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Heroes Of Chinas Great Leap Forward
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Book Synopsis Heroes of China's Great Leap Forward by : Richard King
Download or read book Heroes of China's Great Leap Forward written by Richard King and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2010-05-10 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heroes of China’s Great Leap Forward presents contrasting narratives of the most ambitious and disastrous mass movement in modern Chinese history. The objective of the Great Leap, when it was launched in the late 1950s, was to catapult China into the ranks of the great military and industrial powers with no assistance from the outside world; it resulted in a famine that killed tens of millions of the nation’s peasants. Li Zhun’s "A Brief Biography of Li Shuangshuang," written while the movement was underway, celebrates the Great Leap as it was supposed to be: a time of optimism, dynamism, and shared purpose. A spirited young peasant woman, freed from the restrictions of home life, launches a canteen and wins the recognition of authorities and the admiration of her husband. The story—and the film that followed it—made Li Shuangshuang the greatest fictional heroine of the Great Leap. In contrast, Zhang Yigong’s short novel The Story of the Criminal Li Tongzhong, written two decades later, was one of the first works published in China to suggest a much darker side to the Great Leap. A village official leads a raid on a state granary to feed starving peasants; he is later arrested and dies a criminal. Although Zhang stopped short of portraying the horrors of famine, his tone of moral outrage provides a rejoinder to the triumphalism of "Li Shuangshuang." The stories are accompanied by an introduction to the Great Leap and portraits of the two writers, including their recollections of that traumatic time and the creation of their very different heroes.
Book Synopsis The World Turned Upside Down by : Yang Jisheng
Download or read book The World Turned Upside Down written by Yang Jisheng and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yang Jisheng’s The World Turned Upside Down is the definitive history of the Cultural Revolution, in withering and heartbreaking detail. As a major political event and a crucial turning point in the history of the People’s Republic of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) marked the zenith as well as the nadir of Mao Zedong’s ultra-leftist politics. Reacting in part to the Soviet Union’s "revisionism" that he regarded as a threat to the future of socialism, Mao mobilized the masses in a battle against what he called "bourgeois" forces within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This ten-year-long class struggle on a massive scale devastated traditional Chinese culture as well as the nation’s economy. Following his groundbreaking and award-winning history of the Great Famine, Tombstone, Yang Jisheng here presents the only history of the Cultural Revolution by an independent scholar based in mainland China, and makes a crucial contribution to understanding those years' lasting influence today. The World Turned Upside Down puts every political incident, major and minor, of those ten years under extraordinary and withering scrutiny, and arrives in English at a moment when contemporary Chinese governance is leaning once more toward a highly centralized power structure and Mao-style cult of personality.
Download or read book Hungry Ghosts written by C J Barker and published by Book Guild Publishing. This book was released on 2024-03-28 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lives of Vic Woods and Ruth Wolfe, working-class teenagers from Liverpool and London, are profoundly disrupted by the arrival of World War II. Ruth’s journey leads her to aerial photographic interpretation, though her aspirations for advancement are denied, while Vic’s wartime experiences with bomber command haunt him long after the war is over. Their post-war marriage and tumultuous relationship with their son, James, make for a gripping narrative of trauma, conflict and, ultimately, love. Set against the backdrop of World War II and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, Hungry Ghosts transports readers into the drama of two pivotal eras in history, exploring the intergenerational impact of war, particularly on the intricate relationships between fathers and sons. Hungry Ghosts is not just a war story; it’s a timeless exploration of family bonds and the indelible scars left by war.
Book Synopsis Mao's Great Famine by : Frank Dikötter
Download or read book Mao's Great Famine written by Frank Dikötter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine that recasts the era of Mao Zedong and the history of the People's Republic of China. "Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up to and overtake Britain in less than 15 years The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives." So opens Frank Dikötter's riveting, magnificently detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented because access to Communist Party archives has long been restricted to all but the most trusted historians. A new archive law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that "fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era." Dikötter makes clear, as nobody has before, that far from being the program that would lift the country among the world's superpowers and prove the power of Communism, as Mao imagined, the Great Leap Forward transformed the country in the other direction. It became the site not only of "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history,"--at least 45 million people were worked, starved, or beaten to death--but also of "the greatest demolition of real estate in human history," as up to one-third of all housing was turned into rubble). The experiment was a catastrophe for the natural world as well, as the land was savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. In a powerful mesghing of exhaustive research in Chinese archives and narrative drive, Dikötter for the first time links up what happened in the corridors of power-the vicious backstabbing and bullying tactics that took place among party leaders-with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. His magisterial account recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.
Book Synopsis A Social History of Maoist China by : Felix Wemheuer
Download or read book A Social History of Maoist China written by Felix Wemheuer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new social history of Maoist China provides an accessible view of the complex and tumultuous period when China came under Communist rule.
Book Synopsis The Great Famine in China, 1958-1962 by : Xun Zhou
Download or read book The Great Famine in China, 1958-1962 written by Xun Zhou and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on previously closed archives that have since been made inaccessible again, this volume contains the most crucial primary documents concerning the fate of the Chinese peasantry between 1957 and 1962, covering everything from cannibalism and selective killing to mass murder.
Book Synopsis Mao's Last Revolution by : Roderick MACFARQUHAR
Download or read book Mao's Last Revolution written by Roderick MACFARQUHAR and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 742 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains why Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, and shows his Machiavellian role in masterminding it. This book documents the Hobbesian state that ensued. Power struggles raged among Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Qing - Mao's wife and leader of the Gang of Four - while Mao often played one against the other.
Book Synopsis The Origins Of The Great Leap Forward by : Jean-luc Domenach
Download or read book The Origins Of The Great Leap Forward written by Jean-luc Domenach and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 1996-03-21 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major study of the Great Leap Forward, this seminal volume has now been translated into English for a wider audience. Like no other work, it suggests compelling political and social answers to questions that have long plagued scholars: How could a party with such a successful rural base launch a movement so divorced from reality—especially in the countryside? Why was the movement pressed to the point of social chaos and economic collapse, giving rise to arguably the greatest famine in human history?Utilizing a wealth of primary material, Jean-Luc Domenach focuses on the central China province of Henan, which emerged as a national model of the Great Leap and was one of the most devastated by its failure. The author's documentary sources enable him to illuminate the development of provincial and local political life as well as to gauge popular reactions to the dictates of the center. Domenach presents a lucid analysis of the setbacks in agriculture in 1956 and 1957, the rise of economic corruption, and the launch of the CCP rectification campaign in 1957.Despite the enormous impact of the Great Leap on Chinese politics and economics in the decades that followed, it has proven immensely difficult to research. Domenach's contribution thus stands out as an original and important work on the period.
Download or read book A Chinese Life written by Philippe Otie and published by Harry N. Abrams. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This graphic novel traces the development of the modern Chinese state while the author chronicles the trials and tribulations of the Chinese everyman as he embraces the new order in childhood, serves in the military and with agricultural labor, and becomes a member of the Communist Party.
Book Synopsis Eating Bitterness by : Kimberley Ens Manning
Download or read book Eating Bitterness written by Kimberley Ens Manning and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, Mao Zedong declared that "not even one person shall die of hunger." Yet some 30 million peasants died of starvation and exhaustion during the Great Leap Forward. Eating Bitterness reveals how men and women in rural and urban settings, from the provincial level to the grassroots, experienced the changes brought on by the party leaders' attempts to modernize China. This landmark volume lifts the curtain of party propaganda to expose the suffering of citizens and the deeply contested nature of state-society relations in Maoist China.
Book Synopsis The Cultural Revolution by : Frank Dikötter
Download or read book The Cultural Revolution written by Frank Dikötter and published by Bloomsbury Press. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concluding volume--following Mao's Great Famine and The Tragedy of Liberation--in Frank Dikötter's award-winning trilogy chronicling the Communist revolution in China. After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives from 1958–1962, an aging Mao Zedong launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The Cultural Revolution's goal was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalistic elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. Young students formed the Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semiautomatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people. The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976 draws for the first time on hundreds of previously classified party documents, from secret police reports to unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches. After the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the market and hollow out the party's ideology. By showing how economic reform from below was an unintended consequence of a decade of violent purges and entrenched fear, The Cultural Revolution casts China's most tumultuous era in a wholly new light.
Book Synopsis Forgotten Voices of Mao's Great Famine, 1958-1962 by : Xun Zhou
Download or read book Forgotten Voices of Mao's Great Famine, 1958-1962 written by Xun Zhou and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful account of China’s Great Famine as told through the voices of those who survived it
Book Synopsis Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World by : Rebecca E. Karl
Download or read book Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World written by Rebecca E. Karl and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-13 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout this lively and concise historical account of Mao Zedong’s life and thought, Rebecca E. Karl places the revolutionary leader’s personal experiences, social visions and theory, military strategies, and developmental and foreign policies in a dynamic narrative of the Chinese revolution. She situates Mao and the revolution in a global setting informed by imperialism, decolonization, and third worldism, and discusses worldwide trends in politics, the economy, military power, and territorial sovereignty. Karl begins with Mao’s early life in a small village in Hunan province, documenting his relationships with his parents, passion for education, and political awakening during the fall of the Qing dynasty in late 1911. She traces his transition from liberal to Communist over the course of the next decade, his early critiques of the subjugation of women, and the gathering force of the May 4th movement for reform and radical change. Describing Mao’s rise to power, she delves into the dynamics of Communist organizing in an overwhelmingly agrarian society, and Mao’s confrontations with Chiang Kaishek and other nationalist conservatives. She also considers his marriages and romantic liaisons and their relation to Mao as the revolutionary founder of Communism in China. After analyzing Mao’s stormy tenure as chairman of the People’s Republic of China, Karl concludes by examining his legacy in China from his death in 1976 through the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Book Synopsis Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature by : Ming Dong Gu
Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature written by Ming Dong Gu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature presents a comprehensive overview of Chinese literature from the 1910s to the present day. Featuring detailed studies of selected masterpieces, it adopts a thematic-comparative approach. By developing an innovative conceptual framework predicated on a new theory of periodization, it thus situates Chinese literature in the context of world literature, and the forces of globalization. Each section consists of a series of contributions examining the major literary genres, including fiction, poetry, essay drama and film. Offering an exciting account of the century-long process of literary modernization in China, the handbook’s themes include: Modernization of people and writing Realism, rmanticism and mdernist asthetics Chinese literature on the stage and screen Patriotism, war and revolution Feminism, liberalism and socialism Literature of reform, reflection and experimentation Literature of Taiwan, Hong Kong and new media This handbook provides an integration of biographical narrative with textual analysis, maintaining a subtle balance between comprehensive overview and in-depth examination. As such, it is an essential reference guide for all students and scholars of Chinese literature.
Book Synopsis Three months in Mao's China by : Kim van der Zouw
Download or read book Three months in Mao's China written by Kim van der Zouw and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the fall of 1964, sinologist Erik Zürcher traveled for the first time to China, a country he had been studying since 1947. A collection of Zürcher's personal writings from his trip, including letters and diary entries, Three Months in Mao's China offers not only new insights about the great scholar, but also a rich picture of communist China, which was in those days still almost completely inaccessible to Westerners. During a tumultuous time in world politics, as Nikita Khrushchev was deposed, Lyndon Johnson won the US presidential election against Barry Goldwater, and China became a nuclear power, Zürcher experienced the reality of China under Mao Zedong. Only recently discovered, these documents portray through an expert's eye a land in the midst of its own massive political, social, and economic change. Both a fascinating account by an informed outsider and a reminder of just how much China and the rest of the world have changed over the last fifty years, this is essential reading for anyone interested in East Asia and Asian history as a whole. Erik Zürcher (1928-2008) was professor of the history of East Asia at Leiden University. Erik-Jan Zürcher is professor of Turkish studies at Leiden University. Kim van der Zouw is editor of educational material. Vivien Collingwood is a translator and editor based in the Netherlands
Book Synopsis The Coming Collapse of China by : Gordon G. Chang
Download or read book The Coming Collapse of China written by Gordon G. Chang and published by Random House. This book was released on 2001-09-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China is hot. The world sees a glorious future for this sleeping giant, three times larger than the United States, predicting it will blossom into the world's biggest economy by 2010. According to Chang, however, a Chinese-American lawyer and China specialist, the People's Republic is a paper dragon. Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao's death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere: Deflation grips the economy, state-owned enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly insolvent, foreign investment continues to decline, and Communist party corruption eats away at the fabric of society. Beijing's cautious reforms have left the country stuck midway between communism and capitalism, Chang writes. With its impending World Trade Organization membership, for the first time China will be forced to open itself to foreign competition, which will shake the country to its foundations. Economic failure will be followed by government collapse. Covering subjects from party politics to the Falun Gong to the government's insupportable position on Taiwan, Chang presents a thorough and very chilling overview of China's present and not-so-distant future.
Download or read book Wild Swans written by Jung Chang and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-20 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author. An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.
