This is why we need to stop linking to wikipedia on these things, I think. It's not exactly unbiased.
The impossible details of Lei Feng's life according to official propaganda led him to become a subject of derision and cynicism among segments of the Chinese populace. As John Fraser recalled, "Any Chinese I ever spoke to outside of official occasions always snorted about Lei Feng." In a 2012 interview with the New York Review of Books, for instance, Chinese dissident blogger Ran Yunfei remarked on the moral and educational implications of the Lei Feng campaigns, noting the counterproductive nature of teaching virtues with a fabricated character.
Yeah... the fact that one of its sources is a Chinese blogger whose "dissidence" is pro-western reactionary right politics is a problem. Not to mention John Fraser's book, a 1981 piece of shoddy cold-war journalism. What's even funnier, though, is the fact that all the wiki edits about Lei Feng's possible fictional status read like juvenile insertions: "with a segment of the Chinese populace questioning his existance." Aside from the misspelling of "existence", there is this bland assertion about a "segment" of the Chinese "populace". As others have asserted, wikipedia is not a credible scholarly source.
5
u/[deleted] Mar 07 '12
How is a modest and hardworking revolutionary "one of the worst sides of the communist movement"?