{"id":169,"date":"2021-04-19T13:10:14","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T13:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pcarmody.bergbuilds.domains\/blog\/?p=169"},"modified":"2021-04-19T13:10:14","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T13:10:14","slug":"week-10-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pcarmody.bergbuilds.domains\/blog\/hst271\/week-10-criticism\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 10: Criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Exploration Pack 1: Textbook <\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While working through the textbook material this week a few things about Mao and the party really stuck out to me. The main item being the role of criticism within the communist party, specifically Mao and his relationship with internal as well as external criticism. The main spark in this interest was the &#8220;Hundred Flowers&#8221; campaign organized by Mao. I was first confused as to why Mao would even open the door for criticism, especially from academics as from my perspective while there would be some academics that sided with Mao and the party I feel as if a large proportion of them would be opposed to the direction their country was moving in. While there would certainly be some academics that were raised and indoctrinated by the CCP I feel many would have grown up under the Nationalists and received a very capitalistic and anti-communist upbringing and possibly education so I would assume they would be opposed to the party, making it a confusing decision by Mao to ask for their criticism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/alphahistory.com\/chineserevolution\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/hundred_flowers-203x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"248\" height=\"366\"\/><figcaption><a href=\"https:\/\/alphahistory.com\/chineserevolution\/hundred-flowers-campaign\/\">A poster<\/a> encouraging individuals to write letters to submit their thoughts on the CCP. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a result of this push for academics to speak out on the CCP the party and Mao himself reportedly received large amounts of criticism from the academics resulting in Mao either change his mindset on the open sharing of ideas or enact a hidden plan. My interest was especially piqued in regards to the outcome of the &#8220;Hundred Flowers&#8221; campaign as on the surface it seems like a good-faith effort by the CCP to be more connected with the people and improve their system as some of the brightest in the country see fit. But underneath that, there is a degree of skepticism of the genuine nature of the campaign as the result of the comments from the academics was a retrospective change of Mao&#8217;s speech that seemingly discouraged criticism of the party and subsequent punishment for all of the those that criticized the party resulting in over 300,00 academics being labeled as rights and being punished. The punishments ranged from rehabilitation to hard labor to straightforward imprisonment, all a far cry from the original message of no penalties for their ideas. This begs the question of whether or no the &#8220;Hundred Flowers&#8221; campaign was a play by Mao to reveal those in the academic community that would be most likely to undermine his and the party&#8217;s authority and ideals, if this was the case and not an idealogical blunder on Mao&#8217;s part it worked to perfection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Bibliography: <\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Spence, Jonathan D.\u00a0<em>The Search for Modern China<\/em>. Third ed. New York: W.W. Norton &amp; Company, 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cA-Bombs and Paper Tigers.\u201d In\u00a0<em>The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection.<\/em>\u00a0Third ed. Edited by Janet Chen et. al. W. W. Norton &amp; Company, 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exploration Pack 1: Textbook While working through the textbook material this week a few things about Mao and the party really stuck out to me. The main item being the&hellip;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pcarmody.bergbuilds.domains\/blog\/hst271\/week-10-criticism\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read more<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> of Week 10: Criticism<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hst271"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcarmody.bergbuilds.domains\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcarmody.bergbuilds.domains\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcarmody.bergbuilds.domains\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcarmody.bergbuilds.domains\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcarmody.bergbuilds.domains\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pcarmody.bergbuilds.domains\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171,"href":"https:\/\/pcarmody.bergbuilds.domains\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcarmody.bergbuilds.domains\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcarmody.bergbuilds.domains\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcarmody.bergbuilds.domains\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}