Yuan Longping is a distinguished scientist who has spent his life studying hybrid rice and is known as the “father of hybrid rice. The New York Times commented that his groundbreaking work on high-yielding hybrid rice has helped solve the problems of hunger and poverty in large areas from Asia to Africa.
His death has drawn national mourning, and deservedly so. But in a country where all credit and people’s heroes are to be included under party leadership, observers have noted that some very undeserved problems have occurred. For example, a few people were arrested on the grounds that “heroes and martyrs are not to be desecrated,” according to lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan, who said there could be more than 10 netizens arrested for this reason, adding a somewhat stern atmosphere to a mourning event for the scientist. Some people criticized that the ‘Martyrs Law’ has essentially become an idol law, a unified ideology law, and that Yuan Longping would not have approved of such a crude approach that would have brought him into disrepute even if he were alive. There are also comments that Yuan’s scientific and technological achievements are recognized by scientists around the world, but the propaganda machine’s noise and excessive mythology is not only offensive but also a stain on Yuan’s personal reputation.
The official media reports also added to the problem, such as Yuan Longping’s account of seeing starving corpses in his village in the early 1960s, a tragic sight probably related to his determination to solve the hunger problem, but the official media, Global Times, changed this detail to “Before the founding of New China, Yuan Longping saw starving corpses on the roadside with his own eyes and was very distressed”. The story was reported in the official media ‘Global Times’ as “before the founding of New China, Yuan Longping saw the starving people on the roadside and was very distressed. Some people analyzed that during the centenary of the founding of the Party, the dark side of the Party’s history should be covered up, and it is not in line with the spirit of the Party’s history to say that there were starving corpses under the communist rule. But this fakery has caught the eyes of many netizens.
The English version of Xinhua posted an article entitled “China Focus: “Father of hybrid rice” Yuan Longping dies at 91″ (China Focus: “Father of hybrid rice” Yuan Longping dies at 91), with A paragraph: “‘I saw heartbreaking scenes of starving people falling on the road before 1949,’ Yuan Longping said, recalling a time when even getting enough to eat was a serious problem in China, ‘and that was the main reason that led me to hybrid rice research. ‘” This contradicts Xinhua’s own reporting from a few years ago; is this a reluctance to lose face in front of foreigners, or is it something else?
Some words of propaganda may have gone too far, such as saying that Yuan Longping has solved the problem of feeding the entire Chinese population, and many people disagree. Some analysts, on the other hand, believe that Yuan’s contribution is certainly great, but the lack of food and clothing for all Chinese people for a long time has a huge relationship with the ruling Chinese Communist Party, such as Mao Zedong’s People’s Commune, where land was taken back to the collective and peasants lost their motivation, such as the Great Leap Forward in 1958, where peasants were driven to make steel and build canals on hills without any hope, resulting in the desolation of the land and the death of tens of millions of people, which was originally a man-made disaster that the Chinese Communist Party blamed on “natural disasters”.
Some people on the Internet commented that Yuan Longping is a respectable person and a lovely scientist, but it is very harmful and disrespectful to elevate or mythologize Yuan Longping. It is argued that a lot of people’s nostalgia for Yuan Longping, especially Chinese people’s nostalgia for him, has to do with their memories of hunger, thus making the skinny Yuan Longping a hero in the eyes of many Chinese people for solving hunger.
People commemorate Yuan Longping, in addition to his contributions, his scientific achievements, but also with his reputation in the eyes of the Chinese people, but people are very simple, can say the truth has a significant relationship, the Global Times and Xinhua News Agency mentioned earlier changes to see the starvation time that Yuan Longping said several times. Once in the August 2013 issue of People magazine, he said, “At that time, during the three years of hardship, we in Hunan were called ‘living a hard life’, and it was really hard. I saw with my own eyes five starving people on the ridge of the field, next to the road and under the bridge, tens of millions of people died of starvation.
Yuan revealed a major historical fact that officials have been trying to cover up, the Great Hunger in China in the early 1960s – “people eating each other”. In an interview with Guangzhou Daily in 2009, Yuan also said, “You are young and don’t know that tens of millions of people died of starvation during the three years of hardship. The Great Leap Forward cut down all the trees to practice steel and destroyed the ecology, and in 1959 there was a big drought and basically no harvest for one year.
Even Xinhua News Agency, in a report about Yuan Longping on May 22, 2007, mentioned that in 1960, Yuan Longping saw two bony corpses lying across the road, “Yuan Longping witnessed the harsh reality and felt the sting of the word ‘starving corpses’ “, the article implies that Yuan Longping chose hybrid rice in relation to the stimulus he received from the great hunger.
So why does the Xinhua English-language report now advance Yuan Longping’s discovery of starving people to 1949? The only possible explanation is that the Xi Jinping era has become even harsher than its predecessors, and it is not even possible to tell a little truth and see starving people anymore.
Yuan Longping is also unusual in that he has never joined the Chinese Communist Party, even though it is difficult for a reputable scientist in China not to be “included in the Party”. Yuan’s reason was that he “didn’t understand politics”. Nevertheless, after his death, the official media and Xi Jinping referred to him as “comrade. Hu Ping, editor-in-chief emeritus of “Beijing Spring,” commented, “Yuan did not join the Party, which is very difficult, because a famous expert like him, the Party organization will mobilize you to join the Party several times, and it is very difficult for people to refuse under such circumstances.” Does this have anything to do with his memories of his parents? His father served on the Overseas Chinese Affairs Committee of the Nationalist Government and his mother graduated from a church school, so it was easy to be classified as a “Black Five” family.
The Chinese Communist authorities are now revising the Party’s history to downplay the criminal Cultural Revolution, which Yuan remembers vividly from every movement since 1949: “Every time there is a movement, the intellectuals fall down, and then fall down, and then fall down again. Great intellectuals like Lao She even committed suicide by jumping into a lake, and musicians like Fu Lei had to shave their heads. So cruel to intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution is really a mass catastrophe!”
Reputable, can speak the truth, a lifetime of not joining the party, Yuan Longping is unusual.
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