In April and May of 1989, people around the world were inspired by the protests in Tiananmen Square, then horrified when the June 4 massacre turned Beijing streets into urban killing fields. China has changed enormously in the twenty years since then, but the Communist Party’s attitude toward 1989 has remained constant. It insists there were no peaceful protests and no “massacre,” just “counterrevolutionary riots” that were pacified by soldiers who showed great restraint. It refuses to acknowledge the losses to relatives of the hundreds of victims, tries to keep young Chinese ignorant of what happened and encourages specialists in the West to stop dwelling on 1989.

This approach is part of a larger effort to change the image of the party, so that mention of its name does not bring to mind visions of the Red Guard of the 1960s, anti-Confucian rallies of the ’70s or the iconic picture of the lone man confronting a line of tanks. Instead, party leaders would like it to be associated with skyscrapers, sleek department stores and refurbished Confucian temples. These pictures fit in better with the party’s view of itself as a pragmatic organization that has moved China forward while honoring traditions, transformed cities into showplaces of modernity and raised the nation’s international status and living standards. The 2008 Olympics, seen in this light, was the most expensive rebranding campaign in world history.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 20 years, 2008 Beijing Olympics, Red Guards
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The Red Guards first originated at the affiliated middle school of Beijing Qinghua University. At that time, I was the president of the work association of the school. I saw with my own eyes the beginning of the Red Guard movement.

On June 1st, 1966, the People’s Daily published a banner written by Beijing University’s Nie Yuanzi (and 7 others) criticizing the school’s educational methods. Afterwards, the Cultural Revolution surged through all the large universities in Beijing. Students, working independently, went on strike, and the leadership organizations were paralyzed.

On June 3rd, under the leadership of comrades Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, an enlarged meeting of the Politburo was convened. The new Municipal Party Secretary Wu De and Youth League Central Committee Secretary Hu Keshi both were in attendance. The Politburo decided on eight governing principles for leading the Cultural Revolution. They also entrusted the responsibility for leading the Cultural Revolution within Beijing’s middle schools to the Communist Youth League. That night, in the Beijing municipal meeting hall, all the concerned work unit leaders gathered to attend a meeting and spread the spirit of the Politburo’s meeting. 　

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cultural Revolution, history, Red Guards
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A long forgotten photo of a young woman strapping a Red Guard arm band on the communist leader has resurfaced on the Internet and brought new infamy to Song Binbin, now a scientist living in the United States. [Full Text]

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cultural Revolution, history, Mao Zedong, Red Guards, Song Binbin
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Read the rest of Red Guards in the Arts – Tian Taiquan and Zhang Dazhong (37 words)

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cultural Revolution, painting, photography, Red Guards
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Just before the Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival, the Organising Committee suddenly issued a notice on 26 March saying the film festival was ordered to suspend and the committee was still communicating with the relevant departments. Sources say the suspension is the result of the nomination of documentary “Though I am Gone” (ÊàëËôΩÊ≠ªÂéª).

“Though I am Gone” was directed by Hu Jie (ËÉ°Êù∞), an independent film maker. The documentary is about Bian Zhongyun (Âçû‰ª≤ËÄò), the first teacher who was beaten to death by the Red Guards in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. Last year was the 40th anniversary of the tragic death of Bian Zhongyun and the documentary was shown to her family members: Why did the students beat their teacher so violently? Why have the murderers escaped prosecution? Not even an apology to Bian’s family? [Original Post]

The film (with English subtitles) is now on Youtube: 1/10

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Read the rest of Video: The First Casualty of Cultural Revolution – Letters from China (9 words)

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cultural Revolution, documentaries, Hu Jie, Red Guards, videos
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Li Qingyou vividly recalls the hot summer day 40 years ago in Tiananmen Square. He was among the 1 million members of the new cadre of radical students called Red Guards who stood at rapt attention and waved their Little Red Books as Mao Zedong exhorted them to destroy China’s “four olds” — old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits.

The historic mass rally was the first launched under the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s effort to rid the country of its feudal past and create an agrarian utopia that, over 10 years, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and scarred China’s national psyche.

But it is an anniversary that the government would rather Li, a 55-year-old retired factory manager, and other Chinese forgot. [Full Text]

See also Chinese youth leave cities to taste country life by Reuters.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cultural Revolution, Red Guards
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On a beastly summer day in 1966, in the country-side of northern Jiangsu province, 100 farmers lined up at the threshing ground of Production Team 7 in the Shen Kitchen Commune. The threshing ground doubled as a village square, where chickens and pigs had free rein. Zhou Lianchun, a gangly 11-year-old boy with a shaved head and raggedy cloth shoes, was 12th in line.

Thwack. Thwack. The line moved forward. Thwack. Thwack. It inched forward again.

Zhou reached the front of the line. A middle-aged woman, blood seeping from her nose and ears, faced him on her knees. He pulled back his right hand and, as the others ahead of him had done, smacked the left side of her face — Thwack — then slapped her again with his left hand. Thwack. The sweat from her cheeks stung his skin. [Full text]

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCP, Cultural Revolution, john pomfret, Red Guards
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Red Flag-waving Chinese soldiers, muscle-bound peasants, nudes, dancing girls and women soldiers, and scores of Mao Zedong pictures, sculptures and photographs. Whatever would the Great Helmsman have thought?

China’s Cultural Revolution, which began 40 years ago this month, is the theme of this year’s Dashanzi International Arts Festival in Beijing. Much of the work confronts some of the horror of those 10 years of hardline Communist mania which saw thousands of intellectuals and artists attacked and humiliated by dogmatic Red Guards.

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cultural Revolution, dashanzi, Red Guards
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