Re: la nouvelle gauche: Les jeunes Chinois voient rouge

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For those of us who don't speak French (including myself), these are a few
key paragraphs from the article Henry posted, which I made an attempt to
convert from babelfish to normal English:

If the official left in China tended to be fossilized in its ideology,
these last months have witnessed the rise to power of what the Chinese
intellectuals call the "new left", with an unusual profile: students
returned from studies abroad, who thanks to the Internet, now hold up a
banner redder than that of the Communist Party.

In spring the daily CP newspaper published letters from students at the
University of Peking denouncing their professors, whom they considered to
be too liberal. Anti-globalization nationalists, part of the new left, are
very critical towards social inequalities, which they blame on twenty years
of 'reforms'.

"The current Communist Party is a new capitalist class made up of small and
large bureaucrats. It is a declining party corrupted to an unimaginable
extent. But I believe in the communist ideal ", states Huang Jisu.
According to Jean-Philippe Béja, sinologist, " the new left is not related
to the ruling party".  The red flag has been embraced by certain artistic
circles, including the webzine cultural Red Drapeau (?) launched by young
people. The magazine "I like rock'n'roll"  published in March a biography
of Che Guevara and the writings of the soldier "Lei Feng", who was a hero
of the Mao years. This new left movement is certainly confined to the
intellectual or artistic milieu, but reflects significant growing
dissatisfaction with a party perceived as irredeemably corrupt.


Louis Proyect

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