No speeches or commentaries by China's leaders have marked the
40th anniversary of what many see as one of the most shameful
periods of the country's history since 1949, when the Communist
Party seized power under Mao Zedong (毛澤東). Many people who
reached working age during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution
refer to it as the "10 lost years." The lack of calls to learn
from the mistakes of what the party officially calls the "10
years of national chaos" is perhaps surprising. "The officials
do not permit open discussion, the victims do not want to
remember and the persecutors are not willing to repent," veteran
dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) wrote in an essay published this
month on the overseas-based Web site Observe China. "It can even
be said that 30 years after the Cultural Revolution has ended,
the national self-examination about this `catastrophe' has still
not yet begun today," said Liu, a journalist and literary critic
who has spent a total of four and half years in prison since
taking part in the 1989 pr