thoughts about session 9 (China w/Dr. Clayton)

A Masters Thesis for Yonsei University @ S Korea does well in summing up Mao Zedong: He succeeded in leading the Communists to rule China with victory over the Nationalists, yet he harmed China with initiatives like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Clay's presentation in session 9 gave details of the Cultural Revolution which reinforced that Yonsei University Masters Thesis, and I will merge that content from Clay's present with material from TCI History Alive curriculum: the TCI History Alive curriculum includes lecture slides which shows striking visuals of the Cultural Revolution for the students, including a photo of a Professor being humiliated by Red Guards by being forced to wear a "Dunce" cap and a sign(board) critical of that professor. The photo from p. 470 in the East Asia text shows an example of the chaos happening @ universities in China during this time.
While China is one of three nations (Russia & US being the others) which have LAUNCHED people to space from its own spaceships/rockets/pads, keep in mind that China has only recently launched its own astronauts (called Taikonauts in China) into space. Though China was developing its own space exploration program in the 1960's, that Country's space exploration development was delayed as a result of the Cultural Revolution. This makes sense because China's best Scientists would not have been able to be productive amidst the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Thus, the Cultural Revolution definitely stunted China's growth as a Space Power.

Of course, what has stuck in my mind about Session 9 was the photograph of the very pregnant woman and the doctor about to give her a beyond late abortion. At some point, I had stopped taking notes and so do not recall the photographers name but felt it was unfortunate that he was kicked out of Stanford for publishing that and other photographs he took of the results of the 1 child system. It would appear he was exposing human rights violations and should have been honored for that rather than punsihed..but I am not fully versed on the details of his plight and so would ask if anyone of you would enlighten me about those details. Another idea of Mao's that was mentioned during this session was the idea that the more education a person has the less revolutionary they become...and because he was promoting revolution Mao was also promoting ignorance..well, it was very confusing and frightening that the pursuit of higher education was considered to be disloyal to the party. How awful to hear that universities were taken over by the army and/or looted and closed. Families deemed to be Bureaucratic Capitalists were not allowed to join the Red Guards and this was very hard on the children who then formed their own red guard. The pressure to conform being more important than seeking wisdom had drastic consequences.
edited by mfraser on 5/30/2011
edited by mfraser on 5/30/2011

I agree with Ron that the 1 child policy is fascinating to students. I had adiscussion with my students about this and informed them that infanticide also happened in colonial America when it was inconvenient to have a baby or too many children of the same sex were born. They found it hard to believe that it happened here in America, but it did.

This quote of yours " I guess some are just "more" than others" totally reminds me of George Orwell's Animal Farm wherein the ruling class (the pigs!) eventually corrupt the constitution and the 7th commandment which initially read "All animals are equal" is changed to "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." While this novel explores the idea of tearing down the old to build the new (an idea not totally alien to Capitalist societies), it certainly exposes the hypocrisy of leaders, like Mao and many others, who make rules precisely to rule over others.

Wow, infanticide in colonial America, sounds darkly interesting. Sally, do you have more information about this?

About infanticide in colonial America - I was reading articles from the William and Mary Quarterly and the American Quarterly, both available through JSTOR at the CSUN library.

The topics cover in this class reminded me of the day when Chines people heard that the Gang of four were down. People went out to street to have a parade.
I was a middle school student and did not know much about politics. But the school called upon us to do so. I remember that was a cold raining day. Marching on the street, we held Chairman Mao's photo and shouted slogans like " Down with the gang of four" ," Down with Jian qing" though Jing qing was already down then.
Later as I grew up, I read about her, about what she did in the" cultural revolution". I want to wait more time to see what people will say about her, maybe something different from what we read about her.