Sam Pepper
POL 103
China: A Century of Revolution
A century of revolution is a documentary film of the people who lived through all the terror, and the journey through the country’s (China) most chaotic period. It presents the secret nation with rare archival footage, insightful historical commentary and surprising eyewitness accounts from citizens who struggled through China’s most decisive century. Though the documentary is long, it breaks it into sections from beginning to end. It first starts off with China in Revolution (1911-1949), followed by the Mao years (1949-1976). To watch this film, one must take into account that this really did happen, as brutal as it is, we as human beings were and still are monstrous. Our greed for power is what tears countries apart. In the following, I will try to break down the film into what I saw and how my reactions are to the film. I will try to answer the simple questions as to what I watched and wondered. I will break the film down into the first section, China in Revolution followed by the Mao years.
China in Revolution charts the country’s most violent era where decades of civil war and foreign invasions led to the bloody battle for power between Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek. Before breaking that piece down, I would like to try and answer the following question as to what circumstances do I think are conducive to the rise of communism? Basically what this question is trying to ask is what tended to help in the rise of communism. The rise of Communism in China is largely due to a man named Mao Zedong, poorly educated but highly intelligent. Zedong left home and had become a member of the Nationalist Army as the Revolution began around 1911. He was soon introduced to and became powerfully influenced by the philosophies of Marxism. Marxism was created by Karl Marx and was the beginning of the communist manifesto. It is basically a set of rules that are demanded by individuals in the society. There are neither rich...