Why Is Teacher Committed Suicide

The setting is in Muji, China during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. The leader of the communist party at the time is Chairman Mao and ruled based on a Marxist model by the story mentioning the concrete statue of him in the center of the square. The author states that “the Cultural Revolution was over already, and recently the Party has been propagating the idea that all citizens were

The cultural revolution is a strange period in Chinese history laced with intense struggle and anguish. The cultural revolution mobilized the all of society to compete for all opposing factions that they belonged to (Ong, 2016). Mao mobilized the young people of society during a background of political turmoil, which helped Mao to mobilize the students in order to enforce his political legitimacy and ideas (Ong, 2016). Mao’s charismatic authority created his personality cult and most defiantly leant a helping hand in mobilizing the red guard movement (Ong, 2016) (Weber, 1946) (Andreas, 2007). No matter which faction of the red guard they belonged to, they all mobilized against their common enemy; the better off, upper class. (Ong, 2016). Multiple ideologies within the youth led red guard movement explain why the movement gained momentum and became incredibly powerful (Walder, 2009).

The purpose of this investigation is to examine the extent to which the Chinese Cultural Revolution impacted China’s economy from 1966 to 1970. The main body of the investigation will focus on the persecution and violence towards high-level party officials and capitalists by the Red Guards and the “Destroy the Four Olds” campaign. The “Destroy the Four Olds” campaign was significant because it inhibited industrial and agricultural innovation and production of an entire country for a decade as it placed the country’s economy and industry into the hands of inexperienced revolutionaries. Two sources that will be used will be China: A New History and Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present, and they will be evaluated in regards to their purpose, value, and limitations. An analysis of these sources and the evidence will be used to form a conclusion as to how and to what extent the revolution impacted the Chinese economy.

“As one of the Red Guards in the middle school, I was given power through Mao to torture and humiliate our teachers, headmaster or anyone we didn’t like. I didn’t know it was wrong. I thought I was doing the right thing to continue the revolution, to fight and win the class struggle”- Zhao, Lin Qing. As a teenager Zhao was a Red Guard in Guangzhou during the Cultural Revolution. When asked what her impression was a member of the Red Guards, Zhao answered with two words: “naïve and senseless”. She refused answering anything more about her experience. She said, “The memories are still too painful to recall.”

Even with her previous experiences at Beijing University and at Big Joy Farm, Wong still held some belief that the Chinese system wasn’t as bad as it was sometimes made out to be. This event proved to her that it was. “The enormity of the massacre hit home…Although it had been years since I was a Maoist, I still had harbored some small hope for China. Now even that was gone” (259). As a reporter Wong was able to view the progression of the protests in leading up to the massacre, and in viewing it understood that the Chinese people were much more independent than they had previously demonstrated over the past 50 years. She had continuously seen the Chinese people following what they were told between learning in school or with physical labor, yet this protest was one of the first large scale displays of the unacceptance of the regime by the people, and the government did not know what to do with it. But because of this, Wong was able to recognize that the people were not reliant on this way of life that they had previously been bound to, but truly could lead for themselves and take control. The massacre awakened Wong both to the reality that the government was not acting to benefit the people, and that the people were more than capable of acting for

Originally, Liang’s “parents were deeply involved in all the excitement of working to transform China into a great Socialist country” (4). Over a serious of unfortunate events, though, he became the child of a “Rightist’s cap” mother and a “Reactionary Capitalist stinking intellectuals” father (9, 51). Impacted by the shattering of his family and horrific bloodshed created by fighting, Liang Heng began to question the Cultural Revolution. He claimed that his “family had scarified so much… but it had given [them] nothing in return” (148). Liang Heng presents his shift in ideology to demonstrate that most Chinese were no longer in support of a Communist nation. His “troubles were common enough and anyone could see there was a discrepancy between the glorious words of the newspapers and [their] painful reality (232). Even Liang Heng’s father, after many years of devotion, found that he could no longer defend the Party’s policies after he experienced the ill-treatment of the peasants in the country

1966 brought the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. This was designed to clean the communist society and also to bring Mao back into power. Mao's swimming in the Yangtze River marked the beginning of this movement. "The whole nation rejoiced because our beloved leader had battled the waves for so long at the age of more than seventy, turning his feat inevitably into a metaphor. `The current of the Yangtze is strong and there are many waves, but if a person is not afraid to struggle he will overcome all difficulties'" (43). And that metaphor was the whole basis for the Cultural Revolution: suffer for the greater good of the country. In actuality it became a way for people to point out other's disloyalty to the Party. Intellectuals were attacked, which was specifically bad for Heng's father. Since he worked for the newspaper, he was attacked as having Capitalist or Rightist thought. As a result of this anti-intellectual thought the Universities were eventually closed for about ten years. That was very sad for Liang Heng, since he had a life-long thirst for knowledge. But the immediate result was persecution of intellectuals and their families.

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.

In the memoir “Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution” written by Ji-Li Jiang and forwarded by David Henry Hwang, it follows the experiences of Ji-Li Jiang during the onset of Chairman Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution of China while living in Shanghai, China, 1966. In the memoir, Ji-Li at only the age of 13 experiences first hand the many effects of the revolution which are shown in many ways. These effects include her peers attitudes, her family and classmates relations, as well as personal feelings of the overall event.

This memoir of Ma Bo’s sent shock waves throughout China when it was published and was even first banned by the Communist Government. This passionate story paints a clear picture for what the Great Chinese Cultural Revolution was really like. Many Chinese living today can attest to similar if not identical ordeals as expressed in Ma Bo’s story. The toils of being a young Red Guard in inner China were experienced by many if not millions. The horrors and atrocities were wide spread throughout the country, not just in Inner Mongolia. The experiences illustrated in Blood Red Sunset uniquely belong to Ma Bo’s entire generation of mislead Chinese. As expressed in the books dedication the Cultural Revolution

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

Atwood parallels the Cultural Revolution in China to the how the Gilead government gains power and control over the United States. The Chinese communist leader, Mao Zedong launched the

Although the Cultural Revolution had a huge impact on all of the citizens of China, it seemed to affect the youth the most. The youth of China began to get involved after a speech by Lin Biao by 1965. It urged the students in schools and colleges to return to the basic principles of the CR. The Chinese youths quickly formed a group called the Red Guards early in the CR, which encouraged all the Chinese students to disapprove of whoever didn’t support Mao and his beliefs or anyone associated with Mao’s rival, Liu Shaoqi (Trueman). Schools and colleges were closed, and the students neglected their studies. While the Red Guards were very passionate about what they did, their enthusiasm nearly pushed China into social disorder. The economy was affected very badly, and almost driven to a near collapse (Busetto, Galduroz, and Satou). Food shortage was one of the main problems the economy caused. Also In some areas, the activities of the Red Guards got out of hand. They

The fuse of this revolution is a historical article named “Hai Rui Dismissed from Office” which written by Wu Han. Hai Rui is an honest official of Ming Dynasty. He is outspoken and criticize the emperor thus he dismissed from office. Yao Wenyuan write an article and published on newspaper to criticize this play has serious reactionary tendencies can affect masses. Who also has same opinion with him named Jiang Qing. She is the wife of Mao Zedong and she is an ambitious woman who want to get the highest power. And on her speech in

As the novel enters the phase of the Communist revolution, the protagonists of the Republican era are erased from the surface of history by the consequences of the land reform. Again is a final, spectacular fire to seal the tragic destiny of those coping with darkness. History at this stage lacks of utopian enthusiasm, the boundaries between past and present, dead and living, good and bad, are dropped, man is fooled and history, emptied of ideological content, becomes irrational. What is more striking is that there is no straightforward relationship between the actors their search for meanings, the outcome of the dialectic between signifier and signified is independent of each other. The legendary Commander Yu in the Red Sorghum betrayed by his compatriot keeps fighting alone the Japanese to defend a deserted land just to wound up in exile in a foreign country. The good giant Song Fanpings in Brothers writes the last love letter just before his body is mercilessly smashed, Dongliang’s father in The Boat to Redemption, will drown himself to death under the shame of a political