By addressing the issues that decimated China's monolithic elite in the late 1960s, this text illuminates not only the life and fate of Liu Shaoqi, but also the policy-making process of a revolutionary state facing the diverting exigencies of economic modernization and political development.

First published in 1993. The Cultural Revolution (CR) was undoubtedly one of the most tumultuous and dramatic periods of China's modern history. It was marked by violence, factionalism and economic disruptions. The cataclysm it created had traumatic effects on the majority of the Chinese people, both in their private and professional lives. In this study, the author's emphasise the primordial role of Mao Zedong in instigating and prolonging the Cultural Revolution.

Mao Zedong launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution thirty years ago. This important new documentary history of that calamitous event presents a selection of key primary documents -- many of which are made available here for the first time -- dealing with the Cultural Revolution's massive and bloody assault on China's political and social systems. Comprehensive in scope, this detailed work --covers inter alia the launching of the movement, the Red Guards, the inquisition of party members accused of taking the capitalist road, and the devastating impact of these events on traditional culture, the economy, and China's national defense; --offers a section of recollections by victims and perpetrators; --enhances the documents with detailed commentary, a chronology, biographies, and photographs.

As one of history's most horrific political upheavals, the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, when the Chinese Communist Party officially launched the radical movement on the orders of its autocratic chairman, Mao Zedong. He intended for the movement to revitalize China's revolutionary fervor while simultaneously accelerating the country's evolution into a true communist utopia. China's young people became the advance guard for this new revolution, forming themselves into paramilitary Red Guard units. These adolescent shock troops humiliated, beat, and murdered teachers, intellectuals, local party officials, and others whom they judged to be insufficiently devoted to Mao and his radical ideals. By the time the Cultural Revolution finally ended in 1976, it had claimed the lives of some 3 to 4 million Chinese and left many millions more physically or psychologically scarred. Illustrated with full-color and black-and-white photographs, and accompanied by a chronology, bibliography, and further resources, The Chinese Cultural Revolution, Updated Edition provides a clear and comprehensive account of how this sweeping policy changed the course of Chinese history in the 20th century. Historical spotlights and excerpts from primary source documents are also included.

China's decade-long Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution shook the politics of China and the world. Even as we approach its fiftieth anniversary, the movement remains so contentious that the Chinese Communist Party still forbids fully open investigation of its origins, development, and conclusion. Drawing upon a vital trove of scholarship, memoirs, and popular culture, this Very Short Introduction illuminates this complex, often obscure, and still controversial movement. Moving beyond the figure of Mao Zedong, Richard Curt Kraus links Beijing's elite politics to broader aspects of society and culture, highlighting many changes in daily life, employment, and the economy. Kraus also situates this very nationalist outburst of Chinese radicalism within a global context, showing that the Cultural Revolution was mirrored in the radical youth movement that swept much of the world, and that had imagined or emotional links to China's red guards. Yet it was also during the Cultural Revolution that China and the United States tempered their long hostility, one of the innovations in this period that sowed the seeds for China's subsequent decades of spectacular economic growth.

Now known to the Chinese as the "ten years of chaos," the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) brought death to thousands and persecution to millions. Xing Lu identifies the rhetorical features and explores the persuasive effects of political language and symbolic practices during the period. She examines how leaders of the Communist Party enacted a rhetoric in political contexts to legitimize power and violence and to dehumanize a group of people identified as class enemies.

First published in 1998. In this study what is proposed here is first of all to examine the effect it had on the very functioning of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and how the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, of which the country had become a victim, spilled over to this highly elitist and prestigious Ministry. In summary, it focuses on the chaos that engulfed the institution.

"There has never been anything quite like the Cultural Revolution, which disrupted life in the People's Republic of China from 1966 to 1976. It wreaked havoc in the world's most populous country, often turning life upside down and undermining the party, government, and army, weakening the economy, society, and culture. Tens of millions were hurt or killed during this period, and relatively few benefited, aside from Mao Zedong and (temporarily) the Gang of Four." "The A to Z of the Chinese Cultural Revolution provides an extensive chronology that traces the events of the revolution and the introduction puts those events in context and explains them. The bulk of the information is provided in numerous dictionary entries on important persons, places, institutions, and movements. The bibliography points to further resources, and the glossary helps those researching in Chinese." --Book Jacket.

Collection of true stories of people who lived through the Cultural Revolution in China from 1966 to 1976.