Critique+-+Content


 * __Evaluation of content__**

The main source, "Reforms and Reformers", mainly covers the events of the Cultural Revolution from the political angle: that of the key events (Reforms) and the key characters involved in the events (Reformers). It provides specific details of the main players and the events in the lead up to the Cultural Revolution. For example, Ho mentions an incident between Mao and Liu Shaoqi in 1965, where the French Minister of Culture presented a letter from Charles de Gaulle to Liu, but Mao interjected and prevented Liu from speaking the whole evening. In the conversation with the Frenchman, Mao even expressed his dissatisfaction with the reforms of Liu and Deng Xiaoping. This highlighted and gave a fresh insight into Mao's fractious relationship with whom he deemed the "capitalist roaders", who he felt had betrayed his Communist ideals and eroded his power base.
 * __"Reforms and Reformers"__**

However, the chapter does omit certain information about the lead up to the revolution. Ho mainly mentions paranoia and jealousy, as well as the power struggle between the Orthodox Marxists and the reformers (mainly Liu and Deng) as the main causes of the revolution. Other major factors actually included the path that China's socialist transition had taken in the years since the CCP came to power in 1949. Mao, concerned that the party was getting too bureaucratised and about what he deemed the ideological degeneration of Chinese society as a whole, decided to reverse the socioeconomic inequalities that had emerged in China as they rapidly modernised in the early 1960s. He decided to expunge the "revisionism" that he felt was contaminating his party and China.

Furthermore, Ho adopts the "Great Man" theory when it comes to evaluating the events of the Cultural Revolution. He focused his writing mostly on the key figures and the leaders involved in the CR, choosing a highly top-down approach, as opposed to a bottom-up approach or using personal recounts and personal history as many contemporary historians tend to do when approaching the CR. As a result, the effect of the CR on the main Chinese populace and the Chinese economy was glossed over. He does not describe the changes to Chinese lifestyle despite writing about the movements of Red Guards throughout the country, something that can be found wanting when it comes to recounting the events of the CR.

The film "To Live" differs from the main source in that it goes right down to the roots of society: the people. By choosing to focus on the travails and struggles of one Chinese family, the film highlights the pertinent issues during the Cultural Revolution. The purging of "counter-revolutionaries" and "old revisionists" is highlighted when the professor, being an intellectual and thus deemed as a counter-revolutionary, is booted out of confinement because the Red Guards, all students, have taken over the hospital. His resulting mistreatment causes him to eat too much, and thus is unable to supervise or help the Red Guards in ensuring the safe birth of Fengxia's son. Subsequently, the Red Guards are left to their own devices, and their inexperience in dealing with medical complications results in the death of Fengxia due to a severe hemorrhage.
 * __"To Live"__**

One could say that this, compared to the main source, does go to the direct impacts of the CR on the people, and as a result could be more in tune with showing the effects of the CR. However, conversely, it lacks information on the political machinations going on behind the scenes in Beijing, as well as Mao's motives or the reason for the launch of the CR. It must also be noted that as a film, the content as such is fictionalised and artistic license is taken when it comes to the depiction of certain key scenes, for example, the marriage of Fengxia to Erxi, or the doctor when eating his buns.

The article mainly describes three main portions about educational reform in the CR: the criticisms against the old system, the proposals for reform, and the implementation of such reforms. Discussing the old system, Bastid says that some important criticisms leveled against the old educational system were said to be related to its general orientation. "Revisionism and feudal and bourgeois world outlook dominated the educational system", resulting in two key accusations: firstly, that it promoted elitism and a bourgeois outlook on life to rise to the top, fostering a "promotion-conscious mentality", and secondly, that it produced an elite which was incapable and useless in the communist and socialist society which China had morphed into. On the first count, it seems more in line with the political leanings of Mao's motives for the CR. The old education placed too much emphasis on self-promotion and too little on Maoist, and by extension, Communist and Socialist principles, thus resulting in an elite which felt and behaved as superiors to the rest of society, damaging the Communist ideal where everyone was an equal. On the second, the elite were deemed as useless because they were too detached from the goings-on of society. As Bastid says, "There is a whole folklore of racy anecdotes featuring the palefaced, thin, dogmatic, dissatisfied graduate versus the quick-minded efficient, hard toiling, openhearted "local expert," who spent a short time in a less sophisticated school but grasps better the thought of Mao Tse-tung. He cannot grow Michurin apples or Caucasian maize, but he knows all about rice and wheat; he works himself instead of giving orders; he listens to the villagers and helps them."
 * __"Economic Necessity and Political Ideals in Educational Reform during the Cultural Revolution"__**

When speaking about the reforms themselves, Bastid says that it drew attention away from specialisation and focus on "elitism" and instead wanted the students to have "many strings to their bows", needing to be open-minded, perceptive and active, having intellectual humility in accordance with the "proletarian" world outlook that China was attuned to under Mao. Flexible admissions and curricula were introduced, along with a greater emphasis on Communist and Maoist ideology.

While the article is comprehensive, it brushes aside potential criticism far too easily. However, given that the article was written in the 1970s, there has been much new information which has arisen and been released ever since the opening up of China and Chinese society to the world at large. As such, the lack of information on the deleterious effects of such a reform of the education system, as well as the subsequent destruction of higher learning during the CR, is largely understandable.