GenZedong

This is a line I’ve read today. There’s an exhibition about the history of the town that I used to live in (and came to visit because my parents live here). It detailed the history of local industry.

It started off at the beginning of the 20th century with a couple of mentions of landowners, petite bourgeoise and private farmers independently developing rudimentary confectionery and baking industry.

Then came the socialist era, during which all this industry was nationalized and transformed into worker cooperatives. It detailed how the industry prospered during socialism and the factories grew exponentially under the guidance of the communist party, but of course, had to throw in “despite great successes of the socialist system in developing the region significantly, it’s totalitarian tyranny left much in the way of personal freedoms to be desired”.

And last, it mentioned the disaster that was the privatizations of 1991. Right after that line in the title, it highlighted a couple of capitalists who came to own most of the previously-collectivized industry, and fired most of the workers, who then left the region, leaving the town in shambles and the local industry to collapse.

The exhibition then concluded with the line “despite many workers being let go, they, compared to the totalitarian socialist regime, had the freedom to find employment elsewhere”

Man, I gotta stop reading this shit.