Modern China began with the Qing dynasty in 1644. Many of the Qing’s early years could be described as golden because of the peace and stability during the time period. This changed when China hit some internal and external problems, beginning with the Opium crisis and the Opium Wars of 1839, and ending when Sun Yat Sen and the Nationalist Party took over in 1912. The Nationalist party lasted until 1949 when General Mao Zedong and the CCP took control of China, Mao created a new way to govern China by focusing on the young people and peasants for his main power source. However, Mao used traditional Chinese values by trying to make the perfect citizen, similar to confusion values.
Mao created a new way to govern China through the peasants when he announced the Great Leap Forward. The Great
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The Revolution's goal was to fix corrupt thoughts in the Chinese people; Mao wanted to totally destroy all aspects of traditional China and replace those with new Communist Ideologies. They began the revolution by educating the Chinese public. The educators would praise communism and Mao's Ideas, convincing the Chinese to follow, and that all other ideas were bad or could be prosecuted. The extremist people who listened to Mao then created the Red Guard, which began as a force of Chinese students who relied on Mao's Ideas. The Red Guards then took what they had learned and began to force it upon others. They would go out and find someone who they thought was capitalist and then Humiliate them in front of the whole town. Eventually some of these Humiliations also turned into executions. Mao's reforms totally changed Chinese society. In traditional China elders were respected and trusted, but after the revolution and the creation of the Red Guard, young people and students began to gain more and more power, and with the power and the advice of Mao they became the most powerful class in
The birth of the early 20th century gave way to many political changes around the world such as the emergence of communism as a new way to govern countries. The Soviet Union was the first country to convert to this way of governing through the Russian Revolution in 1917. With the rise of the Bolsheviks party, a small socialist party who supported the working class more than the upper class, as an outcome to this revolution many countries were inspired to follow their footsteps. One such country was China. As China fell imperially in 1911, the Chinese Communist party emerged, reflecting the same values as its inspiration by organizing the country’s urban-working class. With the invasion of Japan, China’s enemy, in 1937 the CCP’s internal opposition,
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
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
The Communist revolution in China was loosely based on the revolution in Russia. Russia was able to implement the beginnings of Marxist Communism in the way that it was intended They had a large working class of factory workers, known as the proletariat, that were able to band together and rise up to overthrow the groups of rich property owners, known as the bourgeoisie. The communist party wanted to adopted this same Marxist sense of revolution, but they realized that there were some fatal flaws in the differences between the two countries. The first was that there was not the same sense of class difference between people, yes there were peasants and landowners but there was not a sense of a class struggle. The other difference was that China was not industrialized like Russia so there was no proletariat group, as defined by Marxism, to draw the revolution from. What the Chinese Communists needed to do is re-define the proletariat for their situation, who they looked at were the peasants.
Ever since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the legitimacy of the revolution of which it was built upon has perennially been in question. For example, in a 1999 issue of the International Herald Tribune, a prestigious scholar claimed that all of China’s tragedies are ‘sustained by a mistaken belief in the correctness of the 1949 revolution’ and that the future progress of China depends on the recognition that the revolution was a failure. However, the CCP government was certainly not perfect and its most significant failures were its political failures such as the Anti-rightist movement and the Cultural Revolution and also economic failures such as the great leap forward. Millions of peoples were falsely accused and persecuted during the political movements of the Mao period as the CCP focused on class struggle instead of economic development during the period and tens of Millions of peoples died due to starvation as there were widespread food shortages during the great leap forward movement.
Mao Zedong will forever live on history as a revolutionary, not only in China but across the globe. There are very few communist nations today because of the many difficulties of having a homogenous population, which shares the same ideals. Mao was able to modernize and re-socialize his citizens in a short amount of time. He defined himself as the face of change in China. Mao’s vision of equality for all Chinese citizens has still not been achieved but it is well on its way. The only question lies in, does the end justify the means.
Most of China was ruled by Chiang Kaishek, a military dictator. The rest of China was ruled under communism by Mao Zedong. Chiang Kaishek aimed to modernise the railways, the postal services. and the telecommunications industry. In addition, powerful foreign companies.
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...
China's transition from the leadership under the iron fist of Mao Zedong to the more liberal Deng Xiao Ping gave the People's Republic a gradual increase in economic freedom while maintaining political stability. During Mao's regime, the country focused on bolstering and serving the community, while subsequently encumbering individual growth and prosperity. Deng advocated a more capitalist economic ideology, which established China as an economic force in the global community while endowing its citizens with more liberties and luxuries than previously granted.
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.
Mao zedong movement of Chinese Revolution influenced China’s economy, government and the people. His movement positively impacted China “from an undeveloped agricultural society to an industrial and military superpower in the long term”, as stated in “Chinese Communist Revolution 1911-1949” by Mary Chan. The movement effected China socially as well by ending the supremacy that men had over women , ending the feudal marriage system, and the people who believed in religion were persecuted. For example it is stated that “ Religion was considered as a threat for the Chinese communists.” Chinese Communists believed that religion was used to have control over people. “Scholar gentry system” and “the business class” were removed as well to help unify
China has been ruled by the Communist Party ever since. It was the events between 1946 and 1964 that strengthened communism in China. At the end of World War II, the Nationalist Party (GMD) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) raced for power in China. The chairman of the Communist Party was Mao Zedong and their army was known as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The Nationalist’s were led by Chiang Kai-shek and their army was the Kuomintang.
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.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, beginning as a campaign targeted at removing Chairman Mao Zedong's political opponents, was a time when practically every aspect of Chinese society was in pandemonium. From 1966 through 1969, Mao encouraged revolutionary committees, including the red guards, to take power from the Chinese Communist party authorities of the state. The Red Guards, the majority being young adults, rose up against their teachers, parents, and neighbors. Following Mao and his ideas, The Red Guard's main goal was to eliminate all remnants of the old culture in China. They were the 'frontline implementers' who produced havoc, used bloody force, punished supposed 'counter revolutionists', and overthrew government officials, all in order to support their 'beloved leader'.
The topic of democracy in China is a highly controversial topic. Although China has not democratised, it has done well in the global situation amongst its democratic competitors. Since the path to democracy is different for each country, we cannot expect that China would follow the same path or same model of democracy as the western nations. This essay will look at what democracy is and how it can be placed in a Chinese context as well as looking at the proponents and opponents of democracy in China. It will also look at whether China is democratising by focusing on village elections, globalisation and the emergence of a civil society. These specific topics were chosen because they will help provide good evidence and arguments to the topic of democratisation in China. The main argument in this essay will be that although China is implementing some changes that can be seen as the beginning of a road to democracy, there contribution should not be over estimated. China still has a long way to go before it can be considered that it is democratising. The small changes are good but China still has a long road ahead of itself to achieve democracy.