🇨🇳 Communist China, 1949-1961 Consolidation of the Chinese Communist State
Summary
The Speak Bitterness campaign was part of land redistribution under 1950-1952 Agrarian Land Reform Policy, targeting rural areas
- Chinese peasant farmers could express anger and sorrow on old injustices
- regional party leaders organised public meetings that were really just public trials against landlords & employers
- peasants were encouraged to step forward and sometimes obliged
- SIGNIFICANCE: endorsed on party scale
- very few formal guidelines for these Speak Bitterness sessions
- no time limit on testimonies
- no formalised process
- no cross examination of witnesses
- little or no opportunity for accused landlords to bring witnesses or speak on their own behalf
- landlords’ failure to answer questions/implicated in witness testimony → insults or beatings
- more commonly, they were banished or forced into subservient roles