Guobin Yang argues that Chinese youth engaged in an imaginary revolution from 1966 to 1968, enacting a political mythology that encouraged violence as a way to prove one's revolutionary credentials. This dynamic would later turn the Red Guard generation against the government, culminating in the Tiananmen protest of 1989. Yang emphasizes the politics of history and memory, as contemporary memories of the Cultural Revolution are factionalized along the lines of political division that formed fifty years before.
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Guobin Yang argues that Chinese youth engaged in an imaginary revolution from 1966 to 1968, enacting a political mythology that encouraged violence as a way to prove one's revolutionary credentials. This dynamic would later turn the Red Guard generation against the government, culminating in the Tiananmen protest of 1989. Yang emphasizes the politics of history and memory, as contemporary memories of the Cultural Revolution are factionalized along the lines of political division that formed fifty years before.
Read Less