop to emotional attacks)

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