Introduction
The period of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was a period in which every level of society was subjected to great sufferings. Although the loss of life was greater during the Great Leap Forward and the second Sino-Japanese war, suffering is not only measured in loss of life. Great pieces of cultural heritage was destroyed, official institutions seized functioning and everyone was in danger of being accused of counter-revolutionary (so called black) activities or tendencies.
This might seem as the very definition of a society in a chaotic state, but it is interesting to discuss what is actually understood as chaos. The Red Guard movement, which was a major actor in the revolutionary activities during the Cultural Revolution., was created by Mao Zedong. Additionally the objectives and privileges the Red Guards had and enjoyed were largely supported or instituted by Mao as well. Can one say that a revolution started by the de facto head of the state can go in under the mainstream definition of what is understood as chaos? In order to assess this question, and due to the massive scope of the Cultural revolution itself, I have decided to look at some key incidents in the beginning of the cultural revolution the so-called Red Guard period.
But before we can address these incidents, we must look at Maos reasons for launching the revolution itself.
Roots of the Revolution
Most scholars seem to agree on that the roots of the Cultural Revolution lay within the mind of Mao Zedong. Mao had been worried for a long time about the stagnation of the Chinese revolution and the bureaucratization of the Chinese Communist Party, a process that he found just as much a challenge to the proletarian dictatorship as the b...
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...o account is that a Revolution is all about toppling the old structures, and those might even involve structures that Mao found necessary to keep. There is a reason that no other government has ever launched a Revolution against itself. It can only lead to complete chaos, that even if you manage to survive the storm, the cleanup will take years. Which it no doubt did in the case of China.
Works Cited
Yung Lee, Hong. “Mao's Strategy for Revolutionary Change” In Gregor Benton, ed. Mao Zedong and the Chinese Revolution. Volume 2 Policies and Strategies 1949-76. Routledge (2008)
Jonathan D. Spence The Search for Modern China W.W Norton & Company (1990)
Mitter. A Bitter Revolution Oxford University Press (2004)
Harding, Harry “The Chinese State in Crisis 1966-1969” In Roderick MacFarquhar, ed. The politics of China 1949-1989. Cambridge University Press (1993)
Jonathan Spence tells his readers of how Mao Zedong was a remarkable man to say the very least. He grew up a poor farm boy from a small rural town in Shaoshan, China. Mao was originally fated to be a farmer just as his father was. It was by chance that his young wife passed away and he was permitted to continue his education which he valued so greatly. Mao matured in a China that was undergoing a threat from foreign businesses and an unruly class of young people who wanted modernization. Throughout his school years and beyond Mao watched as the nation he lived in continued to change with the immense number of youth who began to westernize. Yet in classes he learned classical Chinese literature, poems, and history. Mao also attained a thorough knowledge of the modern and Western world. This great struggle between modern and classical Chinese is what can be attributed to most of the unrest in China during this time period. His education, determination and infectious personalit...
...hinese Seamstress gives an accurate depiction of things that occurred during the Chinese Culture Revolution. It shows that youth were re-educated in villages by poor peasants and that material of western influences that opposed Mao and his ideas were considered bad and were banned. It shows that in order to re-educate them they were to do manual labor and live in communes. They were removed from their families and the things they took for granted. Their lives were no longer under their control, they were told were to go live, where to work and what they can and cannot do. The Chinese Culture Revolution had a profound impact on the people in China from every aspect of life, men, women and children and from every age were affected.
In the Chinese history there is an important date that many remember. That is the Cultural Revolution that started in 1966 (Chan 103). This Cultural Revolution wasn’t a war by any means, but a competition between the different factions of the communist party for power. The Cultural Revolution was also a very important event in the history of the Chen Village. We saw through the different chapters of Chen Village just how it affected the different people that were living there during the eleven year span that it lasted (Chan 103). The Cultural Revolution caused a lot of problems to stir up in Chen Village.
Mohandas Gandhi and Mao Zedong were two great leaders who succeeded in many ways by their actions and decisions. Gandhi was an Indian leader and Mao a Chinese leader. However, their approach to success, peace, and ultimately, a revolution, was very different. Mao favored peace through violence, and Gandhi favored peace through non-cooperation and standing up for what is right. He also believed that these changes will be accomplished by “conscious suffering”, was the way he put it. However, despite their differences, these two leaders were similar too. They were both very charismatic leaders who successfully made it through their revolutions. Mao’s revolution led to change in class structure while Gandhi’s revolution involved India as a country, and he wanted people to realize that working together is a great way to gain independence. While Mao and Gandhi both believed that each of their countries have the need of independence, their views differed when it came to the use of violence, development towards the revolution, and their thoughts on a caste system.
"Memorandum on Communism in China -- A." Memorandum (Institute of Pacific Relations, American Council) 1.8 (1932): 1-4. Print.
The Sun of the Revolution by Liang Heng, is intriguing and vivid, and gives us a complex and compelling perspective on Chinese culture during a confusing time period. We get the opportunity to learn the story of a young man with a promising future, but an unpleasant childhood. Liang Heng was exposed to every aspect of the Cultural Revolution in China, and shares his experiences with us, since the book is written from Liang perspective, we do not have a biased opinion from an elite member of the Chinese society nor the poor, we get an honest opinion from the People’s Republic of China. Liang only had the fortunate opportunity of expressing these events due his relationship with his wife, an American woman whom helps him write the book. When Liang Heng and Judy Shapiro fell in love in China during 1979, they weren’t just a rarity; they were both pioneers at a time when the idea of marriages between foreigners and Chinese were still unacceptable in society.
China’s Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution (GPCR) is a well-documented period in world history, but the most profound records are found vivified in the literature and films later into the 20th century, respectively. One of the most profound novels is “To Live”, authored by Yu Hua, which as a fictional narrative offers both a unique and realistic sense of the time period at the individual level. However, the provocative film adaptation directed by Zhang Yimou in 1994 was formidable enough that it was banned in Mainland China. Zhang paints a more realistic picture of how the GPCR influenced Chinese society but adds zest to Hua’s ambiguity but acceptable imperfection. Naturally, the film has many different characteristics yet still manages to overcome the challenges that implicate film adaptations.
There is no better way to learn about China's communist revolution than to live it through the eyes of an innocent child whose experiences were based on the author's first-hand experience. Readers learn how every aspect of an individual's life was changed, mostly for the worst during this time. You will also learn why and how Chairman Mao launched the revolution initially, to maintain the communist system he worked hard to create in the 1950's. As the story of Ling unfolded, I realized how it boiled down to people's struggle for existence and survival during Mao's reign, and how lucky we are to have freedom and justice in the United States; values no one should ever take for
Chinese Revolution is about making the entire country into Communists and killing each and one the people who hates Mao Tse-Tung. Mao Tse-Tung is the leader of China at this time who believes in equality and everyone should have the same rights. The Red Guards is a military group in which includes a group of children that eliminates the Chinese population due to hatred for Mao. If any of these events happen to our generation, most youth are smart enough to know that Mao is a bad leader and killing innocent people by the case of bitterness for Mao is wrong. The Chinese youth got swept up in the Cultural Revolution by Mao because the youth were easy to persuade into doing something. To expand this idea further, the Chinese youth weren’t old enough, not on this specific age, to realize whether Mao’s actions were virtuous or inaccurate. On the other hand, they thought that working for Mao and joining the Red Guards will help their country out, but they never knew the truth behind Mao’s plans. The truth about the Cultural Revolution was to kill anybody that gets in the way of Mao’s plans and destroying all the old buildings so that it would be replaced with new buildings or reconstruct the old buildings to become brand new again. In addition, the Chinese youth had no idea that joining the Red Guards will give a highly chance of getting killed. In other words, the adults were smarter than the youth because joining the Red Guards means the opposite of helping the country out. Mao just made them think that joining will help their country, even though it was the other way around like someone apologizing to their neighbor in which manipulating their minds that they’re now cool, but they were still rude to them afterwards. To repeat this, t...
Zheng, Wang. “‘State Feminism’? Gender and Socialist State Formation in Maoist China.” Feminist Studies 31, No. 3 (Fall 2005): 519-551. JSTOR. Accessed October 14, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20459044.
Dressed in the drab military uniform that symbolized the revolutionary government of Communist China, Mao Zedong's body still looked powerful, like an giant rock in a gushing river. An enormous red flag draped his coffin, like a red sail unfurled on a Chinese junk, illustrating the dualism of traditional China and the present Communist China that typified Mao. 1 A river of people flowed past while he lay in state during the second week of September 1976. Workers, peasants, soldiers and students, united in grief; brought together by Mao, the helmsman of modern China. 2 He had assembled a revolutionary government using traditional Chinese ideals of filial piety, harmony, and order. Mao's cult of personality, party purges, and political policies reflect Mao's esteem of these traditional Chinese ideals and history.
Struggles of the Cultural Revolution Revealed in Bei Dao’s “Notes from the City of the Sun”
This essay will concentrate on the comparison and analysis of two communist figures: Mao Zedong, leader of the Communist Party in China, and Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union. The main focus of this paper will be to explore each figure’s world view in depth and then compare and contrast by showing their differences and similarities. Joseph Stalin was a realist dictator of the early 20th century in Russia. Before he rose to power and became the leader of the Soviet Union, he joined the Bolsheviks and was part of many illegal activities that got him convicted and he was sent to Siberia (Wood, 5, 10). In the late 1920s, Stalin was determined to take over the Soviet Union (Wiener & Arnold, 1999).
...ng the time of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, mayhem was a part of everyday life. Mao Zedong encouraged rebellious actions from the Red Guards, and rewarded those who shone as leaders. He also targeted his political rivals by provoking the Red Guards to follow his ideas, and annihilate all remnants of china?s old culture. After the revolution ended, the Red guards received the disciplinary actions they deserved, and the tortured victims finally inadvertently received the vengeance they deserved.
Hsueh, Chun- tu, The Chinese Revolution of 1911: New Perspectives (Hong Kong: Joint _____Publishing Co., 1986), pp.1-15, 119-131, 139-171