Detailed study into the rise and development of the Chinese 'ultra-left' during the Cultural Revolution which found itself often in highly confrontational opposition with the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
By now, it has been nearly forty years since the Cultural Revolution officially ended, yet in China, considering the magnitude and significance of the event, it has remained a poorly examined, under-documented subject. Official archives are off-limits. Serious books on the period, whether comprehensive histories, in-depth analyses, or detailed personal memoirs, are remarkably
Detailed study into the rise and development of the Chinese 'ultra-left' during the Cultural Revolution which found itself often in highly confrontational opposition with the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
July and August 1966, the first months of the ten-year Cultural Revolution, were the summer of what Andrew Walder, a sociologist at Stanford, calls “The Maoist Shrug.” Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s wife, told high school Red Guards, “We do not advocate beating people, but beating people is no big deal.” A few weeks later Mao himself heard a report about a mass meeting in Beijing at