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The May Fourth Movement was a Chinese cultural and anti-imperialist political movement which grew out of student protests in Beijing on May 4,1919. Students gathered in front of Tiananmen to protest the Chinese government's weak response to the Treaty of Versailles decision to allow Japan to retain territories in Shandong that had been surrendered by Germany after the Siege of Tsingtao in 1914. The demonstrations sparked nation-wide protests and spurred an upsurge in Chinese nationalism,a shift towards political mobilization away from cultural activities,and a move towards a populist base,away from traditional intellectual and political elites.
The Four Modernizations were goals formally announced by China's first Premier Zhou Enlai to strengthen the fields of agriculture,industry,defense,and science and technology in China. The Four Modernizations were adopted as a means of rejuvenating China's economy in 1977,following the death of Mao Zedong,and later were among the defining features of Deng Xiaoping's tenure as the paramount leader of China. At the beginning of "Reform and Opening-up",Deng further proposed the idea of "xiaokang" or "Moderately prosperous society" in 1979.
The Beijing Spring refers to a brief period of political liberalization during the "Boluan Fanzheng" period in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It began as the Democracy Wall movement in Beijing,which occurred in 1978 and 1979,right after the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The name is derived from "Prague Spring",an analogous event which occurred in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Wei Jingsheng is a Chinese human rights activist and dissident. He is best known for his involvement in the Chinese democracy movement. He is most prominent for having authored the essay "The Fifth Modernization",which was posted on the Democracy Wall in Beijing in 1978. As punishment for writing his manifesto,Wei was arrested and convicted of "counter-revolutionary" activities,and he was detained as a political prisoner from 1979 to 1993. Briefly released in 1993,Wei continued to engage in his dissident activities by speaking to visiting journalists,and as punishment,he was imprisoned again from 1994 to 1997,making it a total of 18 years he has spent in various prisons. He was deported to the United States of America on 16 November 1997,on medical parole. Still a Chinese citizen,in 1998 Wei established the Wei Jingsheng Foundation in New York City whose stated aim is to work to improve human rights and advocate democratization in China.
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Liu Jingsheng is a Chinese political opposition activist and a former co-editor of Tansuo (Explorations),a journal he founded in the late 1970s with Wei Jingsheng.
Big-character posters are handwritten posters with large characters,usually mounted on walls in public spaces such as universities,factories,government departments,and sometimes directly on the streets. They were used as a means of protest,propaganda,and popular communication. A form of popular political writing,big-character posters did not have a fixed format or style,and could appear in the form of letter,slogan,poem,commentary,etc.
The Ministry of Public Security Qincheng Prison is a maximum-security prison located in Qincheng Village,Xingshou,Changping District,Beijing in the People's Republic of China. The prison was built in 1958 with aid from the Soviet Union and is the only prison belonging to China's Ministry of Public Security. The Ministry of Justice operates other non-military prisons.
Yu Dongyue was born in Liuyang,a city in Hunan province of China on December 4,1967. He is the former arts editor of Liuyang Daily. In the Tiananmen protests of 1989,following a plan made by his friend Yu Zhijian,he and Lu Decheng threw eggshells full of paint at a portrait of China’s political figure Mao Zedong. Yu Dongyue was given a 20-year prison sentence for "sabotage" and "counter-revolutionary propaganda”. He had become badly disturbed psychologically. He was also criticized for his "very avant-garde views on art." He also had been subjected to various physical tortures because of “reactionary statements”he and his friends made about officials.
Moving the Mountain is a 1994 feature documentary directed by Michael Apted and produced by Trudie Styler,with cinematography by Maryse Alberti and music by Liu Sola.
Liu Xianbin,from Suining,Sichuan province,People's Republic of China,is a human rights activist,China Democracy Party organizer,writer and signer of Charter 08.
Protesters and dissidents in China espouse a wide variety of grievances,most commonly in the areas of unpaid wages,compensation for land development,local environmental activism,or NIMBY activism. Tens of thousands of protests occur each year. National level protests are less common. Notable protests include the 1959 Tibetan uprising,the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre,the April 1999 demonstration by Falun Gong practitioners at Zhongnanhai,the 2008 Tibetan unrest,the July 2009 Ürümqi riots,and the 2022 COVID-19 protests.
Joe Chung is a writer and political commentator from Hong Kong,who lives in Stavanger,Norway. He is known for his best-seller books I Don't Want to be Chinese Again and China is Stranger than Fiction,severely criticizing Chinese culture,both of which garnered support in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The Stars Art Group or simply "The Stars" was a Chinese avant-garde group of non-professional artists in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was founded by Ma Desheng and Huang Rui and included Wang Keping (王克平),Qu Leilei,Ah Cheng,Ai Weiwei,and Li Shuang (artist) as the only female member. A historically significant exhibition,now called the Star Art Exhibition,took place in late 1979 in Beihai Park,Beijing,outside the China Art Gallery. After the exhibition was closed by officials,the group staged a protest for cultural openness. They succeeded in reopening the exhibition. The exhibition took place between 23 November and 2 December,in which around 200,000 people attended the event. The group organized another exhibition the next year. Around and after 1983,the group disbanded,partly due to their members going into exile under political pressure,especially the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign of 1983.
Chishan Prison,also known as Hunan Provincial No.1 Prison,is a prison in Hunan of the People's Republic of China.
Marie Holzman is a French sinologist,university professor of Chinese,writer,journalist and translator. Her research focuses on contemporary China and Chinese dissidents.
Beijing Spring is a 2021 American documentary film directed by Andy Cohen and co-directed by Gaylen Ross. The film chronicles the struggle for free speech and free artistic expression in the People's Republic of China (PRC) during a brief period of political reform during the late 1970s known as the Beijing Spring. Production started in 2010 and finished in 2020. Due to legal and jurisdictional issues surrounding the rights of Chi Xiaoning's never-before-seen archival footage,production was halted for four years until Hong Kong's M+ Museum untangled complicated ownership rights.
Fu Yuehua was a Chinese construction worker and dissident who participated in the Democracy Wall Movement. She was detained after helping organize a demonstration in Tiananmen Square in 1979 and charged with violating public order and libel,for alleging that she was raped by a Communist Party official. She was sentenced to two years in prison.
References
- ↑ Brook, Daniel. [2005] (2005). Modern revolution: social change and cultural continuity in Czechoslovakia and China. University Press of America. ISBN 0-7618-3193-2, ISBN 978-0-7618-3193-8.
- ↑ Schell, Orville. Shambaugh, David L. [1999] (1999). The China reader: the reform era. Random House, Inc. ISBN 0-679-76387-2, ISBN 978-0-679-76387-1.
