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Ec15-1: Chinese Dream
Photographer/Creator: The creator is unknown
The publisher is Jiefangjun zong zhengzhibu xuanchuanwei (解放军总政治部宣传委)
Who owns it: chineseposters.net (?)
The script in the photo says, “The Chinese Dream is the dream of a strong army.” Made in 2013, the photo shows President Xi Jinping pointing out into the distance. Next to him are two historical Chinese monuments (a temple and a tower). I believe the temple is the Temple of Heaven (I could be totally off). The historical relevance of the temple is that it was where emperors went on an annual pilgrimage to pray for a good harvest. I can’t identify the tower, but it looks to have historical significance based on its construction/design. In the background is the PRC’s flag and aspects of the Great Hall of the People, which is the symbol of the PRC. It’s important to note that the photo is obviously digitally edited as it is cut out of Xi and the monuments.
This propaganda poster is a response to what President Xi coined for the future, “the Chinese Dream,” where all Chinese desire a strong and prosperous nation to escape past humiliations. There are four parts to this so-called Chinese Dream: Strong China, Civilized China, Harmonious China, and Beautiful China. In this case, Xi is focused on solidifying and making his army strong, which is under the first part of the Chinese Dream: Strong China.
This image connects to this week’s topic of the current situation in China and the rise of President Xi. This shows what China is focusing on and how different it may be from previous administrations (Mao).
Source Consulted:
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Down the Rabbit Hole: Dalai Lama
Topic: Dalai Lama
The course material that got me inspired to go down the rabbit hole was the reading from Wednesday:
Dillon, Michael. China: A Modern History. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. (ebook Trexler): Chapter 16 “Tibet and Xinjiang”
Reading about the Dalai Lama and the cultural and religious significance of the leadership was so interesting. I knew vaguely of the Dalai Lama and the Buddhist reincarnation process. Still, I wasn’t aware of how extensive and meaningful his position was to a wide range of communities that goes beyond Tibet. I learned that the 14th Dalai Lama is very different from his predecessors; rather than isolating and being hidden, he is very open in advocating for nonviolence and peace in Tibet. He is a celebrity in every way possible. I wasn’t aware that the Dalai Lama could retire, but in 2011– he stepped down as the political head of the Tibetan government in exile. The future regarding reincarnation is still uncertain and ambiguous, but the idea is that the decision would lie with the Dalai Lama and his religious advisors– not China.
First Source: Under the Dalai Lama’s official website, a brief biography of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is attached that discusses his education, leadership responsibilities, the democratization process, peace initiatives, universal recognition, political retirement, and the future.
I believe that this source is a great way to obtain ‘objective’ information on the current Dalai Lama as it comes from him and his advisors/people personally. There is detailed information on his education that I would not have gotten elsewhere. The information regarding the future of the Dalai Lama and whether the reincarnation will continue would be best to be obtained from the personal website of the Dalai Lama.
Second Source: On the Britannica website on the Dalai Lama, there is a more thorough biography of the line of the Dalai Lamas. It is also very descriptive in explaining the 14th Dalai Lama’s backstory and the climate and political significance of his life, which was somewhat understated in the first source. This source is more explicit in the information on the Dalai Lama, including his ‘personality’ and how different he is from the previous Dalai Lamas. However, the source isn’t the best to rely on when writing a paper or solely using this to summarize the Dalai Lama’s life.
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Week 14: Blog Post
The backstory of Tibet and Xinjiang was necessary for understanding the cultural differences and history between these two autonomous Chinese regions and their relations with China. Understandably, these regions were tense and in disagreement about being annexed and under the subjugation of China, especially when they had their taste of freedom for a moment.
We learned about the importance of the religion and culture in Tibet with the presence of the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, is believed to have been consistently reincarnated for over 500 years. This long line has been revered and respected by people all over the world, which the PRC finds threatening. The PRC had repeatedly attempted to erase Tibet’s culture and religious practices, as shown during the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards, some of who were ethnic Tibetans, had assaulted monasteries and attempted to systematically destroy the Four Olds– old customs, old habits, old culture, and old thinking.
After the failed 1959 Tibetan uprising, the Dalai Lama escaped to India– Dharamshala was given to him by India. The current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, advocates for the well-being of the Tibetans and for the right of sovereignty with the relinquishment of Chinese authority—his fight for freedom accumulated in 1989 when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
This recognized respectable international award was presumably insulting to the PRC as it directly awarded and ‘enabled’ a dissenter in the international community. It also highlighted the human rights violations that the PRC wanted hidden and out of the spotlight. In his speech, the Dalai Lama championed his Five Point Peace Plan, which includes transforming Tibet into a non-violent zone that he coined as the zone of Ahimoa, where it would be demilitarized and have environmental protection. He urged China to abandon the Chinese population transfer policy that encouraged Han Chinese to integrate into Tibet and make Tibetans a minority population. He desired human rights and freedom for Tibetans who are subjugated under China. He also deeply honed his desire to restore and protect Tibet’s natural environment that China is threatening. Finally, he wanted negotiations between Tibet and the Chinese people for everyone to live in unity and peace.
The fate of Tibet and Xinjiang is still unclear despite the years that passed since the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The lack of progress is evident as China is not being ‘punished’ or reprimanded for its human rights violation. China’s resources, labor, and people make it difficult for countries like the United States to resist negotiations or trade agreements. We see this in the speech that Clinton shares, where he attempts to distinguish China’s economical use from its horrible human rights record. Essentially, he is putting money and economic welfare over the liberties of people under the weak process of moral suasion. Pumping more money into China would not change any of the violations that China committed because it does not recognize the violations.
Sources Consulted:
- Dillon, Michael. China: A Modern History. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. (ebook Trexler): Chapter 16 “Tibet and Xinjiang”
- “Dalai Lama and “Ahimsa: for Tibet: The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, December 10, 1989” In The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection. Third ed. Edited by Janet Chen et. al. W. W. Norton & Company, 2014.
- “President Clinton Reevaluates Human Rights as element of China Policy, May 27, 1994” In The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection. Third ed. Edited by Janet Chen et. al. W. W. Norton & Company, 2014.
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Week 13 Blog Post
For Wednesday’s readings, I chose Option A: Women after 1978.
China consistently motions back to the past for inspiration and strength, as seen in its Tiananmen Square protests. Yet, at the same time, China as a whole has not been able to persevere in its social limitations.
In class, we discussed the problematic nature of sex-selected abortions, where typically female fetuses were aborted due to the social preferences for male children in the light of the one-child policy. Because it was ‘mandatory’ to have one child due to the growing population in China, many people aspired to have a boy as the boy would further the family line. At the same time, the girls were expected to follow their husbands and become part of their husbands’ families. In consequence, we saw an influx of the male population with a decrease in the female population.
The CCP was not shy about its advocating for eugenics. They encouraged mothers to abort if the fetus was likely to be handicapped or diseased. Additionally, the CCP encouraged people to abstain from marrying those who were handicapped or had a genetic disease. The One-Child Policy seemed to create more harm than good; women’s reproductive rights were taken away from them, and they could not create the family they wanted.
We learned that there were exceptions where people could have a second child if granted government permission. In return, they had to pay an expensive fine. This is a classist issue where it’s evident that the rich could have more children because they can afford it, while the poor (the countryside) couldn’t afford the price tag despite them needing it the most to help with the work around the farms. In the end, the One-Child Policy was repealed in 2016, and in fact, the government encourages people to have more children because the birth rate is decreasing exponentially. But now, no one wants to have more children because of the costs that are associated with raising children.
The Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in 1989 were a gruesome show of oppression and brutality from the CCP. Going back to the past, the people found it critical to protest on May 4, 1989– 70 years after the May 4th, 1919 demonstrations. This was a symbolic and peaceful protest for students and everyone to demonstrate and demand the rights and privileges the CCP denied. It resulted in many deaths, but it showed the determination and strength of the resilient people.
Sources Referenced:
“The One Child Policy” In The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection. Third ed. Edited by Janet Chen et. al. W. W. Norton & Company, 2014.
Hershatter, Gail. Women and China’s Revolutions. Critical Issues in World and International History. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
Lim, Louisa. The People’s Republic of Amnesia : The Tiananmen Revisited. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA, 2014.
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Rewrite Week 12: Blog Post
For class this week, we explored the Cultural Revolution and Nixon’s visit to China. For Wednesday, I picked the Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution reading.
I randomly selected the “Radiance of the Setting Sun” chapter that explored the protagonist’s past, a Red Guard immersed in the initial phase of the Cultural Revolution. His grandfather was a bankrupt landlord who was rich before falling victim to opium during the Sino-Japanese Wars. The protagonist’s mother was on a propaganda performance team, and his father was a communist and guerilla leader. His father was assigned to rehabilitate the protagonist’s grandfather’s opium addiction. There, the father and mother met and got married, although the father was married once more. It was fascinating how all the elements we learned throughout the semester came up in the protagonist’s history. From opium to divorce, these are aspects that we explored through our various readings.
President Nixon’s visit to China was the start of the geo-political revolution that transformed the way of diplomacy. Relations with China and the United States were tense; in fact, there was not much of a relationship between the two. With a long past between the United States and the CCP, it would make sense that these two are not on great terms. The United States had funded the nationalists in China (Chiang Kai-shek) with weapons, ammunition, and resources for them to use against the Communists (CCP and Mao), who then eventually took over China. Having polarizing beliefs and ideologies, both China and the U.S. disagree on many fundamental issues (Vietnam, Korea, Japan, etc.) and actively fight to undermine each other. There were even nuclear war scares between these two countries.
During that time, there were visible cracks between the USSR and China that were not as evident as before. The U.S. saw an opportunity to exploit the fighting and tension between the Soviet Union and China. Through some tentative negotiations and talks, the U.S. and China decided to arrange a meeting for Nixon that was lavish, over-the-top, and filled with publicity. The amount of effort that went into these events to highlight the friendly dynamic between the countries is extraordinary. There was an excerpt from the perspective of a CCP member who swept the dirt and debris on the pathway of the Great Wall. He remarked that this could not have been done now, and all these finite details were honed in because of Nixon and his demand for publicity. While the world watched the glamourous PR stunts from home, hidden away, millions starved and died in China as it was deep into the Cultural Revolution. Despite flowery words of “peace” or “unity,” there was never a set agenda on how to fulfill that between the two. In fact, both Nixon and Mao opposed fundamental issues like the situation in Vietnam, Korea, and, more importantly, Taiwan.
Taiwan and China both argue their mutual dislike of the concept of two Chinas. They disagree on who is the one true China as Taiwan argues that they will come back to return to the Mainland while China is adamant about taking Taiwan. The United States understands the sensitivity of the issue; however, they have promised a defense treaty to Taiwan. If Taiwan is ever under attack, the United States promises to come to its aid. Nixon clearly knew that his position on this would not change, but any war against China must be avoided if possible due to the destruction it would employ.
The visit was meaningful as it did open doors between the U.S. and China; however, to say that it helped tremendously in improving relationships between the two would be a lie—the current situation between China and the U.S. is rocky, at best. One of the main points of contention is the situation with Taiwan. The United States is still unable to resolve its strained relationship with China despite almost fifty years passing since Nixon’s visit.
Rewrite:
For the rewrite, I added background information on why China and the U.S. had tensions, as suggested in the comments. Another comment inspired me to expand more on the publicity stunt of Nixon and the amount of care and effort incorporated into creating this successful meeting between the two countries that you would never have thought possible. I basically tinkered rather than start from a blank page because I thought I had a lot of important foundational information that didn’t need to change. I also added more facts so readers can understand why things happened the way they did. Through this process of rewriting, I learned that there’s always room for improvement. It only helps me become a better writer and helps me catch my mistakes and learn from them.
Sources:
Gao, Yuan. Born Red : A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987.
Madsen, Richard. China and the American Dream: A Moral Inquiry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Richard Nixon and Zhou Enlai, “Toasts at a Banquet Honoring the Premier“, February 25, 1972.
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EC12-1: Introduce an Image
The designer of this poster is the Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House Propaganda Poster Group, and it was created in September 1966 during the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. I’m assuming that Chineseposters.net owns the work, but if not, then the publishing house. I am not too certain.
The title of the art is “Criticize the Old World and Build a New World with Mao Zedong Thought as a Weapon.” In the image, a young man (Red Guard) faces forward with a Little Red Book and addresses a crowd of people in the background who are also carrying little red books. The young man is wearing green and has a red armband with yellow lettering. There are five red flags flowing behind the crowd as they look upon the man with admiration and happiness.
The Little Red Book is actually the Quotations from Chairman Mao, where Mao attempts to restyle Communism in his own fashion by claiming to supersede Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. The book allowed Mao to effectively weaponize his words against imperialism and Western ideologies to spread Mao Zedong Thought. The idea was that everyone would be able to carry and utilize the book in every situation.
This image connects to this week’s topic as it directly correlates to the start of the Cultural Revolution that was unfolding in China. The little red book represents one of the methods to propagate the revolution. It showed how everyone, even children, can be an upstanding comrade, further illustrating how this image connects to this week’s content.
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Week 11: Blog Post
The Great Leap Forward was an industrialization program that Mao launched to make the country socialist in less than 15 years with the goal of surpassing the USSR. However, instead of a time of prospering and elevating happiness, as Mao suggested, an estimated 35 million people died from the economic chaos that resulted in the famine. The Communist Party remained silent about the Great Leap Forward, even after Mao’s death, in order to keep his image and legacy intact. Many people refuse to speak about the Great Leap Forward because of the trauma, devastation, and danger (considered taboo) associated with it. The Mao’s Great Famine documentary was informative yet difficult to watch because of how heartbreaking and avoidable the situation could have been. The first-hand witnesses recounted their trauma and the deaths they encountered. Stories about the dead lying on the street, the Jianbiangou labor camps, and cannibalism circulated.
Additionally, I thought it was interesting to see how the past, the history of China, and its traditions are mentioned. The documentary comments that previously, emperors would open reserves of grain and distribute food during famines, but that the CCP and Mao (who claimed themselves to represent the people) refused to do that despite the reserves being full. They were willing to sacrifice people for the sake of industrialization. In class, we looked at different types of propaganda posters, and one of them depicted a dragon carrying a worker, peasant, Party cadre, student, and People’s Militia member. Once again, traditional symbolism is brought up through the art of the dragon, which had long been associated with emperors and dynasties. The only difference between this dragon and the historical dragons is the number of claws. The CCP’s dragon has 4, while the emperors’ commonly had 3.
For the reading, I chose Mo Yan’s “Iron Child,” which blurred the line between reality and fantasy. I still thought the mystic elements never took away from the historical and non-fiction elements; they elevated the story. The haunting depictions of starvation and desperation manifested in eating iron, which had a “sweet aroma” to it (108). In the ending, when the Iron Child and the narrator are captured, it is concluded that the men who captured them “scraped [their] rusty bodies with sandpaper” (111). The ending is supposed to represent that even though they’re seen as “iron demons,” they still feel pain from the sandpaper, breaking the illusion that they were made of rust and iron. They’re still human. Everyone should read this if they can; it truly grasped the situation in China during the Great Leap Forward: agony, desperation, pain, starvation, and death.
Works Consulted:
Mo Yan. “Iron Child,” in Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh.
Mio, Arturo, Dérives (Firm), and Radio-Télévision belge de la communauté culturelle française. Mao’s Great Famine. Filmakers Library, 2012.
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Rewrite Week 10: Blog Post
This week in class, we discussed the start of the People’s Republic of China and the Korean War. I chose Explorer Pack 2 for Wednesday and Explorer Pack 1 for Friday.
For Wednesday, we learned about the new “United Front,” which was previously an alliance between the CCP and GMD. This alliance was created so the Communists and Nationalists would be united for a common cause against the warlords and the Japanese. However, the United Front had failed due to each party’s determination to one-up another. Despite the failure of the United Front, the CCP (after taking over) applied this foundation to the Communists, urban petty bourgeoisie, and national bourgeoisie. Despite the fundamental opposition to the bourgeoisie class, the Communists recognize the bourgeoisie class’s usefulness in the economy. The communists were aware that they would fail miserably without the bourgeoisie’s knowledge, expertise, and experience of the market and economy. So the plan was to use them for the short term and get rid of them once their usefulness wore out.
In class, we also learned about how Mao differentiated from Marxist theory. He believed the class struggle and fight would be between the peasants and the bourgeoisie rather than the workers versus the bourgeoisie. He changed one of the fundamental cores of Marxism as he recognized that China was nowhere near the capitalistic mark it needed to be. Therefore, he skipped the Bourgeoise society and other steps by going straight into socialism by having the peasants lead the revolution. Mao was able to make communism effective in his own way, as this ideology is still applicable in the 21st century.
Despite these differences, Mao was able to form an alliance or friendship with the USSR, specifically Stalin. However, that crumbled away when Khrushchev, who took power after Stalin’s death, denounced and undermined Stalin. This hurt Mao, putting him in a difficult situation as a Communist and his alliance with the USSR.
For Friday, we discussed China’s involvement in the Korean War. It was interesting to see how effective China’s propaganda was in promoting nationalism and unity during times of struggle. By depicting jarring images of a caricature of General MacArthur stabbing a woman, China’s propaganda art was a great tool in villanizing the imperialistic and colonialistic West. In the background is an American plane dropping a bomb inscribed with the words “US,” onto a Chinese factory. It also made me consider how effective our propaganda tools are as well. The newsreels showed how patriotic and honorable it is to die for our country during times of war. It is hypocritical for us to point fingers and claim how harmful it is for China to use such propaganda when we do the same. We are also aware that propaganda does not tell us the truth; rather, it directly targets our emotions to rile and infuriate us.
For the rewrite of this post, I added the comments that mentioned the propaganda poster because I realized that I did not provide enough information on it. I also included information on others who mentioned Mao skipping steps in the traditional route of communism to achieve his goals. I tinkered by focusing on structure and word choices by adding additional facts about socialism and communism. I wasn’t too happy about my grammar and certain sentence structures, so it was great to have the opportunity to go and fix it. I learned the importance of rewriting; I really love how we have the chance to make our work better. It’s helping me become a better and stronger writer as I can see the mistakes I make and hone them.
Sources:
Newsclip Dec. 11, 1950
Newsclip April 13, 1953
“Chapter 4: Winning Captive Hearts”. In McKnight, Brian Dallas. We Fight for Peace: Twenty-Three American Soldiers, Prisoners of War, and “Turncoats” in the Korean War. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2014.
Shen, Zhihua, and Yafeng Xia. Mao and the Sino-Soviet Partnership, 1945-1959: A New History. The Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015.
