The Secret Listener

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan-tsung Chen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Great Leap ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
Red Guards ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

From the time she was a girl, Yuan-tsung Chen had had a literary dream, and in 1950 she embarked on a literary career, a journey filled with thrilling and dangerous adventures. She went to Beijing and got a job in the Scenario Department of the Central Film Bureau, where she found herself in a front-row seat during China’s culture wars as Mao Zedong demanded that literature and art serve the Party, while writers wanted culture to be distinguishable from propaganda. Hence she became a secret listener. Purges ensued. She narrowly escaped the Anti-Rightist Purge of 1957 by marrying Jack Chen, who, because of his connections, had avoided political trouble so far. Mao’s “class war” continued. His Great Leap Forward caused the plunge in agricultural production and the greatest famine of the twentieth century. It led to Mao’s last and most violent purge, the Cultural Revolution. His hitmen, the Red Guards, viciously attacked Jack. Yuan-tsung went secretly to ask Zhou Enlai, the prime minister, for help. Zhou tried but failed to protect them. They were sent out of Beijing and consigned to a rural backwater village, cut off from all recourse to friends. But Yuan-tsung figured out a way to get in touch, right under the noses of the Red Guards, with Jack’s American brother-in-law and asked him to arrange a speaking tour for Jack. He did, and thus Jack was able to accept an invitation to lecture on Canadian and American campuses. After a tense wait, on the prime minister’s personal order Jack and Yuan-tsung got permits to leave the country.

Maoism

2021 ◽  
pp. 194-202
Author(s):  
George W. Breslauer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
Great Leap ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Mao Zedong and his legacy may be given credit for effective innovation in conducting guerrilla warfare and mobilizing the peasantry to win a fifteen-year battle against the Guomindang and the Japanese. Stains on his legacy are the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

The Chinese Communist Party in the 1960s: Prelude to the Cultural Revolution

1967 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 3-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Neuhauser
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Commedia Dell'arte ◽  
Great Leap ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The recent events in China are surely drama of the highest order, but at times it has seemed that the actors themselves were not entirely sure who was writing the lines. In fact what we seem to be witnessing is a form of commedia dell'arte: improvisation within a certain tacitly understood framework. The cultural revolution appears to have taken new turns and to have broken into new channels precisely because the actors have been faced with new and unforeseen circumstances as it has run its course. No faction in the struggle has been able to impose its will on the Party or the country by fiat; new devices and stratagems have been brought into play in what has looked like desperate attempts to gain the upper hand. It has clearly been a battle of the utmost seriousness, but there appear to have been limitations on the resultant chaos. Economic disorganisation does not seem to have occurred on the scale of the later stages of the Great Leap Forward. Nor, despite the clashes, confusion and bitter infighting, have new centres of power, totally divorced from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) itself, arisen. The cultural revolution has been pre-eminently a struggle within the Party.

scholarly journals Red Guard Movement in the First Years of “Cultural Revolution” in China (1966—1967): View of Domestic and Foreign Researchers

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (8) ◽  
pp. 346-366
Author(s):  
V. V. Bondareva
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Mass Movement ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Personal Attitude ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
Red Guards ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The article analyzes the first years of “the cultural revolution” in China (1966—1967), characterized by high revolutionary activity of students and school youth, organized into groups of “red guards”, who were distinguished in their actions by extreme cruelty and fanaticism. From this point of view, the destructive actions of the red guards, which were of a terrorist and mass nature, highlight the main direction of their revolutionary strike, which was inflicted on the party and state apparatus of China. Mao Zedong is presented as the initiator of a mass movement of red guards who used monstrous terrorist methods to fight his opposition and all, from their point of view, not enough politically conscious elements. The hongweibing movement, considered as an instrument of Mao Zedong’s struggle with the opposition, allows to reveal in the course of research the personal qualities of a leader who, in the name of establishing his own cult, was not afraid to deliberately plunge the entire country into mass and deeply disorderly turmoil. The detailed description of Mao Zedong’s personal attitude to what is happening, based on documentary sources, reveals the deeply dictatorial and anti-democratic nature of his power, which was asserted in the first years of “the cultural revolution” with the help of the red guards movement.

The 1963 Temporary Work Regulations for Full-time Middle and Primary Schools: Commentary and Translation

1973 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 511-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Shirk
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
School Setting ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Temporary Work ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Great Leap ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

After the Great Leap Forward the Chinese Ministry of Education designed new programmes for teaching and administration. These guidelines, the “1963 Temporary Work Regulations for Full-time Middle and Primary Schools,” which are translated below, were drafted during 1961 and 1962, promulgated in 1963 but only became generally available during the Cultural Revolution when, in 1967, they were reprinted and circulated for criticism, to serve as negative examples for those drawing up new educational reforms. These 1963 regulations were an attempt to structure a school environment in which the teaching and learning of academic subjects would flourish. They provide documentary evidence for the concentration on expertness and “quality” which characterized educational policy during the period between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Moreover, the regulations illustrate how the policy-makers defined “quality” education; they describe the specific measures which the authorities felt were necessary to guarantee a school setting conducive to that goal; and they indicate what values the policy-makers were willing to trade-off in pursuit of educational “quality.”

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