Bing Ghost Pounding On The Wall

During the time prior to the infamous June 4 Massacre in Tiananmen Square China, there were numerous events in which provoked political tension and ultimately stimulated the massacre itself. These events date back to Hu Yaobang’s death followed by the AFS’ seven requests, Deng Xiaoping’s editorial, the student hunger strike, Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to China and the imposed martial law causing the tragic massacre. The Chinese Government, citizens, students, PLA and even some foreign journalists were impacted by these primary incidents to a great extent.

“The Shock of the New” by Robert Hughes has taken us on a 100 years tour through Modern Art. Robert Hughes’1980 observations about the corporate and government capture and distortion of the art industry, the absence of politically effective art and the emptiness of Pop and Minimalism which are sad commentaries on the growth of unconstrained corporatism in the west at that time. The first decade of 21st century has seen the consolidation of corporate power, the transformation of Western democracies into Murdochracies, Lobbyocracies, Corporatocracies, and the continued silence of both Mainstream Art and Mainstream Media about the horrifying US- led Western War on Muslims. Art is a way of understanding ourselves and our surrounding in a profound

Tiananmen has had very little effect on China in 2017, but in the years following 1989, China was in turmoil. As factions began to rise within the CCP and the thought of their lost loved ones are still fresh in people's minds, a threat of yet another movement was growing. Fueled by their fear of revolution, China’s government unifies its members under a single mission, to eliminate and destroy all information on Tiananmen. A purge begins of all documents and articles of Tiananmen. Over the decades, China has hidden and censored many articles, websites, media, etc about Tiananmen from its people and has killed many who dared to talk of the “June Fourth Incident” and anything else the CCP sees as undesirable. For example, in 1996 Falun Gong, a popular buddhist practice that embodies the ideals of peace, balance and harmony, grew extremely popular. Falun Gong was mainly practiced through meditation and involved peaceful practices, but the CCP feared that it would grow too popular and eventually turn into a political rival. To prevent being overthrown, the CCP punished anyone who dare to practice Falun Gong within the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by beating them and torturing them. The photos of the victims of this brutal persecution caused fear to spark in the country and as a result of this terror, not one person of the 1.381 billion people that inhabit Chinese soil talk about the protests or anything that the CCP dislikes as the sword of death is always hanging precariously above their

On April 16, 1989, in Tiananmen Square which is in Beijing, China experienced a protest which was called the June Fourth incident or more commonly known as the Tiananmen Square Protest. China, which had been controlled by the Communist Party since Mao Zedong’s rise of power during the Cold War, had been ruled over by Deng Xiaoping at the time of the protest. More than a million protesters which mostly consisted of students, had gathered at the square, protesting for reforms and the political transition to a democratic society. Through time, the student based protesters soon gained support nationwide as many supporters travelled to Beijing to support the students. However, the protest for reform did not only occurred at the square; the people who sided with the protesters spread the revolt to nearly four hundred cities in China. The protest had been smoothly executed without violence until the government sent forces which ended in a massacre.

The focus of the study is on the event of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and how the Chinese Communist Party government shocked the world. Moreover, the study focuses on the aftermaths and the international effects like how the United States decided how to deal with this violent act or how this event possibly encouraged protestors to fight against their corrupt government.

Mao has many different meanings in contemporary Chinese culture, which makes him a very iconic, familiar, and interesting subject for artists. Mao is likened to dictators such as Stalin and Hitler, because his regime was meant to be for the people, but utilized forced labor and eventually led to famine. For this reason many Chinese people (and others), are very critical of the past regime and of Mao’s image being associated with Chinese pride. A colossal statue of Mao was torn down after backlash and criticisms of Mao’s totalitarian legacy. On the other side of the coin, some Chinese

'Can popular art and culture be politically radical, or is only difficult art capable of being so?'

On April 17, 1989, thousands of student protesters flooded Tiananmen Square, Beijing, to mourn Hu Yaobang’s death. Yaobang was the former General Secretary of the Communist Party and also served as a symbol of political reform and anti-corruption. The students asked the government to end corruption and to give political and economic reform. Demonstrations spread to different cities, with workers joining in. They complained about money and housing issues. The spread of the demonstrations concerned Party leaders, who thought there was going to be rebellion from the protesters. Li Peng, who ranked second in the Party, believed that they should “nip it in the bud,” while Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang thought that Yaobang’s memorial

I decided to look at Ai Weiwei because he’s a main influence in my current project. In October I went to his exhibition in the Royal Academy in London. His installations were fascinating and captivating with a deep cultural meaning and a story running through every piece. Weiwei’s work is very much tied to the fight for free speech. ‘He has drawn attention throughout his career to injustice and corruption in the Chinese government, and has been imprisoned as a result. The exhibition at the RA looked back at artworks he has produced over the last 22 years.’ (BRACKER, A. 2015)

In most works of art, the tone, costumes, and setting can largely influence the mood of the story. A deep examination of the mentioned attributes can possibly reveal latent messages and intents of the artists. This is evident in both Lao She’s Teahouse and China’s The Founding of a Republic. The Founding of a Republic was funded and produced by Chinese government as a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China; as a result, it widely regarded as propaganda. Lao’s Teahouse, however, was written about the Chinese revolution from a common man’s perspective. These differences in the interpretation of the Chinese revolution, along with the intent of the presentations, reveal the creators’ underlying political

“Mr. Big” is about Lu Xun (1881–1936), widely recognized as the most important litterateur, and one of the most influential figures in Chinese modern history. After the 1919 May Fourth Movement, of which he was one of the leaders, Lu Xun began to exert a substantial influence on Chinese literature and culture. His best-known works, ““Call to Arms” (1922) and “Wandering” (1925), show the extraordinary gift of treading a fine line between criticizing the follies of his characters and sympathizing with those very follies.

The Cultural Revolution, launched by Chairman Mao Zedong in the mid-1960s, dramatically transformed Chinese society. Paul Byrne (2012 p.80) suggests that as the Cultural Revolution continued to transform China, a cult of personality was built around Mao; anyone who questioned his wisdom was an enemy of the people. The Cultural Revolution was a period of time where anything capitalist or western was brutally destroyed. The Cultural Revolution aimed to destroy ‘The Four Olds’ these being, old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. This was to bring the areas of education, art and literature in line with Communist ideology (Ebrey, n.d, para. 2). Chairman Mao used a youth army called ‘The Red Guards’ to carry out the task of destruction and anyone who represented the old culture of China or did not fully support Mao and the Communist Revolution were targeted (Byrne, 2012, p.81). Li Cunxin was born into a poor peasant family and from his perspective the Cultural Revolution impacted all areas of his life. Li like millions of other children of his generation had their education, career, opportunities, voice and beliefs censored and recreated to idolise Mao Zedong and the countries strong communist ideas.

However, Mao had assembled a confederation titled the ‘Shanghai Radicals’, centred on his wife Jiang Qing, also including Yao Wenyuan, Zhang Chunqiao, Qi Benyu and Wang Li to assist in deposing traditional Chinese culture – namely the ‘Four Olds’. Old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas were denounced due to the supposed symbolism of anti-proletariat, therefore deeming them as ‘poisonous weeds’ attempting to undermine Socialism. The calculated role of the Shanghai Radicals given by Mao proved to be immense when initiating the Cultural Revolution, as they were the ones who performed the methods of eradicating the Four Olds. This enabled him to have the right conditions to “make the apple fall”, due to him being able to bide during his preconceived violent upheaval - thus preserving his reputation in order to steadily continue the revolution. In addition, the intentional ambiguity of Four Olds built the right atmosphere for Mao to inflict strict limits on freedom of expression, safeguarding that the ‘right’ culture assisted the revolution. Through the leadership of Mao, it is perceptible how an accumulation of factors facilitated him and his ideologies to build the right conditions to force the Chinese Cultural Revolution to ‘fall’.

The Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989, more popularly known as the Tiananmen Square Incident or Tiananmen Square Massacre, were a series of student-led demonstrations in Beijing during 1989. The student-led protests were forcibly suppressed by tanks and armed troops 2 weeks after the government declared martial law and mobilized as many as 300,000 troops into Beijing. The death toll is still widely debated.The protests happened during rapid economic and social developments in China. The students called for political and economic reform, as well as more individual rights and freedoms due to the political corruption that was the result of inflation. At the height of the protests, about a million people assembled in the Square. By May, a student-led hunger strike gathered support for the

Mao said "Criticism of the bureaucracy is pushing the government towards the better." and that shocked the chinese people, because before Mao would have cracked down on anyone.