Download Omar Khattab The second half of Chapter 5 (pg 121

Omar Khattab
The second half of Chapter 5 (pg 121-132)
1.
The Reshaping of Chinese Culture
Mao’s notion of the role of the creative artist

Forced all creative artists (writers, painters, etc.) to have their creative work for the cause of revolution.
II.
The role of Jiang Qing

Jiang Qing became the creator-in-chief of the new Chinese culture.

Turned his denunciation of China’s ‘four olds’ into a definite programme for the suppression of traditional Chinese society.

She was instructed to become the “cultural purifier of the nation”.
III.
Jiang’s demand for conformity

Her rejection of all non-proletarian culture was political correctness in its extreme form.

Children were urged to knock the heads off flowers in order to show their rejection of bourgeois concepts of beauty.
IV.
The Consequences of Jiang’s cultural terrorism

Musicians, painters and writers who showed reluctance to embrace the new rigidities were denounced and sent to labor camps for reeducational purposes where they were treated in brutal ways.

The failure of intellectuals and natural leaders of community to protest against the crimes of the regime was a painful feature of Mao’s China.

The result of this artistic persecution had not been the creation of a new culture but merely the near destruction of the old one.
2. Education and Health
I.
Language reform

In 1959, a new form of Mandarin was adopted.

Mandarin was made of ideograms which were symbols indicating ideas they described.

Pinyin was adopted where all the sounds in Mandarin were given a particular symbol.
II.
Failures in educational policy

During the final decade of Mao’s life the gains that had been made were largely squandered.

Among the Communist authorities responsible for running the party and the government only 6 percent had been formally educated beyond
the age of 16.
III.
Reasons for lack of educational progress

The reason for the decline in qualified youngsters was the disruption caused by the Cultural Revolution.

Education as an ideal was undermined.
IV.
Health provision in Mao’s China

Patriotic health movements were government schemes for providing Chinese people with basic information on health and hygiene.

In 1950, large numbers were treated by a qualified doctor as their first time.
Doctors never reached original targets because of the political intervention.
V.
China’s doctors attacked

Doctors were included among the professional classes who were living off the backs of the workers during the Cultural Revolution.

To survive doctors had to subordinate medical considerations to political ones.
VI.
The barefoot doctors

The trainees would now engage in 6 month periods of intensive study on the practical.

Doctors would then be sent to work among the peasants.

The barefoot doctors were young general practitioners travelled around rural China providing treatment often free of charge.
3. Mao’s Prison Camps: The Laogai
I.
The theory behind the camps

the official theory was that camps were not a place of punishment but for re-education.

It was the state’s duty to re-educate people through camps to see things in an enlightened way.
II.
The practice in the camps

Harsh means to dehumanize the prisoners.

Built in inhospitable parts of China making life a torture for the prisoner.
III.
Statistics relating to the camps

Average number of prisoners each year was 10 million.

By the time of Mao’s death in 1976, there were more than 10,000 labor camps spread across China.
IV.
The economic significance of the camps

Mao’s officials received help from Soviet officials on setting camps.

They were economically important in that they provided an inexhaustible supply of slave labor.
V.
The broader purpose of the campus

Existence of the camps effectively terrified the whole population.
I.