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Red China Blues
''Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now'' is a 1996 book by Chinese-Canadian journalist Jan Wong. Wong describes how the youthful passion for left-wing and socialist politics drew her to participate in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Speaking little Chinese, she became one of the first Westerners to enroll in Beijing University in 1972. However, her idealism did not survive the harsh realities and hypocrisy she saw in the China of the 1970s, and she abandoned her support of Maoism. She eventually worked as a foreign correspondent for ''The Globe and Mail'' of Canada. Wong was an eyewitness to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, which the book describes in great detail. After the Tiananmen Square massacre, Wong interviewed Chinese dissidents such as Wei Jingsheng and Ding Zilin. Jan also recalls memories of Madame Mao and the Gang of Four as they were imprisoned after Mao Zedong died. Synopsis 1989 Student Protests In 1988, Wong returned to Beijing as ''The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jan Wong
Jan Wong (; born August 15, 1952) is a Canadian academic, journalist, and writer. Wong worked for ''The Globe and Mail'', serving as Beijing correspondent from 1988 to 1994, when she returned to write from Canada. She is the daughter of Montreal businessman Bill Wong, founder of Bill Wong's buffet in 1963, and earlier of the House of Wong which was the city's first Chinese restaurant to open outside Chinatown. Life after the Cultural Revolution Towards the end of the Cultural Revolution period, she left McGill University and flew to China. The Maoist became one of two foreign college students permitted to study at Beijing University. While at Beijing she denounced Yin Luoyi, a trusting fellow student who had sought her help to escape communist China to the West. The student was subsequently shamed and expelled. "She suffered a lot ... she was sent to the countryside for hard labour. When she came back, she fought hard to clear her name." Long after, having returned for a second v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dissident
A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established Political system, political or Organized religion, religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20th century, coinciding with the rise of authoritarian governments in countries such as Fascist Italy (1922-43), Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Empire of Japan, Imperial Japan, Francoist Spain, the Soviet Union (and later Russia), Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Iran, China, and Turkmenistan. In the Western world, there are historical examples of people who have been considered and have considered themselves dissidents, such as the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. In totalitarian countries, dissidents are often incarcerated or executed without explicit political accusations, or due to infringements of the very same laws they are opposing, or because they are supporting civil liberties such as freedom of speech. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bureaucracy
The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected officials. Today, bureaucracy is the administrative system governing any large institution, whether publicly owned or privately owned. The public administration in many jurisdictions and sub-jurisdictions exemplifies bureaucracy, but so does any centralized hierarchical structure of an institution, e.g. hospitals, academic entities, business firms, professional societies, social clubs, etc. There are two key dilemmas in bureaucracy. The first dilemma revolves around whether bureaucrats should be autonomous or directly accountable to their political masters. The second dilemma revolves around bureaucrats' behavior strictly following the law or whether they have leeway to determine appropriate solutions for varied circumstances. Various commen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square or Tian'anmen Square (; 天安门广场; Pinyin: ''Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng''; Wade–Giles: ''Tʻien1-an1-mên2 Kuang3-chʻang3'') is a city square in the city center of Beijing, China, named after the eponymous Tiananmen ("Gate of Heavenly Peace") located to its north, which separates it from the Forbidden City. The square contains the Monument to the People's Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China in the square on October 1, 1949; the anniversary of this event is still observed there. The size of Tiananmen Square is 765 x 282 meters (215,730 m2 or 53.31 acres). It has great cultural significance as it was the site of several important events in Chinese history. Outside China, the square is best known for the 1989 protests and massacre that ended with a military crackdown, which is also known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
People's Liberation Army At Tiananmen Square Protests Of 1989
During the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in Beijing, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) played a decisive role in enforcing martial law, suppressing the demonstrations by force and upholding the authority of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The subject of the Tiananmen protests in general and the military's role in the crackdown remains forbidden from public discussion in China. The killings in Beijing continue to taint the legacies of the party elders, led by Deng Xiaoping, and weigh on the generation of leaders whose careers advanced as their more moderate colleagues were purged or sidelined at the time. Within China, the role of the military in 1989 remains a subject of private discussion within the ranks of the party leadership and PLA. Deployment during initial stages of protests The student movement in Beijing in the spring of 1989 was triggered by the death of former CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang on April 15. Well before martial law was decl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Students' Hunger Strike Of The 1989 Tiananmen Protests
The first of two student hunger strikes during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre began on May 13, 1989, in Beijing. The students said that they were willing to risk their lives to gain the government's attention. They believed that because plans were in place for the grand welcoming of Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, on May 15, at Tiananmen Square, the government would respond. Although the students gained a dialogue session with the government on May 14, no rewards materialized.''The Gate of Heavenly Peace''. (1995, Brookline, MA: Long Bow Group, Inc, 1995.), VHS. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did not heed the students' demands and moved the welcome ceremony to the airport. On May 15, students officially created the Hunger Strike Committee to organize operations within the square. By May 16, there were 3,100 hunger strikers. Ambulances and medical help were readily available for the fainting students at the squa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Student And Government Dialogue During The 1989 Student Movement
During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in Beijing, China, students demanded a dialogue between Chinese government officials and student representatives. In total, three sessions of dialogue took place between the students and government representatives. The demand for dialogue began on April 22 during Hu Yaobang's official memorial. Three students knelt on the steps to the Great Hall holding a large paper containing seven demands and waited for a party official to accept their petition. No party official, however, came out to receive their list of demands. The main purpose of dialogue was to resolve growing problems such as corruption and rising living costs within China. In order to prepare for potential dialogue, the Dialogue Delegation was created. It was organized by Shen Tong of Peking University and Xiang Xiaoji of University of Political Science and Law and included elected representatives from various universities. Students requested that any student-government dialog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sino-Soviet Split
The Sino-Soviet split was the breaking of political relations between the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union caused by doctrinal divergences that arose from their different interpretations and practical applications of Marxism–Leninism, as influenced by their respective geopolitics during the Cold War of 1947–1991. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sino-Soviet debates about the interpretation of orthodox Marxism became specific disputes about the Soviet Union's policies of national de-Stalinization and international peaceful coexistence with the Western Bloc, which Chinese founding father Mao Zedong decried as revisionism. Against that ideological background, China took a belligerent stance towards the Western world, and publicly rejected the Soviet Union's policy of peaceful coexistence between the Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc. In addition, Beijing resented the Soviet Union's growing ties with India due to factors such as the Sino-Indian border dispute, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hu Yaobang
Hu Yaobang (; 20 November 1915 – 15 April 1989) was a high-ranking official of the People's Republic of China. He held the top office of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1981 to 1987, first as Chairman from 1981 to 1982, then as General Secretary from 1982 to 1987. Hu joined the CCP in the 1930s, and rose to prominence as a comrade of Deng Xiaoping. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Hu was purged, recalled, and purged again by Mao Zedong. After Deng rose to power, following the death of Mao Zedong, Hu played a role in the "Boluan Fanzheng" program. Throughout the 1980s, Hu pursued a series of economic and political reforms under the direction of Deng. Hu's political and economic reforms made him the enemy of several powerful Party elders, who opposed free market reforms and Hu's reforms of China's government. When widespread student protests occurred across China in 1987, Hu's political opponents blamed Hu for the disruptions, claiming that Hu's "laxness" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fang Lizhi
Fang Lizhi (also Li-Zhi; February 12, 1936 – April 6, 2012) was a Chinese astrophysicist, vice-president of the University of Science and Technology of China, and activist whose liberal ideas inspired the pro-democracy student movement of 1986–87 and, finally, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Because of his activism, he was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party in January 1987. For his work, Fang was a recipient of the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1989, given each year to an individual whose courageous activism is at the heart of the human rights movement and in the spirit of Robert F. Kennedy's vision and legacy. He was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980, but his position was revoked after 1989. Life and career in China Fang was born on 12 February 1936 in Beijing. His father worked on the railway. In 1948, a year before the People's Liberation Army took over the city, as a student of the Beijing No. 4 High School, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ren Wanding
Ren Wanding (born c. 1944) is a Chinese dissident who was jailed several times for his pro-democracy activism. He is the founder of the China Human Rights League. Biography In the late 1970s, he was jailed for four years for his leadership of the Democracy Wall movement. After his release, he worked as an accountant. In 1988, he published an essay through foreign press commemorating the movement's tenth anniversary. When asked if he feared a second imprisonment, Ren replied, "I went through some very frightening experiences ... But China has no democracy and no human rights, and its living standard is too low. These are even more frightening." In 1989, he was arrested again for speaking at the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Ren was the only one of the 71 arrested dissidents who did not recant his position when on trial. He was sentenced to seven years in prison, leading Amnesty International to name him a prisoner of conscience. In 1992, authorities evicted Ren's wife and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
