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Bombard the Headquarters!: The Cultural Revolution in China

Great Events, Book 2
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Bombard the Headquarters!: The Cultural Revolution in China

By: Linda Jaivin
Narrated by: Linda Jaivin
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About this listen

In 1966, with the words 'Bombard the Headquarters!' Mao Zedong unleashed the full, violent force of a movement that he called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. By the time he died ten years later, millions had perished, China's cultural heritage was in ruins, its economic state was perilous, its institutions of government were damaged and its society was bitterly divided.

In this fascinating account, Linda Jaivin focuses on the eventful start of the Cultural Revolution. She sheds light on the ideological quarrels that underpinned it and profiles the personalities involved.

Discussion of the Cultural Revolution is heavily censored in the People's Republic, and many young Chinese people know almost nothing about it. Even so, it continues to cast a shadow over life in China. Current president Xi Jinping's assumption of a third term in 2022, his elimination of rival factions from the leadership and attempts to build a personality cult around himself discomfit many within and outside of the Chinese Communist Party. Bombard the Headquarters! helps us to understand why.

©2024 Linda Jaivin (P)2025 Bolinda Publishing Asia China Military Politics & Government

Critic reviews

'Deftly narrated in precise, pellucid prose, Jaivin wears her meticulous research lightly to provide a lively and essential reading on the maddeningly complex politics of the Cultural Revolution. With insightful commentary and vivid sketches of some of its operatic protagonists, this brilliant short history is a great start for anyone who wants to understand a central decade in the Maoist epoch whose catastrophic legacy endures to this day. A tour de force.' (Jianying Zha, author of Tide Players)
'A beautifully concise account that makes sense of a hugely complex event in modern Chinese history.' (Kerry Brown, Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London)
'To upend an entire society, to pitch a country into a decade of chaos – Linda Jaivin expertly and concisely dissects the origins and the gruesome trajectory of China’s Cultural Revolution.' (Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking and Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson)
'Excellent ... a powerful account of a truly extraordinary period in recent Chinese history, surefooted and perceptive, enlivened by a wealth of vignettes and anecdotes which bring to life the dramatic and frequently horrific events that have played a seminal role in forming Chinese society as it exists today.' (Philip Short, author of Mao: A Life)

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