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>"Most well educated Chinese can read traditional..." That's the key. Proximally illiterate people --who were the target of Mao's campaign, and ninety percent
by mc32 5y ago
>"Most well educated Chinese can read traditional..."
That's the key. Proximally illiterate people --who were the target of Mao's campaign, and ninety percent of the pop. back then, would not have had an easy time deciphering pre-communist texts. The well educated who didn't come correct were re-educated or liquidated so they were not the target.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoAgain, why would the6 care? They were barely literate before the revolution, more literate after but probably still not very interested in old texts from the imperial and republic eras. So they were probably just being dumb if that was their intention. Heck, today most Chinese at the university level learn to read archaic imperial era texts in the original form (making traditional characters look downright modern), they seem to have gone in the opposite direction. It’s not like traditional Chinese evolved from the Chinese writing before that. Many characters in traditional Chinese are simplified compared to the same characters in say Japanese (consider telephone in Japanese vs Chinese).