This content was originally published by Radio Free Asia, and it is now being reprinted with permission.
A common who presided over a Cultural Revolution slaughter that included the eating of those deemed “enemies of the people” by later high leader Mao Zedong was buried in the remains of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Wei Guoqing, a establishment colonel and former leader of the People’s Liberation Army, was buried resurrected on October 24 by authorities.
High-ranking friends, including the heirs of soon revolutionary leaders Zhu De and Peng Dehuai, attended the full-honors burial service at Beijing’s Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, which is where China’s high-ranking officials and revolutionary heroes rest.
The media prompted outrage and comedy on Chinese-language social media, with remarks highlighting Wei’s position in the Guangxi Massacre in which members of political gangs killed an estimated 100, 000-150, 000 people through beheadings, beatings, cremation dead, stoning, drowning, boiling and disembowelment, according to traditional study.
Wei’s brand is most frequently associated with eating during the massacres that occurred in Guangxi’s Wuxuan and Wuming counties and Nanning city as a result of the Cultural Revolution’s 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution’s political assault.
Public documents cited in The New York Times in 1993 and by Radio France International in 2016 showed that at least 137 people were eaten, with dozens participating.
The decision was ominously sarcastic in the light of Chinese-language opinions on this year’s news story about X, which is blocked in China but also accessible by some using circumvention equipment.
” So the Chinese Communist Party’s running-dog barber is now a warrior for killing people”, commented @ueinhu, while @sebonesama quipped:” Babaoshan is currently packed full of spirits and monsters – there’s always room for one more”.
Another jibes echoed those made about the imaginary criminal Hannibal Lecter, with one person posting a joke of Wei confronted with piles of deep-fried flesh and a history KFC brand.
” Paying tribute to a legendary gourmet”, commented @WaterMargin_10, while @akira38458278 wondered if the move was to prevent the people of Guangxi from “digging him up and eating him” and @DingeX22503 concluded:” Only those who are ruthless enough get to be a hero in China”.
Hands” covered in blood”
Feng Chongyi, a professor at the University of Technology in Sydney, said Wei’s burial is politically symbolic, as it underscores Xi Jinping’s status as the heir of late supreme leader Mao Zedong, and is a tacit endorsement of the political” struggle” tactics used by his predecessor.
In a recent interview with RFA Cantonese, Feng claimed that Wei Guoqing was an executioner whose hands were covered in blood. ” By giving him the honor of entering Babaoshan, Xi Jinping is endorsing the persecution mania of the Cultural Revolution, which reflects his own totalitarian resurgence”.
According to Feng,” It suggests that Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong share the same authoritarian nature.”
The burial of Wei’s remains appeared to indicate that Xi was unwilling to distance himself from that period of China’s recent history, according to Yang Haiying, a professor at Japan’s Shizuoka University who has studied the Cultural Revolution’s violence against the ethnic Mongolian population.
” When Wei Guoqing was in Guangxi, his people killed and ate people, and yet he gets to be in Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery”, Yang said. The Cultural Revolution was only temporarily halted by the Chinese Communist Party because it had never condemned it.
” Xi Jinping is , now restarting it, we ‘re , right in the middle of it , now”, he said.
Yang claimed that the authorities had refused to publicly criticize his actions in Inner Mongolia, citing a leader who was comparable to Wei, who presided over the massacres of tens of thousands of ethnic Mongolians during the Cultural Revolution.
” The Chinese Communist Party is a violent regime, and all its talk of revolution just means violence”, he said. ” So it will only reward its most violent followers”.
Wei Guoqing passed away on June 14, 1989, 10 days after the Tiananmen massacre put an end to weeks of student-led pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
Up until the burial ceremony on October 24th, his ashes were kept in the Babaoshan Columbarium.
