A Decade Of Upheaval

A revealing exploration of political disruption and violence in a rural Chinese county during the Cultural Revolution A Decade of Upheaval chronicles the surprising and dramatic political conflicts of a rural Chinese county over the course of the Cultural Revolution. Drawing on an unprecedented range of sources—including work diaries, interviews, internal party documents, and military directives—Dong Guoqiang and Andrew Walder uncover a previously unimagined level of strife in the countryside that began with the Red Guard Movement in 1966 and continued unabated until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Showing how the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution were not limited to urban areas, but reached far into isolated rural regions, Dong and Walder reveal that the intervention of military forces in 1967 encouraged factional divisions in Feng County because different branches of China’s armed forces took various sides in local disputes. The authors also lay bare how the fortunes of local political groups were closely tethered to unpredictable shifts in the decisions of government authorities in Beijing. Eventually, a backlash against suppression and victimization grew in the early 1970s and resulted in active protests, which presaged the settling of scores against radical Maoism. A meticulous look at how one overlooked region experienced the Cultural Revolution, A Decade of Upheaval illuminates the all-encompassing nature of one of the most unstable periods in modern Chinese history.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Prologue -- Factions -- Enter the Army -- Escalation -- Beijing Intervenes -- Forging Order -- Backlash -- The Final Struggle -- Troubled Decade.

A "riveting and illuminating" Bill Gates Summer Reading pick about how and why some nations recover from trauma and others don't (Yuval Noah Harari), by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the landmark bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel. In his international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in his third book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crises while adopting selective changes -- a coping mechanism more commonly associated with individuals recovering from personal crises. Diamond compares how six countries have survived recent upheavals -- ranging from the forced opening of Japan by U.S. Commodore Perry's fleet, to the Soviet Union's attack on Finland, to a murderous coup or countercoup in Chile and Indonesia, to the transformations of Germany and Austria after World War Two. Because Diamond has lived and spoken the language in five of these six countries, he can present gut-wrenching histories experienced firsthand. These nations coped, to varying degrees, through mechanisms such as acknowledgment of responsibility, painfully honest self-appraisal, and learning from models of other nations. Looking to the future, Diamond examines whether the United States, Japan, and the whole world are successfully coping with the grave crises they currently face. Can we learn from lessons of the past? Adding a psychological dimension to the in-depth history, geography, biology, and anthropology that mark all of Diamond's books, Upheaval reveals factors influencing how both whole nations and individual people can respond to big challenges. The result is a book epic in scope, but also his most personal yet.

Why did the Chinese Communist Party state collapse so rapidly during the Cultural Revolution? Consulting over 2,000 local annals chronicling some 34,000 revolutionary episodes across China, Andrew Walder offers a new answer, showing how the army, brought in to quiet brewing rebellions, escalated the violence that took nearly 1.6 million lives.

Spanning a decade of Michael Marder’s contributions as a public intellectual, Senses of Upheavals documents a period of exceptional global turmoil. Thrown into mayhem by right-wing populisms and a pandemic, combined with skyrocketing economic inequalities and worsening environmental crises, the world is on the verge of collapse. Could revolutionary practical-intellectual proposals to learn how to coexist from plants or to rethink the very meaning of energy chart the way to a better, more livable, and, perhaps, calmer world? Nonetheless, such proposals themselves constitute nothing short of an upheaval in philosophy, plant sciences, and environmental studies. We are doomed to upheavals, it seems; the point is not to deflect, but to choose judiciously among them.

Spanning a decade of Michael Marder’s contributions as a public intellectual, Senses of Upheaval documents a period of exceptional global turmoil in intellectual, cultural, technological and political spheres.

The Cultural Revolution, known in full as the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, as a means of quashing capitalism in China. He wanted to ensure that the desire for a communist government would remain strong in the country long after his death.

The Cultural Revolution, known in full as the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, as a means of quashing capitalism in China. He wanted to ensure that the desire for a communist government would remain strong in the country long after his death.