To the chinese people?

[Asia Latham]

During cultral revolution. How were people who believed in the four olds treated. Did the poor classes get a chance to work. How did it effect students. Were students part of the red guard

[coolwid]

yeah, it was bad, but not that bad, so døn't worry too much about it.

btw, sorry about the danish letter, I dont speak danish, but I got sucked into this danish non-sense and am likely to remain here for a while.

[Exco]

Those who were liberal, intellectuals, believed in or participated in market economy; or generally "not left wing enough" were branded "counter-revolutionaries", that would see China revert back to the "evil" times before the Communist Revolution.

They were met with the Purge - public shaming that went from denouncing their most trivial behaviours to political imprisonment. Don't underestimate public shaming - total peer pressure would crush a man's resolve, Deng Xiaoping's son, simply because he was Deng Xiaoping, one of the purged top party members, tried to commit suicide through the intolerable amounts of public campaign that deemed him to be a devil-like creature.

The students? The moronic, hot-blooded teenagers and adolescents were the driving force behind the Cultural Revolution - in their stupid, immature, easily manipulated state, they believed they were the vanguard of a new revolution, urged on by brainwashing and propaganda, they burned houses, threatened the lives of branded "traitors", destroyed countless historical and cultural monuments, irreversibly damaged even more.

Half of the ancestral monuments in Bejing still bear signs of red paint and cracks due to the Red Guard bulldozing entire historical complexes. The Forbidden Palace only survived due to the active intervention of Zhou Enlai, at the time premier of the country, second in command to Mao Zedong, who through avoiding the Purge, attempted to save as many as possible.

It was Zhou Enlai's eventual death, and the mourning of the nation, that finally turned the tide against the Cultural Revolution. The Gang of Four, those who controlled the Revolution to purge their political enemies, forbid any mourning, which inspired the first wave of civil disobedience. From that point forth Mao Zedong's appointed successor, Hua Guofeng, as well as others plotted a coup against the Gang of Four, which lead to their arrest and imprisonment.

Deng Xiaoping eventually outmanoeuvred Hua to become the de-facto leader of China, with is proteges and supporters appointed to various high-ranking positions to carry out Deng's envisaged economic and social reforms.

The students WERE the Red Guards, and Maoists supported the Cultural Revolution, but the mandatory purge of historical traditions, and the prosecution of some of the founding members of the country created an eventual outcry from the public that could no longer tolerate the farce.