Cultural Revolution

http://www.legitgov.org/Shaming-Shunning-People-Who-Do-It-Its-Likely-Effects-Part-I

I can tell you a little about shaming and shunning -- what types of people initiate it, the way it builds, and how it is maintained. I can also speak to the the kinds of responses the shamed and shunned are liable to take in response.

This article examines the production of musical works for the Chinese orchestra during the Mao Zedong period between 1949 and 1976. It considers how certain seminal works were produced to propagate Mao's political thought, as well as the changes made to these works against the backdrop of broader political changes. I argue that Chinese music is not a monolithic entity, but a shifting set of diverse cultural productions and practices. This study suggests that the production and propagation of musical works under Mao's rule can be categorized into three periods, namely, the first period from the founding of the People's Republic of China to the dawn of the Cultural Revolution (1949-1966); the second period during the early part of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1971); and the third period during the latter half of the Cultural Revolution (1971-1976). By analyzing seminal musical works composed during the Mao period, my research will reveal how modern Chinese orchestral music was used as a political tool in the nation-building of the People's Republic of China.

For more than two decades, from 1950 until 1972, Great Britain and the People’s Republic of China had a somewhat incongruous relationship, as they maintained a state of incomplete diplomatic recognition characterized by what might be termed major internal contradictions. It featured profound Cold War ideological antagonism, particularly pronounced on the Chinese side but far from absent on that of Britain, in coexistence with substantial commercial and economic dealings, many of which were channeled, orchestrated, and facilitated through the British-administered colony of Hong Kong. Despite the fact that Hong Kong represented territory Britain had forcibly seized from China between 1842 and 1898, the revolutionary mainland regime chose to leave it a capitalist enclave under British control from 1949 until 1997, an anomalous status bestowed largely due to the substantial financial benefits China derived from keeping the city as it was. Keeping Hong Kong a mutually profitable going concern required Britain and China to cooperate, if only tacitly, in setting ground rules for running its affairs. Whereas the United States largely eschewed diplomatic and economic interchanges with China until at least the late 1960s, pressuring its Cold War allies to follow suit and ostracize the new mainland regime, Britain and Communist China could not avoid some level of communication with each other.

Chi-kwan Mark, a leading expert on China’s international relations since 1945, seeks to address what he terms the ‘everyday Cold War’ between these two protagonists in these years of limited but surprisingly significant contacts. In an outstanding monograph, Hong Kong and the Cold War: Anglo-American Relations, 1949-1957 (2004), and numerous insightful articles and book chapters, Mark has written extensively on Cold War Hong Kong, exploring the complex dilemmas that remarkable city posed, in terms of the inter-relationships among Great Britain, the US, the PRC, and the Nationalist government on Taiwan. Reluctance to recycle his earlier work is probably why, although Hong Kong features quite prominently in this study, in terms of trade, its role during the Vietnam War, the 1967 riots and the retaliation they provoked against British diplomats in Shanghai and Beijing, and the British government’s constant preoccupation with safeguarding their continued control of the Hong Kong, it is not the central focus. This despite the fact that almost certainly Hong Kong was itself the locale of the most sustained and routine of the ‘everyday’ encounters between China and Britain, the venue where the details of a functioning working relationship were negotiated and hammered out.

Mark turns instead to providing a much-needed narrative of the drawn-out path to the restoration of relatively normal diplomatic understanding between Britain and China. Drawing on British, Chinese, and US sources, he ably recounts the episodic negotiations between top-level officials on both sides, assisted by professional diplomats and well-placed intermediaries, notably Malcolm MacDonald, former British high commissioner for Southeast Asia, who developed an apparently genuine friendship with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and Foreign Minister Chen Yi after they made a pit stop in Singapore’s airport. The 1954 Geneva Conference, where then British foreign secretary Anthony Eden also came to know and respect Zhou, brought an upgrade in the Chinese and British diplomatic missions to permanent rather than ad hoc status. British trade with China grew fairly steadily, as the United Kingdom gradually relaxed the embargoes imposed on commerce with communist nations, especially China, during the Korean War.

Even so, such progress as occurred took place against a background barrage of constant communist propaganda vilification of Western powers, with the United Kingdom accorded a prominent position. British diplomats and officials in London, Hong Kong, and Beijing cheerfully came to consider as virtually routine these perennial rhetorical assaults, which occasionally blossomed into well-orchestrated mass ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations in Beijing following such landmark events as the 1956 Suez invasion or the Anglo-American intervention in Lebanon 2 years later. Communist-sponsored newspapers and the Xinhua news agency in Hong Kong were equally shrill in their criticism of British and Western policies, though if they went too far, these complaints sometimes provoked crackdowns by the Hong Kong government.

The establishment of some level of diplomatic relations with China did not imply extensive or revealing channels of communication. Until the late 1970s, members of the British mission, like those of the few other Western powers—the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and after 1964 France—with pre-1970 representation in the Chinese capital, rarely met Chinese people in non-official settings. Unless the Chinese bureaucracy wished to deliver a message of some kind, communications with the Foreign Ministry were sporadic and unpredictable. Foreign diplomats in Beijing lived in considerable comfort, except for those occasions when they became targets of communist political displeasure, but were largely isolated from the broader society to which they were assigned. They were rarely permitted to travel more than twelve miles from Beijing’s center, unless taken on carefully supervised official tours of model facilities and historic sites. Chinese diplomats in London had rather more latitude: leading Labour politician Denis Healey recalled that in the 1960s they sent their children to the local British school at which his daughter taught. By the early 1970s, the chargé could attend seminars at Chatham House, the British think tank. Even so, their movements were restricted, partly thanks due to British limitations imposed to reciprocate for those suffered by their counterparts in Beijing, and they were subject to party discipline. Diplomatic exchanges were often formulaic and confrontational.

The great breakdown of this already challenged system came in the mid to late 1960s, when the Cultural Revolution Chairman Mao Zedong had unleashed triggered anti-foreign sentiments that for a while escaped Politburo or Foreign Ministry control. Chinese Red Guards particularly resented the Hong Kong government’s forceful repression of 1967 riots, initially triggered by a labour dispute that prompted local communist activists, encouraged by Xinhua (New China News Agency) representatives in the territory, to demand an end to British rule. In retaliation, Red Guard factions—initially emboldened by an incautious endorsement from the ailing Premier Zhou Enlai—mounted physical assaults on British representatives in Shanghai and Beijing, and burned the British mission in Beijing, the culmination of a series of earlier sieges and sackings of the French, Soviet, Indian, Burmese, and Indonesian embassies. Low-level Chinese diplomats in London quickly added fuel to the fire by staging attacks on policemen watching and guarding their building in Portland Place. The destruction of the British building and the subsequent retention in China as hostages of the beleaguered diplomats, together with a Reuters correspondent taken as a bargaining chip for left-wing journalists jailed in Hong Kong—marked the nadir of Sino-British relations. Thereafter, Harold Wilson’s Labour government, followed by Edward Heath’s Conservative administration, worked not simply to repair the damage through piecemeal mutual concessions, but to move toward establishing full diplomatic relations. The Chinese government, after suppressing assorted Red Guard factions and regaining control, cooperated by rebuilding the devastated mission at its own expense. And the British closed their consulate in Tamsui, Taiwan, and eventually, after lengthy negotiations, devised a verbal formula that enabled them to leave the question of Taiwan to final resolution—still not reached—by the parties concerned.

Mark’s account makes it clear that on neither side was particularly sentimental relationship. The British and Chinese cherished few illusions about each other after dealings dating back for many years, but did have various common interests. It may be instructive that for Britain, trade came first. A Sino-British Trade Committee was created with government support in 1954, the ancestor of today’s China-British Council. Not until the early 1970s was the Great Britain China Committee (later Centre) established to promote broad Sino-British understanding. In the United States, the order was reversed, with the National Committee on US–China Relations founded in 1966 by a combination of academics, peace activists, and a few businessmen, and the US-China Business Council only established in 1973. Mark notes that, when engaged in negotiations intended to bring full diplomatic normalization, British officials eschewed the flowery panegyrics to Red China that characterized the rhetoric of US President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser. Throughout his study, Mark defends the British stance against those critics who condemn it as ‘appeasement’ of China, arguing that successive British governments rightly—and despite much provocation on China’s part—recognized that excluding China from the existing international system, including the United Nations, simply justified and encouraged communist Chinese intransigence.

The book would have benefited greatly from decent copy-editing, to correct minor errors on almost every page. References to the diplomatic ‘packing order’ in Beijing, ‘armless British police officers’ (I believe the original intent was unarmed rather than harmless), and ‘quip pro quo’ have a certain charm, but the novelty soon wears off. Bloomsbury has done awfully well financially from Harry Potter. And sloppily produced books lack a certain inherent subliminal credibility. How would Hermione handle this?

This paper is the expanded version of my webinar talk on Fr. Kappen’s Philosophy. It deals with two essays of Kappen in his book Tradition Modernity Counterculture: “Art and Social Consciousness”, and “Towards a Revolution of Symbols.” The first is based on Heidegger and the second influenced by Lacan. We shall see how these two great thinkers meet in Kappen’s writings.

嚴歌苓1990 年代末創作於海外的中篇小說《白蛇》和李碧華1980 年代末創作於香港的長篇小說《青蛇》，皆為當代女作家對白蛇傳說的重要重述，並在參照閱讀中構成了有趣的互文。李碧華筆下叛逆的青蛇，以放縱的“亂舞”張揚着越界的慾望和無政府主義的衝動，而青蛇通過身體書寫所表達出的反抗性正是1980 年代充滿活力的香港文化和女作家自身的生動寫照。嚴歌苓則是通過舞者白蛇和帶有雌雄同體意味的女粉絲青蛇從1950 年代末至1980 年代初的錯綜複雜關係，展現了階級政治和性別越界之間的緊張與消解。兩部小說通過舞蹈與書寫、文本與身體，構成了慾望表達、自我發現和心靈治愈的創造性敘事。而小說《白蛇》和《青蛇》對身體越界與性別政治的凸顯，又分別指向了大陸、香港、及海外白蛇傳說重述的“後社會主義”與“後殖民主義”新階段。

This article is an intertextual reading of Nezha naohai (Nezha Conquers the Dragon King), the second cel-animated feature produced at the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, the major animation film studio in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from the 1950s until the 1980s. Released in 1979, the story of Nezha Conquers is an adaptation from three chapters of a popular Ming Dynasty 16th-century novel about a rebellious boy-god. The year Nezha Conquers the Dragon King is released, 1979, is a turning point for the hero in PRC cinema. Visual design for Nezha Conquers the Dragon King seems to be a combination of Osamu Tezuka’s Astroboy and Chinese Communist sports propaganda. Chief director and screenwriter Wang Shuchen considered the film to be a return to fantastic subject matter after the Cultural Revolution. Nezha Conquers the Dragon King signaled a return to mythological themes in PRC film and ends with an elliptical, open-ended finale, suggesting the propensity for future social and cultural contradictions.

How did China's Communist revolution transform the nation's political culture? In this rich and vivid history of the Mao period (1949-1976), Denise Y. Ho examines the relationship between its exhibitions and its political movements. Case studies from Shanghai show how revolution was curated: museum workers collected cultural and revolutionary relics; neighborhoods, schools, and work units mounted and narrated local displays; and exhibits provided ritual space for ideological lessons and political campaigns. Using archival sources, ephemera, interviews, and other materials, Ho traces the process by which exhibitions were developed, presented, and received. Examples under analysis range from the First Party Congress Site and the Shanghai Museum to the 'class education' and Red Guard exhibits that accompanied the Socialist Education Movement and the Cultural Revolution. Operating in two modes - that of a state in power and that of a state in revolution - Mao era exhibitionary culture remains part of China's revolutionary legacy.

The Cultural Revolution (CR), launched in 1966, saw a massive effort by the Maoist leadership to engineer the socialist transformation of Chinese society. The question of why the cultural revolution happened and why at that specific time, remain central to understanding how the campaign unfolded. While post-Mao historiography of the People’s Republic of China often identifies the CR as a period of grave economic and political setbacks, a close examination of the campaign suggests a picture of nuances beyond an oversimplification of power struggle and Mao Zedong’s cult of personality. Taking into account Mao’s incentives andthe particular historical context, the causes of the CR comprised both top-downincentives and popular agency. While Mao initiated the CR to restore revolutionary consciousness among the communist party and wider society, the widespread popular enthusiasm was largely inspired by people’s perceived class interests and the expression of group identities, discontent and achievement of different ends.

While thousands of Latin Americans traveled to China during the Mao years (1949-1976) to learn from the experience of the Chinese Revolution, only Abimael Guzmán went on to lead a Maoist people’s war in his home country. Chinese records on Guzmán’s time in China are closed, but Guzmán has on three occasions talked in some detail or written about his experiences in China. This paper closely examines what Guzmán has said and written in order to better understand this pivotal time in the development of one of the most important figures in twentieth century Peruvian history.

It is imperative for us to study Philippine society and culture by virtue of the fact that nobody will study us but us. What I meant is that, it is only us1 who belongs to this society who has both the obligation and the power, to give a clear and objective analysis of who we truly are. In my view, our society is a fragmented entity that is a product of the bloody history of the country. Philippine society is the result of colonialism, imperialism, war and revolution. There is no doubt that Filipinos are brave and freedom-loving people. Our history is a testament for our never-ending struggle for justice and redemption. Yet, what I cannot understand is the sad fact that despite our courage, why it is that our society is in its utterly sorry and horrible state? Is Professor Randy David correct when he said years ago that: Is our strength, also our weakness? I concur that culture is that "complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs and any other capability and habits acquired by people as member of society." (Taylor, 1871:1 as cited in Panopio et.al.:39). But we have to immediately be clear that not all of our culture are good. Yes, we have the bayanihan, pagdadamayang-bayan, balikatan, etc, however we also have padrinoismo, palakasan, pabanguhan and even the negative aspect of "utang na loob." My view on the matter is to reclaim our noble values and beliefs, incorporate it to the best elements of our good culture in order for us to shatter and eventually destroy the hideous and shameful aspect of our bad culture and disgusting ways. In a sense, I want sort of a cultural revolution. Of course, following the spirit of the ancient Greeks and the C Wright Mills, said revolution must begin within the mind and soul of an individual citizen. Hopefully the spark that shall be unleash to that single person will ultimately explode.

The attitude in how Western classical music is perceived  has drastically changed since Mao was in power in China. So much so, that it has become a hub of classical music in the world. I chronicle some of the political and social changes that led to this about-face.

Resumo
: O presente artigo analisa as raízes do atual conflito USA X China. Aborda a
conquista do poder pelo PCC, em 1949; o caráter camponês e escassamente proletário daquela revolução; os primeiros anos da revolução e o I Plano Quinquenal; o lançamento, fracasso e as consequências do Gra nde Salto Adiante (1958 60); a contraofensiva e vitória de Mao Tsé Tung e de sua facção quando da Grande Revolução Cultura Proletária (1965-69); os projeto, desdobramentos e crise da Revolução Cultural; o fortalecimento da economia mercantil na China,; a morte de Mao Tsé Tung; o retorno de Deng Xiaoping e o fim da Era Maoísta (1949 1978.)
Palavras-chave: China. Grande Sa lto Adiante. Revolução Cultural Cultural.

Abstract: This article analyzes the roots of the current USA X China conflict. It addresses the conquest of power by t he CCP in 1949. The peasant and sparsely proletarian character of that revolution. The first years of the revolution and the First Five Year Plan. The launch, failure and consequences of the Great Leap Forward (1958 60). The counteroffensive and victory of Mao Zedong and his faction during the Great Revolution Proletarian Culture (1965 69). Project, developments and crisis of the Cultural Revolution. The strengthening of the mercantile economy in China, the death of Mao Zedong, the return of Deng Xiaoping a nd the end of the Maoist Era (1949 1978.)1978.).
Keywords : China. Great Leap Forward. Cultural Revolution.

This article examines the diary as a historical source and method for researching Maoist China. It surveys the changing and contested meanings of the everyday form, followed by a discussion on two useful interpretive approaches to Mao-era diaries, each of which is underpinned by distinct theoretical and historiographical orientations. It argues that the diary constitutes a complex but rewarding historical source, offering historians of modern China new possibilities and challenges, from the empirical quest for reconstructing social history “from below” to the discursive pursuit of theorizing revolutionary subject-formation in relation to shifting cultural politics of identification and everyday life.

Zhang Yimou's Under the Hawthorn Tree (2010), an adaptation of a popular 2007 internet novel, drew polarized responses in China for its portrayal of passionate, self-sacrificing  and ultimately tragic love during the late stages of the Cultural Revolution. Media and audiences seized particularly on the invocation in the official marketing campaign of 'ganjing [de] aiqing' or 'pure love' as the film’s central topic. Concepts of purity served to publicise not only the film itself but also the off-screen story of its production, in particular Zhang Yimou’s reported difficulty in finding a sufficiently 'pure' actress to play the female lead. However, many online amateur and professional reviewers of the film rejected and mocked the film’s pretentions to ‘purity’, questioning its modes of sexual storytelling and its politics of sexual citizenship in a China increasingly tolerant of pre-marital sex. This paper analyses online comments on Hawthorn posted to the popular Douban movie review website, finding that styles of contention found more broadly on the internet in China can characterize online movie reviewing too, albeit with particular attention in this case to notions, on the one hand, of sentimental romanticism, and other the other, of a young generation’s sexual self-assertion.

Вопрос Гайатри Чакроворти Спивак «могут ли угнетенные говорить» может быть поставлен не только применительно к женщинам третьего мира или жителям бывших колоний. Тот же самый вопрос еще за полвека до возникновения post-colonial studies был выдвинут в ходе культурной революции в советской России, только его предметом была фигура рабочего, прощающегося с дискурсивной немотой. Вопрос о роли интеллектуала в теоретическом представительстве от лица рабочих и практики их политической борьбы, ставший главным предметом знаменитого диалога между Мишелем Фуко и Жилем Делёзом, в 1920-е находился в центре дискуссии между ЛЕФом и РАППом. Вопрос об идеологичности форм и институтов, выдвинутый Луи Альтюссером в «Идеологии и идеологических аппаратах государства», пронизывал  конкурирующие концепции «литературы факта» и «учебы у классиков», задавшие основную развилку культурной революции. История формирования советского субъекта не только по-новому раскрывается в свете теоретической рефлексии 1970-1990-х годов о природе репрезентации, языке и господстве, механизмах субъективации и политиках идентичности, но и позволяет заново описать интеллектуальную историю самой этой теоретической рефлексии.

Alice Bombardier, "Entwürfe von Modernität von der Miniaturmalerei bis in die Gegenwart. Vier Etappen der iranischen Malerei im 20. Jahrhundert / Concepts of Modernity from Miniature Painting to the Present: Four Stages of Iranian Painting in the 20th Century", in Dorothée Brill, Joachim Jäger, Gabriel Montur (eds.), Die Teheran Moderne. Ein Reader zur Kunst im Iran seit 1960 / The Tehran Modern. A Reader about Art in Iran since 1960, Berlin (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) 2017, pp. 122-137.

https://www.smb-webshop.de/epochen/20.-jahrhundert/3672/die-teheran-moderne

https://www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/news-detail/news/2017/03/01/reader-zur-iranischen-moderne-erschienen.html

http://www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/pressemitteilung/news/2017/03/01/differenzierter-blick-auf-die-iranische-moderne.html

В последние десятилетия мир живет в условиях дробления общества на множество формально аполитичных, но активных и даже агрессивных групп: некурящие против курильщиков, сторонники ЗОЖ против всех остальных,  Женщины против мужчин,  зеленые против всех прочих,  вегетарианцы против  любителей мяса, верующие против неверующих. Случайно ли это? Или результат  продвижения идеологии глобализации в качестве культурной революции и механизма манипуляций обществом.

PROBLEMS OF ADAPTATION AND DISADAPTATION IN THE PERIOD OF CHANGE OF EPOCHS
In recent decades, the world lives in conditions of fragmentation of society into many formally non-political, but an active and even aggressive groups: non-smokers against smokers, supporters of the HLS versus all others, Women against men, green against all the others, vegetarians vs meat-lovers, religious people against non-believers. Is it a coincidence? Or is the result of promotion of the ideology of globalization as the cultural revolution and the mechanism of manipulating the society.

In 1937–38, Igor V. Sposobin and three co-authors at the Moscow Conservatory published Uchebnik garmonii [Harmony Textbook]. This was the first officially approved harmony textbook in the USSR, which came to be adopted as “the basic textbook for courses on harmony in the music
schools of the Soviet Union” (Vladimir Protopopov, 1960). Characterized by its promulgation of the “scientifically based” theory of harmonic functions, this book was destined to be read by many more musicians in a foreign land. In 1955–56, Boris A. Arapov decreed at meetings held at the Central Conservatory of Music in China that the problem posed by the ethnicization of harmony should be solved by combining musical elements that are considered ethnically distinct with functional harmony. Wu Zuqiang, who had studied at the Moscow Conservatory in the 1950s before he headed the Central Conservatory in the 1980s, published a chapter from Uchebnik
garmonii already in 1955. The first Chinese translation of the whole book by Zhu Shimin was then published in 1957–58. The book soon attained canonic status in China and has been used in virtually all Chinese music institutions up to the present day. It is listed in the entrance examination
syllabi of selected conservatories and reputable music theorists have published model answers to the exercises it contains. This article investigates how the Chinese reception of Uchebnik garmonii
diverges from the sources that had inspired Sposobin and his colleagues to compose it in the first place, and throws light on the far-reaching impacts and ramifications of Uchebnik garmonii in China.

Jones, M. (2004). Forging an ASEAN Identity: The Challenge to Construct a Shared Destiny
In Contemporary Southeast Asia, 26(1), pp. 140-154.

ASEAN has formulated a planned integration among its ten member nations and has challenged its citizens to embrace a regional identity. This article raises and attempts to answer the following questions: How might ASEAN develop strategies to enable citizens in transitioning from nation-state mentalities to regional and possible cultural citizenry? How will the regional and national governing bodies facilitate the necessary empowerment of diverse populations to form an ASEAN identity? What sorts of affiliations will engender the necessary social capital to develop civic-minded people with a sense of belonging together? How might education play a role in this process? These questions are raised on the basis of the argument that the call for ASEAN identity delivers a challenge to construct dynamic institutions and foster sufficient amounts of social capital. The underlying assumption is that the creation of a regional identity is of special interest to ASEAN and the intent of the of the 2020 Vision policy document was to reassert the belief in a regional framework designed as an action plan related to human development and civic empowerment. Accordingly, these assumptions will be the basis for recommendations and strategies in developing a participatory regional identity.

In an autobiographical account, the author reflects on the ambiguous role that the Cultural Revolution played in his philosophical and sinological education. He discusses the position of the "Frankfurt School" and the "New Left" in regard to China and points out irritating resemblances between German and Chinese recent history.