...The Cultural Revolution lasted for a decade and saw the fragmentation of China only ending after yielding seemingly little benefit to anyone involved. Mao Zedong was foremostly, and most successfully, a revolutionary and much of his life had been spent seeking to fundamentally transform China. Mao’s goal, to form a new strong and prospering China, required the creation of a new national sense of being through the Cultural Revolution. To forge a new society and culture, rid of entrenched feudal ways was considered absolutely necessary with the omnipresent shadow of the New Culture Movement, which had been frustrated by the size of the task. Only a mass movement by the entire nation to reform themselves could succeed. Mao found his answer in the political philosophy of Marx and Lenin whose work he synthesised and altered, eventually focusing on the potentially revolutionary aspects of widespread revolution. Mao made a significant contribution to Marxist philosophy by concluding that in order to keep the results of a revolution in place, the revolution too had to be permanent. Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, motivated by this genuine desire to preserve and protect the revolution by making it impossible for China’s leaders to become comfortable and lead the nation to regress to capitalism. The Communist victory in 1949 and subsequent decade of control saw some slow improvements in the life of the ordinary Chinese, and few leaders of the CCP were adamant that a revolution was...
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...China during the Cultural Revolution was a place where you were told what to do, and what to say. Today I will be speaking to you about Mao’s Last Dancer, the film adaption of the autobiography of Li Cunxin. To begin with, I will speak about the Cultural Revolution in China, where the story is set. Li’s story took place during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of China, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution. This revolution took place from 1966 to 1976, lead by Mao Zedong, who was the leader of the Communist Party of China at the time. The Cultural Revolution led to millions of people being persecuted and thousands more being killed. Because of the Cultural Revolution, people no longer had freedom of speech and actions. If anyone was found criticising the Government or taking part in anti-communist operations, they would be arrested immediately. Generally, the people of China took to the idea of communism because they had been convinced and continually told that communism would bring great wealth to China. This was great news to the people of China because they had suffered a famine, which lead to the death of millions of people. The Cultural Revolution officially ended in 1976, after Chairman Mao died. Those found to be part of The Gang of Four, a group of Chinese Communist Officials, were arrested for treasonous crimes. In Mao’s Last Dancer, it is shown how Li was taught at school in Shandong that Chairman Mao would end poverty in China. After he arrived at...
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...History 103 001 Cultural Revolution in China: views on Mao’s Era. Yi Jie Yang 40223109 Professor: Steven Hugh Lee Chinese culture has had great misunderstandings particularly in the western countries owing to the views represented by socio-cultural scholars, historians and literature writers. This paper reviews two books that explore the Cultural Revolution in China with a major focus on the Authors’ Writing Style and their views on Mao’s Era. Writing Style In the book “Born red: a chronicle of the Cultural Revolution.” The author, Yuan Gao, explores the first violent years of China’s Great Proletarian culture revolution. Gao provides an account of his own experience as a Red Guard in the Cultural revolution bringing out the readers as close as they can get to the political vortex that shaped the views of millions of teenagers behind the national movement that brought China to the blink of civil war[1]. Born Red entails more than the recollection of a political nightmare including a concise narrative of an adolescent torn by conflicting loyalties as the author is called upon to participate in the destruction of the world that has nurtured him. The author’s story provides tribute to the durability of cultural traditions at a time when nihilism was at its best. Gao clearly outlines the Cultural Revolution in China in an attempt to create a way for a more egalitarian and...
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...In the past 60 years, Cultural Revolution was the most important event in China. It was the biggest mistake in modern Chinese history. If China didn’t have the Cultural Revolution, Chinese lives would be much better than now. Cultural Revolution was started in 1967 by Mao Tsetung who was the first chairman of the People's Republic of China. In his opinion, China had not finished socialist transformation. There were still some capitalist ideas in some persons’ minds, especially in intellectuals’ minds, so he started Cultural Revolution. 10 years later, in 1977, Cultural Revolution was ended by Deng Xiaoping who leaded China far away from closed-door policy, and made China become more and more opening. This decade was called black ten years by Chinese people, because these 10 years had huge effects on Chinese lives about education, culture, or economy and so on. Culture Revolution has influenced China in several ways. First, the education system collapsed at that time, because Cultural Revolution focused on the intellectuals, such as, teachers, professors and scientists. Mao Tsetung thought every person who had high educational background, or high political status had to go to countryside and accept labor reform. Some of them, who used to be capitalism or whose family used to be capitalisms, were put in prison, or even killed. So, in those ten years, people who had high educational background didn’t have any social status, but workers or farmers got the highest social status. So...
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...Liu Shaoqi -Revolutionary, Communist, president of the PRC -1898-1969, died in prison. -The most famous victim of the Cultural Revolution, “the biggest unjust case of the CCP”, he was posthumously rehabilitated in 1980 and given a state funeral Zhou Enlai -A leader of the CCP, Revolutionary, diplomat -1898-1976 -The first Primer of the PRC, most important political partner of Mao, very positive appraise by the history and Chinese people. American Volunteer Group Lin Biao - a major Communist military leader -Leader of the army during the civil war, especially in Northeastern China. - Lin had chance to be the successor of Mao, but his relation with Mao became terrible later in the Cultural Revolution. Lin died in plane crush in Mongolia, and he is also blamed for the cultural revolution Jiang Qing -4th Wife of Mao -Became to be active in Chinese political life in 1960s Cultural revolution. -She is the leader of Gang of Four, also one of the main leaders during the CR. Joseph Stilwell -American General, -US government sent Stilwell to Chongqing in 1942 - The Chief of Staff in China Burma India Theater, left the position because of conflicts with Jiang; Red Guards -A special group of China during the CR. Most RG are students -During the CR -So called “solider of Chairman Mao”, regard the little red book as all the truth, easy to be egged and the main power of CR Hu Yaobang -The General Secretary of the CCP -Took the position during 1982-1987...
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...Question: What Was the Cultural Revolution? Answer: Between 1966 and 1976, the young people of China rose up in an effort to purge the nation of the "Four Olds": old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas. In August, 1966, Mao Zedong called for the start of a Cultural Revolution at the Plenum of the Communist Central Committee. He urged the creation of corps of "Red Guards" to punish party officials and any other persons who showed bourgeois tendencies. Mao likely was motivated to call for the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in order to rid the Chinese Communist Party of his opponents after the tragic failure of his Great Leap Forward policies. Mao knew that other party leaders were planning to marginalize him, so he appealed directly to his supporters among the people to join him in a Cultural Revolution. He also believed that communist revolution had to be a continuous process, in order to stave off capitalist-roader ideas. Mao's call was answered by the students, some as young as elementary school, who organized themselves into the first groups of Red Guards. They were joined later by workers and soldiers. The first targets of the Red Guards included Buddhist temples, churches and mosques, which were razed to the ground or converted to other uses. Sacred texts, as well as Confucian writings, were burned, along with religious statues and other artwork. Any object associated with China's pre-revolutionary past was liable to be destroyed. In their...
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...In 1966, China’s Communist leader, Mao Zedong started a revolution. It became known as the Cultural Revolution to reaffirm his authority over China’s government. A significant part of the Cultural Revolution were the peasant communes. These communes were places where many poor families lived. Nothing was owned by an individual person, from cattle to kitchens, everything was shared by the members of the commune. Despite the positive ways the government propaganda displayed or described the communes, they were places of suffering. Feng Jicia, a former Chinese athlete who is now a writer, tells the story of his sister’s suffering in an article called “Feng Jicai on mistreatment in a peasant commune (1981)”. In this article, Feng talks about the...
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...know yourself, you need not to fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also duffer a defeat...” (Giles, 1910) Ancient Chinese military general, Sun Tzu made this well-known statement. In relation to foreign policy analysis, it is important to consider about the best of one’s strengths and weaknesses. After all, we’re humans and it is in our nature and interest to want the best for ourselves. Humans are greedy and self absorbed. National leaders want to try to maximise national welfare or develop eventual benefits in a system where there are a growing number of states that want to increase control on an international scale, as well as to uphold their own interests. So that when it comes to decision-making, lawmakers are able to take advantage of this knowledge in order to make more effective policy decisions. The aim of the text is to establish the idea that decision making made by national bureaucracies, leaders and individual members of the government body has the capability to influence and impact decision making upon other international decision making systems. Sometimes, decisions are made for the best although it does cause misunderstandings and inconveniences. It is important to understand and accept the cultural and historical reasons of another state as to why they decide to make particular decisions. These decisions can draw meanings and can be used to make sense of other foreign policy decisions...
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...What was the Cultural Revolution all about? Why did Mao launch the Cultural Revolution? The Cultural Revolution could be regarded as a nightmare for the generation of my grandparents’ age. It was initiated by Mao Zedong and utilized by the counterrevolutionary clique that led by Lin Biao and Jiang Qing. This leading mistake was an unchangeable disaster to the whole state, the CCP, and all the Chinese people. This struggle lasted for ten years from 1966 to 1976. How could Chinese people endure this ordeal for ten year? We should understand the concept of the Cultural Revolution first according to the required readings. From 1966 to 1969, Mao wanted to change “the bourgeois dictatorship” to “the proletarian dictatorship,” which meant that Mao needed people to destroy the so-called “the capitalists.” The real meaning of the Cultural Revolution for Mao himself was to help the CCP to seize power from the KMP. For him, that meant to snatch the regime from the bourgeois leaders and gave it back to the proletarians. In 1966, the “Sixteen Articles” announced that the party should adjust those in power but took the path of “capitalism ”. The events about seizing power started from January 1967 in Shanghai. And one month later, Lin Biao and Jiang Qing led the counterrevolutionary people frame those older generations of proletarian revolutionaries up to say that the elders were disturbing the CCP by complaining their concerns about the Cultural Revolution. This movement...
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...given by the Chinese government after the violence during the Tiananmen Square conflict in 1989. A more modern example of when a government turns its troops on protesters can be compared to the youth revolt in France in 2006. In France there were students protesting a labor bill that they believed to be unfair and in the case of the Tiananmen square conflict students and residents both protested because they believed their government to be unfair as well not following the Chinese Constitution. There are a few factors that could have contributed such as cultural, economical, or political ones. The main reason that many believe to be what led to the protests is the death of Hu Yaobang. Hu was the general secretary of the Communist party of China. He was considered controversial because he believed that the government should become more western in there policies and was a supporter of democracy. When Hu Yaobang suddenly died of a heart attack on 15 April 1989,students began to organize on the 16 of April. Millions of people joined the march making it as said by the article China-Conflict at Tiananmen Square: “ the greatest challenge to the communist state in China since the 1949 revolution”. The protests lasted for seven weeks until June 3 when the army moved into the area shooting random protesters. Outside governments were horrified but what had happened. UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said she was “shocked and appalled by the shootings”. Three ways that cultural reasons...
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...Mao’s reinvention: the destruction of the Capitalist Roader The Great Proletarian Revolution was filled of bloodshed and terror in an attempt for a dictator to regain long lost power. This revolution was to undertake the cleansing of political capitalist roaders trying to undermine Communist China. To do so, Mao needed the support of the masses in which he employed millions of students to begin to find capitalist opposition to his ideas, and regain political stature amidst the removal of opposing ideas. This event was to make use of the members of the Communist Red Guard, which Mao created to occupy the strength of teenage masses in china. The Red Guard, although great in strength, had eventually become a major weakness for the revolution. Mao used the Cultural Revolution to regain political stature through the removal of capitalist opposing thought, and did so using the removal of four olds to cover over this. This was significantly effective, but created lasting effects that he struggled to control until his death. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had begun in 1966. The revolution was based on a sixteen point decision made by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party relating to the removal of capitalists. This decision was to remove all “old ideas, culture, customs and habits” from the bourgeoisie (a social class based on capital) and replace them with the “new ideas, culture, customs and habits of the proletariat to change the mental outlook of the...
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...her Family. This could not have happened without Richard Nixon’s trip to China in 1972 that ended more than two decades of Cold war hostility. This trip allowed journalist’s access to china for the first time in two decades, and created an appetite for China. This appetite was insatiable after many of American top journalists describe it as like “going to the moon.”, and therefore when US – Chinese relations were reopened in 1979. Many top Journalists jumped on this, including Fox Butterfield. This was historically important because it gave firsthand knowledge of the struggles that occurred within Chinese society especially with the destruction of intellectuals in Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and allowed for the first time in 30 years the ability for Americans to understand what was occurring overseas in China. Relevant Events background The Chinese revolution of 1949 was based on the majority of the Chinese against imperialism, feudalism, and capitalism. This was displayed quite well in the previous presenters by Mao in “the foolish old man“, speech in which Mao explains that the Chinese people hold two large mountains on their shoulders and one being imperialism, and “the other is feudalism.” However, afterwards much of the economic surplus was placed in the hands of the state for industrialization and in turn allowed elites the power to control. These elite found power and...
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...Deng engineered reforms in virtually all aspects of China's political, economic and social life, restoring the country to domestic stability and economic growth after the excesses of the Cultural Revolution though cementing an inequality gap as well. His regime was also marked by the 1989 massacre of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Xiaoping died on February 19, 1997. Early Life Deng Xiaoping was born Deng Xixian on August 22, 1904 in Guang’an, part of the Sichuan province of China. The son of a well-to-do landowner, Deng joined the Chinese Communist Party while in high school and traveled to France and later Moscow before returning to his home country in 1926. Revolutionary Organizer Deng Xiaoping joined China’s burgeoning communist revolution, led by Mao Zedong, as a political and military organizer. He cut his revolutionary teeth on the fabled “Long March” of 1934-35 when the fledgling Chinese Communist movement escaped capture by the Nationalist Chinese Army. War broke out against Japan in 1937 and Deng served as educational leader of the Chinese Revolutionary Army, helping it grow into a large military machine during the Communist Revolution, 1946-49. Mao initially praised Deng Xiaoping for his organizational skills, but he fell out of favor in the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution. Deng’s emphasis on individual self-interest did not sit well with Mao’s egalitarian policies. Deng was eventually stripped of all his posts and, with his family, exiled to the rural...
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...Name: Course: Tutor: Date: The Hundred Flower Movement and its impact on Chinese culture today: Introduction: In Chinese history, specifically the years 1956 and 1957, Mao Zedong the then paramount leader of People's Republic of China (PRC) launched the Hundred Flower Movement which was a movement that encouraged open intellectual and political debate. The main intention of the campaign was to cause a stir in the bureaucracy and at the same time weaken the Chinese Communist Party’s position as a dominant pro-Soviet right wing and slacken its tight grip over the freedoms of thought and expression. However, the situation went rapidly out of hand resulting in an uncalled for censure of party members. Background information: The movement began in May 1957 after a secret speech by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev attacking the excesses of Stalinism came to light. Its founder, Mao adopted the slogan ‘Let a hundred flowers bloom together, let the hundred schools of thought contend’. He then invited Chinese intellectuals to openly voice their criticism over government policies and party cadets. Mao’s intention was to win over alienated intellectuals by giving them a certain degree of intellectual freedom. Such incentives included: increased access to foreign publications for intellectuals working in schools, colleges and universities since the people had began losing faith in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after it introduced a Soviet-style education system to China in 1949...
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...Urban Workers: * Establish planning (Central Planning) * Annual planning, similar to soviet style * Went back to recognising hierarchy and experts (Chinese) * Russians began to fear China, they armed the Chinese border * Pay differentials, if you do more skilled work you get paid more * By 1965 they’ve doubled their 1957 output * Introducing elements of capitalism and its working Politics: - Ideology takes second place to pragmatism - Mao is being ignored - They bring back many of the people in labour camps people Mao had purged in the past - Mao tries to get power back, power struggle and it’s going to bring negative impacts Cultural Revolution Key dates: 1976 Mao dies 1966-1976: - Cultural Revolution- intensifies in the beginning - In the mid 60’s the pragmatic group of the party led China - Trying to create a reasonable standard of living with economic stability - Still working on national unity - Making sure China’s place in the world is made secure Why it happens? * Mao still has a very revolutionary vision * One of those visions, is greater equality and of mass participation to create change * Mao thought China was stagnating in terms of revolution * He identified the things that were holding China back from proper revolution * Mao looks at education as one of the factors * Education gave a view privileges, e.g. people from rural areas received bad education * He saw this was...
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