CHINA AND THE CUTURAL REVOLUTION

In 1966, Mao Zedong proclaimed the so called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which lead China to the brink of civil war and traumatizes Chinese society until today. In order to portray this historically unique process, the historian Cornelia Hermanns has ranged far afield. Just as exciting as a political thriller, yet fact-oriented, she describes China during the period from 1911, the time when the Chinese empire ended, until 1976, the death of Mao Zedong: the beginnings of communism, the conflictual relationship with the Soviet Union, the war against Japan, the Communist struggle for power, the Korean War, the Great Leap Forward. And as a consequence of all that, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, during which the unleashed youth terrorized the country.