The Evolution of China
In 1966, Mao ZeDong (leader of the Cultural Revolution) mobilized the Chinese youth to commence the Cultural Revolution, an attempt to change China, and an event in Chinese history. Mao used teenagers called Red Guards to complete orders during this event. His goal was to get rid of the Four Olds and make China a Communist country. However, over 11 million students were pulled away from education into the farm work that Mao that was necessary. Education and social structure changed as a result of the Cultural Revolution. Many changes and adjustments had been made in education during the Cultural Revolution. The education students received changed, and most topics they learned about changed into farming and agriculture. “Teachers, officials, intellectuals, and cadres were humiliated in public, beaten, and tortured” (Stanzel), which shows that there were much disrespect for professors. Belief also changed to make citizens uneducated and mindless, and the thought was to remold the people’s minds. School children were taught farming, which led to students being wasted because they were stuck in the fields. Many high
…show more content…
The Cultural Revolution supported the poor and disliked the wealthy and middle class/upper class. In the book, Red Scarf Girl, the book described how Jiang Ji-Li, had to go farming rather than the Red Guard she could have been because she was a black whelp based on her family background. Mao ZeDong also said to “rely on the masses of poor, and working class, unite with labouring masses and strengthen working class” (Bradley), which shows the biased views on the different classes in society, and the change in what people believed in. Ex-landlords, reactionaries, and rightists were commonly attacked by Communist Party. The lower class benefited for society change during the Cultural Revolution and also tried to make everyone equal in the working
The Red Scarf Girl take place during the Cultural Revolution, Ji-li and her family got caught in the savage change in china of the year 1966. Ji-li went through many hard struggles, as in losing and gaining friends, tough times with family, and because of her family, Ji-li was not allowed to do a lot of actives she wanted to do for examples; being a Red Successor and then a Red Guard. The reason there was a Cultural Revolution was because of Chairman Mao Ze-dong. The citizens trusted Mao with all of their hearts. China’s communities were brainwashed, so what’s good and what’s bad got all twisted around and if anyone contradicted what Mao said, that person would be jailed, tortured, or even killed; so he can keep a tight regain on the unfortunate
In Ji-Li Jiang’s Red Scarf Girl, the story is set in Shanghai, China. In 1966, Ji-Li Jiang is a happy little girl of twelve years. She looks forward to a future working for Chairman Mao's New China and his Communist Party. However, her happy life is suddenly interrupted by the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, a movement led by Chairman Mao, to remove all parts of capitalism in Chinese society. Her family becomes the target of government persecution, since her parents and grandparents are labeled as ''Black'', which means that they are opposed to the (Red) Communist Party. Ji-Li and her family become outcasts of society as they live in fear of arrest. Ji-Li realizes that the Communist Party and Chairman Mao prevented China from improving
Mao’s Last Dancer, directed by Bruce Beresford, is driven by Li’s experiences in the clash between American and Chinese culture and the journey to discovering his own identity. Through Li’s eyes this film shows us his search for identity which can sometimes be helped or hindered by the difference in cultures. These themes are shown during the film through the use of Symbolic, Written, Audio and Technical conventions (SWAT).
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
During the Cultural Revolution Mao Zedong , people also knew him as Mao Zedong Tse tung was the Chinese ruler. He ruled the country during this time known as Chairman of the Communist Party of China. Moa was very well educated in Western and Chinese traditions. During the year 1918 Mao Zedong had a job as a librarian assistant at Peking University. He would call himself a Marxist in the of 1920 and he helped found the current Chinese Communist party Communist formed an alliance during 1923 with a man called Sun Ya sen and his Nationalist party. After that Mao Zedong quit the current job he had as a teacher to become a poli...
Schoenhals, Michael. China's Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969: Not a Dinner Party. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. Print.
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 and manipulating their minds that they’re now cool, but they were still rude to them afterwards. To repeat this, the Chinese youth got swept up in the Cultural Revolution by Mao because the Chinese adolescents were vulnerable to influence their minds into joining the Red Guards army and doing all of the dirty jobs that Mao should’ve been doing in the first place; developing their minds into believing that they are helping their country and being involved in violence.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Most films captivate the audience’s interest through the main character. This film did just that. Through the main character Li Cunxin, I was able to notice the amount of hard work and dedication which lead Li to become a famous ballet dancer known worldwide. The film, based on the autobiography by Li Cunxin, “Mao’s Last Dancer” directed by Bruce Beresford is about a Chinese boy named Li Cunxin who’s born into a large family of 6 boys. At the age of eleven, Li got chosen from a poverty-stricken Chinese village by Madam Mao’s cultural representatives to leave his family and study ballet in Beijing. This film focussed on his eventual departure from China to U.S.A after being selected by a world leading choreographer, Ben Stevenson including the
There are several reasons for Mao call for the Cultural Revolution, as the situation at that moment is full of bourgeoisie thought, the free market policies implemented by Liu and also the ideological different with Krushchev, all these factors make Mao wanted to safeguard the purity of the Communist Revolution. Furthermore, he also wanted to remove Liu and find his own successor through this mass movement.
Mao’s Cultural Revolution was an attempt to create a new culture for China. Through education reforms and readjustments, Mao hoped to create a new generation of Chinese people - a generation of mindless Communists. By eliminating intellectuals via the Down to the Countryside movement, Mao hoped to eliminate elements of traditional Chinese culture and create a new form Chinese culture. He knew that dumbing down the masses would give him more power so his regime would be more stable. This dramatic reform affected youth especially as they were targeted by Mao’s propaganda and influence. Drawing from his experiences as an Educated Youth who was sent down to the countryside Down to the Countryside movement, Ah Cheng wrote The King of Children to show the effects of the Cultural Revolution on education, and how they affected the meaning people found in education. In The King of Children, it is shown that the Cultural Revolution destroyed the traditional incentives for pursuing an education, and instead people found moral and ethical meaning in pursuing an education.
Mao's period of communal reform and the establishment of the Communist party from 1949-1976 was needed in order for Deng's individual oriented, capitalist society to thrive. Mao's period encompassed the structure of a true dictatorial communist government. It strove to concentrate on unifying communities to create a strong political backbone while being economically self-sufficient and socially literate and educated in Maoist propaganda. Under Mao's leadership individual wealth was seen as a hindrance to community goals in meeting production quotas and was crushed by such policies as collectivization, land reformation, and movements such as The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Under his rule, modeled under the Stalinist USSR archetype, China raised its masses from poverty and starvation to a standard of living that was considered a substantial upgrade.
Karl Marx, a German philosopher, saw this inequality growing between what he called "the bourgeoisie" and "the proletariat" classes. The bourgeoisie was the middle/upper class which was growing in due to the industrial revolution, and the proletariats were the working class, the poor. These two classes set themselves apart by many different factors. Marx saw five big problems that set the proletariat and the bourgeoisie aside from each other. These five problems were: The dominance of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, the ownership of private property, the set-up of the family, the level of education, and their influence in government. Marx, in The Communist Manifesto, exposes these five factors which the bourgeoisie had against the communist, and deals with each one fairly. As for the proletariat class, Marx proposes a different economic system where inequality between social classes would not exist.
One of Mao Zedong’s motivations for beginning the Cultural Revolution was his view that a cutting-edge bureaucratic ruling class had surfaced because of the centralized authoritarian nature of the political system, which had little hope for popular participation in the process of economic development (The Chinese Cultural Revolution revisited). The motivations of Fidel Castro, on the other hand, were different in that he wanted all people of all classes to be equal. The notion that the poverty-stricken could live a life equal to all other humans was an immense sense of happiness and alteration. In China, Mao Zedong developed many things to entice people.
Were you ever given the chance to be the best, the be the star? Li Cunxin’s first and only novel, Mao’s Last Dancer, is a stunning and emotional autobiography filled with the hard work and perseverance of Li, himself. This inspiring story tells the tale of himself, whom is given the chance to be one of chairman Mao’s private ballet dancers. Li was born in a poor family but is raised in one of pride and respect. However, one day, a few government officials make a brief visit to his school looking for future ballet stars.
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'.