This morning a "Letter from Beijing" in the NYT reports:

Even as China’s economy and society become increasingly diverse and sophisticated, its relationship to its own history remains stubbornly mired in cover-ups and silences. A look at how high school textbooks present the six decades since the establishment of the People’s Republic reveals the problem. Glaring omissions include mass famine, violent political campaigns, deadly labor camps and the suppression of a democracy movement that was televised live around the world. Taken together, these events killed dozens of millions of Chinese.

The reason is simple, say critics. The political party that caused the tragedies is still in power, and it fears challenges to its authority. “They didn’t begin telling the truth in the Soviet Union until after it collapsed, did they?” said Yuan Tengfei, a teacher in Beijing.

A result is that high school graduates, many headed for university and top jobs in China and, increasingly, abroad, leave school in a miasma of ignorance about their country, Mr. Fan said.

It's a well known story: the Party, in an effort to bolster its legitimacy, obstructs people from critically understanding history. This is obviously a sign of political weakness.  Why fear and open and critical engagement with the past?  Because the Great Leap Forward, among other horrible atrocities, lurks there…

It brings to mind an excerpt from the DDJ passage (33) cited in the previous post:

To know people wisdom, but to know yourself is enlightenment.

To master people takes force, but to master yourself takes strength.

The Party, in essence, restricts Chinese people from knowing the national self, while permitting certain knowledge of other people in the world.  In this the political leadership seeks not only legitimation of the authoritarian state, but also national strength in the world.  But the DDJ suggests that strength will not be found in suppression of self-knowlegde.  And much the same can be said in terms of national power and understanding.  As long as the Party denies the open study of Chinese history, sources of Chinese national strength are also repressed.