Multimedia Collection
Born Under the Red Flag: 1976-1997
(China: The PBS Series)
VHS
120 minutes
DS779.2 .B671 1997 + guide
Part 1, Surviving Mao, covers the years1976-1984 following the death of Mao Zedong. Under Deng Xiaoping's leadership, China witnessed sweeping economic and social changes. People began to air their long-suppressed grievances, but when they criticized the Communist Party itself, the government moved to suppress them. Events include:
- Democracy Wall Movement (1978-1979) - Centered around the display of posters on a wall in western Beijing which protested the injustices of the Cultural Revolution. Eventually some activists called for democratic reform.
- Household Responsibility System (1979+) - Radical redistribution of land that gave communal land to individuals and allowed them to profit from the surplus crops they produced.
- Special Economic Zones (1979+) - Areas targeted by the CCP for development and designed to accept foreign investment, to increase exports, and to help China adopt foreign technologies.
- Joint Declaration (1984) - Document signed by British and Chinese leaders, declaring Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997.
Part 2, The New Generation, covers the years 1984-1997, and examines the political attitudes of young people as they began to challenge the meaning and value of communism. It chronicles the growing student movements and the government crackdown in Tiananmen Square, and focuses on the following events:
- Cultural Fever (1985+) - Dramatic flowering of the arts in the mid-1980s. Students shifted their focus from the political to the personal and, on some campuses, were encouraged to think and study freely.
- 1989 Student Movement - Largest, most spectacular student demonstrations in China's history, triggered by the death of Hu Yaobang. It lasted six weeks and ended in a brutal crackdown on June 4th.
- Sino-Soviet Summit (1989) - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Beijing to mark the end of nearly 30 years of tensions and hostilities between the two communist nations.
- Investment in China (1990s) - Led by Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, worldwide trade and investment in China vastly increased.
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