The Red Guard strove to remove and destroy the Four Olds, foreign influence, enemies of the Party and the current societal structure by persecuting those who supposedly perpetuated them. All vestiges of outdated customs, habits, culture and ideas were to be destroyed, since the movement represented “a triumph of youth over age, of ‘the new’ over ‘the old.’” To do so, the Red Guard wrecked thousands of art collections and the contents of libraries, and changed “reactionary” street signs. They persecuted members of the public who attempted to stop them or refused to give up the Four Olds. Those who had foreign ties, like businessmen, missionaries, or who had western education were also persecuted to prevent backwards or rightist ideologies from spreading into the new Chinese society. Chinese intellectuals were also hounded for the same reason: to prevent free thought. The messages of the movement were “negative—against the established authority, against the Party, against the military” and the outdated structures of the older generation. To destroy the established order, the Red Guards attacked educational and political institutions that were enemies of Mao and the party, and created general havoc within China. The Red Guard targeted teachers, education policies, and universities to change the core of education and the qualities that it had extolled. Members of the general public and even party officials themselves were attacked, to remove the “capitalist roaders” with bourgeois tendencies from society. Mao hoped that in this chaos a new communist China would emerge.
The primary cause of the tension that led to their disbandment was that many members were drawn to the Red Guard by the chance for a better life and more opport...
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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...
Schoenhals, Michael. China's Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969: Not a Dinner Party. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. Print.
The Sun of the Revolution by Liang Heng, is intriguing and vivid, and gives us a complex and compelling perspective on Chines 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 in 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.
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
Red Scarf Girl, by Ji-Li Jiang, is a memoir about the Cultural Revolution. I chose this book so I could learn from someone who had experienced Cultural Revolution and not from a historian who did not face the terror of being labeled as anti-Communist. I decided to take AP World History because, as a college-level course, it will challenge me to become a more efficient note-taker, studier, and time-manager. The focus on smaller details that influenced an event instead focus on the big event itself will be more engaging.
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...
Zhou, Yongming. Anti-drug Crusades in Twentieth-century China: Nationalism, History, and State Building. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Print.
While in school, the young kids would rehearse the Young Pioneer anthem that went, in part, as follows, “We are Young Pioneers, successors to Communism. Our red scarves flutter on our chests” (Jiang, 3). Mao began his reign teaching those that were of the working class that they were not being treated fairly and that he would work with them to better incorporate Communism into the country. Those that had owned property or had been wealthy were looked at in a negative light, namely that of the bourgeoisie. In order for Moa to accomplish his goal of doing away with the bourgeoisie, he and his team would work to destroy the Four Olds, “Old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits” (Jiang, 277). By making this decision, Mao simply reversed the roles of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat so that those who were of the higher class would become the proletariat and those of the lower class would become the
Rae Yang’s Memoir “Spider Eaters” is a poignant personal story of a girl growing up amidst the political upheaval during the establishment of People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong’s Communist leadership. Yang describes the fascinating journey of her life from her early years as the daughter of Chinese diplomats in Switzerland to a student in an elite middle school then a fanatic Red-guard and eventually a laborer in a pig farm. Her experiences through the revolution serve as an eye-opener and lead to her eventual disillusionment of the Communist revolution in China. There are many factors that contributed to her growing discontent with communism such as the anti-rightist movement which was an effort to rule out any criticism against the government, corruption and violence of the party leaders who abused their power and continued to exploit the peasants, the false claim of proletariat dictatorship used merely to eradicate bourgeoisie and further the interests of party members.
Gittings, John. The Changing Face of China: From Mao to market. Oxford University Press, 2005.
?Red Guards? was a title given to people belonging to many different social groups: workers, peasants, demobilized soldiers and students. A vast majority of the people in this group were youngsters in their mid-teens, who were summoned at their middle schools by Mao. The Red Guard youth soon turned from obedient to rebellious students. Red Scarf Girl is a novel based on truth, terror and courage during the Cultural Revolution. The following excerpt discusses about the hundreds of wall posters the young Red Guard?s wrote, which discriminated against teachers, and members of their community.
Revolution was the only solution to save China. D’Addese 8 Works Cited Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. New York: NY 2013.
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