China and Youth

The Chinese Revolution is worth defending. When I was in high school, I read books such as “Daily Life in Revolutionary China” by Maria Macciocchi, and “The Long Revolution” by Edgar Snow. I learned about a society where the educational system was very different. Instead of the students desperately stressing out to get the best grades, and doing their best to appease teachers who knew just how to abuse their power over their students, in China the masses of youth were told during the Cultural Revolution that “It is right to rebel.”

This was such an inspiration to me.

The Chinese Cultural Revolution was a movement about empowering the people, specifically young people, to help run society. Youth weren’t told to obey. Youth weren’t told to take orders with a smile. Youth were told to stand up and be heard, as they were the future of a socialist society, in which the power belonged to the masses of people.

When I think of today’s schools, which are packed with racist cops, and students being dragged away in handcuffs or frisked for drugs is the norm, I remember what I read about education in Socialist China and that there is another way.

China has backed away from some of its socialist policies, but that is not enough for the U.S. The U.S. wants to reverse everything that was won in 1949 when the Chinese workers and peasants took power. The U.S. wants to rip all of China’s resources, all of China’s labor power, all of China’s land away from the Chinese masses, and return it to their money-grubbing hands of war and empire.

We must not let lies about Tibet get in the way of what is right. The Chinese Revolution is a revolution that every young person should defend!

—Caleb T. Maupin

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