Democracy Movements in China
In 1978, stimulated by the opening of China to the West and also by the "reversal of verdicts" against the 1976 Tiananmen protesters (These demonstrations against the gang of four had been condemned as counter-revolutionary at the time but were now declared a revolutionary act), thousands of Chinese began to put their thoughts into words, their words onto paper and their paper onto walls to be read by passers by. The most famous focus of these displays became a stretch of blank wall just to the west of the former forbidden city in Beijing, part of which was now a museum and park and part the cluster of residences for China's most senior National leaders. Because of the frankness of some of these posters and the message that some measure of democratic freedom should be introduced in China, this Beijing area became known as Democracy Wall.The background to the Democracy Wall movement was the Cultural Revolution, the Gang of Four Period and the April Fifth movement, which opposed the Gang. Many of the views expressed during the Democracy Wall movement regarding the corruption of the party and its lack of legitimacy as a representative of the people are directly related to the
Posters and journals began to explicitly criticise Mao, with many arguing that the Gang of Four could never have gained power and held on to it for so long without Mao's backing. Although attacks on the Gang of Four were welcomed by Deng Xiaoping any wholesale discrediting of Mao was not, since it called into question the legitimacy of the whole Chinese revolution and was likely to alienate the army among whom respect for Mao was still very high. The workers were more sceptical of all top leaders for example they criticised Zhao Ziyang for his and his families wealthy and bourgeois lifestyle (golf habit). The Workers were unwilling to accept student dominance over worker's organisations. Their shop floor organisational efforts were hampered especially after martial law and they were kept out of Tiananmen Square itself by the students until the last days of occupation. But they did form independent unions which also had a political function, being intended to give workers a collective voice in national and local decision-making as well as protecting their interests at work. The Workers still saw Poland's solidarity, which was legalised 2 days after Hu Yaobang's death, as a model to follow. The Workers targeted the system from the beginning whilst many students seemed to want to join the system and reform it from within. Workers called the party elite a bourgeoisie and quoted the Communist Manifesto "workers of the worlds unite..."
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 4810
Approximate Pages = 19 (250 words per page double spaced)
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