Book description for paperback of The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China

Excited to know that the paperback of my book The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China will be out in March, 2017. I had to come up with a very condensed version of the book description, and here it is:

Guobin Yang argues that Chinese youth performed an imagined revolution from 1966 to 1968 in order to prove their revolutionary credentials and enact a hallowed political mythology. As sent-down youth in the 1970s, they rejected their revolutionary idealism and embraced self-interest and the values of ordinary life, paving the way for the cultural and political movements of the 1980s. Yang shows that contemporary memories of the Cultural Revolution are contested and often fall along the lines of political division that formed fifty years ago. 

The book description on Amazon and on the web site of the press is like this:

Raised to be "flowers of the nation," the first generation born after the founding of the People's Republic of China was united in its political outlook and at first embraced the Cultural Revolution of 1966, but then split into warring factions. Investigating the causes of this fracture, 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 same competitive dynamic would later turn the Red Guard against the communist government.

Throughout the 1970s, the majority of Red Guard youth were sent to work in rural villages, where they developed an appreciation for the values of ordinary life. From this experience, an underground cultural movement was born. Rejecting idolatry, these relocated revolutionaries developed a new form of resistance that signaled a new era of enlightenment, culminating in the Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s and the Tiananmen protest of 1989. Yang's final chapter on the politics of history and memory    argues that contemporary memories of the Cultural Revolution are factionalized along these lines of political division, formed fifty years before.

Op-ed, China's Divided Netizens

Written for Issue No. 6 of Berggruen Insights, October 21, 2016

On January 13, 2008, Southern Metropolis Daily in the southern city of Guangzhou, China carried a story titled “The Rise of Internet Citizens: Don’t Even Think about Duping Netizens.” Referring to the many online protests in 2007, the story noted that in the internet age, netizens could no longer be hoodwinked by anyone. They would use online forums and blogs to voice their concerns and fight for social justice. 

The word “netizens” in the title of the story, as was in public discourse at that time, carried a sense of solidarity. Wangmin, or netizenry, had taken on the meanings of a collective identity in Chinese society. No matter how different they might be in other ways, netizens shared one distinct trait. Champions of marginal social groups, they were vociferous on issues of social injustice. 

“Netizens” became a powerful collective identity through frequent netizen action – or what I refer to as online activism in my 2009 book The Power of the Internet in China. They have sought justice for victims of police brutality, exposed corrupt government officials, challenged the censorship practices of propaganda authorities, and put government authorities on the defense on policy matters. As recently as in the 1980s, students and intellectuals were considered as the conscience of the nation. Now it is netizens.

Continue to read the whole essay here.