China’s Awakening in the 1980s [podcast]

In the 1980’s a billion or so people were waking up from a socialist nightmare. Because of both mismangment and malisiousness, Chairman Mao oversaw a culture genicide, the murder and imprisionment of millions and the largest famine in recorded human history which started in 1949. In the late sixties mobs of students called the Red Guards with Mao’s blessing went around the country ransacking homes and schools, pulling out books and other items they deemed bourgious, “right wing”, capitalist and counter-revolutionary. In the end, this only left a handful of books that anyone could read legally. Citizens found with such materials were denounced, lost their jobs, publically beaten and many cases murdered by the Red Guards. So many teachers were imprisioned or killed, many schools just shut down for a generation. That is until the death of the chairman in the late 70’s. Deng Xiaoping ascended to leadership and quickly liberated parts of the economy, relaxed censoship and reopened many of the schools. A man who goes by the english named Moonlight talks about what the 1980’s were like to he and other Chinese at his age.