The Cultural Revolution

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Article
The Article 'Red Guard Battles in Peking' was written in June 1972 by Harrison Salisbury and printed by the New York Times. The article outlines the battle at the Tsinghua University, which occurred in April 1968. By the second quarter of 1966, Tsinghua University students and faculty were involved in a cultural revolution. This cultural revolution went out of control when the communist party sent party leaders to surface the revolution, but they could not. A group called Red Guard started changing the institution's culture by re-modeling both the students and the faculty in general. The revolution came to an end in July 1968 when thirty-thousand workers from the surrounding town came unarmed. The confrontation led to the death of five workers, and more than ten students lost their lives. The Red Guards were divided into different factions, claiming they are the dedicated representative of Maoist ideas.
Historical Context
This article was written during the reign of the Mao Zedong era. Mao Zedong's communist party took over power in 1949 from the Nationalist Government. In the 1950s, Mao Zedong introduced many reforms to change the country's economic situation and the political scenes. The Great Leap forward was one of the reforms that led to starvation in 1957 (Tanner 205). He also allowed criticism for some time from the public in 1957. The critics were concerned about the future of the party; therefore, he commanded a national crackdown of the 'right movement' to quell his government's critics. Moving forward to the 1960s, the central committee members took control of the government's day-to-day business (Tanner 211). Mao was sidelined to make the country recover from its economy. The central committee included the President, Liu Shaoqi, the Premier, and Beijing Mayor. The central committee changed many policies, including centralizing power. All these new policies formulated by the central committee did not go well with Mao. Mao engineered a plan to gain control of power by using culture.
Mao's cultural revolution activities shaped the article. Mao used his influence as the remaining source of power. Mao had the ability and a good reputation among the citizens of the People's Republic of China. Mao started gaining influence from local, provincial leaders and allowed people to criticize the central committee members one after the other. Mao decided to pass the revolution legacy to the young generation of the time. Mao called on the whole country's learners to stand up and make revolution change against imperialist and capitalist culture cropping up in China down and against party members or other bodies who were polluted with feudal and bourgeois ideas (Tanner 218). Mao was using a different tactic to circumvent the communist party he had built. The cultural revolution came with violence and nationwide mass protests.
In the early summer of 1966, the first signals emerged in Peking's center and universities, where the Cultural Revolution was then focused. The membership was limited to young people from these aspects of life; Workers, poor and lower peasants, political radicals, and revolutionary martyrs. Members...