Word: posters
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...week's end Chinese authorities appeared to be putting the lid on this unprecedented outburst of free expression, which was seemingly confined to the country's capital. One poster went up saying that informal exchanges between foreigners and the masses should be ended for the sake of national unity. Gradually, the crowds at "democracy wall" grew smaller and less demonstrative. Yet even if there were no more public challenges to Maoist orthodoxy, foreign observers were left with two distinct impressions. One was that Peking's outbreak of poster politics had been tacitly authorized by the leadership...
...poster campaign was the most dramatic expression of popular feeling in Peking since the death of Mao in 1976. In the largest single incident, 6,000 demonstrators, marching 30 abreast, paraded through the streets chanting slogans seldom heard in the People's Republic since the Communist takeover in 1949: "Long live democracy! We will never turn back!" Their destination was T'ien An Men Square, site of what had up to now been the most extraordinary political happening in China's recent past. In April 1976, throngs had congregated there to protest the removal of wreaths left...
...interview with Novak and in talks with two touring Japanese politicians, Teng demolished a number of Sinologists' preconceptions about the poster campaign. When the campaign began, it was widely believed that Teng was planning to replace Hua as Premier. Yet in a talk with Yoshikatsu Takeiri, head of Japan's Clean Government Party, the Vice Premier renounced any designs on that prestigious job. "I am too old and I wish to live longer," he explained. "A younger man is better for the job." (Hua is 57.) Similarly, al though few experts believe that the protesters would have denounced...
While Mao was being nailed to the wall, Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing received flattering references in the same poster. Mao, it said harshly, "because his thinking was metaphysical in the last years of his life and for all kinds of other reasons, supported the Gang of Four in raising their hands to strike down Comrade Teng Hsiao-p'ing." Although the commentary omitted specifics, few people who read it were unaware of the reference to one of the strangest and most important events in recent Chinese political history...
Teng has so obviously strengthened his position that he can now safely reject those terms. In a society where little is permitted to happen without government approval, the poster remained on Wang Fu Ching Street for two days, indicating that the auto mechanic who wrote it, if indeed a mechanic was the author, had high-level approval. Moreover, as the week rolled on, additional posters supplemented the original. Words like "fascist" and "dictatorial" were used to describe Mao's rule. One poster attacked Mao openly for having purged Teng and suggested that Mao had been involved in the activities...