CULTURAL REVOLUTION.   Term Paper ID:26807 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Examines the social, political, ideological & economic factors, goals & consequences of 1960s conflict, through early 1990s.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines the social, political, ideological & economic factors, goals & consequences of 1960s conflict, through early 1990s. Paper Introduction: The late 1960s in China was known as the period of the Cultural Revolution, and this was an attempt on the part of certain central Communist Party members to weed out dissent and to exert a tighter control. Jonathan D. Spence discusses the issue beginning with the leadership and the organizations headed by this leadership and examines the broad intentions of these leaders in launching the Cultural Revolution, noting that the leadership had goals in terms of altering first the political purposes of literature and the performing arts. What began as a push for the socialist purification of art would become pressure for the socialist purification of all aspects of society and life as well as a drawing of lines between competing groups and an effort to weed out all dissent and all enemies, real or perceived. Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Many indeed only went along for the thrill because they wereintoxicated with the power and uninhibited by authority (Yuan xxvii-xix). James and Ann Tyson spent fiveyears in the new China, and they use stories told by the people themselvesat the grassroots level to illustrate some of the changes taking place andto speculate about how successful reform will be in the long run. The question asked is, if it isdesirable that some people become rich before others, then who should thepeople be, and what should be the extent of the income differences? Some, though, saw this as an opportunity to vent theirfrustrations about inequities in the educational system or about cloggedchannels of mobility after graduation. The party had becomeincreasingly aloof from Mao and from the masses and more resistant to thestruggle against "bourgeois rightism" among the intellectuals, thepeasant's "spontaneous tendencies toward capitalism," and the drift towardSoviet revisionism. Sharpe, 1991.Hsu, Immanual C.Y. The success of theson, Greg, may seem to undercut the nature of the reforms in that Greg hasachieved his success by emigrating to the United States, but in fact hisexample has served to energize others still in China: Peng cannot ignore the success of his son. The Rise of Modern China, Fourth Edition. The Cultural Revolution indeed reduced much of the economic gain madein the first half of the 196 s (Grasso, Corrin, and Kort 217). They have pooled their labor and saving to start millions of dynamic rural factories (2).They have done this and much more, and what emerges from this book is thededication of the people themselves to reform because they have seen thefailure of the socialist structures of the past five decades and have nowtasted the possibility of something very different. Mao did not believe that the party and Liu would carryon his work once he was gone, and he believed he needed to shake up thepower structure and bring about real change, especially an "irreversibletransformation" in the people's thought and behavioral patterns (Hsu 696-697). This was the start of the mass phase of the CulturalRevolution in which power at the center passed into the hands of radicalideologues and anarchy prevailed. Since that time, Chinesecommunism has been redefined in several waves, with the most recent beinglabeled economic reform as China follows the rest of the world into a formof tentative capitalism unlike anything attempted since 1949. Another view is offered by Gao Yuan, who notes the plight of variousstudents and teachers who were afraid of what would happen to them or theirfamilies for imagined wrongs, and Gao at the time tried to assure them thatsuch aberrations would only be temporary. After the Revolution, thisclass was given special status as representatives of the working class forwhich the Revolution was intended. Take the case of my father. Industrial and agricultural production sufferedsetbacks, and the disruption in education meant the loss of a generation ofmanpower (Hsu 7 2-7 3). TheTysons trace the current fervor for reform to the post-Cultural revolutionera, noting that the Chinese then started listening to "their inner voices"because they were deeply disillusioned by their own worship of Mao: "Theywere fed up with Mao's promise of a workers' utopia, exhausted by maliciouspolitical campaigns, and bitter over years of sacrifice for the collective"(1). This groupcame into existence in 1978 when the government decided to permit privateindividuals to engage in petty trades and services--areas in which thestate sector had performed poorly--to help solve a growing unemploymentproblem. They have planted cash crops despite official pressure to grow grain. This producedescalating violence, and the intellectual class in particular waspersecuted, imprisoned, and murdered, with many committing suicide underthe pressure brought to bear against them. Norton, 199 .Tyson, James & Ann. He may alsohave been spurred to action by ill health and old age--at the time he wassuffering from Parkinson's disease and may have been the victim of astroke. . Spence believes that the leadershiphad one idea of the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guard another, sincethe Red Guard exerted all their energies on proving their own revolutionaryzeal by denouncing any perceived lack of it in others. Jonathan D. In 1971,party leader Lin Biao planned a coup, apparently counting on Moscow'ssupport in the succession crisis that would follow. . China has undergone several periods of revolution and reform in thiscentury, constantly redefining itself within certain parameters. Healso wanted to revitalize the youth, politicize the masses, and combat oldcustoms, old habits, old culture, and old thinking. The Tysons consider the nature of the entrepreneur by talking aboutthe factories of Zhang Guoxi, a man who clearly had a difficult timeachieving his current place in society: Zhang is one of thousands of go-getters who have amassed millions since senior leader Deng Xiaoping checked the powers of bureaucrats and allowed the market to animate the economy. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1995.Yuan, Gao. Of course, Spence alsorelates these events to all that would follow and shows how the period ofthe Cultural Revolution would lead to a counter-movement that would in timeproduce a more democratic feeling in the country, though not necessarily inthe leadership that still fights against any such reforms. The Search for Modern China. Thosegoals became distorted in the course of the Cultural Revolution itself,pitting classes in society that were supposed to be united against oneanother. The structure of this book takes the reader from the peasant classupward through other levels of society to show how different individuals indifferent social classes are reacting to the new opportunities and the neweconomic forces. He had his own family experienceas proof: Good people who are wrongly accused will be cleared in the end . Modernization and Revolution in China. The reformers of the time, led by Deng Xiaoping, took a radicallydifferent strategy to recover the support of the people and to rebuild thecountry: Beginning in the early 198 s, Deng offered the people hard incentives: cash bonuses instead of equal wages for workers, family farming instead of communal toil for peasants, and promotions for professionals based on skill instead of Communist fervor (1).In the newest wave of reform, say the Tysons, the impetus for changes comesfrom the grassroots so that 1.2 billion Chinese are seeking to push toextremes the market-oriented reforms instituted tentatively by theCommunist party, and the Tysons find the change considerable: Craving everything from more meat in their diet of rice and wheat to speculative investments and foreign travel, they have grabbed each new chance to make money. What began as a push forthe socialist purification of art would become pressure for the socialistpurification of all aspects of society and life as well as a drawing oflines between competing groups and an effort to weed out all dissent andall enemies, real or perceived. Mao felt that his authority, his approach to social programs, andhis style of leadership developed over a lifetime were all being threatenedand sabotaged in secret by his chosen successor, Liu. What started as a "cultural" revolution became a politicalrevolution, with the leaders of the victorious Red Guards seeing themselvesas the new and proper leaders for China as a whole. Born Red. Spence examines the Chinese Revolution to try to determine whatunderlying forces were shaping the Cultural Revolution, the counter-revolution, and the social, cultural, and political changes that were beingbrought about by the internal battles of the time. The majorrevolution of the era was that in 1949 after a long period of conflict.This was a major break with the past, shifting from the imperial history ofChina to a new era under Communism, but even then the past was not simplycast out and ties remained to older philosophies. The late 196 s in China was known as the period of the CulturalRevolution, and this was an attempt on the part of certain centralCommunist Party members to weed out dissent and to exert a tighter control. But few people are as rich as. Because they provide much-needed services and are flexible interms of business hours and locations, the business operators haveprospered in general and have tended to earn more than state employees, andthis in turn has caused some resentment. Works CitedGrasso, June, Jay Corrin, and Michael Kort. The rapid expansion of the Red GuardMovement showed the success of Mao's goal of striking a responsive chordwith China's youth. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1987. In the countryside, peasants have taken control of collective land and property. He was once labeled the leader of an anti-Party clique, but later he was rehabilitated (Yuan 77).Yet, at the time, there was little indication that there would eve be anend to the damage being done. What this book showsis that the people have so embraced the idea of change that they areforcing that change from below. Clearly, much ofthe West hopes that such moves will be followed naturally bydemocratization, and in the United States, much of the recent argument overmost-favored-nations trade status for china was based on theadministration's view that open trade would lead to democracy. He said it was risky and Greg should be satisfied working as a doctor in China. The story of this family in this bookextends from that period to the present and from support for the revolutionto the democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. He initially opposed the move abroad with great vehemence. The plan failed, andLin Biao's career and life ended in disgrace: "Lin Biao was blamed fornearly everything that went wrong in China during the late 196 s" (Grasso,Corrin, and Kort 228). Spence discusses the issue beginning with the leadership andthe organizations headed by this leadership and examines the broadintentions of these leaders in launching the Cultural Revolution, notingthat the leadership had goals in terms of altering first the politicalpurposes of literature and the performing arts. It is tooearly to be certain how successful this effort will be. By 1966 the Cultural Revolution was a full-scale national movement inwhich counterrevolutionaries within the party, along with representativesof the bourgeoisie in academic and cultural circles, had been identified astargets for attack. Contemporary China is very much a product ofthe Cultural Revolution and its aftermath, however. He believed he couldaccomplish all of this with a single, immediate expurgation. Yet in one generation, Greg has followed his own inner voice and led the family from dirt-scrabble poverty to the promise of riches as a medical doctor in the United States (36). New York: W.W. The story of Peng and his family is the story of the peasant classand how it has emerged as a force for change. TheCultural Revolution benefited Lin Pao and the military, but it was alsosignificant that Mao's wife rose to national prominence during thisprolonged period of upheaval. New York: Oxford University Press, 199 .Spence, Jonathan D. Spence notes that the leaders of the Cultural Revolution led acomprehensive attack on the four old elements in Chinese society--oldcustoms, old habits, old culture, and old thinking--while leaving it to theRed Guard to carry out the reforms. If the reforms are tobe effective, they have to be embraced by the people. As Spence also shows, the program was less and less coordinated as itprogressed, with different revolutionary groups vying for supremacy and forwhat amounted to the top position as the most revolutionary group of all,producing near anarchy, with radical groups fighting one another as well asthose they saw as socialistically suspect: The result was a bewildering situation in which varieties of radical groups, not coordinated by any central leadership, struggled with party leaders and with each other (Spence 6 7).The Cultural Revolution began as a natural outgrowth of developments tothat date and of the way the revolution had unfolded so that the leadershipfelt more effort was needed to achieve the goals of the revolution. While Mao was at firstin agreement about the move toward communes as models for nationwidedevelopment, he changed his mind, adding to the undercurrents thenoperating in China: It was difficult in many such cases to tell if these were real or sham power struggles--whether "the masses" were really seizing power or whether party leaders were merely pretending to hand over power while in fact continuing to exercise all their old functions under loose Red Guard supervision (Spence 6 8). The Maoists proclaimed the Cultural Revolution a victory because itreestablished the supremacy of Mao's authority and of his thought andideology, and they deemed these as necessary to China's progress. Chinese Awakenings. Armonk, New York: M.E. Theview taken now is that those who contribute most to the creation ofsociety's wealth, and thereby set a good example for others, deserve tobecome rich first, and this group includes the entrepreneurs. The party was decimated and many of its leaderspurged or dismissed. And no one else had the audacity to father a personal fortune in the cradle of China's Communist revolution during the decade of Maoist fanaticism and virulent anticapitalism known as the Cultural Revolution (4 ).Men like this are survivors of the Cultural Revolution, some of whom evenbenefited from that era of turmoil. The Cultural Revolution also ushered in adecade of turmoil and civic strife that brought the country to the brink ofchaos and bankruptcy. Others used the Red Guards as aninstrument of vengeance against teachers they disliked or classmates theyenvied. The aftermath of the Cultural Revolution was mixed, and how peopletoday view those events is also mixed. The idea of the entrepreneur is foreign to CommunistChina but is becoming more accepted. In instituting the Cultural Revolution, Mao wanted to reestablish thesupremacy of his authority, his line of revolution, and his work-style. 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