Unknown Cultural Revolution in Most of the Essay

Unknown Cultural Revolution

In most of the literature, China's Cultural Revolution gets a bad rap. It is considered a time of social turmoil that eventually led to an economic disaster for the country. There are accounts of intellectuals being persecuted as well as violence in many communities. However, the author, Dongping Han, gives a different account of this period. In many cases, history is written by the winners. Therefore, the capitalistic model that eventually won the debate undoubtedly discredited the communist roots of the Cultural Revolution. In this sense, Han points out many of the accomplishments that China was able to produce during this period. As a product of the Cultural Revolution himself, Han is able to give many personal stories of the movement's success.

The fact that Han has actually lived through this experience gives his stories a great deal of credibility. He speaks of the period favorably and gives lots of personal accounts of how the Cultural Revolution not only affected him personally, but also his family and the local community. His family believed strongly in Communism and his father was very loyal to the factory he worked for. Under this type of social organization, many of the workers felt a sense of ownership for the factories. His father for example, would go work at the factory even during times of holiday because he would be worried about the production levels or some other factor. He did such things not because he got paid any extra, just because he felt a sense of loyalty to the factory and its management. This type of sentiment was common in the movement and although it is mostly viewed as negative, the rural communities were empowered in many ways.

Background

The Cultural Revolution was the greatest revolutions that took place in the last hundred years and it took place from 1966 to 1976. Mao Zedong was the communist leader of the Cultural Revolution. His objective in promoting the Cultural Revolution was to form a more affective bureaucracy and make the country more egalitarian. During the Cultural Revolution the "Red Guards" fought against the democratic ideal that was promoted. The guards attacked a concept that was called the "4 olds." The "4 olds" were old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits.

Many of the supporters of the Cultural Revolution would fight against any Western influences. Shopkeepers wouldn't sell Western clothes and people would not wear Western style haircuts. Some people would burn books that offer perspectives that were against the views of communism that Mao Zedong promoted. The workers and the common people were the focus of the revolution. Traditional things that were reserved for the upper-class were shunned by the majority of society. Things like using cabs, private cars, and trains were looked down upon because it symbolized a life of upper class citizens.

The Red Guard groups popped up all around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist Party leadership itself.It resulted in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. Many of these groups took matters into their own hands despite the actual beliefs of Mao. There were many personality cults that grew to powerful sizes. Many of these groups committed horrendous acts and as a result the Cultural Revolution has been treated officially as a negative phenomenon point in history since the end of the movement.

Book Review

Dongping Han's book takes a significantly different approach to studying the Cultural Revolution than many other works. He was actually a student during the socialist movement so he experiences the revolution first hand. He was able to experience the rural communities' transformation first hand as people in his family and communities were empowered by the movement. He writes very favorably about how this revolution affected these rural communities. From this stance he develops reasonable arguments of the contributions that the Cultural Revolution had on rural development in communities such as his.

There are two main points that Han promotes in his book. One is related to rural education. He first outlines the rural education system prior to the Cultural Revolution. Many communities did not even have a formal education system and rural communities were often overlooked by the Chinese Community Party (CCP) and many of the educational opportunities for the rural youth never developed. When the CCP was in power, there was a strong authoritarian worldview with a strong power structure. However, during the Cultural Revolution the power structure began to change.

There was a mass expansion of rural schools; especially with regard to rural-based vocational schools. Villages would come together as communities to develop much of their own curriculums that would be relevant to that particular community. Some of the students would be actually tasked to write their own text books. The students would go research things such as how to repair farm equipment and prepare their own educational materials to share with other communities. Han's perspective portrays the community involvement as something to be admired. There was an egalitarian sense in which people genuinely cared about others in the community as opposed to the perspectives in other power structures.

' The youth and rural communities also made advancements in industrial farming; including small factories. These communities began to mechanize farming for the first time, they also began to use fertilizers and build irrigation systems. They even experimented with seeds, crop rotations, and different systems of farming, many of which proved effective. Furthermore, even though there was an egalitarian type of society built, there was still a level of competition that existed between communities or within communities for pride and respect from other members of the community. There were also advancements in rural health systems.

In some cases, people received health care for the first times in their lives. There was a form of universal healthcare that developed, long before even industrialized countries….....