Sample Mid-term Scoring Guidelines

Note

Please note that the sample essays provided below are intended for reference purposes only. They should not be regarded as “best essays” or templates to be replicated. It is important to develop your own unique ideas, structure, and writing style when crafting your own essay. I have provided detailed written comments to help you analyze their arguments (and show how I will be assessing your work), but the original scores have been omitted.

Primary Source: Xue Fucheng

Excerpt

Note

In the following excerpt from Suggestions on Foreign Affairs (1879), Xue Fucheng (1838-1894), secretary and advisor to self-reformers Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, calls for reform on the ground that historical change is inevitable and nothing new to Chinese history.

Sometimes in the succession of one sage to another there cannot but be changes in the outward forms of government. Sometimes when a sage has to deal with the world, sooner or later there must be changes made… . Now there is rapid change in the world. It is my opinion that with regard to the immutable Way we should change the present so as to restore the past [the Way of the sages]; but with regard to changeable laws, we should change the past system to meet present needs. Alas! If we do not examine the differences between the two situations, past and present, and think in terms of practicability, how can we remedy the defects?

Western nations rely on intelligence and energy to compete with one another. To come abreast of them, China should plan to promote commerce and open mines; unless we change, the Westerners will be rich and we poor. We should excel in technology and the manufacture of machinery; unless we change, they will be skillful and we clumsy. Steamships, trains, and the telegraph should be adopted; unless we change the Westerners will be quick and we slow… . Unless we change, the Westerners will cooperate with each other and we shall stand isolated; they will be strong and we shall be weak.

Some may ask: “If such a great nation as China imitates the Westerners, would it not be using barbarian ways to change China?” Not so. For while in clothing, language, and customs China is different from foreign countries, the utilization of the forces of nature for the benefit of the people is the same in China as in foreign countries. The Western people happen to be the first in adopting this new way of life, but how can we say that they alone should monopolize the secrets of nature? And how do we know that a few decades or a hundred years later China may not surpass them? … Now if we really take over the Westerners’ knowledge of machinery and mathematics in order to protect the Way of our sage kings Yao and Shun, Yu and Tang, Wen and Wu, and the Duke of Zhou and Confucius, and so make the Westerners not dare to despise China, I know that if they were alive today, the sages would engage themselves in the same tasks, and their Way would also be gradually spread to the eight bounds of the earth. That is what we call using the ways of China to change the barbarians.

Scoring Guideline

High-level Indicators

• Situates Xue Fucheng and his ideas as part of the self-strengthening movement
• Registers Xue’s conclusion about Chinese tradition as a resource for – rather than obstacle to – reform
• Discusses the difference between the “Immutable way” and “changeable laws” and considers their relationship
• Notes Xue’s understanding of Confucianism as a universal concept, rather than merely a Chinese tradition (“the utilization of the forces of nature for the benefit of the people”)
• Observes Xue’s understanding of utilitarianism and pragmatic statecraft as part of Confucian tradition and its relevance for Qing China
• Examines the relationship between past and present, noting Xue’s departure from traditional notion of cyclical change (“change the present so as to restore the past”) and embrace of linear time (“change the past system to meet present needs”)
• Compares and contrasts with other thinkers, especially his patrons, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, and other thinkers we have read (e.g. Zhang Zhidong)
• Probes Xue’s nationalism as one defined by culture and civilization, as opposed to race or ethnicity
• Considers the audience of the text – more conservative members at court – and its potential reception among intellectuals
• Offers an assessment of the self-strengthening movement, including its successes, limitations, and legacies

Low Level Indicators

• Fails to contextualize Xue Fucheng as part of the self-strengthening movement and its impact on 19th century China
• Makes binary generalizations about China vs. West, tradition vs. modernity
• Dismisses indigenous roots of modernization and intellectual change
• Misses Xue’s understanding of Confucianism as one based on civilization and universal in nature (“the utilization of the forces of nature for the benefit of the people”)
• Has little to say about specificities of Xue Fucheng’s own writing, especially regarding his notion of historical change and/or relationship between China and the West
• Fails to register Xue Fucheng’s interlocutors (namely more conservative members at court) and the potential reception of his writing
• Concludes the self-strengthening movement as “failure” without considering the context of reforms, and/or considering its intellectual legacies
• Overly negative about the value of the text for understanding intellectual, political, and social change in late 19th-century China

Sample Essay

Xue Fucheng wrote Suggestions on Foreign Affairs in the midst of China’s Self-Strengthening Movement, an intellectual and political conversation which spanned the latter half of the 19th Century and tried to find China’s place in an increasingly globalized and Western-centric world. The movement began after the Treaty of Tianjin of 1858 left China fully vulnerable to Western influence, allowing free trade along China’s coast, foreigners to reside in China’s capital, and free travel for foreigners to China’s interior; the unprecedented amount of Western culture, technology, and ideology suddenly transplanted into forced Chinese intellectuals, government officials, and the population at large to discern a relationship with the West. Would China adopt Western intellectual, economic, and cultural traditions or would China remain loyal to their own ways of life and governing? More importantly, if China were resist change, could they cultivate a formidable presence on the global stage, or would they be eaten up by stronger national economies as social darwinism suggested?

Xue Fucheng advocates for middle path between Westernization and stagnation: China ought to adopt Western methods of using natural resources while re-invigorating traditional Chinese culture. At the end of his piece, he seems to imply that if China is able integrate Western technologies, commerce, and infrastructure into traditional Chinese society, eventually the West will look to China to as a role-model, beginning an era of Sinicization that finally establishes the Chinese “tianxia.” Although I agree that China should not fully Westernize their culture, Xu Fuecheng’s belief that the re-invigoration of traditional Chinese culture can complement Westernization of industry and commerce is naive and impractical.

Xu Fuecheng, to his great disadvantage, subscribes to the old Chinese belief that reform means a returning to the past during China “golden age.” What Xu Fuecheng ignores in subscribing to this ideology is that industry, commerce, and technology are part of culture. How a society engages with itself and the outside world is a part of culture. Instituting the use of steamships, trains, and the telegraph, as Xu Fuecheng suggests, will alter the way that Chinese people travel, communicate with one another, and trade with the outside world. As communication and travel are made easier, fundamental relationships ascribed in Confucianism like that of a ruler and his subjects or internal family dynamics will inevitably change. If questions of culture were as straightforward as algebraic equations, with every cultural and societal variable in stagnant relation with one another, then maybe Xu Fuecheng’s plan would be easily accomplished; however, the culture is more analogous to a spiderweb, where one string cannot be snipped and restrung without changing the entire web’s appearance and function.

Other reformers, like Kang Youwei, posited a more realistic view of cultural reform, which viewed reform as a pushing toward the future. In order to successfully Westernize their technology, industry, and infrastructure, Chinese culture ought to adapt to changing conditions. Xu Fuecheng comes to the cusp of understanding this when he discusses the changing of “changeable laws,” but his belief in an “immutable Way” forces China into cultural and industrial stagnation. Fundamentally, the culture of an industrial society must be different from an agrarian society. As seen in future cultural movements, China eventually did Westernize their culture to varying degrees and was able to Sinicize western ideas.

Comments

Thank you for this considered analysis of Xue Fucheng, which goes beyond his writing and examines the larger politics of reform during the self-strengthening movement. I especially appreciate how you address the difficult context of reform in the wake of a series of political turmoils in the mid-19th century.

To make this essay stronger, I suggest a closer reading of Xue’s ideas. In your essay and our conversation, you missed unfortunately some key elements of his writing:

• Dynamics of historical change: How can the QIng balance tradition with the imperative to change? What is the boundary between the “immutable way” and the “changeable laws”? When should it “change the present so as to restore the past”, and when should it adapt the latter to suit the former? This key distinction is somewhat unclear in your analysis.

• Confucianism (and Chinese tradition by extension) as resource of – rather than obstacle to – change: You seem to associate Xue merely as a conservative eager to reaffirm the legitimacy of the mandate of heaven, but this reading doesn’t do justice to his main argument, which is mainly to convince more conservative members at court that change is indeed intrinsic to Confucian thought and compatible with Chinese tradition.

• Relationship between China and West: You have picked up Xue’s usage of “barbarians” as reference to foreigners, but misses some other key points about the synergy between Confucian tradition and Western modernity. Unlike Zhang Zhidong, who maintains a sharp distinction between Chinese essence and Western application, Xue sees universalism as indigenous to Confucian thought – “the utilization of forces of nature for the benefit of the people is the same in China as in foreign countries” – and supportive of his reform program.

You seem to fixate on a narrative of failure of Xue and of the Qing: his ideas were deemed “naive and impractical” and ultimately unrealistic. However, the fact that Confucianism, despite repeated attacks against it during the 20th century, retains its enduring appeal in Chinese political thought suggests that Xue’s attempt to reconcile Chinese tradition and modernity was not such a foolhardy endeavor after all. Again, the point is not to deny discussions of “failures”, but to critically consider their historical context and contested meanings.

Finally, you essay makes some key assumptions about culture and politics that remain under-developed. Instead of thinking of culture change as a spiderweb that must be undone completely with one snapped string, old branches can be grafted and generate new shoots, and to assume that “the culture of an industrial society must be different from an agrarian society” is to impose a linear notion of historical change that doesn’t do justice to the full complexities of Xue’s ideas and those that came after him.

Secondary Source: Xu Jilin on Tianxia

Excerpt

Note

Jilin Xu, “The New Tianxia: Rebuilding China’s Internal and External Order,” trans. Mark McConaghy, Xiaobing Tang, and David Ownby, Reading the China Dream, 2015, https://www.readingthechinadream.com/xu-jilin-the-new-tianxia.html.

Xu Jilin, professor of history at East China Normal University, is a historian of 20th Century Chinese thought and culture. In the following excerpt, he discusses how to reform the traditional notion of tianxia (literally “all under heaven”) which, in Xu’s words, connoted both “an ideal civilizational order, and a world spatial imaginary with China’s central plains at the core.”

As a great power with global influence, what China must achieve today is not just its dream of rejuvenating the nation and the state, but more importantly the redirection of its nationalistic spirit toward the world. What China needs to reconstruct is not just a particularistic culture suited to one country and one people, but rather a civilization that has universal value for all humanity. A value that is “good”for China, particularly core values that touch on our shared human nature, must in the same way be “good”for all humanity. The universal nature of Chinese civilization can only be constructed from the perspective of all humanity, and cannot be grounded solely in the particular interests and values of the Chinese nation-state. Historically speaking, Chinese civilization was tianxia. To transform tianxia, in today’s globalized era, into an internationalism integrated with universal civilization is the major goal of a civilizational power. China is a cosmopolitan power, a global nation that bears Hegel’s “world spirit.” It must take responsibility for the world and for the “world spirit” it has inherited. This “world spirit” is the new tianxia that will emerge in the form of universal values. […]

In today’s era of the nation-state, with our respect for the equality of peoples and their right to independence and self-determination, any plan to return to the hierarchical tianxia order, with China as its center, is not only historically reactionary but is in fact merely wishful thinking. For this reason, tianxia needs to pick and choose and revitalize itself in the context of modernity, so as to develop towards a new configuration: tianxia 2.0. […]

What is new about the new tianxia? In comparison with the traditional concept, its novelty is expressed in two dimensions: one, its de-centered and non-hierarchical nature; two, its ability to create a new sense of universality. […]

Traditional tianxia was a hierarchical concentric politico-civilizational order with China as its core. What the new tianxia should discard first is precisely this centralized and hierarchical order. What is “new” about the new tianxia is the addition of the principle of the equality of nation-states. In the new tianxia order, there is no center, there are only independent and peaceful peoples and states who respect one another. […]

The universality sought by the new tianxia transcends both Sinocentrism and Eurocentrism. It does not seek to create a civilizational hegemony on the basis of an axial civilization and national culture.

Scoring Guideline

High-level Indicators

• Registers Xu Jilin’s definition of tianxia (all under heaven) and notes its difference from traditional tianxia (“hirarchical and sino-centric”)
• Notes the Confucian roots of tianxia and tradition of Chinese universalism
• Discusses the motivation of Xu’s writing as one against excessive nationalism and its intended audience
• Examines the inherent tension between universalism and nationalism in Xu’s writing, namely using tianxia, a traditional Chinese concept rooted in hierarchy, to counter sino-centricism and hierarchy
• Compares and contrasts Xu with earlier thinkers calling for Confucianism universalism, such as Kang Youwei
• Considers the efficacy of Xu’s arguments, especially as to whether tianxia (all-under-heaven) offers a viable alternative to the Westphalian world order

Low-level Indicators

• Fails to register Xu’s definition of “tianxia” (all-under-heaven) and its difference from the new tianxia
• Has little to say about universalism in Confucian thinking
• Overlooks the context of Xu Jilin’s writing – a rising and increasingly confident China – and his position vis-à-vis other intellectuals
• Has nothing to say about enduring influence of Confucianism and / or Chinese tradition in contemporary thought
• Makes no attempt to consider the audience of Xu’s writing and potential reception of the text
• Overly dismissive of Xu’s text as nationalistic and its value for understanding Chinese intellectual thought today

Sample Essay

For much of the Qing’s rule in China, the idea of Tanxia, that notion that China was “the middle kingdom” and the lands and sea were divinely appointed to the Chinese sovereign the was fundamental to how the Chinese state understood itself and interacted with foreign nations. The position of the emperor himself was also of fundamental to Chinese governance, as was the moral basis on which the nation governed: Confucian ethics. These three important ideas and institutions, Confucianism, Tianxia, and the Emperorship, may be mistakenly thought of as relics the past that died with the Qing empire. In Xu Jinlin’s call for a new Tianxia, however, we see that these ideas are deeply woven into Chinese society and thought to the extent that even major external factors includings wars, revolutions, technological innovations, and massive overhauls in China’s place in the world fail to stop the inertia of these ideals.

A discussion of these ideals importance of these ideals should begin in the Qing empire. In the 1800s, the importance of Tianxia, political hierarchy, and Confucian Ethics were of the utmost importance to the Qing empire. The entirety of their bureaucratic governing system depended on “elite commoners” who had passed rigorous examinations on Confucian ethics to earn their place in the government (note from module S3). With regards to Tianxia, the entirety of China’s foreign policy depended on this idea to the extent that this Sinocentrism resulted in China having several conflicts with Britain and other European powers who believed in the equality of nation states this is evident in the boldness of Qianlong’s edict to England during a trade dispute regarding the England wanting to be able to trade in more than just the Canton Port in which Qianlong refers to the “Celestial Empire of China” not being able to accomodate the “vassal states” like England request (Qianlong Edict from Class). With regards to the Emperor, the notion of the Chinese Emperor having the mandate of heaven to govern his people.

For much of the Qing’s rule these ideas governed and institutioned governed China. Losses in the Opium Wars and treaties were seen as the marker of the beginning of a century of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers. As the Qing empire began to weaken, however, it seemed that these ideas might fall with it. After lasting for hundreds of years, the Confucian exam system for civil service was replaced by a western education model, the empire was to be replaced and China was looking to modernize and join the comity of nations as the idea of Tianxia sputtered.

As time progressed, however, it became apparent that all of these ideas remained deeply rooted in the Chinese psyche. When deciding what should replace the monarchy Kang Youwei argued that Confucian ethics could be a source of reform. In many ways, his thinking resembles what Xu Jinling expresses here. While Xu Jinlin argues for “tianxia 2.0” that takes responsibility for the “world spirit” and transcends Sinocentrism and Eurocentrism, Kang Youwei argued for a “grand commonality” that transcends national provinical and economical boundaries (class notes module 07). In this shared understanding between Xu Jinlin’s we see how China is in many ways a nation of intellectual inertia, in which ideas of old perpetuate even as nation and its place in the word changes. Following the fall of Qing, not only did the idea of Confucian ethics survive the figure of the emperor did as well. From the nationalists Chiang Kai Shek to Mao Zedong and the CCP to even Xi Jingping today the leading, emperor-like figure governing a bureaucractic remained. The idea of Tianxia also remained strong, but manifested itself in a sort of nationalism Following the mass migration in the early 20th century there was a wave of Chinese nationalism evident in Chiang Kai Shek’s New Life Movement which advocated for the good of Confucian ethics and Wong Chin Foo’s “Why I am Heathen” which uses irony to point out the superiority of Chinese Confucianism to Western Christianity.

The purpose for Xu Jinlin’s letter is to argue for a new Tianxia in the era of the nation state in which the nation discards the old hierarchical and nationalistic identity in favor of a modern universalistic understanding of Tianxia in which everyone is China heps to lead the world to a better future. In this argument, however, we see the inertia of Chinese thought in two ways. First he is arguing against the hierarchy and Sinocentrism on numerous occasions. He need to make this point however, is a clear indication of just how deeply ingrained the nationalism and hierarchy of Chinese society is. He is essentially arguing against the core principles of the Qing dynasty that survived the fall of empire, the Communist revolution adn remain in the Chinese psyche today. In his advocacy of a universalism, however, he also displays the interia of Chinese thought.

Comments

What is tianxia and why is it still useful for understanding China’s place in the world? In this essay you have offered a careful reading of Xu Jilin’s essay, which revives – if not reinvents – the concept of all under heaven not as an unchanging essence of Sinocentrism, but as a counter-weight to growing Chinese nationalism. According to Xu, Tianxia 2.0 is, at in its most ideal form, rooted in universal humanism, one that is the true the essence of Confucianism. You have offered not only a succinct and accurate reading of his writing, but also your own assessment as to why the concept is attractive to Chinese intellectuals today and why we should pay attention. I also appreciate how you connect Xu’s writing to a much longer tradition of Confucian thinking, especially in the 19th century, when thinkers such as Kang came up with new concepts such as grand commonality to reconcile Chinese intellectual tradition with new geopolitical realities of the time.

To make this analysis stronger, I would invite you to ponder our default association between tianxia and pre-modern Chinese world order. The notion of all-under-heaven, with China at the center of civilization, is an ideal type, one that has its own history (as we see with the 19th century British translation of Qianlong’s Letter to King George, which portrays the Qing as a haughty and isolated power) and does not stand historical scrutiny (e.g. Qing’s flexible arrangement with , including a Western-style treaty negotiated with Russia). The essay could also benefit from more careful consideration of this inherent tension between nationalism and universalism in Xu’s thinking: Can tianxia serve as a viable alternative to our current world order? How is this brand of (Chinese) universalism different?

Multi-media source: The Red Detachment of Women

Excerpt

Note

Set on the island of Hainan in southern China amidst the conflict between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) in the 1930s, Chinese director Xie Jin’s 1961 film, “The Red Detachment of Women,” chronicles the tale of a peasant girl named Wu Qionghua. Originally from Yelinzhai Village, Qionghua finds herself imprisoned in a dungeon by her tyrannical master, Nan Batian. However, her fortunes take a turn for the better when she is heroically rescued by Hong Changqing, a valiant communist fighter.

In the following excerpt, Qionghua joins a female detachment within the Red Army following her liberation. There, she undergoes a transformative education and emerges as a conscientious and heroic warrior. In 1964, this gripping narrative was adapted into a ballet production and subsequently elevated to one of the eight “revolutionary model theatrical works” (geming yangbanxi, or yangbanxi for short) during the Cultural Revolution.

Watch: 31:07 - 35:00

Scoring guideline

High-level Indicators

• Connects the film to broader gender history: role of women in Chinese communist revolution
• Discusses changes in female representation: Women as victims and heroic martyrs vs. 
• Situates revolutionary feminism under CCP with broader gender transformations in 20th century (e.g. anarchist tradition, etc.)
• Discusses the ambivalences and limits of female emancipation: the Detachment of Women still under male leadership; women’s domestic labor made invisible; etc.
• Examines the ambivalent relationship between party and women: female emancipation as , but women cadres
• Remarks historical parallels between Hua Mulan and Qionghua, and considers the CCP patronage of Chinese cultural tradition

Low-level Indicators

• Overly negative about the value of propaganda for understanding Communist China
• Fails to register the tactic of mass mobilization (e.g. struggle session, speaking bitterness) and their influence on
• Makes little discussion on the relationship between the medium and the message (i.e., socialist realism in cinema)
• Has little to say about CCP gender ideology and policy, and how they worked in practice
• Overly descriptive of the segment and makes no connection to broader history of women in Chinese socialism, relationship between art and politics, and so forth
• Makes no attempt to disaggregate the experiences of Chinese women (rural vs. urban, rich vs. poor, Han vs. minority)
• Overlooks gap between depicted realities and lived experiences: How did Chinese women experience the Communist Revolution?

Sample Essay

The clip shows an evolved conception of women’s roles in society. In the clip, women are dressed in traditionally masculine clothes and march carrying rifles, and because they are members of the Red Army, their dress and actions are cast as heroic rather than heretical. Additionally, the clip implies that the liberation of women is intimately tied to the adoption of communism. When asked why she wants to join the army, Wu Qionghua replies that she wants to “kill the officials, those big bellies, who eat human beings.” Here, joining the Red Army, becoming a communist, is posited as an avenue for Qionghua to get the revenge she was denied. This exemplifies Mao Zedong’s belief that communism, which will undo class oppression, will by extension undo oppression on the basis of the Three Bonds–which includes the subordination of daughters to father, wife to husband. The role of the communist party in helping women is also shown through the concept of party tutelage woven through the clip. Thus, the clip shows that Qionghua’s devotion to the party in turn enables her to take revenge.

The clip is also an interesting showcase for both the communist party’s emphasis on discipline and subordinations but also flexibilities within those rules. In the clip, when one of the soldiers report to the regiment leader, she is at first scolded for not reporting in the proper posture. Later, when Qionghua and her friend are approved by the regiment leader to join the army, the regiment leader tells her that her membership must be legitimated via registration with the local office. The two instances show the strict procedures party members are supposed to give themselves to and the extensive bureaucratic network the CCP employs to organize such a vast country, but interestingly, the film suggests that sometimes, those rules can be bent just a bit. Qionghua is immediately approved by the regiment leader to join the army when she finds out that her background belongs to a proletariat’s, so in a way, even though Qionghua has to register with the local office, her membership in the CCP is already guaranteed because she has the correct class background. Registering with the office, then, is simply going through the legal motions. Qionghua’s application–if there even was one in the clip–to join the army is not approved on the basis of her physical qualifications (strength, endurance, etc.) or her character, but her class, which stands in for both. This depiction of what counts as credentials is by no means limited to the film itself, but rather an illustration of beliefs that permeated China. The film was released in 1961, five years before the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. In the revolution, class–reds, grays, blacks–would become increasingly important measures of character and determinants treatment people could expect, determining whether people can have certain jobs, whether they can attend university, whether they would fall victim to struggle sessions, and more. The revolution’s emphasis on class can already be seen in the years leading up to it.

Finally, the film clip shows a continuous grappling with what it means to be Chinese. Part of the army’s chant while marching is “There was Hua Mulan who joined the army taking the place of her father in the ancient history. There is women army use the guns to protect the people nowadays.” While this line can be read as a celebration of how different China under communism is from imperial China, as Hua Mulan had to cross-dress to be let into the army while the women can now join the army without hiding their gender, there does exist another interpretation. The line can be seen as modern China’s continuous efforts to improve itself and trying to find legitimation for that improvement in older times so that the improvements may not be seen as something that takes away from a “Chinese identity” that has existed, as some sources would claim, for the past five thousand years. Here, the formation of women’s regiments in the army is not seen as a practice that purely emulates Western methods, but rather, a celebration of Chinese women’s resourcefulness, strength, and willingness to lay down their lives for their country.

Comments

How did ordinary women experience the Chinese communist revolution? What was their relationship to the Chinese Communist Party? On a broader level, what is the relationship among art, politics, and propaganda? Such are some of the key questions from the The Red Detachment of Women, one of the most popular revolutionary dramas from the Mao era.

In this considered analysis, you make a compelling nuanced and compelling reading of the clip. I especially appreciate your reference to the tales of Hua Mulan: the selective patronage of traditional culture, as you rightly pointed out, helps explain the party’s success in communicating its abstract theories of class struggle to the masses. Also well-noted is how the party presents itself as a disciplined organization: as we see with the scene of Qionghua granted provisional membership, the party’s role goes beyond merely arousing revolutionary fervor of the masses; it is also responsible for taming its excesses and channeling it towards its larger revolutionary goals of transforming Chinese society.

To make this essay stronger, may I suggest that you offer a more concise statement of your own thesis. While your essay does a wonderful job paring the rich overlays of the film, noting its presentation of women, traditional culture, and the party’s own self-image, what conclusions do you offer that can bring together these various strands of your reading? I like where your essay is taking us, but the final point – about how the film grapples with what it means to be Chinese – is somewhat abstract and under-developed. What Chinese identity does the film present? Where do women fit in that picture? How does cinema help visualize – and actualize – that sense of self?

One way to answer these questions would be to compare and contrast The Red Detachment of Women with earlier works of Chinese cinema that explore the plight of working class women in urban China, such as the Goddess. How did the visual language and ideological content change? At the same time, how did women’s experiences in reality compare with their propaganda representation? As we discussed in person, even though women were encouraged to become active political agents, their liberation was conditional on the party leadership and defined in relation to its revolutionary project. This tension – between individual and organization, between private life and public interests, between emancipation and subjugation – is key to understanding how female identities and subjectivities are defined under the CCP.