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Hai Rui Dismissed From Office
''Hai Rui Dismissed from Office'' () is a theatre play notable for its involvement in Chinese politics during the Cultural Revolution. The play itself focused on a Ming Dynasty minister named Hai Rui, who was portrayed as a savior to passive peasants for whom he reversed unjust land confiscations. The play became a center of scholarly and political controversy because of its implications for debates within the communist party, including at the Lushan Conference, regarding the political role of peasants going forward in light of the failures during the Great Leap Forward. Background Wu Han, who wrote the play, was a historian who focused on the Ming Dynasty. He also served simultaneously as a Deputy Mayor in Beijing. In 1959, Wu became interested in the life of Hai Rui, a Ming minister who was imprisoned for criticizing the emperor. Wu Han wrote several articles on his life and his fearless criticism of the emperor. Wu then wrote a play for Beijing Opera titled "Hai Rui Dismissed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Politics Of The People's Republic Of China
The People's Republic of China is run by a single party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), headed by the CCP General Secretary who tends to be the paramount leader of China. China is among few contemporary party-led dictatorships to not hold any direct elections at the national level. State power within the People's Republic of China (PRC) is exercised through the CCP, the State Council, and its provincial and local representation. The state uses , secret documents produced by Xinhua News Agency as a form of internal intelligence sharing to keep high-level CCP cadres informed of developments within the country. China's two special administrative regions (SARs), Hong Kong and Macau, have multi-party systems separate from the mainland's one-party system. Aside from the SARs, the PRC consists of 22 provinces (excluding Taiwan Province and ROC-controlled Fujian), four directly administered municipalities (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing), and five autonomous regi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kang Sheng
Kang Sheng (; 4 November 1898 – 16 December 1975) was a Chinese Communist politician best known for having overseen the CCP's internal security and intelligence apparatus during the early 1940s and again at the height of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A member of the CCP from the early 1920s, he spent time in Moscow during the early 1930s, where he learned the methods of the Soviet NKVD and became a supporter of Wang Ming for leadership of the CCP. After returning to China in the late 1930s, Kang Sheng switched his allegiance to Mao Zedong and became a close associate of Mao during the Anti-Japanese War, the Chinese Civil War and after. He remained at or near the pinnacle of power in the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1975. After the death of Chairman Mao and the subsequent arrest of the Gang of Four, Kang Sheng was accused of sharing responsibility with the Gang for the excesses of the Cultural Revo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gang Of Four
The Gang of Four () was a Maoist political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and were later charged with a series of treasonous crimes. The gang's leading figure was Jiang Qing (Mao Zedong's last wife). The other members were Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen. The Gang of Four controlled the power organs of the CCP through the later stages of the Cultural Revolution, although it remains unclear which major decisions were made by Mao Zedong and carried out by the Gang, and which were the result of the Gang of Four's own planning. The Gang of Four, together with general Lin Biao (who died in 1971), were labeled the two major "counter-revolutionary forces" of the Cultural Revolution and officially blamed by the Chinese government for the worst excesses of the societal chaos that ensued during the ten years of turmoil. Their downfall on October 6, 1976, a mere month ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of his predecessor Joseph Stalin's crimes, and embarked on a policy of de-Stalinization with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan. He sponsored the early Soviet space program, and enactment of moderate reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba, he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin leadership stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Khrushchev was born in 1894 in a village in western Russia. He was employed as a metal worker during his youth, and he was a political commissar during the Russian Civi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
May 16 Notification
The May 16 Notification () or Circular of May 16, officially Notification (), was the first major political declaration of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It was issued at a May 1966 expanded session of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. The May 16 Notification ended a political dispute within the CCP stemming from the Beijing Opera play ''Hai Rui Dismissed from Office'' by dissolving the top level of the party's cultural apparatus and encouraging mass political movement to oppose rightists within the party. The result was a political victory for Mao Zedong. The Notification is often viewed as the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Background Beginning in 1965 and into spring 1966, a political dispute arose within the People's Republic of China regarding the Beijing Opera play ''Hai Rui Dismissed from Office''. The play depicts an honest official of the Ming Dynasty named Hai Rui, who reverses unjust land verdicts on behalf of peasants who are portrayed passive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chen Boda
Chen Boda (; 29 July 1904 – 20 September 1989), was a Chinese Communist journalist, professor and political theorist who rose to power as the chief interpreter of Maoism (or "Mao Zedong Thought") in the first 20 years of the People's Republic of China.Chen Boda biography Britannica Concise Encyclopedia Chen became a close associate of Mao Zedong in Yan'an, during the late 1930s, drafting speeches and theoretical essays and directing propaganda.Guo Jian, Yongyi Song and Yuan Zhou, "Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution", pp. 33-35, The Scarecrow Press, 2006 After 1949, Chen played a leading role in overseeing mass med ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James Buchanan Duke established The Duke Endowment and the institution changed its name to honor his deceased father, Washington Duke. The campus spans over on three contiguous sub-campuses in Durham, and a marine lab in Beaufort. The West Campus—designed largely by architect Julian Abele, an African American architect who graduated first in his class at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design—incorporates Gothic architecture with the Duke Chapel at the campus' center and highest point of elevation, is adjacent to the Medical Center. East Campus, away, home to all first-years, contains Georgian-style architecture. The university administers two concurrent schools in Asia, Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore (establi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Class Struggle
Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or between rich and poor. The forms of class conflict include direct violence such as wars for resources and cheap labor, assassinations or revolution; indirect violence such as deaths from poverty and starvation, illness and unsafe working conditions; and economic coercion such as the threat of unemployment or the withdrawal of investment capital ( capital flight); or ideologically, by way of political literature. Additionally, political forms of class warfare include legal and illegal lobbying, and bribery of legislators. The social-class conflict can be direct, as in a dispute between labour and management such as an employer's industrial lockout of their employees in effort to weaken the bargaining power of the corresponding trade union; or indirect such as a worker ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-criticism (Marxism–Leninism)
Self-criticism ( Russian: Самокритика, ''Samokritika''; Chinese: 自我批评, ''Zìwǒ pīpíng''; Vietnamese: Tự phê bình) is a philosophical and political concept developed within the ideology of Marxism–Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism. According to David Priestland, the concept of "criticism and self-criticism" developed within the Stalinist period of the Soviet Union as a way to publicly interrogate intellectuals who were suspected of possessing counter-revolutionary positions. The concept would be a major component of the political philosophy of Chinese Marxist leader Mao Zedong. The concept of self-criticism is a component of some Marxist schools of thought, primarily that of Marxism–Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism and Marxism–Leninism–Maoism. The concept was first introduced by Joseph Stalin in his 1925 work '' The Foundations of Leninism'' and later expanded upon in his 1928 work ''Against Vulgarising the Slogan of Self-Criticism''. The Marxist conc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historical Materialism
Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborator, Friedrich Engels, the ultimate cause and moving power of historical events are to be found in the economic development of society and the social and political upheavals wrought by changes to the mode of production. Historical materialism provides a challenge to the view that historical processes have come to a close and that capitalism is the end of history. Although Marx never brought together a formal or comprehensive description of historical materialism in one published work, his key ideas are woven into a variety of works from the 1840s onward. Since Marx's time, the theory has been modified and expanded. It now has many Marxist and non-Marxist variants. Enlightenment views of history Marx's view of history is shaped by his eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Five Man Group
The Five Man Group (; also known as the Group of Five, bearing in mind the gendered English translation of 'Five Man' is ungendered in Chinese) was an informal committee established in the People's Republic of China in early 1965 to explore the potential for a "cultural revolution" in China. The group was led by Peng Zhen (the mayor of Beijing), the fifth most senior member of the Politburo. The Group was said to be tasked with studying popular trends in China's arts and cultural realms. In 1965 the Group commissioned a study of the play ''Hai Rui Dismissed from Office'', written by Vice-Mayor Wu Han, which came under suspicion for being an anti-Mao allegory. The Group then released the ''February Outline'', a document arguing that the play was not of a political nature. Mao became offended by the ''Outline'' and dissolved the group in May 1966, when it was replaced by the Cultural Revolution Group. Mao argued that Yao Wenyuan hadn't focused on the word 'dismissed' in the title of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wenhui Bao
''Wenhui Bao'' (), anglicized as the ''Wenhui Daily'',Shanghai Municipal Government"Press Group Celebrates" 26 July 2008. Accessed 18 Dec 2014. is a Chinese daily newspaper published by the Shanghai United Media Group. History ''Wenhui Bao'' was founded in Shanghai on January 25, 1938 by leftist-leaning intellectuals centered on writer and journalist Ke Ling. Over the next decade, it was closed down twice for its political leanings. In early 1956, ''Wenhui Bao'' was forced to relocate to Beijing and was renamed '' Jiaoshibao'' (Teacher's News). After the start of the Hundred Flowers Campaign, however, the paper was allowed to resume publication under its original name, beginning on 1 October 1956. Under its editor-in-chief Xu Zhucheng, ''Wenhui Bao'' became one of the most outspoken newspapers of the Hundred Flowers period, but was attacked by Mao Zedong in July 1957 and punished. In the 1960s, ''Wenhui Bao'' became an outlet for Mao Zedong's editorials, and in late 1965 i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
