The Trial Of The Gang Of Four: An Analysis

In Jan Wong’s entrancing expose Red China Blues, she details her plight to take part in a system of “harmony and perfection” (12) that was Maoist China. Wong discloses her trials and tribulations over a course of three decades that sees her searching for her roots and her transformation of ideologies that span over two distinctive forms of Communist governments. This tale is so enticing in due part to the events the author encountered that radically changed her very existence and more importantly, her personal quest for self-discovery.

These two tragic deaths, both filled with dramatic irony, reveal Zhang Yimou’s critique of communist collectivist culture and the class structure and power in revolutionary China. Communist collectivist culture may produce benefits such as communal kitchens and giving poor townspeople a sense of hope. However, the class antagonisms between revolutionaries and counterrevolutions produces an environment where no one challenges authority and where blind patriotism sometimes morphs into hysteria like

There are many similarities between the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the American cultural changes we are experiencing today; one of the most glaring of which is the government’s policing of citizen’s identities. In 1966, propaganda posters were commonplace and accepted as ‘normal’. If we compare that to our president’s social media presence, oftentimes using his position in office to say whatever he wants, we start to see the beginning of the comparisons. In Red Scarf Girl, Ji-li’s academic and career choices are limited because of her family's social class.

July 1968 is a symbolic date during Cultural revolution, when, student activists as the ed Guards expanded their authority, and accelerated their efforts at social reconstruction (Yuan Gao 122-132). They began by passing out leaflets explaining their actions to develop and strengthen socialism and they even held public meetings to criticize and solicit self-criticism from suspected ‘counter revolutionaries” (those who do not agree on Mao’s revolution idea, especially those who support ‘the four olds’; old ideas, cultures, manners and customs. Here is another reason why, Mr. Chiu could be suspected as an ex-member of the Red Guards.

During the second half of the twentieth century, many citizens in China fell victim to economic and social hardships as a consequence of the Great Leap Forward. As a result, Mao Zedong was marginalized and new power arose. However, fearing that traditional chinese culture and “ bourgeois ideology” were at risk of recurrence, Mao established the Cultural Revolution as his final attempt at abolishing his concerns. The Cultural Revolution brought about many young, loyal Maoists ready to risk it all in order to establish a new regime that rid chinese society of what Mao believed to be impurities. Among these revolutionaries included Red Guards and some members of the sent-down youth. In the memoirs, Call Me Qingnian but Not Funü: A Maoist Youth in Retrospect and Images, Memories, and Lives of Sent-Down Youth in Yunnan, it is expressed that the Cultural Revolution greatly affected the lives of the revolutionaries, and although both stories entail different circumstances, the Red Guards and sent-down youth experienced both different and similar feelings of optimism as well as concern and apprehension for the future during a critical time in both chinese history and their personal lives.

The population also tried to hide the truth from Mao, first with exaggerated weights of food and commercial steel to impress Mao, and keeping the famine a secret from Mao by acting in the streets and painting the trees stripped of their bark. “It’s better to starve to death than beg or steal.” Chinese culture was imbedded into them and they were powerless to break the patterns of behaviour enforced

And I was”(Prologue, 2). In the Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution, the author, Jiang Ji-li at first was a girl who believed everything that the government, the Communist Party said and didn’t once question whether it was right or wrong. She was told things like “Heaven and earth are great, but greater still is the kindness of the Communist Party; father and mother are dear, but dearer still is Chairman Mao”(Prologue, 4). People are being hurt for being from a family that had an ancestor or past family member whose actions went against the government. When the Cultural Revolution started to affect

This book is a personal narrative of the author’s experiences in China during the Cultural Revolution. It is the story of her coming of age during a gruesome point in Chinese history. She points out in the epilogue that what Chairman Mao did was brainwashing, and how easy it was for people forget their personal ideals and listen to him. I believe that it was her intention to inform the public about what tragedies took place in China during the cultural revolution. In doing this is hoping to educate people about the suffering that can take place under the rule of a corrupt. She also points out in the epilogue that very few people have been punished for their crimes during the revolution so she could also have written

During the Zhengfeng (1942-1944), the Chinese Communist Party strongly believed that artistic expressions lacked a unified cultural approach. As such, they used various methods to consolidate ideological unanimity among cadres around Maoism. In his “Talks at the Yan 'an Forum on Literature and Art,” Mao Zedong stresses the struggle on the cultural front as an indispensable

This is a contrasting struggle between legal rule and party rule. A massive photo of Mao Zedong is prominently displayed at his mausoleum in Tianamen Square, Beijing, China to propagandize their message (Danford, video 1). In fact, perceived dissidents by the PRC have been jailed, tortured, and executed. During Mao Zedong’s regime, an estimated 40 million Chinese

The “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” or the “Cultural Revolution” had been a failed attempt at making China a stronger country. This revolution had destroyed China’s rich history. The period from 1966 to 1969 had been terrifying years in which the Red Guards used violence to purge China of any anti- communist sources. Mao Zedong had led the violence and turmoil in China after his failed attempt at the Great Leap Forward. He relied on China’s youth to change the traditional customs and ideas. The students carried the Cultural Revolution forward and were encouraged to attack authority. Mao said, “to rebel is justified.”(par. 2, Schell). The stated goals of the Cultural Revolution were to abolish the four olds, “old customs, old

The autobiography Mao’s Last Dancer by Li Cunxin is successful in informing readers of the marginalisation of the people in communist China through the recounts of his life. The autobiography raises awareness of how those with disagreements against Chairman Mao’s communist government received penalties that could be as consequential as death. It examines how no one was able to pursue dreams of their own agenda during Chairman Mao’s dictatorship. The author also reveals through his own experience, how if someone were to change loyalties from Communist China, they and their families would be threatened. Mao’s Last Dancer clearly displays the marginalisation of the Chinese people throughout the time of Communist China.

The Chinese Cultural Revolution presents a fratricidal mass conflict that boasts the largest political movement of the 20th century. Its professed goal was to annihilate any traces of Capitalism in China and to overhaul the political and cultural values of the Chinese nation. Populist in ideology, this crusade was directed against ‘bourgeois’ and ‘intellectual’ archetypes. By targeting urban intellectuals, the Revolution channelled the energies of the masses in the service of Mao Zedong’s effort to re-asset firm-control over the nation and the ruling party. The outcome was a cult of personality so effective that it rivalled familial ties – traditionally seen the substratum of social interactions in China – in its allegations on people’s loyalties.

I grew up, watching the world’s understanding of my cultural heritage be reduced to ching chong’s and ling long’s, kimonos, and fortune cookies. I grew up, being asked if my parents belonged to the communist party, when I held in me the stories they told me of labor camps they were sent to at the age of 13, of how one day, they couldn’t go to school anymore, of how my grandparents tried desperately later on, long after Mao’s regime ended, to force their children, now adults, to eat copious amounts of food, as if to make up for times when there was nothing to

The launch of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1966 was due to a culmination of political and ideological struggles that had divided the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the end of the Great Leap Forward. As said by Che Guevara, “A revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall”. Che Guevara’s statement is accurate to an extent in relation to the causes of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Although China was vulnerable during the twentieth century and Mao Tse-Tung, Chairman of the CCP, took control of this susceptibility, the Chinese Cultural Revolution was already ‘ripe’, someone just had to provoke it to ‘fall’. The Chinese Cultural Revolution can be considered a power struggle between Mao and his rivals. Mao needed to regain the control that he had lost after the failure of ‘The Great Leap Forward’ and the Chinese Cultural Revolution was a means for him to do so. Mao genuinely believed in an equal society and went about this belief in a very severe manner. Che Guevara’s statement is not entirely accurate as the Chinese Cultural Revolution was just part of a progression that was taking place and although Mao provoked it to fall, China was ultimately ripe for a revolution.